Nightmare mode is easy they said. (mild chapter 3 spoiler)

[PrimeNum7]

Just spent 2 hours trying to beat the steel maiden and her goons in Juno fortress. I finally beat them by spreading the party out, using ranged based crafts and buffing Aureila for her 200 cp S-craft. I barely won that fight and was in the red for 90% of the fight. Hardest fight in the game so far, unless you count those optional solo fights with Rean. This is the third time when people on the forums and on reddit says game is easy on nightmare. Yet, just like in CS1 and CS2 to a lesser extent I get totally destroyed by bosses that I should steamroll if I abuse game mechanics.

Using sledgehammer (or for the Steel maiden fight Gaius' brave order) and rushing to break didn't work. In fact it didn't work for like 70% of boss fights and I had to use other brave orders like Iron will or Arts Celebration to survive. This strategy is overrated the enemies simply have too much health and deals too much damage.

Like seriously, are people going to say CS4 on nightmare is easy too? Whats it going to be next time?
CS1 = just use AT delay bro (C and other At delay immune bosses destroys you)

CS2 = just use eva tank and s-crafts bro (Ok, you might have a point. But for certain bosses like Mcburn your s-crafts only bring him down to half heath and your weak low damage evasion tank can't dodge his S-craft and Arts.)

CS3 = Just use break bro (Most bosses attacks first bringing you down to half heath at the start. And when you do start attacking you bring the break bar(s) down to like 60% lets not forget when they enrage and resets the bar entirely.

CS4 = Just use ______ bro (TBA)

Lets cut the BS, either i'm living in a alternate reality or just plain bad. But If I beaten CS1 and CS2 on nightmare and Sky SC on hard am I truly a bad player?

[quang.billy.79]

They should make boss have phase 2 or phase 3. For example you spam all S-craft to kill a boss and then it change to second form which is much stronger, now because you used S-craft before you run out of CP (may be EP HP too) and it's much harder

[PrimeNum7]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

They have a warped perception because they are like you: they played the games too much. It is stranger that you dont feel the same way, since you also played the other games on nightmare.

It makes sense for someone that is new to play CS games, or playing them on nightmare to feel that the game isnt easy on nightmare. But it doesnt make much sense for someone that has recently played the previous 2 games also on nightmare.

Which begs the question, what is hard? and what is easy? Because if its so easy why am I putting so much effort into defeating bosses? Isn't that the opposite of easy? I don't find the previous two games in nightmare easy either. But you're being deceptive for saying that this easiest CS game because of Brave Orders while ignoring a even more OP mechanics such as Overdrives in CS2.

This is just me calling you guys out for this so called easy game where I should just steamroll everything with sledgehammer.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Delay works on almost every fight in the game. Not working on one or two fights doesnt change that fact. Also, C is weak to stun. One of the fights gives you Angelica who can conveniently inflict that same status effect. His adds are still vulnerable to Delay as well.

You must have really had a hard time with that game if a single fight not having Delay being broken was a problem for you.

Besides, Delay is only mentioned right now because it is the CS1/2 Equivalent to Orders. These are far from the only way to break the game.

Yes it will work but just like the sledgehammer brave order It will fail you for a good number of fights and you have to start using more conservative jrpg strategies that doesn't rely on at-delay. C is not the only problem I had with.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

You dont use S-crafts to break unless you need to get a turn in. S-crafts have way too much delay to just randomly use like that.

and

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

...why are you trying to break a boss with a single character? You have 4 characters: use all of them. And use something like Rush, that does massive break damage.

Have you ever did suboptimal strats for research purposes? That is what I did. Maybe I should have made my self clear when I posted those points. But even with 4 characters, it is not enough and you have to fall back into heals because its the bosses turn.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

You can use it on 2 people. Which you should, altho you can still break fine with it on just one person. If other quartz saved your ass more then break, why are you here complaining about being unable to break?

Because like At-delay in CS1 it is touted as the ultimate strategy that will break the game. Listening to this, I curiously tried it myself only to fail 70% of time. Yes it does work for the remaining 30% of time but those odds are unreliable.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Ofcourse I do. You have played CS1&2 on nightmare and beat it, as you say yourself. That means you have no excuse for failing on CS3 nightmare. CS3's nightmare difficulty is not easy...but that only applies to people new to either the difficulty level or the CS games.

For someone experienced with the precious games nightmare difficulties it is easy. (after prologue/chapter 1)

I dont know why you are so in denial that you arent playing the game right. If anything you should be glad, since thats better then not being skilled enough. You are just doing the wrong things. Thats easier to fix then learning how to play, isnit it?

I like how in your P.S. statement you covertly call me egotistical yet here you are passive aggressively calling me a noob. I would have you know that I did not struggle as much during the prologue and in chapter 1. And yet I would still say that the game is not easy on nightmare because the effort required to beat it is not.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

That's what they all say. And few actually do.

And I'm the egotistical one?

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

If the boss kills you, then the damage you deal is pointless, because you wont deal any more damage. In RPGs its very important that you learn to balance stats. In this game, having more speed is more valuable then getting a minor-medium damage boost. Since more turns is also more damage, as well as a better ability to react to incoming damage, or even prevent it entirely.

and

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

If you are talking about the very first tune: sometimes bosses get guaranteed first turn. At other times its randomish. However for the rest of the fight if the boss gets too many turns, that means your speed is low. If speed is a problem for you, then gear towards it. That's simple RPG stats balancing.

At the end of chapter 3, 3 characters had spd over 100 (Rean, Sara, and Kurt) another 3 were borderline (Angelica, Gaius, Aurelia). Leaving out Angelica and Kurt since they were in team B the Stahlritter still ocassionaly get multiple turns. If you're going to sit here and say that Rean is too slow at 110 spd I going to have to call BS. Also if you don't do much damage you will hit a enrage timer. This game have soft enrages.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Status effects are rarely a problem. The biggest status debuffs are delay, vanish and OK. Which interestingly enough, the Abyss Shadows prevents. Go figure. It eats up U-mats? Yeah. But U-mats are plenty in this game. They arent rare like in the previous games.
That is because you need loads of U-mats to get the better Quartz. If you need more, go fishing or kill monsters.

So petrify, freeze, seal, mute and faint don't matter? Ok, so the only fatal one on that list is petrify but you can't just shrug off the other ones without missing a few turns to heal. Grinding for U-materials? I thought the game was easy..

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

I never said anything about evasion. Altho evasion builds are also one of the OP things...45% is very low for that point of the game if you arent using Insight.

I'm not really trying to make him into a evasion tank due to my failure with Fie in CS2. He is still a bit lackluster for my taste so I guess I failed again.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

I didnt even understand all of their value untill I tried them for a bit. Dont be arrogant and presume you understand it all right away. With a mindset like that its easy to see how you fail to see where you are screwing up. Judging by what youve written so far I doubt you have re-evaluated your understanding of the mechanics at any point.

Arts Celebration is a poor Order. One of the weakest in the game. Divine Song is the one you want to use if you plan on using Arts. It removes the Casting time, and combined with Bell stacking you can get close to 0 delay Arts as long as it is active.

The strongest order tho, is ofcourse still Sledgehammer.

So the strongest order, Sledgehammer, not being so strong as everyone says is me screwing up. That is some great projection btw.

As for Arts Celebration, maybe I don't want my heavy Arts users to be EP starved? Bell Stacking? More stuff that burns U-Materials. Yeah, this game nightmare mode is so easy that you have to grind more than in CS1 and CS2.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

There is your problem right there. You should use Sledgehammer as often as possible.

With the extra added risk of your party getting hammered as well. Iron will is up most of the time. I use sledgehammer, raging fire or Arts Celebration when I feel confident enough that I won't get punished for doing so.

-Edit: What I wanted to say here is that sledgehammer is not important enough for me to use it as often as possible because it is not all that powerful.

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

They are. That overwhelming.

Its a shame that i'm not seeing it.. Have a good day.

Originally posted by Kuro:

CS4 is waaaay harder than CS3 btw. Your BOs are nerfed, enemies can use their BOs to cancel yours. Breaking is much MUCH difficult. Enemies also have ARCUS unity attacks and heightened combat senses. Divine Knight battles can get ridiculously difficult as well.

I don't believe you.
I'm willing to bet that most people here and on reddit will claim that CS4 is the easiest cold steel game and easiest of the easiest trails games of all time. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Mistfox]

I found Nightmare quite easy, one of the things to take note of is you can double stack quartz. For example, Break 2 not cutting it? Use Break 2 AND Break 1 together. You're too slow? Action 1 and 2 together. This lets you build really role focused characters, so for characters like Kurt, I stacked Spd/Atk while Juna was the Eva tank/Breaker. Rean also works well as a breaker, stacked with Break quartz and Spirit Unification/Fatal Helix, he takes out about 70% of Arianrhod Break Bar in 1 shot even without Sledgehammer in the fortress.

This carries on later as well, you can use the Named quartz in combination with the normal quartz to really lethal effect.

[Kyle G]

This guy basically used all the strategies the above posters said and avoided damage from Arianhod..

Basically if you don't wanna get hit at all, just stack speed while using Adamantine Shield, Platinum Shield + Chrono Burst, and have evasion tank with Aegis w/ shining. This guy could've finished this fight faster if he used S-crafts, but I guess he wanted to challenge himself? Even then, he got Ariahod and the Stahlritter in break state in just 5 minutes mark w/o Gaius' BO, using some helpful strats that flew over my head when I did this boss battle. Jusis w/ chrono burst is a great choice for making sure everyone on your party is consistently protected with Platinum Shield. Why I didn't think of that? It's so obvious it hurts just watching this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMB-NSybTuA

Edit: And yeah as Mistfox said, Rean w/ Spirit Unification + Helix w/ two Break quartz and Skuld MQ equipped on Rean is what saved me from getting demolished from Ariahod, though I was too stupid for not using chrono burst for my defensive set up at the beginning of the fight.

[Xx_ThRiLlHelM420_xX]

Originally posted by Sandvich of Peace:

This guy basically used all the strategies the above posters said and avoided damage from Arianhod..

Basically if you don't wanna get hit at all, just stack speed while using Adamantine Shield, Platinum Shield + Chrono Burst, and have evasion tank with Aegis w/ shining. This guy could've finished this fight faster if he used S-crafts, but I guess he wanted to challenge himself? Even then, he got Ariahod and the Stahlritter in break state in just 5 minutes mark w/o Gaius' BO, using some helpful strats that flew over my head when I did this boss battle. Jusis w/ chrono burst is a great choice for making sure everyone on your party is consistently protected with Platinum Shield. Why I didn't think of that? It's so obvious it hurts just watching this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMB-NSybTuA

Edit: And yeah as Mistfox said, Rean w/ Spirit Unification + Helix w/ two Break quartz and Skuld MQ equipped on Rean is what saved me from getting demolished from Ariahod, though I was too stupid for not using chrono burst for my defensive set up at the beginning of the fight.

Beat this fight on nightmare last night. I used Sara's brave order for the initial fight set-up for accel but the chrono burst is a pretty neat trick as well and wouldn't have cost 4 bp.

A lot of the characters in this fight can get very high evasion and combined with drive, shining, millium's order and jusis shields + admantium shields from millium I was able to get through on second re-spec for fight without too much difficulty. I had mobius for AOE items to deal with some tricky parts which was helpful. I also stacked quartz as noted by poster above (evade 3/2/1 etc...). Didn't try for a break strategy and killed them by charging aurelia's s-craft, my break stuff was on other team and I didn't want to go through trouble of switching out quartz.

With regards to poster ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on sledgehammer;

I've only started ch 4 right now but so far sledgehammer into break into windstrike with iron will or ebon crest up to cover boss turns really trivializes a lot of the encounters given how easy it is to farm BP off broken opponents and completely lock out the fight. I have kurt on stacked evade + delay and altina on stacked speed + delay and between rain blade and fragrach most mobs have beenl pretty easy to delay lock even without arc slash from previous games. Both of those crafts also have good break for combing with sledgehammer order, in addition to juno's high break crafts. Sledgehammer is very powerful and is definitely worth being your bread and butter order.

[Mistfox]

If you are really paranoid and need to bunker down, Altina's Order is insanely good for that. Absolute reflect bounces everything back at your enemy. Why take a percentage off damage when you can bounce everything back anyway? lol. Timing's a bit short, so you do need to time it right.

[butterbattle22]

I won that fight on my first try on nightmare blind, and I think the steel maiden got like 2 turns the entire fight.

I don't think there's any one thing that breaks the game by itself, although there are certainly a few mechanics that are more egregious than others. The people that call these games easy have generally identified all the most abusable mechanics and are abusing most of them. What really breaks the game is combining these things. On that note, if the game becomes easy when you have a deep understanding of all the mechanics and apply your knowledge strategically, does it still make sense to call the game easy? The bosses in these games hit very hard. If your setups are not optimized to suppress the enemy from getting turns and/or mitigating damage, the amount of damage they do can feel hard to overcome. That separates the people that post these types of threads from the responses that are basically "git gud."

If I had to pick one thing in CS3, it wouldn't be sledgehammer either, it would probably be chrono burst, which I already thought was one of the worst offenders in CS I and CS II. I would put Thor on a speed/evasion Fie and stick a chrono burst with it, and it was the most god awful broken thing ever. I would say that Brave Orders are broken too when you employ it tactically. Obviously, this means you're not just using sledgehammer; you're using the best order for every situation. You use sledgehammer when 1) Your characters are about to get a lot of turns and 2) The enemies are mostly not broken. When the enemy is about to get quite a few turns, you should have ebon crest on or at least Rean's defensive order if nothing better is available.

[butterbattle22]

In this game, beginning a cast does not count as a turn for buffs and brave orders. So depending on what the turn order looks like, you can start a long arts cast as a way to troll ebon crest as well.

[Evil Gambio]

You know what? Since I'm that guy in the OP who tells people to use these op af setups, I may as well explain why and how they work, each of them.
"CS1 = just use AT delay bro (C and other At delay immune bosses destroys you)"

This post may as well just explain how at delay works and why it's so overpowered and how to use it.

People who don't think it's busted generally don't know why it works at all. Basically for every source of delay (it'd be raven master quartz, impede quartz, shadow virtue etc.), you add an entire extra chance of delay, and if a single one triggers, then the full delay is applied.

With just 2 impedes and arc slash, a boss with a vulnerability of 20% has, in reality, around a 48% chance of being delayed, and that's a 2 turn stun on a low delay move. Combine this with using multiple characters doing this, and it just goes on and on to the point where my sister, on her own playthrough, stacked 800+ delay on the final boss lmao.

Most people don't know how this works and just assume that based on the low chances and their experience, it doesn't work, and it makes sense, because people who did have a good experience probably just randomly stacked impedes with their delay moves and saw that they worked and recommended it to other people, like you, who didn't do this, and thus had a bad experience with delay cause they're dealing with far worse odds of delaying stuff.

C is definitely immune and is the second toughest ground fight in CS1 because of it. Though you can still stunlock him with faints as you have angelica and evasion still works relatively well.

"CS2 = just use eva tank and s-crafts bro"
I mean, delay wasn't changed, so you can start by doing that and then pelt them with s-crafts, might need to use overdrive, but after you get the first delay it's over and you can just setup some superpowered s-crafts and call it a day as you wittle him down.

Though CS2 is just a very boring and dull game for me to play anyways so...

For CS3, the answer post has a few broken af strats that seem to have answered your question already.

Though, tbh, CS3 has so many good broken strats. Abusing the ♥♥♥♥ out of Arcane Gale is great though. Equip a super gladiator belt, and then for MQs, put on a minotauros primary and a skuld secondary, spirit unification and just... use arcane gale.

You can also just use keeper to face tank almost everything actually. Rean with Keeper and a lot of stacked hp just makes you stand there forever... maybe occasionally taking a slight tear spell once in a blue moon (which can be made super quick by a single water bell)

To point out every single broken aspect of CS3 would take an eternity and a half and this thread has probably discussed this a LOT.

But, to bring it in, I'm making a Cold Steel 3 difficulty mod, and the amount of broken setups and other such nonsense I still have to patch into chapter 4 on nightmare against enemies that have already been beefed up ridiculous amount is kinda insane.
Just to say, enemies all have (at least outside of other changes anyways), around 30% more HP, 50% more BRK, 66% more SPD, 33% STR/ATS and 9% DEF/ADF.

These are some insane bonuses, and the fact that the game, on nightmare, with these settings, and drastically nerfed strategies, it still surprises me that the game is somehow still a good feeling and satisfying experience for experienced players.

Now, these numbers can't paint a full picture as I have given the player newer tools to mitigate all the stuff that's being thrown around, namely the fact that status effects are highly useful in the mod as well as stat down so don't take all these numbers at face value and evasion can still be used to mitigate opening turns and other such stuff.

I hope this post has given you some extra insight into all of this lol.

[YueJin]

Sounds very interesting. 66% increased speed and 50% break seems like it could make some bosses a real challenge I'd be interested in using that for a second playthrough one day.

[Evil Gambio]

Originally posted by YueJin:

Sounds very interesting. 66% increased speed and 50% break seems like it could make some bosses a real challenge I'd be interested in using that for a second playthrough one day.

The mod should release within the next few weeks anyways so... If you want it it'll be there soon enough.

[Xx_ThRiLlHelM420_xX]

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Arts Celebration is a poor Order. One of the weakest in the game. Divine Song is the one you want to use if you plan on using Arts. It removes the Casting time, and combined with Bell stacking you can get close to 0 delay Arts as long as it is active.

I wouldn't say arts celebration is one of the weakest orders in the game.

Arts celebration + chrono boost on a high crit character is a pretty easy lock. Arts reduces chrono boost cost to only less than 50 EP, and you only need to farm 2 brave points to reissue celbration which also refills your EP for more chronoboosts making it a self sustaining combo.

I just beat the mage knight underneath the racetrack first try unscathed using only arts celebration order and kurt with a crit setup, knight never got a turn.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Chief Ten Beers:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Arts Celebration is a poor Order. One of the weakest in the game. Divine Song is the one you want to use if you plan on using Arts. It removes the Casting time, and combined with Bell stacking you can get close to 0 delay Arts as long as it is active.

I wouldn't say arts celebration is one of the weakest orders in the game.

Arts celebration + chrono boost on a high crit character is a pretty easy lock. Arts reduces chrono boost cost to only less than 50 EP, and you only need to farm 2 brave points to reissue celbration which also refills your EP for more chronoboosts making it a self sustaining combo.

I just beat the mage knight underneath the racetrack first try unscathed using only arts celebration order and kurt with a crit setup, knight never got a turn.

I think he just phrased it wrongly, not to mention a proper configuration is needed to use Arts Celebration vs just bombing the hell out of everything with Divine Song. It's not really weaker, just less convenient to use properly vs just one click bombing.

[Xx_ThRiLlHelM420_xX]

Originally posted by Mistfox:

Originally posted by Chief Ten Beers:

I wouldn't say arts celebration is one of the weakest orders in the game.

Arts celebration + chrono boost on a high crit character is a pretty easy lock. Arts reduces chrono boost cost to only less than 50 EP, and you only need to farm 2 brave points to reissue celbration which also refills your EP for more chronoboosts making it a self sustaining combo.

I just beat the mage knight underneath the racetrack first try unscathed using only arts celebration order and kurt with a crit setup, knight never got a turn.

I think he just phrased it wrongly, not to mention a proper configuration is needed to use Arts Celebration vs just bombing the hell out of everything with Divine Song. It's not really weaker, just less convenient to use properly vs just one click bombing.

I think that if you have chrono boost (and why not) then arts celebration is almost strictly better than divine song.

Consider that even for a caster, if you pop boost your spell will go off essentially immediatlely anyways, and with the 80% reduction to cost the additional EP For the boost is basically nothing in comparison to what you would need to spend using divine song for the instant cast, plus you get an EP refill from the order. Combined with EP regen from master quartz (so it is eaiser for EP from damage to recover EP spent to cast) spamming spells with chronoboost + arts celebration seems a lot stronger for the same cost in BP and probably less cost in EP.

[YueJin]

They both work to ensure the boss never gets a turn. A caster with Titania secondary MQ for EP regen+one of the 1/2 delay after casting MQ and stacked speed gets around 10-15 turns of back to back art casting with divine song which is enough to insta kill every enemy in the game I've run across so far unscathed.