How is the difficulty?

[Xenor]

Is it challening like in Grim Dawn where you can easily die or more casual like i.e Wolcen where I have never come close to death?

[shrewdlogarithm]

It's not casual - you need to pay attention to resistances in particular - but you can generally slog through so long as half your brain is on.

The game seems to be setup to allow players to experiment with builds - you don't need to minmax/follow a build guide - most things 'sorta work' - some things work REALLY well

You can also 'skip throgh' a lot of the enemies - you don't need to (and probably shouldn't) kill everything - much like PoE really...

I'd say it's similar to GD at the start but GD gets tougher a bit quicker perhaps

[Ravenkid9266]

All of the meaningful danger you encounter is condensed into highly telegraphed attacks designed to one shot you, so as long as you can move out of the way of these attacks you will be fine.

In that regard LE is closer to a Touhou game.

You are handed the overwhelming bulk of your players power for free via levels, and bosses dont have stats the way they do in other games, instead relying on a dynamic DR system. Dynamic Damage Reduction basically attempts to counter all the free more multipliers you get by artificially lowering your damage output, causing you to do less damage because you built for damage.

So all in all its a perfectly fine casual game, as Zizaran said "You deal similar damage naked and fully geared with the huge damage multipliers coming from skill trees. Due to this you cap out fast and the urge to min/max is not as strong as it could be."

Edit:

Originally posted by shrewdlogarithm:

you need to pay attention to resistances in particular

to quote the developer mike "It is important to note that capping resists isn't anywhere near as important as it is in other ARPGs of you've played those."

[shrewdlogarithm]

You don't NEED to cap resists but there are points in the campaign where - if you have very little or no resistance to the prevalant damage type - you will get wiped pretty quickly...

Note: the death screen tells you what type of damage you took and that's a clue to what you did wrong...

Anytime things seem to be getting spicy, I peek at the resists and think "ah yeah , some of that might be wise" and once you get that, the big spiky damage disappears and you can continue...

Note: anyone considering Hardcore - the online stuff in LE is flaky AF, you WILL die teleporting between zones/using portals and I don't believe there's a logout macro equivalent here so - erm- be prepared for that. My first 5 deaths online were all due to zoning into an area - the game hung on the loading screen - my character got killed...

[Tremere]

Never played Wolcen and the last time I played GD was probably 5 years ago, so I wouldn't be able to compare it to those two games.
The campaign is well balanced for the most port in terms of difficulty. It is not hard but also not trivial like D3 for example. The very beginning can be a bit tough if you pick the "wrong" starting skill, but that will soon change when you level up a bit and pick up some decent items.
In the end game it strongly depends on the build you are using, like any other ARPG.
But overall not too hard as long as you don't go too high in corruption (the main difficulty scaling mechanic in the game) and you avoid some of the bad modifiers.

[shrewdlogarithm]

LE does scale your damage/power in a weird way - you are FAR more dependant on levels than gear - for example

Gear existing mostly to fill-out stats and special armour enables some build ideas but your power comes from level/specialisation of skills for the most part.

That also means 'twinking' doesn't do that much - so long as you keep your level 'roughly' in line with the level you'll be fine anyway tho

I reckon you could throw on some armour which gives 'some reistance' and a few other bits and just bang through to endgame quite happily - this may annoy some folks as tonnes of loot drops and you need VERY little of it (it's not really even worth selling as gold drops more plentifully anyway)

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by shrewdlogarithm:

You don't NEED to cap resists but there are points in the campaign where - if you have very little or no resistance to the prevalant damage type - you will get wiped pretty quickly...

Note: the death screen tells you what type of damage you took and that's a clue to what you did wrong...

If you look at the math behind attacks and how EHP is calculated, resistances contribute the lowest portion of your EHP, mostly because in LE your resistances go down based on area level.

At post story having capped resistances means you take full damage, and as long as your resistance is equal to the area level in the story you are getting the same experience.

Edit clarity: as long as your resistances are equal to the area level you are getting the experience the developers want you to have.

[MrDammit]

You hold a couple buttons down and run around watching everything explode, melt or bleed out. It's relaxing.

[Stephanos]

[/quote]

Originally posted by Xenor:

Is it challening like in Grim Dawn where you can easily die or more casual like i.e Wolcen where I have never come close to death?

In last epoch your life pool is like...well...is hard not to die

[Bulletzen]

Really? I found Grim Dawn to be fine in difficulty yet when I played Wolcen on release it kicked my ass! lol!

[Xenor]

Sounds like the game is more casual then? That's disappointing <.<

[Ayk-]

Assuming you can recognize one-shot attacks and have a sense to get out of fatal danger, I would say its one of the easiest ARPGs on the market right now. It is a good game for those who are new to the genre and want to try out an ARPG.

[Xenor]

Originally posted by Ayk-:

Assuming you can recognize one-shot attacks and have a sense to get out of fatal danger, I would say its one of the easiest ARPGs on the market right now. It is a good game for those who are new to the genre and want to try out an ARPG.

:(

[Ravenkid9266]

Originally posted by Xenor:

Sounds like the game is more casual then? That's disappointing <.<

There is some debate around this, but most people generally agree that there is >< difficulty in the story. The debate comes in when you consider that you get so much of your player power from levels, and lizardirl put up several videos showing you can clear the endgame content with no gear. Some people like that others do not like it, but it is what it is. Even if you decide to eschew that and build your character to rely on gear it is currently very easy to "finish" your character even if there are upgrades.

What I mean by that is some upgrades might exist for your character in a theoretical sense, but 1 in 16 Quintilian drop rate for those items makes it untenable, regardless you do not "need" those types of items in the first place because see above about the difficulty.

The vast majority of deaths come in the form of highly telegraphed attacks designed to one shot you if you do not walk out of them. According to a developer these attacks are designed in a way as to not even require a movement skill to avoid either.

[shrewdlogarithm]

Firstly, I despise people who use the term 'casual' as some sort of insult - how tough a game is does not define you and "casual" has been aimed at every game on earth by someone so...

LE is nowhere near as rippy as PoE - but not many games are and I suspect there's good reason for that.

I'd say LE is on-par with D3 (campaign at least), Grim Dawn and maybe even Torchlight II - so long as you choose sensible skills and don't fall asleep you'll get through BUT if you misgear, sleep on resistance or miss-read tougher enemies you'll be going down quickly enough.

ARPGs are not Soulslikes - the skill lies in making a solid build, learning what not to get hit by and pressing ahead as fast as you dare. A lot of the time you're cruising through fields of enemies in the hope of getting better gear with the odd Boss you'll need to pay a BIT more attention to but it's not Dark Souls...

[ElBobbyGonzo]

Originally posted by shrewdlogarithm:

LE does scale your damage/power in a weird way - you are FAR more dependant on levels than gear - for example

Gear existing mostly to fill-out stats and special armour enables some build ideas but your power comes from level/specialisation of skills for the most part.

That also means 'twinking' doesn't do that much - so long as you keep your level 'roughly' in line with the level you'll be fine anyway tho

I reckon you could throw on some armour which gives 'some reistance' and a few other bits and just bang through to endgame quite happily - this may annoy some folks as tonnes of loot drops and you need VERY little of it (it's not really even worth selling as gold drops more plentifully anyway)

You captured what I was finding difficult to articulate in my head while I was playing.
I was wondering why, despite having below mediocre gear, I did not feel the need to switch gear or pickup most of the drops. So much loot drops, yet I felt no need to pick most of it up.

Now I see that focus of the system is indeed simply leveling up and pouring points into certain skills you like and that's about the extent of it. For a casual ARPG player like myself, I'm liking the simplicity.