Experiences on a high difficulty run

[Dabor]

Since the higher difficulty is new, it's probably useful to properly catalogue what worked and what feels like it didn't in it. I'd be curious to hear other people's experiences, especially anyone who went straight into a higher difficulty without already knowing the game pretty well first.

Stuff that's better

1. Since enemy HP isn't increased but Def/Res are, anything that either bypasses them or scales damage to something else (like Desperate Blow or Heavy Hit) are naturally a bit stronger, but not by enough to be a huge deal.
2. Especially against more polarized enemies like some bosses, attacks that have def/res down attached can be surprisingly useful - again, not by enough to be a must or something, just a bit higher value than otherwise.
3. Abilities that disable or, even better, turn enemies against each other, are a chunk more important. In particular the Knight's Berserk is utter godsend. Worst case scenario, you bait them into eating your counterattacks - and best case, they just turned that +15% atk against their own allies. Being able to use that taunt from two spaces away makes it nigh-on a bread and butter move. At some point I would have 3 knights with running boots blitz all the enemy spellcasters and berserk them in a single turn. Since berserk units need someone else to cleanse them, their options are either getting remedied by an ally or just staying berserk - and they tend to stay berserk.
4. Abilities and counters that completely avoid damage are a little chunk stronger - with enemies having bonus attack, healing and defense buffs are a bit less efficient, but mirage, evade:skill/magic, rebirth, and anything else that doesn't necessarily care about the size of the damage, is naturally a bigger deal. Not by so much that it becomes a must-have (well, evade skill/spells is already fantastic anyway, but so are counter:mute/slow/root/poison/bleed).

Stuff that's worse

1. Self-damaging abilities are more risky, since enemies do that chunk more damage to you, making going to even half HP a profoundly risky prospect depending on what the turn order look like. I don't think this is too much of a problem unless someone is playing with permanent injuries/death, in which case they'll probably be hesitant to use some abilities, but that already obviously applies to some abilities that straight up make you commit suicide. (maybe have those bypass injuries, actually? Or do they already?) As an extension of this, Critical Counters are also quite unappealing - enemies tend to deal enough damage to completely bypass them, and they're quite mediocre for players trying to keep their characters alive compared to many of the incredibly powerful counter:status moves anyway.
2. Early game healing just isn't enough to keep up with enemy damage - you'll usually see 22ish point heals trying to keep up with 34ish damage enemy swings or such, or damage closer to 20ish but with an added debuff. Your main healing option is just using a potion or two, and after that you're better off trying to DPS race via focus fire.
3. Enemy counters are more scary and your own counters are (slightly) less so. Counterattack is still the number one biggest player on either side of the battlefield, but it's stacked a bit more against you. Where on normal difficulty I would often take an enemy counterattack, here I usually Forceful Strike enemies to trade off some damage in exchange for avoiding their counter, and sometimes forceful striking them against an ally to deal bonus damage actually isn't worth taking their counter, depending on what things look like. A character with counterattack is worth two without, for the first few battles of a new campaign, at least.
4. "Escort" missions are a chunk harder. Perhaps just having escort targets benefit from the increased stats would balance things out without making stronger enemies while essentially also adding a harsher timer to the mission?
5. A lot of the more unreliable abilities felt far less appealing to me on high difficulty. When it comes to something like Enraging Bullet, I'd probably find it more tempting if it had a markedly higher mana cost in exchange for a 75% base chance or so.
6. The "enemies always have full inventories" thing is a waaay bigger deal in the first couple of battles, where them all being loaded up on pure bands and toad boots inflates their defenses further. Perhaps, the same way as "maps have no level cap" is a setting that's ignored for the first couple of maps, stuff like enemies in crossroads having counterattack and full inventories should be scaled back as well.

I'm sure there's some stuff I didn't think of here (might edit it in later), but hopefully there's some useful info in here. By and large I think the game holds up quite well at a higher difficulty, especially compared to some others I can think of.

[Conan The Librarian]

Dabor--

This time (for once) I'll keep my comments short(er).

1. Can you specify what your exact difficulty settings were?
   
   
2. As a note on Gunner's Enraging Bullet, it was specifically nerfed to a lower % value because Gunners (who have high range) were spamming Enrage on ALL your heroes ALL the time, and it was a constant cleanse-fest to try to keep up with them. The tradeoff is pretty simple: Knights have a 100% change enrage since it's only two range, meanwhile Gunners have a lower chance since they can do this from about 8 squares away.
   
   
3. I will admit that I personally don't like the "Critical X" counters in general for the reasons you mention. That being said, I mentally file that under a "personal playstyle thing" and haven't commented much on it. We'll see what people (and 6 Eyes) think.
   
   
4. I know there is only so much you can do about this in the earlier parts of the game at times, but I try to bypass [Counterattack] as much as possible by using spells, crossbows, and spears. Remember that it only triggers if the attack was made directly adjacent to the enemy. Similarly, if you use knockback, assuming the enemy doesn't have a ranged weapon (spear bow etc) they won't counterattack since they can't reach you. I of course also like Mercenary's [Flash Strike] to help with all sorts of counters.

So, thanks for the notes on your high difficulty experience.

[Dabor]

1. Every maxed except injuries, left at default. More items, maxed inventories, no limit level scaling, +15% enemy stats.

2. I don't disagree that the gunner abilities would be too annoying from enemies if they were more reliable (although as I said, it should be met with a higher mana cost in that case), I'm mainly focused on pointing out that, when enemies are more lethal, as a player, you would tend to prefer a weaker option that gives you a tangible benefit that makes it less likely one of your characters goes down next turn. Even 75% chances are kind of iffy. I don't think it's a profound issue to anything,just noting that high volatility abilities, both on your side and the enemy side, have more of a chance to be frustrating and unsatisfying when you up the lethality a bit.

Maybe this is my good experiences with Xcom 2's beta strike talking, but I'd actually be curious to see a Low Lethality mode in this game. The problem is just that so many abilities scale to things in various way that I doubt it's a possible mod setting without a lot of work, and even in that game, a lot of things end up balanced very differently. Disables, for example, are a pretty good place balance-wise in Fell Seal. Being able to bypass a couple of enemy attacks can be amazing, and yet enemies aren't so hard to kill that you feel obligated to always disable some while you kill the others.

[6 Eyes Studio]

Thanks a lot!
These are great notes and exactly the kind of feedback we've been looking for on the new settings :)

Worse list:
4. Agreed, I was planning on doing exactly that to help out with those.
5. Hmm, interesting. Will keep it in mind.
6. I thought the items were already ignored on those maps. I'll double check, thanks!

Thanks again :)

[MrArkansas]

So, i'm doing a max difficulty run as well except i have injury set on default also. Here has been my experience so far.

i'm currently at anadine gets turned into a monster and loses control at yates cabin battle so thats not super far but about 1/3rd ish of the way through?

My highest level character is 9 and i've only grinded a patrol twice and that was just to see how much more difficult they would be.

MY SETUP:
1 Knight/Mercenary/Marked ( i'm using the marked skills but i have the passives from merc and knight)
1 Mercenary/Knight or Knight/Mercenary
1 Scoundrel/Ranger or Ranger/Scoundrel
3 Wizard/Mender or Mender/Wizard

Health Expert , Counter Attack, Life Font make it so i never have to worry about damage. I sprinkled in No Flank for icing on the cake. I'm roughly 3 hours into the game and nearly unkillable. I dont use enrage, i just march my knight 5 spaces forward (he has boots) and the enemy 2-3 come attack him, he hits them all for 30-40, and i can walk him away to heal about 50 health while my 3 mages can clean up that group of 3 enemies. Or 2 of my mages can put the enemy AI into retreat and heal mode while my 3rd mage can heal another 35-40 hp back to my knight.

my other 2 characters just finish people off. Sneak attack is super useful once you get boots. I've actually come to feel like the game is significantly more difficult before you can get a pair of boots, then becomes a way easier after boots since it boosts abilities like life font and mana font and makes it much easier to get character in position.

------OPINIONS ------

EQUIPMENT: Shields are still not worth using over an accessory, though others may disagree. Same with helmets, an accessory instead of a helmet was a better option until the silver helmet became available. I think you should consider making a 2h weapon take up 2 spots instead of only preventing you from using a shield.

BALANCE: i honestly don't know if i just have a good strategy that i can execute because i know what i'm doing, or if its over powered. I do feel like if i switched classes i would be nerfing myself or making the game harder on myself intentionally. Maybe you get the passive abilities too soon in the skill trees.

MAPS: the first 3 maps show level ranges like 1-3, 3-5, 3-9 or something like that. the rest of the maps show 4-99, 7-99, etc. I dont know if its a bug preventing the first 2 to 3 maps from having the infinite level scaling enemies or not. I did test this out by going into the first available map at level level 9 and all the enemies were stuck at level 3.

[Dabor]

On the MAPS thing, I believe it's intentional so that, if you level reset your characters, you always have somewhere to fight equally low level enemies.

On the 2H weapon thing, you actually might be right. As is, 2H + Accessory is always better than 1H + Shield. Making a 2H take 2 slots would actually make it a choice - the difference between an Axe and a Maul (-10 def and -20 attack for using an axe instead) would actually be a choice then, rather than just a question of if you can use a maul or scythe.

It would also make the mercenary ability to use a 2H weapon in 1H actually mean something. As is, it's literally only relevant for dual wielding mauls or scythes, or making use of a shield super early when you have a hard time finding accessories to fill your slots.

I believe they mentioned considering making shields/helms actually worthwhile in the future, though.

I know what you mean on the "changing class would be a nerf." While I find it fun to have a Gunner-Knight using One For All with dual pistols or such, I know in practice that I could do well just sticking to the base classes and making well rounded builds using Wizard, Mender, Knight, Mercenary and Scoundrel. Building up to the advanced classes is basically taking on a temporary penalty in exchange for trivializing the late-game once you have ideally kitted out builds and passives.

Your experience seems decently similar to mine, aside from that I never went wizard heavy (not that I don't think it's good, just that I think it's sorta boring), but some of your points are interesting stuff I didn't quite think of. I'd be curious to hear if the game stays as easy as it is as you enter higher levels and counterattack and life font become weaker and weaker, or if you'd eventually be forced to get advanced classes and optimize your builds.

Edit: Also, on the topic of boots, you're actually right. As soon as they're avaialble I usually have an average of something like 1.8 boots per party member.

[MrArkansas]

and really every pair of boots is an added 10 health you can recover by moving with life font (potentially).

When you use 3 wizards in your party you make all the monster enemies more or less irrelevant.

i can say that i've ran through the game on the default difficulty with the same setup, but i also didnt grind in that playthrough so the only settings that will make a difference are the 15% stat boost and full equipment.

i'm also trying not to cheese the game either. i realize 3-4 sorcerors dual wielding rods with MND boost passive etc, will wipe any map clean. then i can have 2 more dual wield physical damagers to clean up anyone with evade magic. The worm boss being probably the only exception.

I'm just not sold on any other combination being stronger than the Mercenary/Knight or the Wizard/Mender. While i feel like i progress my character through equipment, i dont feel like switching classes is any more than a side grade in the best case scenario.

P.S. on equipment:
If i swap out a gauntlet accessory for a steel shield (what i have available in shop) i only gain +7 RES and +7% EVA, but i lose 8 ATK. So when i look at this choice i have to decide between 7 resist or 8 attack, because i'll never notice the evasion. that 8 attack is overall more impactful on my character. Even when using a 1 hand weapon it seems better to go with an accessory.

[Dabor]

Eh, there's a lot of fun and powerful setups at there, especially once you get certain gear (Like the Scythe with +40 mind on it). Warmage-Felblade can do more than half of a guy''s health easily while also sleeping it, and having the Wizard's ability to just annihilate anything with an elemental weakness en masse. There's loads of incredibly useful things like counter:poison and counter:mute that you need to explore specific classes for, as well as the ever-lovely evade:magic and evade:skill. Dual weilding guns with One For All makes for a character that provides a lot of damage against, say, the worm boss, where a lot of other builds falter. Dual wield is a great way to ensure you can get a lot of damage without spending any mana. Focus + Sniper Shot annihilates almost anything from massive range without too much risk. Anadine as a Demon Knight+Templar can, for 24 mana, do most of anything's HP easily (while not even needing mana to merely hit something harder than most already), and then use cleave to then deal a massive blow to something else, healing her self-damage with Life Font all the while.

I actually think mercenaries are pretty mediocre, though. Life Expert is great, but their abilities are of very limited use later on. It's usually easier to just use Reaver or Duelist abilities to kill your enemies much faster than using mercenary ones to trade damage for utility.

Honestly, the problem isn't that the classes you named are the strongest - most of the good counters and passives for optimizing are elsewhere - but that they're good enough to do all the hardest content anyway, and getting your hands on stuff like evade:magic, duel wield, duelist flourishes, dualcast, whatever else (not even going to mention the crazy OP mana passives as they currently exist) isn't actually really necessary. Going through later classes is a lot of work and time spent being weaker, in exchange for eventually being so strong that you all but trivialize content.

But yeah, keep in mind that both life font and counterattack become a lot weaker later, and you also do start running into monsters with so much resist that wizards don't really do more damage than anyone else to them... they just don't do particularly less, is the problem.

Still, I feel you're mistaking "they're the strongest classes" with "they're strong enough that I don't need to switch classes."

[MrArkansas]

Originally posted by Dabor:

Eh, there's a lot of fun and powerful setups at there, especially once you get certain gear (Like the Scythe with +40 mind on it). Warmage-Felblade can do more than half of a guy''s health easily while also sleeping it, and having the Wizard's ability to just annihilate anything with an elemental weakness en masse. There's loads of incredibly useful things like counter:poison and counter:mute that you need to explore specific classes for, as well as the ever-lovely evade:magic and evade:skill. Dual weilding guns with One For All makes for a character that provides a lot of damage against, say, the worm boss, where a lot of other builds falter. Dual wield is a great way to ensure you can get a lot of damage without spending any mana. Focus + Sniper Shot annihilates almost anything from massive range without too much risk. Anadine as a Demon Knight+Templar can, for 24 mana, do most of anything's HP easily (while not even needing mana to merely hit something harder than most already), and then use cleave to then deal a massive blow to something else, healing her self-damage with Life Font all the while.

I actually think mercenaries are pretty mediocre, though. Life Expert is great, but their abilities are of very limited use later on. It's usually easier to just use Reaver or Duelist abilities to kill your enemies much faster than using mercenary ones to trade damage for utility.

Honestly, the problem isn't that the classes you named are the strongest - most of the good counters and passives for optimizing are elsewhere - but that they're good enough to do all the hardest content anyway, and getting your hands on stuff like evade:magic, duel wield, duelist flourishes, dualcast, whatever else (not even going to mention the crazy OP mana passives as they currently exist) isn't actually really necessary. Going through later classes is a lot of work and time spent being weaker, in exchange for eventually being so strong that you all but trivialize content.

But yeah, keep in mind that both life font and counterattack become a lot weaker later, and you also do start running into monsters with so much resist that wizards don't really do more damage than anyone else to them... they just don't do particularly less, is the problem.

Still, I feel you're mistaking "they're the strongest classes" with "they're strong enough that I don't need to switch classes."

Maybe you didnt mean monsters and meant human enemies, because later in the game the monsters seemed to get even more defined and larger weaknesses. i saw many more -100 or -150 weakness types. Wizard damage is always relevant.

considering that the developer said that the Mind+Attack skills are (Mind+Attack x 0.6) and the scaling on those abilities are .85 for sleep and .9 for the others. I definitely disagree that the combo is as good as how you feel about it. Especially considering sleep/status effects are not guaranteed.

not sure why you would think life expert and counter attack lose value later because they both scale with your characters power. life expert is an even better skill later in game than the beginning due to it being 25% boost instead of a flat amount. So long as your character's physical damage is relevant, so is counter attack.

I dont agree that mercenary is mediocre either. They have a .95 scaling 100% accuracy ability, and a .9 scaling bypass counter moves ability. I dont think they are so valuable that they couldn't be replaced. They do however get access to Maul which Knight and Templar dont.

I cant argue against focus + sniper shot's damage, although it takes atleast 3 turns to set that up. 12 mana + 12 mana and cast focus + sniper shot. I think in those 3 turns you could have used multishot or other abilities from the character that would put you in an equally useful position in battle without ending with you being rooted and kill 1 monster.

[Dabor]

Honestly, you said so many things that make little sense to me that I don't know where to start. Maybe it's just because you haven't finished your hard mode run yet, but I'll try to address everything point by point to see where we differ.

Yes, I mean monsters. Later on you get monsters that have like twice the resist compared to defense, to where even a wizard hitting their primary weakness hits about as much as a regard side attack from a normal physical attacker. Still very (probably too) useful, just not quite as crazy exceptional as they are earlier on when very-high-resist enemies aren't a thing yet.

I'm not sure why they get bonuses sometimes, but sleep is usually at like an 80-90% chance easily, and it's not like missing sleep once is a big loss. You don't need sleep to work every time, but you already have the warmage/fellblade hit for most of an enemy human's HP (doesn't really matter if the scaling was bigger - it wouldn't be enough to 1-hit kill, so it'd still be a 2-hit kill), likely restores mana and health via critting, and when you do get a sleep it's for all intents and purpose a 1-hit kill given that everyone else'll be dead before the guy's awake, and if someone else remedies him you likely wasted 2 full enemy turns while still getting a huge amount of damage off.

Life expert loses value later because you start killing enemies so quickly that your own characters barely have a chance to be hit - you will win anyway. If you want to be injury-proof, forittude is better than life expert. You will definitely win every fight if you're actually optimizing (the only fights I ever lost past the very early game were just walking in with everybody in new classes with mediocre gear and me not paying much attention). Once life expert isn't necessary to actually *win* fights anymore, it's inferior to fortitude for injury prevention, and inferior to almost anything else for winning speed.

Counter attack though, this is the part that convinces me you just have very *very* little experience with the later game. Early on a huge chunk of enemies will hit you in melee. Later on it's a noticable minority, and most of the enemies limited to melee are the ones easiest to deal with anyway, since it's so easy to get them to clump up for aoes. Counterattack becomes almost irrelevent - enemies who will get counterattacked are usually about to be crazy overkilled anyway, and you're better off using counter:statuses that'll waste enemy turns and apply many times more often.

Focus/sniper shot is just one element of what's a pretty damn powerful build anyway. On the turns leading up to it you can be doing decent damage with a dual-wielding gunner to whatever you want on the map (your normal dual weild attack does more than any ability anyway and is a lot better, since it focuses the damage on one place, than using multishot, which also has crappy vert for use with height advantage, and if you don't wanna dual-wield dropping knee shots can be pretty solid), and then kill the highest priority enemy back-liner with a two turn investment, not counting the turns you'd spend saving your mana *anyway*. If you actually wanted to focus on them as-is, you could easily get someone mana perks like Boon or Economy to use sniper shot every 2 turns (root doesn't matter when you have 8 range on the attack).

Anadine's demon knight final ability tends to instakill any enemy that isn't particularly tanky, often triggering her cleave, and you can say the same for the templar final ability on a good offensive build, doing like 70% of an enemy's HP at an absolute minimum against anything that your wizards don't already instakill, like pektites.

The mercenary .95 scaling 100% ability and counter bypass... if you really care about accuracy ,just have a single character with Concentration and use them to kill high-evade enemies. Counters also don't trigger when enemies die, which should be every 2nd or 3rd attack you use. Precise strike is the only ability I ever use later on, in the narrow range where a rock wouldn't kill them, but they would surely die anyway to any other ability so you may as well be 100% accurate. In practice it makes a "difference" once every god knows how many fights, and I don't think it has ever been the difference between victory and defeat past the early game. Early on forceful strike, precise strike, and flash strike are all very useful ways to actually snatch victory in challenging, engagements, but later on you're not worried about actually winning, just how cleanly and quickly you can murder your way through everything.

There's almost no time a counter matters. Even if it's a counter that applies something I'll HAVE to cleanse next turn, I would rather use 2 strong attack abilities from other classes to kill an enemy (the 2nd not eating a counter since they're dead), and then spend 1 action cleansing next turn, then having to spend 3 actions killing them, between which I'm more likely to get interrupted. Given a lot of great melee moves from marked/demon knight/duelist/reaver that have 1.5x or 1.6x scaling and no mana investment (an HP investment isn't a huge deal with life font, and even then you kill enemies fast enough that it rarely matters). You can't tell me that a duelist off-specilty on a guy using scythes isn't going to kill in 2 hits what your merc would kill in 3 hits, and it's likely that the action I would've "saved" doing so can compensate handily for whatever I "suffered" by having to take a counter. As for precise strike, outside of the first handful of missions where mercs are a big deal *anyway*, it's extremely unlikely I'll ever run into a string of misses that'll actually be responsible for making me lose a battle, whereas lacking access to 1.5x or 1.6x abilities easily means leaving a scary enemy alive for an extra turn.

The amount of times having a stronger ability available to get a kill you otherwise can't is a way bigger deal than not having to risk a small miss rate (and a lot of the time you'd just be able to throw a rock for that purpose), and merc can't do that outside of rare positioning with forceful strike, and even then that's nothing compared to sneak attack, much less classes that have ult moves or free self-damaging power attacks. Doesn't matter if you damaged yourself if everything that'd fight back is dead a couple of turns in.

Knight isn't great offensively aside from cheesy one-for-all builds with ranged weapons, but Templars get the nearly-as-good scythes. Having access to an aoe, a super strong finisher move, and more importantly, a strong ability (aoe atk buff) to use on turn 1 when out of range is waaaay better.

-------------------

Really though, by far the strangest thing you said is counter attack not losing value later on. Exclusively melee enemies are an order of magnitude less common, and ever moreso less threatening, past the very early game.Duelists, reavers, assassins, peddlers, knights, templars - something they all have in common is having things to do that aren't melee attacks, and they opt to do those things pretty often. Compared to having counterattack go off once or twice every turn early on, you'd be lucky to see it hit twice in a single battle if you're not playing particularly slowly.

---------------------

Looking at everything you said though, I'm getting the distinct impression your entire judgement is one of extrapolating from the early game. Early on, all of your points are indeed valid. Mercenaries are very useful, mercs and knights defensive perks are amazingly powerful, wizards are total engines of destruction, status effects are too risky, counterattack has a lot of chances to trigger.

Also, keep in mind that the mind + attack skills are a LOT stronger once you get the power scythe. The previous tier of scythe is like 106 attack. Then this one is like 110 attack + 40 mind. It's the single greatest weapon in terms of combined atk+mnd stat and makes abilities that use both - fellblade single-target and warmage aoe, both present on a hybrid of the two - extremely powerful. Frankly I think it's a mistake of game design that there's such a huge jump from combined skills being mediocre-to-decent to being pretty damn good, but they're clearly working on smoothing out item choices to make them more varied and less skewed.

Sorry if the tone's a bit harsh or I go on a tangent somewhere in there, I was focused on trying to address everything more-so than getting it all neat. I'd be curious to hear back and find out if this is just me talking about a rather different section of the game compared to you, or if our experiences are actually that disparate (although it wouldn't be a good sign if two people using completely different strategies and disagreeing on the basics *both* managed to find the game trivially easy pretty quickly).

[MrArkansas]

At this point there is really nothing for me to add. I never said you couldn't unlock all the classes and cherry pick the best passives combination from a pool of them all and with the best equipment and right set up to one shot kill monsters.

When i've completed early access again i'll come back to this and update whether or not I encountered any problems.