Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Did combat diffuclty get upped a ton?

Started with a rogue and witch, did most of the stuff in town and got a level. Headed out the lighthouse where I promptly got my ass handed to me by the first skels out the west gate.

Reloaded. Kited them to get guards involved. Won. Got to the first house with skels. Annnnd died once again. It's not even close at this point. I'm not even dropping 1 skel before both my guys are killed.

Gonna try with a cleric and a knight and see what happens.

Both?
Don't you get the 2 companions to make a party of 4?

With Lone Wolf on a Battlemage and Knight I have not once died over the course of 4 levels, nor do I think I had to be particularly clever to stay alive for it. You should be grabbing the companions if you aren't lone-wolfing it.

I have found the difficulty to be reasonable but definitely not much if any more difficult from before.

I was actually hoping the difficulty settings would be available in this patch so that I could bump it up a notch or two.

I thought it was a bit to easy too, my fire spells/fields were wrecking everything in the first area, really just everything that is hurt by fire. Without a wizard it might be pretty hard though until you can acquire some decent skill books, but if you have a character that can sneak like the rogue you can steal everything lying around without much trouble, then trade for some skill books.

Yeah, I've also noticed it seems to have got a lot more difficult and my entire party has been pretty much insta-killed several times now. Not fun.

I think fire might actually be a bit too strong. A good number of fights can be won by just putting down a big fire field and having all the enemies run through it, which will pretty much insta-kills them. On the other hand, my guys die too fast when they touch fire as well.

I think all status effects are currently a bit much (except healing) for their expense. Another pivotal skill I feel is the "Midnight Oil" spell, which slows everything that runs through it. Indispensable if you ask me, and what is its cost? 3 AP?!?!? /spam cast

I hope difficulty will go down! I'ts frustrating some partymembers be killed in every battle!

What we really need are difficulty levels, because we're never going to find a balance that is acceptable to all players. What's impossible for one player may be incredibly easy for another.

Just as long as the difficulty is consistent for each setting.

This is the importance of testing different combos. Some people are saying no problem with some combos, and other saying many with certain other combos. Anyway, if anyone would like to test out a rogue and witch combo and see how that goes I'm curious to hear.

I'll try a seemingly sub-optimal combination. Probably a witch and some sort of rogue-y type. I'll let you know how it goes.

_


Yes, I agree with Gyson. I have a feeling we both play in the upper tiers of strategy games and we will need far more difficulty than many to risk death.

If the game becomes any easier I would get bored from how little I'd have to work at combat, so a blanket reduction would just be bad news.

I have that going now, actually. I'll see how that works, assuming I don't run into the game-stopping crash bug when re-entering areas again.

I agree with Gyson, more difficulty levels would be preferable. Having said that I'm not a programmer so I have no clue how hard it would be to do that at this stage of the game.

This is part of the Divinity : OS FAQ, so I assume difficulty settings are still planned?

"Can I re-spec my character?

You will be able to re-spec your character by training, but it will cost you. A lot.

It also depends on the difficulty level – at some levels, you can’t."

lars said a "difficulty slider" would be in game

So I have been doing the witch/rogue combo. Ended up being a spear user with a half-n-half earth magic/witchcraft partner, no companions but yes to lone wolf.

Double pulled the two camps of undead to the NW of town (1 decapitator, 1 swordsman, 1 zombie from near the gate, then 2 archers, 2 swordsmen, 1 lieutenant, and 1 mage I believe from the broken house). Killed all of them and only lost probably 40 hp on my spear user, which had a lesser heal ticking up next turn to end the thing at full for both.

I know I'm not all that high level yet with this pair, but I'm supposing the problem isn't with class choice, but instead with personal familiarity with min-maxing and good environmental control, chokepointing, etc. I'll continue with the pair but from how smoothly it goes I'm not expecting a sudden change to "OH GOD IM DYING", since I didn't have that show up for my level 6's at any point.

I just wondered how difficulty/balancing will affect the possibility of splitting the party in coop mode.
After all Larian made a big fuss about it during the Kickstarter and while I personally think that the possibilities there are probably anyway a bit limited for story reasons, it seems pretty difficult to balance - you need encounters that are challenging enough for two players together, yet not too dangerous that one player alone can't possibly win them.

Just to revisit this, it seems that I became unstuck when excitedly visiting the new areas: perhaps not surprisingly, it would appear that enemies get tougher the further you get from the safe haven of the town. Going back to say hello to old foes, they still went down the same as before: more easily if anything, since I now seem to be in possession of half a clue what I'm doing, finally.