Custom Difficulty

[Nate of Scooba]

I heard this game is easy, so I'm hoping to play on hard + custom modifiers to make the game harder. What settings are reasonable to increase, and which are bad to increase? From the look of things, the difficulty settings aren't carefully crafted, just number modifiers and I'm not sure which will be crazy and which reasonable

[eskatonia]

If I were you I'd start a campaign on very hard, play a few missions and then decide if you need to go harder or not using a custom difficulty. You can restart then if you want or keep going with new settings.

[Nate of Scooba]

I heard people are getting turn-1 kills on the final boss. I wonder whether self imposed limitations might also help, like always destroying tech instead of scavenging it

[eskatonia]

Originally posted by i Scooba Nate:

I heard people are getting turn-1 kills on the final boss. I wonder whether self imposed limitations might also help, like always destroying tech instead of scavenging it

Pretty sure that's not on very hard. There are extra limitations you can turn on in custom difficulty like "iron man (no save scum)" , perma death for tech priests , random skill upgrades or melee only, ranged weapons only.

[EasternTime]

Most of "too easy" comments are somewhat old now, devs balanced their game a little more around patch 1.2 or so. So you won't roll through enemies like a steam engine on hard and very hard, don't listen to them.
Powercreep, however, is quite real. In a late game you will be mowing down good chunk of the enemies, but at this time game focus changes to running against awakening gauge, making you lean towards risky moves. Because of this you may misplay from time to time and get your guys killed - enemies have as much damage as you, and specials are a treat even in a late game, especially Lords and Guards. This keeps the game challenging to me. I'm playing on hard.

[ChiliOil]

You mean to tell me that this game isn't stupidly easy anymore? I still remember when you could just ROFLstomp through the entire game without a second though if you had half the sense to use cover/LoS blockers, decent enough weapons, some sembalence of armor, and SHEER amounts of cheese that the game almost encouraged you to do even without really thinking about it.

[Phoenixflieger]

I think you can change difficulty settings back and forth whenever you like - in a mission even, even in iron man/permadeath settings.

So I would try to reduce blackstone to 50% (delays your Magos development; might only be effectiv if chosen right from the start though...)

And the other is CP per extra move. Should reduce your ability to counter threats or end maps very fast.

Not sure reducing canticles is worthwhile. But hey, if the game is too easy for you, just 1 per mission might make you think twice about them.

[Aldehydra]

Originally posted by EasternTime:

Powercreep, however, is quite real. In a late game you will be mowing down good chunk of the enemies, but at this time game focus changes to running against awakening gauge, making you lean towards risky moves.

And if you actually try to complete every mission and kill the last boss before 100% awakening, it's still a challenge. Just a different one. You're going to have to figure out how to complete all objectives (including scanning and destroying every terminal) in one turn, which requires careful CP management and extensive use of group buffs.

Originally posted by Phoenixflieger:

Not sure reducing canticles is worthwhile. But hey, if the game is too easy for you, just 1 per mission might make you think twice about them.

I think reducing canticles would mostly hurt tech auxiliaries. The canticles themselves don't matter much. One cast per deployment is nothing; their true potential is in being able to cast them multiple times per fight with the Overzealous ability. Of course, tech auxiliaries are pretty overpowered so limiting their versatility to 1-2 canticles might be a good idea.

Originally posted by i Scooba Nate:

This would make a big difference, but the problem is that its sort of fun to be able to move so far.

It gets ridiculous in the late game, though. I've had a lone character run around the map to scan and destroy every terminal, kill some enemies along the way for fun, then run back to the entrance to evacuate, ending the mission before any other party member or enemy could do anything at all. High level lexmechanics are hilarious, but it doesn't really feel balanced.

[Dorok]

For people arguing you just rush destroy terminals and exit, it's not the game I play, this is almost never possible and most combats will involve to kill all enemies even many of those requiring reach an exit, and those with exit are less frequent anyway.

Custom difficulty allows plenty harder options than Very Hard which is the max difficulty.

For example at Very Hard enemy HP and extra number of units are both +50% but you can increase both up to 200%.

I agree that reducing Canticles to 1 would be a serious penalty, but reduce them to 0 is even possible, but a bit illogical with a priest tree final skill allowing cast canticles.

The problem with custom difficulty harder is that you'll have to tune it yourself, but you can change the setup along a campaign.

[Dorok]

Yeah try tune difficulty yourself with ironman wouldn't be possible, I quoted the permadeath option, but not the ironman option.

For sure some missions are made to be harder, and that's necessary, there's nothing worse than combats with constant same difficulty.

For sure it's not easy, and that's why the dev didn't setup higher difficulty levels, it's not done with a fingertip. But if a player find quite too easy max difficulty, there's margin to try set it a bit harder.

At some points, it's experimental and a challenge, lost some missions or a campaign is part of it.

Myself I don't have the experience to suggest any harder setup, but those that find the game too easy should jump in, I quoted a thread from a player requesting a harder difficulty setup, and none did any real suggestion.

EDIT:
It seems that the point is force rush the campaign, and ends in less XP and less missions done when you reach and beat each boss and final boss. The option of +1 CP cost for each move should contribute. Or even increase awakening cost from move.

Also if the game curve seems wrong, it's probably a too fast progression, then perhaps XP penalty will work.

But obviously, and an even harder setup need be harder so less approach will work as well. Try find a setup harder for the same strategy and tactics is probably not the way to achieve it.

[Aldehydra]

Originally posted by i Scooba Nate:

Agreed. I've only had 1-2 missions that were not 'kill all enemies': after you get to the terminal, the objective changes to 'kill all enemies,' etc.

I got lots of them near the end. Either scan/destroy terminals and then return to the door or just dash across the map and leave. I'd usually kill all enemies anyway for the blackstone, but by the end you need to kill so many enemies to level up that it's not worth the time anymore.

Originally posted by i Scooba Nate:

I am about to finish the game and for the last boss fight(s) I have to make a wild guess what difficulty to set ahead of time :(

I found the final boss to be really easy if you go for a completionist run where you complete every other mission before the last boss. One level 20 character can take him solo on normal difficulty without too much trouble. A full party can easily kill him the first turn even on very hard.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Aldehydra:

I got lots of them near the end. Either scan/destroy terminals and then return to the door or just dash across the map and leave. I'd usually kill all enemies anyway for the blackstone, but by the end you need to kill so many enemies to level up that it's not worth the time anymore.

I'm closer to the end, and still didn't saw that at all.

I observed carefully, and many exit missions finish with a kill them all, but you should have notice even if you killed all enemies and then exit, because in this case there's the message anyway to kill all enemies, and after the end of mission.

It's more than 1 or 2 missions like that, but it's not much. Perhaps it's RNG or linked to some conditions, but it's not the game I play, only few missions are scan/destroy terminals then rush to exit, the game is very very far to be that, click terminals and exit.