This game is stupidly hard

[Gorael]

I'm a veteran of the genre. I have played every BG, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, etc ...
The difficulty of this game is stupid and make it not enjoyable. It's a shame because otherwise it has a nice feel: arts are cools, character creation is very complete, etc ...

At the moment I'm in act 2 and must go the the Bald Hill. I have tried the fight like 30 times with no success... My party is lvl 4, I used every spell and potions at my disposal ... Once buffed, the tower shield girl has 30 AC, the magnus orc hac 26AC + mirror image, the barbarian girl only around 20 though. Once I kill every spider but one, Silky and the Doomspider appears. The former freezes my party with "Hold Person" while the second spams 25+ sneak attack, which even my tanks can't evade ... I just can't do anything about it. Also my main character is an Eldritch Archer, and despite using the "Precise Arcanum" perk which gives him an overall +15 attack bonus, keeps missing his targets 2/3 of the time...

I'm speaking of this particular combat, but honestly every one has been a pain in the ass so far, and demanded me to save scum 5 to 10 times. Even 3 anonymous "bandits" can whipe out my party made of 6 heroes ...

Hence my question is: for what type of minimaxing monster is the game made for ? What I liked about the BG games was that it was very permissive with your playstyle. You could play any main character and play with any companion you wanted and make it work. Here I'm reading "guides" on how you should keep your party at lvl 1 for buying mercenaries at the cheapest, and making a "decent minimaxed party" with 30AC at lvl 1-2 ... Seriously ?

[Memnarch]

Level 4 is way too low for BH tbh..id go level and explore until atleast 5/6

[Quacksalber]

I know this isn't the answer you want, but use the difficulty sliders or set it to easier.

[TreP]

Strange question, but have you tried lowering difficulty? Because that usually helps when game is hard.

[EvilDonut]

Level 4 is way too low. I had an hard time at level 6.

[Rokatsa Marskirs]

Could very well be the difficulty you are playing on...Game is balanced for Normal Difficulty, and even then you may still be too low level. I was level 5 before I finished Act 1 and killed the Stag Lord. As a point to make...I was watching CohhCarnage play on HARD mode, and he managed to beat the encounter after several tries, which says something...it's doable, even when it's totally skewed against you.

[Jaeger Pilot]

What makes the game hard is that there is no way to inspect enemies to know their challenge rating compared to you. Also, the quests doesn't have a recommended level. So quite often you try to take on quests that are way too difficult for you, while you would not do them yet if the quest log had said 'Very difficult' or had red colour coding or something, like The Witcher 3.

Also, for the monsters to have similar stats to the tabletop game monsters, you have to turn down enemy difficulty to weak. Unfortunately this makes trash mobs too easy, but harder mobs are more resonable.

[Gorael]

Thank you for your answers. So am I supposed to go grind some random encounters to lvl up my team then ? I am supposed to do the Bald Hill quest right now, as the time will expire in 10 days. I finished Act 1 with still 40 days left. Maybe my mistake was to not use that time for grinding ?

If so, the game punishes you hard on your 1st playthrough, as you are not supposed to know what is ahead ...

[CHAO$$$]

bald hill isnt all that hard
kill the spiders first. The hold person / Tashas spam is annoying but if you get a few resists it really doesnt matter.

The only real problem is when you cant kill her by the time she runs out of tashas and hold. She then uses magic missile which hurts a lot.

[erikem]

AFAIR you can use "hold person" on that caster as well whcih makes your life much easier.

[Ammellisan]

i did it with a level 4 party quite easily on hard mode, pull the spiders further down, use 'entangle' on the area so they arrive somewhat slower, focus down the doomspider as soon as it arrives and use a caster to keep their caster busy, took 2 tries for me to finish it that way

[Gorael]

Chaos when someone tells you that he is having a hard time with something, telling him" Oh it's really not that hard " is probably the most irrelevant thing that you can ever say.

[CHAO$$$]

Originally posted by Gorael:

Chaos when someone tells you that he is having a hard time with something, telling him" Oh it's really not that hard " is probably the most irrelevant thing that you can ever say.

Its not. It tells you that youre probably doing somethign fundamentally wrong and that you will get overwhelmed more in the future unless you fix that.

Possible fundamentally wrong things could be:
Playing on hard/unfair
bad gear / bad stats / bad comp

you get the idea

There are much harder fights in the game than bald hill.

[Gorael]

The spiders are not a problem at all, they can hardly touch and damage me. It's really Silky and the Doomspider that I can't help fighting. Tried to focus both of them ... but I guess I'll have to restart a new playthough, on an easier difficulty, and use more of my time for grinding ...

[Shahadem]

it isn't hard so much as it is imbalanced as ♥♥♥♥. The devs have very clearly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up enemy stats beyond belief.

[Quacksalber]

Originally posted by Gorael:

Thank you for your answers. So am I supposed to go grind some random encounters to lvl up my team then ? I am supposed to do the Bald Hill quest right now, as the time will expire in 10 days. I finished Act 1 with still 40 days left. Maybe my mistake was to not use that time for grinding ?

If so, the game punishes you hard on your 1st playthrough, as you are not supposed to know what is ahead ...

You are right that if you are getting the quest @ level 4, you can't exactly level up due to the time limit. I expect you may have missed something in Chapter 1 as you are supposed to be level 5 by that time afaik. BTW you can crank down the difficulty at any time.