Sometimes I can't see something even if it is right in front of me.

Is the options for changing difficulty settings in EA?
If so, where?

No difficulty setting adjustments in EA, at least not yet.

Was there an option for game difficulty? I love the story and dont mind a challenge, but im having a real hard time progressing at this rate I feel like its on hard or something. I played normal in DOS2 and was fine.

With the amount of enemies to player ratio I just get swarmed and destroyed, especially against archers. Feel like I need to save every 5 minutes and instead of exploring freely I try avoid everything. Sucks for two reasons, I miss story opportunity and XP.
Anyone else have this feeling? Do I just suck at 5E?

Im a fighter drow, I have lae zel, shadowheart and gale in my party. Gale doesn't seem to do much damage, Shadow is good and lae zel does better than I do.

My rolls seem skewed to, I have yet to have successful rolls, my dialogue rolls are mostly fails. If I get a pass its almost something to celebrate for.

So far i'm not having too much trouble in battles. Not that there are too easy, the right amount of difficulty i think.
I'm a mage, and i have lae zel, shadowheart and gale in my party too. try mixing it up with different spells for gale when you level up.

My dialogue rolls are really bad, almost all of them below 5, but i have friends that get normal results.

Other difficulty options will come later: balancing everything properly takes a lot of time and feedback. I'm reminded somewhat of the balancing of DOS2 in the EA phase which tended towards being quite difficult. I feel your pain as I am neither much good at combat nor someone who is at all tactically-minded, so I've been pwned quite a lot; plus I'm also one of those people who tends towards a losing streak with dice-rolls, so I'm having to resort to a mixture of F5-before-dialogue and the "maybe I'll try again later" approach. Not very elegant, but at this stage it really is a case of whatever works.

You can always cast guidance to a character and then engage in dialogs, adds d4 to skill checks.

I'm finding the game pretty much impossible to enjoy because of the difficulty.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I feel like I must have fallen behind, because I'm now at a stage where I can't progress. I'm Wizard 3, with Wyll, Shadowheart and Lae'zel also level 3. I've left the druid grove and cleared out the blighted village, and the caves underneath.

First I went north, killed some Gnolls on the road, then went to the Gnoll camp. I was outnumbered 2-1, and with the multiattacks, I was hit with 20 attacks per round at one point. I tried everything I could, but seeing them as level 4 I backed off. Pretty deflating, but I can admit to being under leveled to fight 8 level 4 mobs.

Next I was exploring and found the Riverside Teahouse. Didn't like how the story unfolded so decided to try the combat route. Prepped my party with lots of buffs at the start of the fight and beat the first enemy. Also level 4, but there was now only three of them. Soon as the second was in range, they did an attack of 31 damage (my highest HP is 28), next round, 29 damage. At this point I just turned the game off in sheer frustration.

Next, I load before that and follow towards the goblin camp. Ended up in combat at the gates. There are 7 of them, sleep put 2 down for only 1 round. By there second turn I get hit with a ton of attacks (most of my attacks miss in my second round) and despite bane on the enemy, then a fire bomb hits me and kills my healer and knocks most of the party to sub 10. I tried spacing my party better, but the game has really narrow play areas. So I reload. Again.

Outside of getting to a point of downing a potion every turn, I'm really not sure what to do here. I'm not enjoying the game at all, I'm being constantly punished everywhere I go.

Just getting that off my chest, but to the folks finding the game easy, can you talk us through your fights? I really hope I'm just missing something here, because I don't know what I don't know at this piont, and would love some tips on the fights I mentioned.

Yeah, I'm not finding the game impossible for the most part but I'm getting through most combats by the skin of my teeth at this point.

I was thinking it easier than I thought it would be, but I wonder, does that have to do with the 5e rules? I actually feel powerful as a level one character. Thats the exact opposite of BG 1 and 2 and the earlier D&D editions right? In the earlier D&D games the early levels are such a struggle. I like the change and know different levels of difficulty are coming but the classes feel more powerful and good job to whoever, Larian or WotC did it

I found the opening of the game fairly easy, except when I picked a fight with the gunnery crew and got one shot. The game punishes very hard for not doing exactly what you should be.

Same here.
I usually play games in "hard" difficulty because I like challenge and I don't mind doing the same battle 3 times or more...
I'm absolutely not the greatest expert of D&D rules but I played BG1/2 many many times so everything is not new to me...
But here I have to admit that sometimes it's hard, even during random encounters.

SPOILER ALERT

I.E I choose to kill all the goblins at the mill. I kill the leader so the fight stop but I choose to do it again and kill every single ennemies before him to have more XP. This combat was not impossible but hard. I think it would fit a normal difficulty but with 6 companions.
Same in the goblin camp. Crusher want me to kiss his feet, I refuse, He fight me, I decide to kill him so the entire camp attacked me. The battle was hard because there were many many ennemies. Still not impossible if you use verticality but it's hard to fight during 1h against 30 goblins and not very "fun", especially with only 4 companions that need more than one turn to kill their opponent.
Now I'm playing in the goblin dungeon and still decide to kill them all. It's still possible, I don't have to reload but it's hard.

I usually have to rest after every battles.

I really like it but I think it suit a normal difficulty for a party of 6
With only 4 it's sometimes really hard to manage dying companions and the combats are very very slow.
I love those huge encounter so please, add more companions in party rather than removing ennemies

This is something they are prepared to monitor and address as needed. As shown in pre-release, they have heat maps that show how often people are dying or not. So, if their maps show too much carnage, they’ll reduce the difficulty. I haven’t gotten very far yet, however. As easy as it has been so far, and as hard as it might get soon, I would be very hesitant to ease up on the challenge. We have months of time with only limited content. Let’s get a lot of mileage out of it.

As I'm a giant nerd, I decided to do a simple math out of the goblin gate fight. Everyone is using basic attacks.

A Goblin is, on average this:

+3 to hit (Prof is +2, Mod (Dex/Str) is +1).
Damage is, without abilities, 1d6+1 (Mod being the +1).
Against my parties average AC of 14, they need to roll 11 to hit. Though with height, it can be as low as 7 to hit.
So they have 45% chance to hit, with up to 65% to hit. But for the sake of simplicity, I left it at 45%.

The Klaw is :
+5 to hit (Prof is +2, Mod (Str) is +3)
Damage from bite is 4d4+3!
Against the AC of 14, they need to roll 9 to hit.
They won't get any height mod, so they have a 55% chance hit rate.

The fight has 5 Goblins, 2 Klaws (I know one is weaker here, but I'm condensing the information)

The damage range of the goblins are 2-7, the damage range for the Klaws is 7-19. Max theoretical damage is 73, my party has 88hp.

I pasted 45 results, on average there was 25 unsaved damage per turn, meaning at worst case, I can last for 3.5 turns.

The PC's are tricky to ascertain, as they aren't set up like mobs, so the damage can spike wildly, but the enemy party had 124hp.

There is backup that comes in the fight, but the battle is set up overwhelmingly in the enemies favour, and I had to do a lot of LoS breaking and hit and run tactics, and just had great luck that the big Klaw missed all of it's attacks. There are other things the goblins can do to boost their damage, but we'd be here all day.

Difficulty settings obviously make sense, but I hope we'll be able to easily identify a setting which corresponds to the current difficulty. Im finding the challenge level to be about perfect, and it's given me some really fun, thrilling, surprisingly memorable fights. This is a magic element that really makes games fun.

So please, Larian, include an "original EA" difficulty setting when you adjust it!

Though saying that, the very next fight (started at the urging of Wyll), my party took 74 damage from two AoE attacks before anyone on my team could activate :P

I love the challenge. Haven't had any reloads due to deaths yet, but there was one fight where it came close until I figured out a better strategy.
I really hope that whatever this difficulty level is remains the standard difficulty and other options are implemented around it.

I've been very vocal in this thread but I did really start with asking how people are getting through the fights. I'd love to know what you did for the goblin gate fight, if you found that challenging? Also how did you find the Gnoll camp or the true soul goblins.

I do really think I'm missing something here.

During the goblin gate fight -

Killed one gob on the ground, then I had Lae'zel climb up to melee a goblin archer on a high cliff rock thing, and I remembered Swen's pushes - so I pushed that archer all the way down. Then brought the other chars up and enjoyed the elevation as we ranged the rest. Targetted the warg first.

If you're a drow, you can just talk your way in: "Welcome your Drown-ness!"

That said, I do find combat is too hard early on, every encounter could go either way for me. I did the fight on top of the chapel maybe 10 times and only won cleanly twice, having to resort to popping in and out of line of sight, then fighting in the doorway to finally beat the encounter. During some encounters, my squishies died before they could even move, which is not great gameplay. My F8 button is getting plenty of use, but at least the loading screens look nice.

I used Grease and Fire Bolt near where the friendly NPCs were fighting, and painted a line with goblin blood that I froze with Ray of Frost and that prevented any of their melee from getting to my party.

Oh and there's also the super exploitative approach - equip heavy armor on your characters at the end of their turns and take it off again at the start of their turns, pick up all the exploding barrels and spike and acid pods you see and then throw them at your enemy. Stay at range and hide after every attack so the enemy just stands there glossy-eyed.

Basically, the game is too hard if you try to play it like DnD and too easy if you treat it as the poorly balanced farce it is.

I feel like I'm role playing toddlers with noodles. The attack rolls are abysmal I can't hit a barn door in front of me but the enemy decides which freckle on my face they want to put the arrow in. I average about 7 on my attack rolls per battle my enemies average about 13 this is without modifiers. I actively avoid any conflict and am becoming ok with just letting myself be a Mind Flayer at least then I'd be a useful player character.

Lol, you guys are funny. Please, Larian, keep this difficulty setting as an option at least!

I think the combat is very enjoyable as it is now.

DOS 2 was far more frustrating to me.

I'm really curious, what is it you are enjoying about the combat?

Welcome to 5e.

5e was designed to be easily run & fairly light at the table for a Human DM.

This means, if you do the kite & kill that a Human DM would just have the opponents fall back & regroup for later instead of getting slaughtered piecemeal.

Hunam - 5 goblins (CR 1/4 or 50 XP - so 250 then x2 for numbers for 500) & 2 klaws (CR ~2 ish for the damage & HP, so, about 450 XP - so 900 for both x 1.5 for numbers and you get 1350) for a total of 1850. The threshold for 4 level 1 characters for a Deadly encounter is 400. Level 4 is 2,000. Level 5 jumps to 4,400 because of the second action gained.

Monsters w/reduced HP have negligible impacts on CR calculation, because it's all about expected damage output per round.

Per 5e rules, which this game uses, this fight should kill you 90% of the time, until you get to a party of 4 5th level characters. Then it is 'Hard' which is still "someone should die" territory.

Most encounters are pushing Hard to Deadly constantly.

I think "Classic" is moderate hard difficulty in D:OS? If so, they will introduce 2 easier settings and one harder one.


Overall a lot of encounters can be massively cheesed with sneaking in, taking high ground and then just machine gunning everything with bows and spells, while pushing off the melees that eventually manage to reach you. Shove is almost criminally powerful for a bonus action and so is Eldritch Blast with repelling invocation - it is pretty good at screwing archers and such. Then, it seems you can practically full rest wherever (which really needs to be fixed, because it's silly you can just full rest in a fortress filled with hostile goblins - let alone it ports you to camp), so you can just brute force things that way - initiating the combat with Shadowheart and other casters you may have at full spell slots makes things a cakewalk.

There are some places where you really don't want to go in guns blazing - like that phase spider cave, that is simply super deadly for level 3 party if you just waltz in the middle of all the phase spiders and ettercaps. You can, though, bait ettercaps separately from spiders it's much easier then - I found that you can do it by intentionally triggering webs, so they come for you.

Same goes for many goblin fights, vast majority of them - you can sneak in, separate party members to take positions on rooftops/ledges/walls and then trigger it, this makes things almost trivial, because by the time their melee fighters manage to get to you - you already pretty much killed most of them.

I agree with the first point, but kiting is pretty hard in 5e unless you're a rogue. If you're trying to move and attack, the enemy can dash to get on top of you, and make it impossible to move away with an AoO - unless you use disengage, but then you can only use a standard move action and the enemy can then just catch back up and start making actual attack actions. That's not true in BG3 because everyone's a rogue now I guess.

The fact is they wouldn't have to crank the enemy count and stats up if the game weren't so poorly considered that any battle can be made trivial using the same small set of exploits.

I've been employing the same handful of tactics for a little while now. I'm a Warlock, and I've got Wyll, Gale, and Astarion with me, so we're 3 casters (but kinda 4 since Astarion is Arcane Trickster.)
Because we're all extremely squishy, I play keep-away. I usually use my hardest hitting spells on what I perceive to be the most dangerous target to take it out of the fight immediately, and then it's a game of cat and mouse as I run away as far as I can, jump up to ledges, whatever I can do to create space. If something gets close, it either gets a push or a thunderwave. I also make a point to move into a ledge that I've jumped up on just a bit in the event that an enemy clambers up there with me. That way, I can give them a shove off the ledge, cause more damage by simply being defensive, and take them out of the fight for a second by knocking them prone. You can also abuse line-of-sight and move around small corners or adjacent rooms and force targets to funnel in toward you. Melee typically heads right for you, and ranged tend to expose themselves to get into position to hurt you.

I don't know if it's supposed to be easier or harder with 3 dedicated spellcasters, but I've been having a good time in every fight looking around the environment for high ground, planning retreat paths, and giving myself as much advantage as possible.

My biggest challenge thus far has been the harpies because they're also ranged, and dive into battle for attacks and retreat with huge movement advantages. And the area is painfully wide open. Almost lost that fight until I switched up my strategy.

I do not think we will have difficulty options until later in the EA.
One of the reasons for an EA is to test difficulty spikes so they need the player´s info to fine-tune different options and choose how to make the game more difficult. But I´m sure we would have it in the full game release.

Sounds about right.

Sorry, the kiting was BG3. A competent DM would, in fact, have enemies dash. Or run away. Or flank. Or do something.

So far in BG3 they just chase & wind up in the meat grinder.

I too am enjoying the combat difficulty- use you spells & scrolls wisely - take out the dangerous opponents use grease, ice, flame, sleep & sometimes the dice just don’t go your way.
I lost 2 of 4 characters at goblin gate - reloaded changed the route & took higher ground - kicked butt.

I know a balance is required & we all likely have differing tactics & views but nobody wants a cake walk for combat - just the right level to be challenging without entirely rage quitting level 😉

I have to agree. I'm finding the combat here sooo much more enjoyable and compelling. DOS had the magic/physical armour and tbh that always annoyed me. I also like the spells in BG3 a lot more than DOS2. And the bonus actions make it much more interesting.

The options for strategy just feels better and more balanced in BG3.

The full game will have options anyhow. I'm at level 3 and haven't encountered anything overly difficult so far.

And I played the beginning hours of the game solo, and only have picked up Lae'zel (denied the others at least for the time being).

That means I had fought packs of four bandits alone (haste potion, luring them through a doorway "decorated" with acid).

Soloing so long also means I tried to use the environment in more creative ways, e.g. like this (possible crypth/Chapel spoiler): http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=680547#Post680547

Our last combats as pack of two was taking out the 3-4 gnolls near the inn in the Northwest (luring them to the archway of the inn, grease scrolling it). After that we took out the gnoll horde with the help of fire wine barrels (laying a large fire and then climbing the ladder to shoot them from above). https://i.imgur.com/yjGXucS.jpg

My main has an AC of 17 though, same for Lae'zel (she basically has the same stats, and build; Fighters with the defensive style).

I'm sure the harder fights are yet to come though. I was able to talk myself out of the Goblin village fight, for instance. As an ado, leveling on this happens way fast in comparison to the originals...

So im in the goblin base where halsin is, and I have just rescued him, but this means you need to kill all three goblin bosses and the drow chick to get out, im a drow and got in by talking my way in, this was fine.

Its fighting the endless hordes of 8 or 10 gobbos with that warhammer hobgoblin guy im having an issue with, last night I finally beat him by shoving him off the roof rafters, I had my character and shadowheart hiding in the roof shoving goblins off as they got up the ladder, the rest of my team were all killed.

Im a fighter so my sneak is shitty, I dont have a rogue either and it wont really help either, the damage these gobbos do kill my party members either in one shot or two. Most of my party is put to sleep or hit with fire bombs and necrosis clouds.

I rested and then had to get through the throne room where the other boss was, All members of my team were murdered before my 2nd turn. I reloaded to try again and the same thing happened, there is just too many of them. If they hit the war drums, you are absolutely in the shit, as even more gobbos from other rooms pour in.

I unfortunately had no saves before entering the area, so I just restarted a new character to make different choices.

Yes, combat is far more enjoyable than DOS2.

I am perfectly fine at this point, I carried every weapon armor and misc item and sold them, i found the secret weapon in druid grove but otherwise did not bought any item from any shop yet still i can manage.

I may be too early but 2 phase spiders gave me hard time cause i was lacking range and Wizard miss every stuff. Because Humans are the only race that can't see in dark in 5e... every other race has it

If you find it difficult, always sneak ahead, use consumables, hide and ambush, i believe it's just a learning curve. It fits my 5e games i played and GM'ed currently. I wasn't expect to beat owlbear for instance at level 3.

I have been finding the game too difficult for me. And frustrating, which is an emotion I never do well with.

I don't want the game nerfed into the ground (don't worry people who like the current difficulty, I am rooting for you to get all the hard and ironman modes you want. I know we don't all play the same way, or enjoy the same things!)... What I want is a nerfed into the ground mode where I can enjoy the story without feeling like I'm always needing a long rest after a single combat. Also, I get really tired of always fluffing dice rolls in conversation, I'm trying to get into the habit of always F5ing before a conversation, but that's not always possible anyway. And the load times make save scumming annoying to the extreme.

Z.

The combat seems good to me, no issues here at all. The only TPK I have had yet is the undeads in the crypt and that was because I stupidly cast fog cloud and block my own view.

My only complaint about combat is that rogues seem to not add much to combat. It seems that sneak attack is much harder to get than in table top.

Personally I find a combat enjoyable, maybe a bit too easy even, although that would be solved by the "tactician" equivalent down the line I guess.
That being said, I believe some combats are too hard for the "classic" difficulty level. Namely Gnolls, and most of the Riverside Teahouse area. It's not insanely hard, but feels more at home at tactician difficulty level, not classic.

I think, dice rolls work against the party and in favor of enemies. I mean the game lets you take several rounds to kill off a goblin with 2 HP left, because your characters miss every fucking attack at 60-70% chance.
Also enemies often get various benefits at combat start from outnumbering the party while having almost unreachable high ground, setting half the group on fire with the first attack and so on.
I'm avoiding combat (which costs me xp) and even reload if persuasion checks fail and combat is at hand.

Example: Battle in Destroyed sanctuary:
The goblin outnumber you by far.
The casters and archers have high ground advantage. While you have to even get into the lowground area in order to get into further combat.
They seem to have a lot of casting abilities, counting alone the 3 times one goblin made Lazael fall asleep.
Two archers climb up the long ladder and have easy attacks on you, while you need a long time until you get up to them.
The goblin priestess throws the large statues at you, again you have the problem of being on low ground here.

I find it interesting that people are having any difficulty with the combat. I'm going trough five fights between rests without issue. I didn't short rest for the first time until after the fight outside the grove, so I did everything in the tutorial, the intellect devourers, the guys outside the crypt, all the guys inside the crypt at once, the skeleton at the end of the crypt and the fight outside the grove on no rest and just a handful of health potions.

I picked a fight with the Harpies while half bloody without spell slots and I absolutely slaughtered them. That was after the goblins under the grove, the two teiflings guarding the goblin prisoner and the druid healer. I have to wonder if it's the game or the character design/party layout. For instance, I'm not running with Shadowheart. My main is a Warlock and I have Fighter, Rogue and Wizard. I attempt to come at fights from odd angles and force the opponents to come to me while I pick them off, or use game mechanics against them, something this game is very well suited for.

Hello together!

Can
someone tell me where I can adjust the difficulty level?

Is that even possible at the moment?

if not, will it be given later?

Many thanks

No option to adjust difficulty yet. I think they do plan on adding it in the future (not sure if for EA or just final release, though).

Just finished the Tea house and the fight was too difficult. I'm level 4 and only had single attacks while the Redcaps had Bloodlust and got to bash my party 3 times in a row.. The Thralls were more manageable but still took forever to beat them. Felt like I had not a single good roll. Frustrating not to have a sense of skill progression.

Would like to know what class you are Kai Spiro and how you managed so well. I use items, use terrain, spells and still get slaughtered. They seem to have unlimited spells and abilities.

I am actually finding the game a bit too easy. Also, given the way rolls work in dialogue, I would really like to have an Iron Man mode, with only one constantly updating save. The temptation to reload failed dialogues is just too much!

I'm glad this thread exists because I have been finding this game incredibly difficult. I think part of it is 1: I don't like Shadowheart or Lae'zel and my player character is a ranger so I'm running with all squish, no tank, no heals. On top of that I like to persuade/intimidate/deceive my way through encounters which doesn't net exp.

When I do have to get into a fight I feel massively disadvantaged compared to the enemies and I'm lucky if I can ever hit anything--my hit chances are so low. If this is the result of party composition/under-leveling then I feel like I'm being punished for playing the way I want to play. Having difficulty tiers will definitely be good but doesn't address the problems that may be causing my run to be so challenging.

Hi, What difficulty modes will there be in the full release, Like i know in the divinity original sin there is easy normal hard, I am one of those people who have trouble with combat, I was able to finish early access, but barely, had trouble in one of the side quests in underdark, so I want to ask, will there also be story mode for those who want easy combat?

thanks

Chibs

Funnily I've read about this being a hard fight before, but is was the probably easiest fight I had (if we are speaking about the fight outside the hut).
But that was because the redcaps were totally scattered around the map and needed to close in first, so I could pick one at a time and when it was dead the next one arrived. Only the 4th did arrive one turn before I could kill the 3rd, so he did this huge damage one time before he got killed.
So that was the one fight where I had the clear advantage

They just need fix all problems and bugs and mistakes...

and so after that make some options like:

- Special NPCs have saving throws agains death (my wanna-be companion dies in fight with goblins when he wasn't my companion)
- AI scaling and AI improvement (coz some of side-quest villagers went in a fight against Bugbear and get oneshoted - what a fool)
- Blocking some Special Actions for AI if they are really don't do that
- And ofcource Challenge Rating scaling/multiplier (that you are really don't need to fight 10 goblins, but just 5 instead) OR stats scalling for enemy creatures
- DC scaling (that you roll not above 20, but above 15 or 10)
- Special Rules for creating your Character (like "Beholder eyes" or "4d6" rule or "3d6" - epic rule) + starting Feat at lvl1 to make it more easy and rpg-colored

Is you need it.
Coz I'm ok with D&D suffering. (still hates that Human doesn't have Feat subvariant)

Long time DnD player/DM here (3.5/5/pathfinder), I've got about 7 hours in the game so far on 'classic' difficulty but have found almost every combat encounter after arriving at the Druid's grove has been pretty much impossible to beat. The temple near the grove had a fight with so many level 3, perhaps 4 skeletons with casters that I decided it must be intended to return to at a higher level. The problem has been that trying to follow the story always leads to similar scenarios, such as freeing the 'bear' in the goblin camp causes a combat encounter between at one point our party and 9 other combatants, all of whom were at least level 3. Has anyone else had this problem?
Inb4 people say git gud, however there seems to be little chance I could return at a higher level as xp gain is fairly slow and I've yet to find any side quests with an appropriate challenge for the party to gain said xp. Party composition seems to make little difference and I know as a DM for dnd that if I ever threw similar encounters at a party of lvl 1s, I would expect them to run away as it's certainly not winnable.

somebody please tell me I'm missing some significant mechanic or quest tree, as I suspect coming back with a level 2 party would have the hit points to survive it.

You're definitely not alone. I've seen a lot of people chime in with specific strategies/party comps that make it supposedly "easy" but just playing the game in a straight forward way is incredibly difficult. My hit rate always seem abysmal, I attack for less than the enemy seems to, the enemy has access to tons of aoes and effects, and there's usually tons of them. I only got by because my player character was a ranger who could summon a bear and I had Wyll summon an imp, so that *somewhat* evened things out but I still found myself having to retry an encounter 2-3 times. More if I got especially unlucky on dice rolls.

So far if you play the game like its DnD it will be unreasonably difficult, or you will run into issues. But if you play it like its DOS or DOS2, it should be pretty damn easy. This isn't a good thing in fact its a really bad thing.

I don't see how it's any different mechanically, as it is as far as I'm aware, pretty much exactly the same as 5e so far. I know the spells, actions, and strategies that work it's just against the encounters where they've got often 3 times the hit points there's only so far that will go.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'play it like it's DOS or DOS2', as it's neither of those games, and I can only be expected to use the game mechanics presented to me. The game should still be playable to people who've not played DOS or DnD, although there'd obviously be a steeper learning curve for those people. This could easily be solved by lowering the level of the enemies to make them more in line with the party.

I give up.

My hit rate is NEVER even half what the AIs is (usually 1/3rd) and virtually every battle I can count on 2-4 critical misses by me and 2-4 critical hits by the AI. Additionally the AIs range attacks have at least 50-100% more range then mine and hit twice as hard (on the rare occasions I do hit). With LOTS of save scumming and replaying most battles 3-10 times I was eventually able to get to 4th level and guess what ... it didn't matter in the slightest, characters are still 2-hit-wonders due to increased AI damage.

I've removed BG3 from my computer and will try again when the game is re-balanced and whatever horrid random number generator you're using has been replaced.

What he means is that while it should play like D&D, it doesn't. In fact, a lot of the 5e rules have been changed by Larian for no real reason other than they wanted to make another Divinity game that would lure in more people. This plays almost entirely like Divinity, except with some dice rolls in conversations thrown in. As for you trying to fight the skeletons in the ruins at level 1, why are you still level 1? By the time you beat the goblins in front of the Druid's Grove, you should be level 2 at the least, that fight actually bumped my party up to level 3. Have you been leveling up your party members?

The hit rate thing (for one part) is because the game starts you at with a disadvantage. After Grove it seems like most encounters have enemy archers on high ground throwing shit at you. Not only when it gets to your turn (when its 4v9+ already), you're half hp because surface crap ignores AC, but ur either out of range or low ground and therefore less chance to hit. The combat encounter's seem to be designed by a DM that's new and hasn't actually played the game and understands the rules.

I sincearly hope that's a joke lol, no I've got 418 xp and require another 1382xp to reach level 2... are you on the easiest difficulty? even still, I'm only on classic which was described as 'normal difficulty', but I've no idea how you'd get anywhere close to level 3 that quickly...

I've personally really been enjoying the difficulty, played through the content that is available. When I can see 'red' enemies from a distance I always approach in stealth so I can get a suprise round, when the enemies are neutral but I could see a battle coming I try to scout and position before starting a dialogue. This will make a huge difference in battle. Perhaps this goes against some dnd immersion, I don't know. Feels like something you would do if ran around a hostile environment. If you run in with all your party and are surrounded by archers on rooftops you'll probably die.

I've found spells in general to be really unreliable however, you simply can't spend a turn hoping for those 50-60% spells will hit. Magic Missile is by far the best and as far as I can tell the only damage spell worth casting, other spells that do not have a saving throw such as fog/darkness can be fantastic for disabling ranged enemies. Using potions or eating food as your bonus action is way better than trying to run around with a cleric and actually spending actions to heal companions. If you're using the cleric companion make her melee. If one party member does not do damage then the fight is prolonged requiring more healing to be done. It's usually best to just try and go all in for damage and trying to reduce their numbers asap.

Not sure if this helps anyone, but this is how I've been playing.

I think the combat is difficult but not impossible. I've played it with my first 2 rolls being fighter, 3rd being a warlock. I always grab all the companions except wyl and then I do the ruins first. By the time I get to druid grove I'm level 2 already. When I get to the blighted town, I usually get close to if not level 3 by that time. I haven't gone past the goblin camp temple yet and the hardest fight I had to do was right outside the goblin camp where if you don't kill that one goblin near the back of the small camp he hits the drums and calls a bunch of gobs in. I had a really difficult time there but I won by funneling them onto the bridge and throwing grenades basically cause they did way more damage than my ranged attacks and I didn't want to take a chance missing melee swings. My take is that its not impossible on classic, def challenging, and playing with friends we usually win every battle but just requires a lot of strategy. I rather like it myself. Just my take.

As a previous poster said, there are many oportunities for xp on the Eastern side of the map. The tombs are easy enough to get you through lvl2 and a bit, then do grove fight and quests, harpys and owlbear. Should be lvl3 then head west to Blighted Village most of the goblins are neutral but there are a few encounters which start hostile, clear them and head to north central gnolls, Zhent quest, "paladins" and clear the road of more gnolls. By then I was lvl4. Can pick up more xp if you head to Waukeens Rest, try clear Blighted Village, kill the Ogres there, kill the Gith to the NW or even head down South and explore the bog.

I'm sure there is enough xp in the early access areas to hit lvl5 and be well into 6. Even further if you kill everything you see/accept some of the more genocidal quests.

As for difficulty, spend your gold, there are traders everywhere. That extra +1 attack, damage or AC is huge. merchants have many upgrades for sale andyou can usually buy two upgrades when you meet the first one, I haven't run a high CHA character so maybe you could gear up quicker. Run Gale and learn Magic Missile, prevents so much frustration, it's easy to get Lae'zel a 1d12 or 2d6 weapon ASAP, Astarion is a bit harder to gear, Shadowheart come pretty well kitted at the start and doesn't need much to be effective. There is a stupid reliance on high ground in the game, a carryover from DOS2 I hear though I never played the game, try to start fights from high ground and give everyone a light/heavy crossbow, try get to highground with your weaker characters, move-take action-repeat.

Once you hit the later areas there are stupidly powerful items available which make the game a cakewalk. Look for The Sapphire Spark Amulet and Staff of Arcane Blessing. Those two items themselves make the game easymode. Shadow of Menzoberranzan helmet is great for scouting out fights and setting things up.

I've played this game more or less exactly the way I would play a DnD game and I've had no problems with the difficulty. I think a lot of DnD players are too accustomed to going at problems and fights head-on rather than addressing them tactically. I would suggest easier difficulties for players like that, so they can play their way and still have fun; if I were DMing for a group like that, I would certainly adjust the challenges to their playstyle rather than demand they change how they play to suit my challenges. Right now there are no difficulty settings, but I'm pretty sure there will be. That should prove an adequate fix.

This is unfortunately true. I love D&D 5e and DOS/DOS2. I have put 30 hours into BG3, I love it but it has some serious flaws based around the game systems meshing.

I'm the same as Zer0. I approach the battle like how I would play a pnp DnD 5e game. Using the environment or sleep spells to gain whatever advantage I could gain on action economy.

So far it's been working pretty well for me. I've finished the EA without too much difficulty.

I did this fight solo at level 2 on classic (its the only available difficulty option) with a Wizard. It is definitely a you problem.


Saying "Git Gud" is not very helpful so no, instead I'll try suggesting things which can help.

1. Use line of sight to give you an advantage against ranged enemies. If they cannot see you, they cannot hit you. Hide behind walls, in enclosed rooms, etc and restrict how many enemies you fight at a time. This was how I did the fight you complained about further up, when the casters appeared I just ran into the room, cast grease at the door and then used cantrips like Ray of Frost on them as they walked in.
2. Use height (when its an option) to your advantage. Stand on high ground, shove off any enemies when they come close and then use ranged powers or a bow against them, as you will have advantage.
3. If you see someone hostile to you at a distance and you know moving closer to them will engage combat, enter stealth, position your characters appropriately and then use sneak attacks to initiate combat. This will give you a surprise round which will allow you to alpha strike them.
4. Make use of crowd control effects and appropriate buffs for encounters.

^I agree 100% with this.

I find the combat difficulty just about right personally. After my first playthrough, I only encountered about 4 particularly difficult fights. Larian games are kind of like From Software games. There's a trick to them, and once you learn it and everything clicks, it becomes quite manageable, without usually ever tipping into easy.

Other comments have already offered some good suggestions, but I'll also mention that food is your best friend. Most food will heal you a small amount, and you can eat it as a bonus action; some rare food can heal better than potions. I was absolutely slamming apples and sausages into my character's face every turn that I had a leftover bonus action, which as a fighter was pretty frequently.

Also, something to keep in mind, particularly in that temple fight, is that light affects your chance to hit. Attacking enemies in shadows is disadvantaged, and if you're playing a character with darkvision you might not even notice that they're standing in a shadow until you switch to a human, or pay attention to the hit-change tooltip that will give you a warning. Make sure your cleric or wizard has dancing lights, and pre-cast it before the fight if you can, or just cast light on your fighter. Or, if you do not want to commit concentration to a maintained spell, light some existing light sources in the room, or drop lit candles in the combat area, etc.

You should be able to get to level 2 before ever getting to the temple though just by gathering your party and exploring a bit. I got to 2 on my most recent character just from killing everything in the tutorial and gathering 2 out of the 4 companions.

Honestly I'd be a bit dissapointed if the combat was easy - BG could be notoriously hard sometimes (remember Lord Firkraag?) and I for one find it refreshing from smashing 1 rinse, repeat kind of combats (looking at you Geralt). It's rare nowdays that the game actually requires you to think (I especially loved the spider matriarch fight).

As for the temple I'm sorry to say but it's definitely a you thing - I took Shadowheart's word it's imperative we get there asap so I only stumbled upon Astarion trying to find the entrance and we 3 manned it easily straight from the nautiloid.

I think Sharp gave you a sound advice I'd just emphasize it's imperative to pay attention to positioning and react to the terrain, also you know you can step out of AOE effects like silence right?

Also there are surely going to be other difficulties available but they just want to fine tune classic first.

Hi,

I am the sort of person who likes to play games on the easiest settings possible. I am not totally struggling with the game as it currently is, but I am finding it to be an unsatisfying experience at times, especially since load times are horrible which makes save scumming annoying.

Anyway, this post is about possibilities for difficulty settings. Larian could do worse than looking at Owlcat's Pathfinder series for ideas here - completely customizable difficulty settings for the basic wimp like me to the hardest of hardcore ironman people. There are a couple of things I want to specifically address though - you'll understand the first one if you read my anecdote at the end of this post.

The lowest difficulty setting should completely do away with the concept of character death. Have characters knocked down in the fight get up at the end. If that isn't possible, at the very least on this setting enemies should not be targeting downed individuals, and the save DC for a death save should be 5. (Yes, it's DC 10 in DnD 5e, but we're talking about the easiest setting here! I am not proposing it change for all difficulty levels!)

Another thing I might suggest for the lowest difficulty level is a reduction of all DCs, I (and I'm sure there's others) would really like to avoid save scumming if at all possible. The load times at the moment are too slow for it to be an effective tool for those who want to see the story and yet see continual fails on conversation dice rolls. This could be something that can be adjusted over the difficulty levels, make them harder for higher difficulty levels.

If you have any other ideas for difficulty settings, feel free to post them in this thread. (Please don't attack or belittle people who like an easier game, just because we're soft and squishy doesn't mean we're total carebears... and besides, I might cry *sob*.)

Z.

Anecdote:

I think I hit my limit last night when I was fighting a Boss and lost Shadowheart. At the end of the fight, I realized I didn't have any scrolls of revivify, and as such I was stuck with a dead party member. So in the end, after much faffing about, I decided the easiest solution was just to repeat the fight, but this time without fatalities. Then I ended up losing Wyll (the baddie hit Wyll so hard, he flew into a ravine, and hilariously ended up all the way back to camp, where his corpse landed near the campfire, but I digress...) So I gave up for the night.

That whole situation might have been mitigated if Shadowheart's corpse was able to be picked up. Cause then I could have taken the corpse with me when I went to buy more revivify scrolls, rather than having to buy the scrolls then sneak back into the now thoroughly hostile goblin camp to her corpse. This is not an unrealistic idea - people can be carried.

Is there any additional confirmation from Larian about multiple difficulty levels, and what setting the current early access state will be akin to? To me this is a hard setting, at least a level above what should be default/normal. I really hope this isn't what "easy" is supposed to be. This being even "normal" would be bad. I'm very concerned that easier settings won't make it to full release because then the only way I'll be able to play is to either hope someone mods it in, or cheat. I like the game but I'm here for the story and the character interactions, not to spend hours save-scumming to try and make it through encounters.

After struggling with a particular fight involving I'm frustrated enough with the difficulty that I'm ready to either just find a way to slap on God Mode and cheat my way through this (and I sure hope Larian's analytics notice that this is what it takes), or drop the game until full release. I'm unfortunately too many hours into it for a Steam refund so I'm really hoping that the promised multiple difficulty levels actually make it into the game.

I've already spent 30 hours from all the constant re-loading due to terrible skill check rolls. Highly intelligent wizards, deeply wise clerics, and very charismatic warlocks shouldn't be struggling this much on such basic things. I'm not trying to learn a stranger's deepest secrets during conversation, I just want to continue the story. RNG treats my characters like they're blind, deaf, and dumb.

I don't even know if this particular fight is necessary to progress any quests, but I will want to feel like I've experienced the full game with at some point.

sitting at a table in a physical DND game and rolling a 2 on an insight check with your character's 18 wisdom is no different than failing it in the game. is it frustrating? yeah. but that's what the save scumming is for. it's tedious but if you aren't content with the outcome your rolls get you, you reload and do them over and over again until you get what you want.

as far as game difficulty goes, I've found that combat difficulty was the worst for me when I was playing a fighter, with the cleric, rogue and wizard in my party. but now I'm running with 2 warlocks, the cleric and a fighter and honestly? warlocks wreck face really fast. Hex + Eldritch Blast is no joke, I've done 20 points of damage in one go.

The spider matriarch is pretty easy, you can kill a lot of the little spiders by shoving them off the cliff, and you can also burn the webs. If you burn the webs it means that the spiders can't just walk up to you.

I had no trouble with this fight following the ideas I just wrote down with two different comps. First I was Cleric, Astarion, Gale and Wyll; second was, ranger, Astarion, Gale and Lae'zel.

Astarion is the MVP, he is seriously the best party member you can recruit , put him on thief specialisation and he gets double Bonus Actions, it's the BEST!

Use the Dancing Lights Evocation Cantrip as well, it'll help get better hit on the matriarch too. There is also Alchemist's Fire that you can pick up from the Doctor's Laboratory too.

Messing around on the game files look what I found:



Hints at Casual, Classic and Hardcore difficulties for the game.

My characters at level 4 struggle horribly against enemies that should be easy and quick to deal with (like goblin cannon fodder). And, no it's not the build, or lack of armor etc. The Matriarch Phase Spider is insanely difficult. I've never had an RPG register so many misses when attacking with anything other than Magic Missile. And even then, the damage registered is Pitiful (2, 3, and 4 hits) for a total of a Measly 9 hit points on a spider with 130 HP!

I suppose what I am asking for is: an easier difficulty level. Because right now, playing this game is infuriatingly frustrating for me. I like these games for their story.

Thanks so much!

It will come. Hopefully soon.

I hope you're right!

I've had mixed experiences. First play-through I really struggled with; second has been a lot easier in that I'm probably getting the hang of the rules, though given the amount of stuff I don't use there's obviously a lot I don't know. A combination of separation, high-ground, sneak and not being afraid to play dirty! And having at least one party member with an escape plan should the worst happen, i.e. pay to resurrect the others at camp. Only had to do that once so far, and yeah, it was the spider!

Dice-rolls are the real killer and a number of people have commented on a tendency to roll low (some people vehemently dispute this but the number of times I'll roll a four or less in dialogue checks is remarkable; well, it's more remarkable if I roll a 17 or over as it happens so rarely...) but if you have the patience you can save during combat and reload if you get an unlucky streak.

The game definitely has balancing issues IMO. I have a thread on reddit where I talk about how the game is too easy if people use all these non-D&D strategies that are artifacts of the game engine. Some, like being able to push while invisible without breaking invisibility, are definitely bugs that have not yet been fixed (Makes spider queen real easy). But some like unchaining to skip initiative checks are questionable. Will Larian address them or leave them in? And if they plug some of the holes, will they fix the encounters to be easier?

To me, part of EA and play testing is to see if they made things too easy/too hard. But it is hard to say when there are all these ways to cheese the game. The heat maps mean nothing once users get frustrated and just start cheesing every fight. So until these things are fixed or there is some indication what will and will not be fixed, it is hard to gauge if difficulty is correct or not.

but steal gold, hit m, portal out is the best bit!

Its interesting how I haven't seen anyone mention potions - which are cheap as hell, but you can just steal anyway. Apply oil of sharpness then binge drink potion of fire resistance, potion of fire breathing, potion of hill giant strength, potion of speed, throw a potion of sleep at an enemy then go to town, that is if you bloated stomach doesn't explode first

I think it's pretty safe to assume that they'll give us a difficulty slider in the full release. It's fairly standard in RPGs.

They'll also give a good look at balancing the difficulty of encounters. The levelling-up speed will also be looked at. Basically the balance of the whole game.

But will they do that soon ? I don't think so, and I hope not. Balancing the whole game requires having the whole game ready. It should be the finishing touch.

The game currently feels like it's BG3 : Play-testing Edition. You walk into the Druid Grove and you're level 3, allowing you to quickly check out the archetypes of all the classes, and finding problems. You talk to 5-10 people and you're celebrating at camp, allowing you to test story permutations.

I'd much rather they prioritise the user interface, the writing and the game mechanisms at this stage of development, rather than improving the balance or, say, releasing new races or classes.

Some of the potions are weirdly cheap, I noticed. I tend to just stockpile them and not use them, because I want to have them "when I really need them", and then I never do. They seem mostly good for solo runs.

Exactly my (everyone's ?) problem with consumables in video games.

They're rare or costly enough that I don't want to use them all the time. But they're also not powerful enough, and I can easily finish the game with my spells and class abilities that are recharged every day for free.

Really ? i think the potions in BG III are ridicoulusly strong!
I mean potion of haste ? giant strength and invisibilty potion for example

I think I didn't formulate my thoughts well enough on that one.

I didn't mean that the potions are weak. I meant that with spells and class abilities alone, I could roll through the game easily enough. So I kept hoarding the potions, for "just in case". I didn't even try the potions you mention, in fact I probably only drank health potions. If the potions are indeed battle changers, they are very unnecessary battle changers.

What you ask is not difficulty level OP, what you ask is a normal difficulty level... What we should actually have

That's the main problem of the game. Many people find it totally hardcore and others totally easy.

You have to know that BG3 is a game that has incredible cheats.
These cheats are nearly the only things you have to know (+ the basics of D&D) to beat it.

Just try to jump even when engaged to backstab your ennemies without any consequences, eat during combats, dip your weapons in fire, go higher, long rest after every 1 or 2 combats, use the surfaces arrows/potions/cantrip and sometimes a few barrels (they're funny) and you'll easy win.
That's what you have to do to beat this strategy game.

Is that a good summary ?

1) There will be some sort of difficulty adjustment.
2) I find it interesting that some find the game too hard, while others too easy. No offense to you, but I have soloed the game with 4 different classes. Alice is wrecking the game without leveling up. Yes, a solo Level 1 character. And that is without cheesing the game. So, I hope in the future there are options to make the game easier and harder.
3) Check out my thread on combat for help. https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=722075#Post722075

That's fun to say "without cheesing the game" then give the link of a guide to cheese the game^^

And yet I can avoid all your "cheats" and still defeat the game with a solo character so what is your point?

It's elevation. Make sure you're above your enemies, it is as powerful as having permanent greater invisibility on your entire party, I'm not sure why Larian did this, because once you make sure elevation is your primary concern, every fight is pretty easy. If you're in melee, walk around and backstab the opponent

the spider queen is still appropriate for a deadly encounter for a 5th level party, not a 4th level party (theres a HUGE spike in power at 5th level so this is important), but you can cheese it by knocking it off ledges for 40+ damage

Do you have any videos of how to beat the more difficult fights without cheesing any of the larianisms with a solo character? (height/los + poor enemy pursuit AI, Barrelmancy, etc)

I fully agree with this and IMHO a huge issue with current combat system. The fact that you can horribly cheese any encounter with shove/invis/barrels and just not bother with the D&D combat system is a terrible design issue. This is why some people find game easy while others arent. High ground alone has already gotten people talking and it turns the battle from 100-0 so fast just by itself.

Yeah, I find it funny that so many people complain about the surfaces, specifically fire, when you can buy potions of fire resistance for about a minuscule 20 gold, they're stackable with other potions and they last until long rest. Plus you find a few in the first areas. Everyone dying in the middle of a goblin induced inferno saving their fire resistance potions for "when they really need them."

Just because I don't cheese doesn't mean I can't tell others, plus there is a lot of non-cheese in my guide. If you need to cheese to get through a fight that is frustrating you...why not? Take barrels for example. Larian put them in the game to be used. I can choose not to use them too. If you are having trouble with an encounter and it's frustrating you, why not use them as intended?





Nope. You can check out youtube videos of others though.

Thank you for this! I'll try to use this when playing again.

Thanks RumRunner!

Gotcha! Thanks so much for the advice!

Correction : nope, that doesn't exist...

Shoot/hide/shoot/hide/... is also an another way to cheese the game and to easy beat the AI... The first 10 solo playthrough are full of this and/or of other things I talked about.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad if you enjoy this... You're free to love having common god mode cheats everywhere in a strategy game.

But if it's "so easy to beat the game with a solo character", that's because the game is poorly balanced... Whatever you enjoy it or not.

Problem is the definition of cheese is very subjective. Is recruiting Halsin Cheese? Is using Halsin's thunderwave to knock minthara into the underdark cheese? Is using the spider companion cheese? Mono RPG definitely doesn't "Shoot/hide/shoot/hide/". So even if you think he cheesed the Minthara fight, there are plenty of others that he doesn't.


To further my point, you say "long rest after every 1 or 2 combats" is cheese. Ok, so all spell casters are cheese and you can only play melee. You say dipping is cheese, what about applying poisons? What about an item that applies poison after healing? Where does it end?

Also this guy beat the game by not killing anyone and he didnt just stealth to the end either: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=733836#Post733836

Bottom line...if yer havin problems, don't keep doing the same thing over an over, try something else.

Adding my 2 cents I saw a couple of people wrote the game was really hard the first time they played and second playthrough was almost too easy, also watching some gameplay videos there are a fair amount of “oh I did not know that” moment in the middle of people’s playthrough so i believe overall difficulty feel will be shifted a lot for a couple of people once the tutorial is more extensive and the UI is more polished. Also as others i expect Larian to tweak/experiment with the action economy/resting system and nerf some of the existing cheese as well which can radically change the difficulty feel again.
I do like some of the ideas in OP and agree that once most of the rules and tutorial are functioing better then Larian will see more clearly from the feedback where to set toggle options and balance encounters based on difficulty levels. Regarding gameplay toggles it would be nice to see some “hardcore dnd rules” option (where it makes sense and there is demand) but we will see.
Personally im waiting for a simple (?) “cannot save during combat” toggle this made combat in battle brothers super tense because of the RNG which i like (but i understand many dont).

Yeah, pre-buffing and abusing rest was an integral part of bg1 and 2 yet some people seem to thing that anything except wandering up to the person you are going to kill unbuffed and saying hurr durr me kill u now like an 6 int moron is cheese. If this was "real" and the pc kept doing that and miraculously survived i suspect astarion or lae'zel would just murder you in your sleep for endangering their lives.

IMO, the solo ranger video has plenty of cheese in it. But I agree that what is considered cheese varies from person to person.

I doubt many would argue that usage of obvious bugs that need to be patched like invisible push is cheesing the game. Along those lines, I would argue that the Beastmaster Summon Companion "ritual" is bugged. 5E D&D rules say it should only work once every 8 hours. Right now, it functions like a cantrip making it OP big time. Just hide your ranger and send in an army of giant spiders. I suspect they will eventually fix it so that it works 1 time and then needs to be recharged with a short or long rest.

Is meta-playing cheese? If I know there is an ambush at a certain Villiage because it is my second play-though, is it cheese to drink some potions and prep before walking in? On a secondary playthrough, is it cheese to choose certain stats during character creation because you know there is a stat boosting item early in the campaign? (Solo Ranger also used that one). Probably... but I don't normally consider these things cheese.

For some, anything that deviates from what a reasonable DM would let you do in a table-top game is cheese. Use of unchaining to bypass initiative. Barrelmancy and save/reloading for the sake of avoiding a bad roll. (No really, I pick-pocketed EVERYTHING the merchant had without failing any rolls... honest).

Personally I don't care about cheese. I use it all the time. In fact, I don't want Larian to patch ALL the holes, because I am not a fan of 10 and 20 min battles. Ironincally, I would be happy to let battles play out properly if they were over in say... 30 seconds or a minute. THen I would know if I won or lost and could reload. This is how it was for most of BG2. But once a battle exceeds a certain size (maybe 5 enemies?) I tend to just load a save and figure out how to cheese it because I don't have the patience for a long battle that I may lose. Or maybe my justification is more like this: I did it once the hard way on my first play-through. Now I am going to take shortcuts.

I suspect I am not alone.

I disagree on BG1. You could go a long time without resting, because wands were plentiful and powerful, and so were potions for buffing. But what made BG1 a great fantasy adventure is that it left you useful hints at to the nature of your enemies. Combined with how easy scounting was, this helped to create a narrative where if your party prebuffed, they could be acting on the knowledge they had, not that of the player.
BG2 unfortunately didn't follow this design approach anymore.

BG3 has scouting covered, where it fails at is resting. The narrative implies that taking too much time could be dangerous, but so far the opposite seems to be true, because if you don't go camping often, you lose out on companion interactions. edit: Just to add, I assume Larian will fix the enemy ai regarding stealth. Stealth as it is now is not well implemented, imo.

As an older player I love the story and the atmosphere but easier combat settings would really enhance my enjoyment.
Could you please offer an easy game play option as I am sure there are many like me who were the earliest players of D&D

What are the issues you are having? Perhaps people could give you suggestions. With only your request to go on, I can only suggest to use the environment (barrels, etc) to your advantage, and make sure to always be on high ground. Stealth will also make combat much easier.

I believe there will be difficulty levels once the game is released, it would make the most people happy like this.

I agree and suggested this: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=94602&Number=733462#Post733462

Also, this may help you: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=722075#Post722075

If that can be of any relief for the long term : the FAQ mentions that "Difficulty options won't be available during Early Access, but we will be looking at feedback as we decide what kind of options to include." So, hopefully, when the full game is release, people can make the game easier or harder, as they see fit.

For the short term, yes, there are thread on this forum that can help with strategies and tactics.

I agree, OP. Combat is awful in this game and we need difficulty settings to help either ease combat or else bypass combat. And using exploding barrels is an absolute nonstarter for me. That is a ridiculous gimmick that I will never ever use, even while expecting that the game will allow me to "win" encounters reasonably without ever using those gimmicks. So what those difficulty settings and other gameplay option settings will be is a major issue for me on which I am still awaiting information.

I think a lot of it is just take your time and learn from mistakes. I was horrid in the beginning now I run around like a Leroooy master at times. Basically do not bite off more than you can chew in the beginning. Explore the map and use save to your advantage. Save before going into a nasty cave. Then do another new save inside. Doing this allows you to have a fall back point if needed Pick your battles. I am not a youngster and I will give you 10 tips that help me.

Tips-
1. you can trade behind the scenes in battle (health potions for example)
2. barrels and bottles of grease they can explode or be set on fire.
3. hide and shoot (thief's are absolutely one class not to mess with from the shadows... bow attack and run and hide. If you can reach the target saber them...use the special attack skills)
4. get high for spells and archers
5. shove baby shove any hole or nasty thing you can fall into are great traps.
6. if they fall get them up as soon as you can. The AI likes to gang bash downed players. you usually have time to get them up.
7. Defensive spells are worth it. Mage armor ... Mirror Image... Color Spray
8. Magic missile is the best finisher in the game IMO. Example you have a low health runner launch this spell. Since it always hits if you can see the target. you can pick and choose multiple targets as well (so if a target has 1 health ...shoot only one missile at him and choose other targets for the balance.)
9. Many areas have things you can use against your targets. You have lots of time to pan the room in combat to look at things.
10. Its your game have fun take challenges on learn from mistakes and the game gets easier and more fun

I would rather like to see increased difficulty to have some challenge.