Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Difficulty far too severe when starting out?

Hi,

I've been playing this for a few hours now and I have to say the difficulty (normal) is ruining my enjoyment of it. I appreciate things shouldn't be too easy but, you know, this is the start of the game?!? Surely the idea is to get the player up to speed, figure out the mechanics, allow them to explore?

I've arrived in the city, the guards keep telling me I'm under experienced to go outside, fair enough, but how am I supposed to level up in the city?? I can find only a handful of quests all of which bestow very little XP.

If I venture out of town (yes I have a party of 4, all lvl 3-4) I'm pretty much restricted by encounter diffculty to only one area of the map: NW(ish) where there are level 3 or lvl 4 mobs. Essentially making it a linear experience so far. I thought the game was supposed to be the exact opposite of that? This would be fine if said encounters didn't pit me against 13(!) lvl 4 opponents or bomb undead that decimate my party in one explosion.

I think I might just have to admit defeat and turn it to easy (the shame!) but for me this 'normal' difficulty on what is still essentially a starting area is pretty ridiculous. There seems to be poison everywhere and I'm yet to create more than one fire arrow and have encountered little to no fire spells to counter it. None of my party have them.

Clearly I'm missing something fundamental here, but I'm yet to discover what that is. Balancing seems way off to me and it really is ruining my enjoyment of it. Any tips much appreciated

thanks

What you've described does not suggest the difficulty is too high.
You're merely discontent with what you perceive to be a linear progression.

Well, it is and it isn't. If your idea of non-linear is to be able to explore at will, and not be impeded by higher level mobs, then yes I guess it is. If instead non-linear means you're able to do most quests and explore some areas at your own pace, in whatever order you want, then this is a very non-linear game.

The main story quest notwithstanding, you're free to quest and explore with in reason as you please.

As far as the guards suggesting you're low level ... you can ask them to open the gates and you're free to roam.

As far as early leveling, you're at about the right level now to exit town (NW) and start fighting mobs to and finding more quests to level. However, the bulk of your experience does come from the town and it's related quests.

Again, you haven't made a case for the game's difficulty being out of place, merely that you're frustrated with your experience thus far. Which I suspect stems from a rather steep learning curve in some respects.

You need magic pretty early, best spells I found early on is Midnight Oil, only takes 1 ability point but still use it at level 14, it slows down the enemy mobs / also makes them walk around the oil giving you some breathing room. Also teleportation. Lure the archers/mages into close combat by using corners too. It's a thinking game!

Er...ok, I was asking for advice, not a semantic argument. I'm guessing you think the difficulty is fine, I don't. Good for you.

A 13 mob vs 4 member party battle in what is essentially still the starting area is too difficult. For me at least. The linear progression and difficulty are two separate issues but one is compounded by the other. I basically have one choice of where I can travel once leaving the city. Anywhere else is not a viable option because my chances of survival are almost nil. Not exactly what I'd call a free roaming game mechanic. But that said it's difficult in any direction. NW included.

If this weren't the case then maybe I wouldn't be finding the experience as frustrating as I am, but it is and I am, hence my original post ultimately asking for help.

As I already said I can't find enough quests in the city to level any higher than I am, so I was forced to leave the city and travel...to the NW.

If I'm missing something ie numerous quests in the city, where are they? As far as I can tell they don't exist. And those few that do, invariably mean leaving the city anyway.

That reply was to n3m3c1s, not you Jackal2200. Thanks for your help

You can hit 3-4 from the city, but that's about it before you leave. I too thought the difficulty curve was a little rough (though I play on Hard), but it's really about engaging tactically and utilizing everything you have to your advantage. A 4v13 is actually pretty easy if you have a caster and a chokepoint. The explosive guys can be shot or Teleported into clusters of mobs and they usually 1-shot them. There are environment barrels to utilize in most places as well.

You're meant to learn and 'get up to the speed' through trial and error, instead of hand holding in the early game. Proper engaging and positioning is really what makes the largest difference, in my opinion. Don't charge your melee in, kite through chokepoints, utilize CC, use proper weapon types, etc.

The difficulty of this game in the beginning is obscene and its completely wrong. Additionally you can become under-leveled and "stuck" against encounters. This game is still in Beta stage

Advice - West Gate, hover of enemy before engaging to see their level. You can use sneak.

In town there is a lot to do to get EXP, I don't think you've touched that much on the potential there. I do know my first time in town, I was more chomping to fight vs figure it all out, it just caught me off guard.

You always can change difficulty in game at any time. Once you get your sea legs, you can bounce it back up.

Get Leech and give one of your companions Bloodletting, easy game.

Out of curiosity is this your first iso-rpg? Anyway Like the others have said playing smart and positioning are key and can make your life a hell of a lot easier. Your companions knock-down and stun skills are your best friends especially at the start when you don't have a lot of other options available. Teleport is also a amazingly useful skill if you think outside the box, sure you could use it to hurt a single enemy or you can use it to drop a water barrel in the middle of a group and then electrify it to stun the lot, drop tables on clustered enemies or to block doorways (oil spill is also great for blocking paths and cheap too at only 3ap), hell I've even used it to drop my melee fighters into a better position to battering ram as many enemies as possible in one shot. It even has some good out of combat usefulness like lifting chests or keys out of trapped areas. And although I've never tried it myself there is a flee combat button so you could probably reduce their numbers a bit, runaway, heal and then return to finish them off.

One handy thing I've only recently started using is the "leech" trait and it is amazing, pretty much every time you are hit you'll bleed a little and leech soaks it right back up and heals you. The healing is pretty good but the main benefit I've found is it stops me from shocking my own guys who before would have been 9 times out of 10 be standing in a blood pool and been zapped along with the baddies.

As for the game having linear progression, thanks to exploring a certain area with my lowest perception character (pretty dumb on my part) and missing a key item I found myself at lvl 10 with nothing to fight except mobs of lvl 14-15 and apart from the awful chance to hit % (solved by keeping them knocked down/stunned/frozen to get 100% chance) by playing smart and using choke points I even managed to kill some bosses. It was actually my favourite part of the game so far as it kept me on my toes and forced me to come up with strategies I would never have needed if I was just taking on mobs my own lvl. That's about as non linear as you can get.

f5--->f6 alot of time and a blood pressure strap always near you, trust me...game is awsum

I agree with the OP. I stated several times throughout beta that the combat encounters need to be balanced a hell of a lot better. Yes, you can create some optimal characters to make it easier but that's indicative of a poorly designed encounter to begin with. No one wants a cakewalk, but they don't repeatedly want to beat their brains against the wall reloading fights because every encounter they walk into there are 3 times as many mobs as there are in your party.

@Stones, ha no, not my first iso rpg I've played many of them, this one seems extremely tough from the outset to me though.

Maybe I need to give it a bit more time, I was hoping for more exploration and freedom especially initially but it just seems to channel me to towards specific map areas and battles....the way the devs want me to play rather than choosing for myself?

I just seem to hop from brutal battle to brutal battle frantically quicksaving and loading just to make it through. That just says to me it's too difficult. I'd expect that sort of thing mid/end-game time, not in the starting area. Anyway as you say I can switch to easy, we'll see.

Thanks for all the advice though guys, much appreciated

I play on Hard and honestly the first time I tried to fight a group of 7 that was 1 level above me, I spent 2 hours reloading on that single fight (Lighthouse). Even after I learned to use a barrel and 1 shot 3 of the 7 mobs, I still couldn't do it. I ended up rerolling to change some class/henchman stuff (more personal preference than due to difficulty), but after many more hours of combat I learned I was just playing poorly.

When I say 'you have to utilize everything you have', I really mean it. Terrain, positioning, engaging, talents, CC, environment, combos (poison/fire). If you skimp on these and are not 1-2 levels above what you're fighting, you will die. Position your melee toward the front when the fight starts, but let them sit the first turn (unless something is in range to CC). This forces enemy melee to use AP to get to you, and you bank AP, so next turn you can instantly start on the offensive with your melee. Use your status effects, use your talents (if a mob is knocked down and your Ranger has bully, hit the knocked down mob), use it all.

I have noticed that 1 level makes a big difference. Not sure if that's behind the scenes in rolls, or what, but fighting at the same level vs. 1 level behind is actually significant. If you're behind in levels, play extra safe.

If you can catch my stream live, I'd be happy to walk through some general combat tactics in whatever encounter I'm currently in, and can answer questions. Maybe it'd help you to see what exactly we're talking about (since most of us are echoing the same ideas in this thread), at least for myself I find seeing stuff a lot more helpful than reading. I run a Rogue/Fighter/Mage/Ranger setup, and I'm on twitch @ thesircuddles.

At the end of the day though, this game, compared to your average game, is actually very difficult, especially at the start. So don't feel bad about not stomping it, you're just in the middle of your initial learning curve.

Divinity Original Sin seems to be targeted the hardcore RPG crowd. Personally I love the difficulty - it makes you cautious and you have to reload a save game often. But that is just part of the genre. This is why you see sites like RPG Codex raving about this game.

High focus on tactics and combinations of spells, buffs and elements are essential.

If you don't like it turn it down to Easy.

I would say it's not just you. The amount of AP and skills enemies get along with group size is most certainly unwieldy in the beginning. I am level 11 now and the mobs I fight all do 4-5 actions per turn while my party can only do 1-2. Pure elemental damage ranges from 1/3 to 1/2 of my health even with 25 resist and the 50% resist last only 3 turns so they aren't much help. The mechanics of the game almost force you to go out of character to min/max your way through the content.

For instance I am using 4 blood knights ( witchcraft + man at arms), but to get through a large fire section set of encounters I had to teach one of them water magic to use rain. Without rain I would have been stuck fetching water barrels for several hours. Completely out of character but had to be done to get through. If you don't steal and rob graves you are more than likely to be very short on gold and decent equipment for all of the early game. Things like this rub me the wrong way in what is supposed to be an rpg.

The lack of item variety can also make things harder. I wanted to stick to two handed but there are seemingly no 2 handed blunt weapons until much higher level. This means I either stay in character as a 2handed knight that I invested heavily skill wise and ability point wise into using 2handed weapons or I go to 1 handed and shield so I can get some weapon variety. You wind up hacking through a lot of undead at a major penalty if you don't go blunt.

Talents aren't very exciting and talents like poor zombie are hard to fit in. Good luck setting up poison fields to heal when every enemy can use fire.

Lastly there is no reliable base of items to pull from for certain elements. If you don't have a buff mage your not going to have proper elemental resist for quite some time. You can't buy a fire resist ring etc to help you through the fire portion, or a shock ring to help you with air elementals. Considering how punishing elemental damage is I feel this is either an oversight.

This game is feeling more like vanilla skyrim to me the more I play it. It's going to take a few mods here and there to make my character progression more fun and less restrictive. Mainly weapon variety, elemental gear,and more talents.

Aside from the other suggestions of cc and using your terrain, I'd suggest getting a few summons to help soak damage Spider is a great summon and you can get it right away.

@Exiled There are res potions you can use, and if you get man-at-arms 5, you get a great talent for elemental res if I'm not mistaken

Having 4 identical characters is to ask for trouble.

Conventional wisdom says you should have a balanced party. It even says so in the manual on page 18:

"
However, Divinity: Original Sin is a party-based game with turn-based combat, so it is a good idea to build a party that covers many talents. A party with only fighter-type characters or a party with only wizards may be possible, but is not recommended for first-time players.
"

Weirdstone

The only thing that makes the game seem difficult is players not knowing about all the things they can utilize at the very start, when playing for the first time. As you learn the game and its options things will become much easier, at least as the regular fights go.

While you are in the city there is a small underground map that gets you some xp and some nice equipment, either to use or to sell. Looting several different places where the most important characters in the murder quest are living will enable you to buy or find even more.

With that, and level 3 or 4 you should be able to clear the western area of the undead.

One small but very important thing is just to remember to use different potions and food items which all give you various resistances.

Then, with some proper tactics and abuse of the environment you will reach levels 5 - 6 with which you can clean the Black Cove or the northern part with zombie boars.

And so on...




errmm, whats written in the post directly above mine, by ExiledTyrant is completely wrong.
- The amount of AP is decided by investing in proper attributes. If the player doesnt then its his own fault and he should figure out how to use such builds differently.
- You dont need to learn water magic to have the Rain spell because you can just buy and find rain spell scrolls.
- Resistances are buffed by potions and food. If one simply refuses to use them or cant figure out such a basic thing - its his own fault. Additionally some schools of magic have spells that raise resistances. Plus those given by equipment. Either way its not a problem.