WTF with this "difficulty????"

[Maidiac]

So I finish the tutorial without any real grief and get to upgrade both my dudes. Then I get to pick between 2 missions. Both of which are described as EASY. Try one mission and get wiped fairly soon (2 or 3 turns in) and I think, ok, bad luck.
Reload and on the very next mission my first dude gets killed in the first ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ turn???????????????

Im no expert at turned based games but if this is their idea of easy they can ♥♥♥♥ right off.

[Maidiac]

By the way, im playing on normal and save your gitgud nonsense. Seriously, I just rage quit a game for the first time in years and it wasnt because a 12 year old noscopped me from across the map after doing a 360 off a 3rd story roof. The devs just no scopped me from overseas with this nonsense

[Porygon]

First off, take it easy. We all rage at games sometimes but you'll be able to help yourself succeed if you look at what happened and take it apart.

Second, what mission was this? First, second? Was this the second Scaevola mission, the one where you meet that Necron Destroyer? That is a notoriously problematic mission to take on early, it's highly advisable to wait on that mission until a little later when you have some more upgrades.

Thirdly, there are some general tips if you find yourself getting wiped in Mechanicus: Armor is better than health. Energy armor is especially good for protecting your Tech-Priests from Warriors, so you'll want to get augments that give Armor early on. Another big deal is Servitors - use them all the time to soak up hits. Move them in between tech-priests and enemies to take damage for you.

[sp00ky]

The first missions are actually harder than the rest of the game, mainly because your techpriests become really OP (and it's not because you min-max, they will just become OP no matter how you upgrade, just remember to upgrade and install new gear). So hang in there, I am nearly finishing the game and I am not particularly good at these types of games.

First be sure you are understanding the mechanics of this game, it's not about cover and RNG like XCom(if you are used to that kind of thing). If you are in the line of sight of the enemy you will get hit, so avoid being on the line of sight.

There is also a balancing act between using your servo skulls to scan the enemies and know their weakness (and avoid wasting attacks) and getting more cognition points.

Try to understand the enemies and use it to your advantage, keep in mind that the enemies for example cannot use their ranged attacks if you are on an adjacent tile to them so try to gang up on them. When they move to shoot you will get a free attack because of that.

Take out the weakest troops first (canoptic spiders).

Try to get a healer in the party as soon as you can, if you equip it with a shield generator (absorbs 5 damage on an area) you can protect the rest of your troops quite easily.

Also remember that you can use the chants to get yourself out of hairy situations, I mostly use the ones that heal, bonus damage( to take out the most dangerous targets) and the free cognition points.

When you have several skills on your techpriests you want to hoard cognition points like there is no tomorrow, I kid you not I had one techpriest destroy up to 4 or 5 targets on a single turn.

Keep at it, I hope this helps.

[Leoscar]

The difficulty curve in this game is really weird. In the early game ennemies can deal actual damage, you only have 2 tech priests and little to no armor. I wouldn't call it hard, but if you go unga bunga in the middle of 3 ranged ennemies you will get your priests killed.

And then midgame happens. Your priests all have access to the repair tool, making them much more durable, they have armor and passive/active skills. You have weapons that can take out multiple units at a time. You can stant in the middle of 3 ranged units and they're the ones that are going to die. The ennemies just can't keep up. Oh and if you really mess up the chants will be your safety net.

And late game stops being if you can beat a mission, because it becomes impossible to loose, but how quickly you can do it.

[Cpt Beefheart]

Beginner tips: Use two Tech Priest with melee weapons + Servitors & Skitarii Rangers. Focus on Healing and cognition canticles.
Get your tech priests and servitors into melee with Necron Warriors. Attack of opportunity is gold+ ranged attacks from Skitarii rangers is gonna finish of most necron wankers. Use the skull probe to get more cognition. (Revealing stats isn't really that important most of the time).
Focus on leveling up no more than two priests in the beginning.

[MoreEvilSquid]

Yes this game has a really bad reverse difficulty curve. The first few missions can be surprisingly difficult - there's one in particular that took me a number of tries, and it was touch and go (it was a harder difficulty, but still).

But then you find some decent weapons, which is usually also at a point where you've upgraded 2-3 TPs to a level good enough to use them, and BAM! Game becomes a massive cakewalk.

The later-added advanced options do alleviate that somewhat, depending on what you pick...

[Cpt Beefheart]

Finished the game today. Fun, but the difficulty is pretty lame.
Max out two tech priests before you focus on leveling up new ones. Skitarii Rangers rules with the weapon disabling skill. (Alphas are also awesome, especially at lvl 3.)
After you max out your two tech priest, just farm blackstone and level up three more tech priest as you go. Make sure you get some guys who specialize in cognition and the free canticle skill, and you are gonna breeze through the game. Hell, the last fight was a total cakewalk. Kinda anticlimactic to be honest.

Despite this, I really liked the game. the atomsphere and the story is pretty cool. But i think being a Mechanicus\WH40k fan is gonna help a lot :)

[Leoscar]

Out of curiosity I restarted a game on max difficulty with default settings to see how it goes.

The first few missions were brutal and I managed to get everyone killed. Lack of armor and regen tools really showed, not to mention necrons being super tanky when you have your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1-2 damage pistol. Restarted until I managed to complete 3 missions without failing one.

The first time I encountered the shield necrons, I really, really managed it badly and managed to be wiped.

From time to time a priest is targeted by 5 ennemies at once and dies even though he was at 75% health, but that's it. Everytime I play I forget I'm on max difficulty because I'm stomping everything. And now that I've reached actual end game I'm back to being an absolute unstopable force with priests that can wipe several ennemies in one turn.

[Cpt Beefheart]

Originally posted by Leoscar:

Out of curiosity I restarted a game on max difficulty with default settings to see how it goes.

The first few missions were brutal and I managed to get everyone killed. Lack of armor and regen tools really showed, not to mention necrons being super tanky when you have your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1-2 damage pistol. Restarted until I managed to complete 3 missions without failing one.

The first time I encountered the shield necrons, I really, really managed it badly and managed to be wiped.

From time to time a priest is targeted by 5 ennemies at once and dies even though he was at 75% health, but that's it. Everytime I play I forget I'm on max difficulty because I'm stomping everything. And now that I've reached actual end game I'm back to being an absolute unstopable force with priests that can wipe several ennemies in one turn.

Yeah i thought about doing the same thing.Thanks for doing it for me, not gonna bother now :) But did you liked the game overall? I kinda loved it despite some obvious flaws, and i'm thinking on getting the DLC.
Edit: norwegian english grammar...

[Leoscar]

Originally posted by Cpt Beefheart:

Originally posted by Leoscar:

Out of curiosity I restarted a game on max difficulty with default settings to see how it goes.

The first few missions were brutal and I managed to get everyone killed. Lack of armor and regen tools really showed, not to mention necrons being super tanky when you have your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1-2 damage pistol. Restarted until I managed to complete 3 missions without failing one.

The first time I encountered the shield necrons, I really, really managed it badly and managed to be wiped.

From time to time a priest is targeted by 5 ennemies at once and dies even though he was at 75% health, but that's it. Everytime I play I forget I'm on max difficulty because I'm stomping everything. And now that I've reached actual end game I'm back to being an absolute unstopable force with priests that can wipe several ennemies in one turn.

Yeah i thought about doing the same thing.Thanks for doing it for me, not gonna bother now :) But did you liked the game overall? I kinda loved it despite some obvious flaws, and i'm thinking on getting the DLC.
Edit: norwegian english grammar...

Considering I'm not at all a Warhammer fan, so that's not impacting my judgement, I liked the game. Not a masterpiece but a fun game.

I don't have the DLC, mixed reviews and everything.

[Ottomic]

I've only managed to do the tutorial mission and the something jar one (quite okay, beat tutorial guy even) but it's true that the game plays pretty weird. I don't know how the rest will play but so far for me it's all about turtling up and not moving for extended periods of time while baiting nekrons to my position with peek-a-boo shooting and throwing melee skitarii that will do like 1 damage before getting shred to ribbons immediately afterwards in an attempt to lock the enemy in place for my priests to keep getting potshots at them and driving the scarabs off nekrons. If anything the enemy movements are incredibly predictable so you can reload knowing exactly how every movement will play out. There's a weird lack of feedback in regards to which skitarii will play when, which makes it hard to know who to buff, or what angle can walls be shot around. I really hope the game will get more interesting past a certain point because right now cowering behind a wall and throwing murder hobos piecemeal to their doom is not exactly the most engaging tactical experience I've ever enjoyed.

[Leoscar]

Originally posted by Ottomic:

I've only managed to do the tutorial mission and the something jar one (quite okay, beat tutorial guy even) but it's true that the game plays pretty weird. I don't know how the rest will play but so far for me it's all about turtling up and not moving for extended periods of time while baiting nekrons to my position with peek-a-boo shooting and throwing melee skitarii that will do like 1 damage before getting shred to ribbons immediately afterwards in an attempt to lock the enemy in place for my priests to keep getting potshots at them and driving the scarabs off nekrons. If anything the enemy movements are incredibly predictable so you can reload knowing exactly how every movement will play out which is not exactly engaging. There's a weird lack of feedback in regards to which skitarii will play when, which makes it hard to know who to buff, or what angle can walls be shot around. I really hope the game will get more interesting past a certain point because right now cowering behind a wall and throwing murder hobos piecemeal to their doom is not exactly the most engaging tactical experience I've ever enjoyed.

Don't worry, the game will soon turn into a power fantaisy in which your priests will torch Necrons 4 by 4.

[Ivelios]

Except on "boss missions", difficulty describes how many fights you have to complete to beat the mission (e.g.: 1 on easy, 2 on normal, 3 on hard). There might be a few other exceptions (for example, the whole Heretek or the "Secret" quest chains) to this rule, but the best way to see how difficult a mission will be is looking at which type of Necrons will be present on that particular mission. Hope this helps, brother. All hail the Omnissiah!

[Herodotus]

I came back to the game, having completed most of the game on Normal, but switched to Easy when that became available for the final missions. And boy, did I need to have that level adjust. In the Final mission, none of my ranged weapons had any effect most times (zero damage), and I was only able to take one villain down by surrounding it and repeatedly hitting it with every melee weapon I had. On Normal, I would have lost.

returning to the game, after purchasing Heretik, missions I breezed through on Normal are hitting me hard on Easy. So have to agree with the OP and state the game is much harder now than it was.

[Leoscar]

Originally posted by Herodotus:

I came back to the game, having completed most of the game on Normal, but switched to Easy when that became available for the final missions. And boy, did I need to have that level adjust. In the Final mission, none of my ranged weapons had any effect most times (zero damage), and I was only able to take one villain down by surrounding it and repeatedly hitting it with every melee weapon I had. On Normal, I would have lost.

returning to the game, after purchasing Heretik, missions I breezed through on Normal are hitting me hard on Easy. So have to agree with the OP and state the game is much harder now than it was.

You know one of the last boss is nearly immune to damage until you break the crystal thingy around the room right? [spoiler/]