How to play this game?

[Wyrtt]

So, Im playing in hard difficulty and Im at loss.
Its a 5th or 6th fight in the game (thief boss battle) and Im severly underpowered. My party is lvl 2 and even tanks hass less hp than average enemy, Each enemy can down my hero in 2-3 hits. Boss himself just comes out of stealth and one shots my party with aoe and his second attack.
With how little healing you can do you cant even outheal dmg you recive.
Even if we forget that you have to actually HIT anything to actually progress and with 60-80% hit chance, overcome parry and dodge chances so you might as well do zero dmg with half of your party per turn. You still cant deal enough dmg to reduce enemy count. You have to hit one enemy 3-4 times to kill it.

At this point there is no real buffs or defensive options.

What exactly Im supposed to do in this fight?

[Alliances]

Greeting Wyrtt

I'm sorry to hear that you are having such difficulties in the game.

First of all, base on your comment, i'm assuming that this is probably your first playthrough of this game. If it's not, than i'm sorry for assuming wrong.
But if i'm right, than playing this game right at the start in "hard difficulty" (epic) is your first "mistake". You should have started your first game in "normal difficulty" (ballad) or even perharps......easy ?

You see, Dungeon on Naheulbeuk is known to be a for above than average difficulty game. (you can see it in the line of games like Darkess Dungeon or Dark soul.) Even the normal difficulty can prove very challenging. This is why the developper even made an easy mode.

So maybe this game, for your first playthrough at least, is prooving to be a little to much challenging for you ?? But if it is, it's ok ! There is no shame in that. Know that you can always at any time in the game (except in combat) change the game difficulty in the option and tone it down a notch.
Once you'll get the hang of this game and done one playthrough of it, i'm sure you'll feel ready to tackle the more harder mode.

For everything else you said, this all seem right and how the developper wanted their game to be. In "hard difficulty", all of your heroes have diminished stats (health, defence, damage, ect...) than they should have. (And they don't have much already in normal, i can tell you!)

In this game, you are also almost always outnumbered and ennemies are most of the time the same level as you and above. (in case of bosses)
Except maybe completly at the end of the game, you never really outpower your encounter and opponent in this game. This is not this kind of game.

Dungeon of Naheulbeuk is a game where the players need to trive to acheive his goal by succeding in hard and sometime skewed situation againt him. Don't get me wrong, this is not an unfair/unbalance game. But just not a "walk in the park" game either. It is EXPECTED in most fights, especially in hard and very hard difficulty, to have of few heroes unconscious during the fight and even out of combat. After all, you only need to have 1 character alive to win a fight and pushing the ennemy to retreat. This is why there is no permanent death in this game.

Still, if you really want to persevere in this difficulty, know that the "Evil Thief" fight is considered one of the hardest fight in the ealy stage of the game. (In hard difficulty at least.) Since he has quite a devastating Area of Effect attack, it is not recommanded to pack you heroes all together. Try to seperate them a little by doing small group of 2 or 3.

In this fight, you can benefit quite a lot of cover due to crates and objet in the area, try using those to protect yourself againt the long range ennemy while taking down the melee one. Be wary also of traps in that area. You'll also notice that there is a few chicken cage in the are. Maybe you should try to free them. Although they are chaotic, chickens in some fights are a great way to buy you time and distract your opponent. They also are really a nuisance to stealth character. ^_- (Since they can reveal them.)

Finally, although the fight state you to kill the Evil Thief to make his ally dissapear, in hard difficulty, you really shouldn't ignore them and really should take most of them, if not all of them out if you can. The Evil Thief as really a lot of Hit point and focusing on him make you vulnerable to all the attack of his allies. Take down the easier ennemy first!

Good luck!

[Alliances]

If that can give you more help and you are interested to watch, here is a very recent and very good let's play of the "Evil Thief" fight made by the very excellent youtuber MiniVanHelsing !!!

https://youtu.be/djmSP2Zcxn0?t=955

This video was done a little more than one week ago and under patch 1.2. So it is very current to your situation. This is his first play/blind playthrough of the game. So MiniVanHelsing know nothing of the game.
His let's play is played under the "Epic Gest" difficulty (Hard) just like you Wyrtt. (And even more, under the Iron Man setting. So it's win or it's game over for good! Yeah, he kinda went ham with his first playthrough. O.o)

You'll see that this fight is very doable at that difficulty, but it's really no easy cake!!! He even also make the "group packing" mistake like you. But.....that doesn't mean it's totaly impossible to recovery from that bad situation. In Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, you ofthenly have to make the best of a very worst and disavantagous situation.

Hope that help you.

[Wyrtt]

Basicly I had to surrender my honor and save scum. I restarted 3-4 times to find optimal starting position so enemy only hits my tanks and thief doesnt ko half of my team on second turn. Than on turn 3 I had to realod 2 times to abuse AI and force thief waste his turn moving in my zone of controk instead of spamming his aoe move. Also I didnt know I can use potion to revive insted of skills.

After that game is a smooth sailing for now. Next 5 fights are VERY easy and should have been placed before this boss battle.
4 knights are cc to death, cultists, kitchen staff, rats come in low numbers and with zero fire power. + You open A LOT of new option for CC or healing after 2 lvl ups.

[Scarab-Phoenix]

Why not just playing on normal? At least for the first playthrough, to become familiar with it.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by Scarab-Phoenix:

Why not just playing on normal? At least for the first playthrough, to become familiar with it.

How you having more stats and enemy dealing less dmg would make me familiar with harder difficulty?
If you mean mechanis than this game is standart trpg so there isnt much to learn.

[Rathalos23]

I agree : i played the game on normal for the first time last week and devoured the game without dying once ^^

Then i tried "Epic difficulty" and yeah, the early part of the game is sooo difficult, and i died too on this thief battle because you don't have enough abilities available at this point.
But the true problem is that after this battle you have another one instantly and if you don't have enough potions and stuff, you're screwed :/. I managed to win those 2 but i agree with the fact you're so weak and those early fights are very, very difficult.

All in all i think the difficulty is not linear as it should be; and i gave up Epic difficulty on some specific battles and yeah i see exactly what you mean ^^
And sadly i can tell you it will be like this many times until you hit some treshhold, easy fight and suddenly HARD ones that force you to try again and again and rely on luck.

I suggest you turn to "Normal" difficulty if you're stuck like this, and turn "Epic" again when you feel confortable =) !

[JC]

The problem with the difficulty is people really need to change tactics. It's not like one is really that much harder, you just have to do things different. The harder levels rely more on healing and procs, which i don't find as much fun.

Id rather have only one player with an heal, and play it on lower, than have 4 heals having to use them all the time. I don't find one really that much harder, it's just one needs tons more healing.

I really wish there was an easy way to mod this game because even with the god of fail, i would balance things a bit different. I'd love to try um out with say an XML swap or something.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by JC:

The problem with the difficulty is people really need to change tactics. It's not like one is really that much harder, you just have to do things different. The harder levels rely more on healing and procs, which i don't find as much fun.

Id rather have only one player with an heal, and play it on lower, than have 4 heals having to use them all the time. I don't find one really that much harder, it's just one needs tons more healing.

I really wish there was an easy way to mod this game because even with the god of fail, i would balance things a bit different. I'd love to try um out with say an XML swap or something.

Honestly real issues are crits and failures. One shots are never ok in a video game. Your characters sudenly burning alive your entire team because she proced critical failure is not okay as well.
If those 2 things happen one after another then you lose a fight simply because game said so. Nothing to do but restart and sudenly win because this time YOU used that crit.

Also seed generation is a bad thing for this game. Its supposed to prevent save scumming as nothing is rng in a true sense. But that works only if you reload after every move. If you restart a fight after losing it sudenly you know what is going to happen in the next 20 moves. Thats is cheating in a sense. Although my game crashed once after a fight and I just had to repeat every move to get same result without any fear of losing the fight so it has some benefits. This game sofl locks from time to time during lvl ups and actions,

Overall this game has a pacing problem. dozen of fights with rats and goblins that follow after thief fight should have been placed in the first chapters. After boss fight rush in the begining of the game with limited potions and bandages you sudenly have EVERY tool at your disposal, plenty of healing and CC skills as well.

[Casey]

Originally posted by Wyrtt:

Originally posted by JC:

The problem with the difficulty is people really need to change tactics. It's not like one is really that much harder, you just have to do things different. The harder levels rely more on healing and procs, which i don't find as much fun.

Id rather have only one player with an heal, and play it on lower, than have 4 heals having to use them all the time. I don't find one really that much harder, it's just one needs tons more healing.

I really wish there was an easy way to mod this game because even with the god of fail, i would balance things a bit different. I'd love to try um out with say an XML swap or something.

Honestly real issues are crits and failures. One shots are never ok in a video game. Your characters sudenly burning alive your entire team because she proced critical failure is not okay as well.
If those 2 things happen one after another then you lose a fight simply because game said so. Nothing to do but restart and sudenly win because this time YOU used that crit.

Also seed generation is a bad thing for this game. Its supposed to prevent save scumming as nothing is rng in a true sense. But that works only if you reload after every move. If you restart a fight after losing it sudenly you know what is going to happen in the next 20 moves. Thats is cheating in a sense. Although my game crashed once after a fight and I just had to repeat every move to get same result without any fear of losing the fight so it has some benefits. This game sofl locks from time to time during lvl ups and actions,

Overall this game has a pacing problem. dozen of fights with rats and goblins that follow after thief fight should have been placed in the first chapters. After boss fight rush in the begining of the game with limited potions and bandages you sudenly have EVERY tool at your disposal, plenty of healing and CC skills as well.

The battle is a total RNG fest on harder difficulties, I agree.

IMO, the issue is just how absurdly constrained you are in these fights. Despite the size of the arena, you're in actuality fighting in a phonebooth. You can't move far, you start surrounded by boxes, and the enemies are already on the doorstep. I don't even know why the battlemaps are so big when it goes totally unused. The fight itself is a grind forward and hoping the Thief doesn't instant gib half your squad with his absurdly OP AOE attack.

[JC]

Originally posted by Wyrtt:

Honestly real issues are crits and failures. One shots are never ok in a video game. Your characters sudenly burning alive your entire team because she proced critical failure is not okay as well.
If those 2 things happen one after another then you lose a fight simply because game said so. Nothing to do but restart and sudenly win because this time YOU used that crit.

You must never have played Dungeons and dragons based games. there is an entire system called saving throws that is exactly for that. Roll the save or die, full health or no.

They also had a fumble table that did just that, which causes disastrous effects. Something as simple as dropping your sword to casting cloud kill on your entire party.

They have been in dnd games since the 80's.

But in this game if your strat revolves around not getting a crit fail or you will loose, you should change your strats a bit.

Also, often it's better to let a character drop and get a wound than to use a heal. They will often parry or dodge even with 1 or 2 HP left. if they drop, the NPC wasted a full attack on a 2 HP character and then they can be up to attack with a potion or heal. sure wounds stack up but it's not to terrible. It also clears stats when you get dropped, so there is a strat with that side of things too.

[JC]

Originally posted by Casey:

IMO, the issue is just how absurdly constrained you are in these fights. Despite the size of the arena, you're in actuality fighting in a phonebooth. You can't move far, you start surrounded by boxes, and the enemies are already on the doorstep. I don't even know why the battlemaps are so big when it goes totally unused. The fight itself is a grind forward and hoping the Thief doesn't instant gib half your squad with his absurdly OP AOE attack.

Your not playing the fight right, You have a bunch of characters that can move/sprint far, you can also use the boxes to block to keep your squishies in the back.

The AOE only hits the squares next to him, Set your characters with that in mind.

If your only using a small portion of the map it's not the games design/fault, that is a strat issue. Sprinting is very useful. It can keep NPC's from being able to attack for a round as they have to sprint too, meaning you can recharge powers for another round.

Besides the thief is so squishy he can be killed by turn 2, but honestly i just leave him till last he really is not all that powerful in this fight, there are more dangerous targets. THe 4 knights that follow is a harder fight IMO, But it's easier if you take down the 2 damage dealers first.

[Casey]

???

There's no leaving the opening area because the enemy are already standing at the openings, unless you're suggesting a player run through Zones of Control which would be asinine.

[JC]

Originally posted by Casey:

???

There's no leaving the opening area because the enemy are already standing at the openings, unless you're suggesting a player run through Zones of Control which would be asinine.

Going through zones of control is a thing you can do. They can only attack of opportunity once. Use someone with high HP or high dodge, someone that can take the hit, or maybe you luck out and get a miss.

there are 2 spots you can move through the boxes, One on the left and one in the top middle. You can use ranged to take down the archer on the right. I typically move 2 people up the left side.

You can also use the first turn to kill one of the blockers and funnel up the center.


Maybe i'll rerun the mission and post a vid. I've been meaning to do a minstrel playthrough anyway. :)



@wyrtt, At the 2 highest levels you get a higher change of crit fails, also Dodge and Parry are upped on many characters which is another factor, so using States like Stun for example stops the whole mechanic making you more likely to hit.

At these higher levels missing isn't as bad as you think because it helps fill randomia bar. the crit fails fill it even more, so in many ways a Crit miss can be a good thing. Buff up your barb, use the extra attack and then do a double wammy on someone and hope he hits! :)