Is Death OP?

[suomuhauki]

I feel like Death is OP, especially on Master difficulty. the skeletons are able to clean up all my beasts before they get a chance to wake up from their nap. The danse macabre is way too powerful

[Inkmila]

We'll be taking a look at balancing it.

However, the Master difficulty is supposed to be a challenge. Like a game of chess versus a very advanced player, where every move counts! And we will surely keep this difficulty way harder, than Easy and Normal.

[suomuhauki]

Originally posted by Inkmila:

We'll be taking a look at balancing it.

However, the Master difficulty is supposed to be a challenge. Like a game of chess versus a very advanced player, where every move counts! And we will surely keep this difficulty way harder, than Easy and Normal.

Thank you for the reply. I understand master is supposed to be way more difficult than other difficulties, and I like that, I do still think death is kind of overpowered mostly because of the danse macabre , other than that the game balance is mostly fair

[antonoutkine]

I second that! I breeze on Easy through the entire game now, and then Death is absolutely unwinnable for me, however I try to play him. So, frankly, I'm very frustrated now — I can't beat Death and I noticed that if I just abandon I don't get any progression at all…

[Setting Sun]

It's not too fresh in my memory since it's been about more than 2 weeks ago, but i've managed to beat Death on normal in my first run when the big update dropped.

The preparation phase is very important, so make sure to have a big pool of health/starting ink, some strong beasts, useful talents and hand actions when arriving to the point of fighting Death.
What i did use in my army: flying bear head, foxes (one was with bow), bishop cat and i thing the big dog (or sir snail can't remember), so it was an army about strong beasts and support beasts.
Firstly, i made sure to have a big number of starting ink so i could draw turn 1 a flying bear head combined with another less costly beast to harass very early.
I made sure to choose carefully my placements so i can collect more ink while being out of reach of any enemies if possible, tried not to stack too because of dance macabre.
Healed and cured my units affected by danse macabre with the hand abilities of my tiny inkulinati helped by the bishop cat, i managed to loose just a few units.
With 2 flying bear heads and wielding bow foxes i harassed Death itself until it collapsed.

[Kahli Shine]

Death at master's is really challenging.
Not only do you need good strategies and try to map control, but you also need to build up stats and get a nice amount of beasts and control abilties. I had a strong challenge because I didn't had archers available. Flying units are a good replacement if you can get protections and healing, thus they will never last long due to danse macabre. Wake up abilities and block drawings (like doors/infernal mouths) can help a lot keeping skeletons at bay. Try also to farm as many feathers you can, there's a bit of luck you need for starting obstacles.
Personally since I had nothing to get close by him, I had to stall while using wolwes. In a couple of attempts I got him.

Good luck~♫

Personally even if I found the challenge pretty hard, I did enjoy it a lot. It really felt like challenging death itself, and I loved it.

[kakugo]

Death himself is not terribly difficult. The real problem is he spams skeletons, and facing five skeletons at the same time is extremely difficult, especially if you chance upon maps where no choke points can be created. Even the cheapest skeletons that can be mass-spawned cause Danse Macabre with every attack and Infection every other, and that's without counting other abilities such as putting enemy units to sleep.
Basically it boils down to surviving long enough for passive abilities and/or long range units (assuming they can be kept safe or spammed fast enough) to wear down Death to 0 HP.

The only nerf I could suggest for Death is to slightly curb his ability to spam skeletons. But really, the best solution would be to either rebalance the skeletons themselves or to introduce some units that can really take them on at their own level.