Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Who designed this lvl 6 encounter? *spoilers*

There is a level 6 encounter in the Eastern part of Fort Joy after you escape. I understand this is alpha and that's not a problem.. but I absolutely must know.. the name of the individual.. who designed this encounter.. I will not harm kill this person I swear.

I am just going to enumerate the one sidedness then get into why its a problem. This is a lvl 6 full party against a lvl "6" encounter

The starting lineup for the San Francisco Deep Dwellers:

Middle Linebacker: Voidwoken Deep Dweller (needs more cowbell)
Armor Phys 83 Armor Mag 83
HP 382.
Oath of Desecration - 40% damage buff to any target lasts a few rounds can cast every round favors the swashbucklers
Void Shard - 97 Damage ST long range can cast every round
Health Link attack - Any attack on him damages your ally
Phoenix dive = frequently and has elemental landing affects like stun
Electric Discharge = (DoS1 aoe lightning damage and stun)
Metric ton of AP = to go with that repertoir

Left Tackle: Decomposing Swashbuckler
Armor 100
Hp 332
Swings for 100 minimum damage on a 300 armor target crits for 230. Thats without the near 100% uptime oath of desecration Christopher Walken uses.
Has 3+ each nail (100 damage) and Firestorm (40-70 damage + burn effects that double procs *bug? (15-19) at time of throwing

Right Tackle: Decomposing Swashbuckler
Armor 100
Hp 332
Swings for 100 minimum damage on a 300 armor target crits for 230. Swings on the cloth/leather targets for 130 minimum
Has 3+ each nail (100 damage) and Firestorm (40-70 damage + burn effects that double procs *bug? (15-19) at time of throwing

Outside Linebacker: Decomposing Marksman
Armor Phys 83 / Armor Mag 83
Typical ranger abilities
45 minimum damage 60 average without crit.

Left Cornerback: Decomposing Aeromancer
Armor Mag 100
damage.
HP 299
Curse of Desecration 100% uptime aoe bleed
Multiple Air based attacks and Aoe stuns moderate damage

Right Cornerback: Decomposing Pyromancer
Armor Mag 100
HP 299
Multiple aoes and burns decent damage (would be highest damage if not for swash)

Starting Lineup for the Dallas "What the Fuck Just Happened"s:

Center: Dwarf Warrior - Best gear luck of the party
Armor Phys 311
HP 376
Cripple/Knockdown if the target has no phys armor remaining
Average damage 44 w 1 hander/shield

QB: Sebille - mediocre armor decent unique crossbow
Amror Phys 52
HP 190
Average crossbow against the mage 40

Guard: Red Prince - all hand me down gear from dwarf
Armor Phys 133 Armor Mag 21
HP 331
Cripple/Knockdown if the target has no phys armor remaining
23 minimum 30 average damage w 1 hander/shield

Halfback: Lohse - Mediocre armor nice rare wands
Armor Phys 17
HP 166
37-40 each wand so about 80 per swing.
Limited spell pool as very few spellbooks\vendors in this area. Best combo is teleport (from gloves) the aerothurge into the 2 swashbucklers and hail storm 3 of them frozen in the same turn. Except hailstorm is near impossible to aim because it hits way outside the circle.

Now lets enumerate what is wrong with this situation.

1. Starting area is thin on skillbooks and gear tends to have little mag defense. This seems like not a big problem until you factor in that even a small amount of mag d blocks all consumable/aoe CC and the blocked CC does not diminsh the shield unless coupled with magic damage. My tank has multiple points in Mag D but does not get this amazing benefit

2. The NPC party has high hp and defense regardless of their role.

3.They all have high initiative regardless of role the only member of my party who gets to act before the last 2 of them is the high finesse/wits rogue

4. Every NPC hits harder than their equal leveled PC counterpart even with unique/rare weapons. The swashbucklers are almost as tanky as my dwarf and hit 10x harder even without the near 100% uptime oath Walken puts on them

5. Every NPCs action economy is higher than the PC party. Luckily there are some AI bugs and the npcs will sometimes climb up a ladder throw a grenade climb down the ladder and back up just to taunt. The Dwellers action economy makes theirs look like childs play.

6. Hard CC is spammed by the Dweller/Aerothurge throughout this encounter. I have reloaded the fight about 20 times and tried multiple attack directions and strategem to reciprocate the cheese. Closest I got was 4/6 of them dead and my dwarf the last one standing

7. Complete situational / positional advantage as they are summoned in prime locations on top of the numbers advantage. This comes into play when utilizing consumables their Nail+Firestorm Nail+Firestorm combo can kill 1-2 of my players which in 6v4 devastating not to mention cheesy as fk for ai. Pre spreading the player party out and luring them into the chokepoint does not work well but is the best option.

Conclusion: The Dweller is a flipping beast but I like his design and his AI isnt overly cheesy as a boss he should stay close to this potency. The 5 other NPCs should not be even close to this potent. The Hard CC spam should be traded in for area denial, elemental fields, or add more weaker mobs. I dont want a cakewalk but this is giving a fixed encounter that cannot be split every possible advantage this tuning is what I would expect from the hardest difficulty and at lvl 10+.

It can be beaten and also I could just gear up and come back. There are 2 unexplored areas that may give me more power but I do not think it will be near what I will need. My parties gear is decent given lvl 6 especially with the pirate treasure cache but nothing close to the enemy power level (Nappa's scouter told me so) Desperately need skillbooks as well

*edit* grammar

I just beat that encounter not too long ago. It helps if you split the party and put the strongest character you got, preferably melee at the top of the rigging to take out the aero and swash that come up there, or you can use teleport if you have more than 1, 1 is good too, and bring them to you. it was annoying at first but you just gotta stay back near the entrance to the encounter and bring them to you. After you kill some skeletons the boss will just teleport on top of your party and he's really not that strong.

My best run was to put just the dwarf up front to start the encounter. At the bottom left entrayway they have to funnel towards you and cant flank. The only combatants in the first round are Swashbuckler#1, sometimes the marksman and the aerothurge the rest have to catch up or get confused.

In the first round I can near kill the solo swash and position the Red Lizard. I then use the mages 1st/2nd round to tp the aerothurge behind the now 2 swashbuckler ranks and in the same round freeze all 3 of them. At this point I can normally kill swash1, and the aerothurge without them doing any actions at all. Swash 2 is usually half hp but at this point the marksman/pyro/dweller decides its time to cheese and stuns/kills 1-2 people no matter how I position.

The grenades are dealing far too much damage and The frequent AoE stuns/stun fields are guaranteed death because sitting 1 round out as a healer/archer is death. I know I can do the fight as I was 4/6 at one attempt but I do not want to do the fight. If this were launch I would mark it down move on and come back. Since this is not launch I feel this encounter needs to be tuned for this difficulty level at the very least. Or it should be relabeled at the apropriate power level.

And the pitiful end to this entire endeavor was me retooling my gear, going and spending near all my money on upgrades and skillbooks, finishing some exploring. I get back to this area and decide to attack from the top platform directly across from the boss..

Queue the benny hill theme as the skeletons run around in circles because they forgot how pathing worked. I killed the aerothurge and Marauder#1 on t2 platform As Aerothurge kept failing at LoS and running in circles while the archer decided it was arm day and climbed up and down the ladder a few times. Marauder #2 took the longest way unhumanly possible climbed up the ladder walked up to my mage who waved and teleported him directly back to where he started. The Pyromancer literally just kinda stood there for 2 rounds and casually climbed down the ladder and stood wide out in the open and did nothing. The boss after losing 3/5 minions and the other 2 being space cadets decided it was a cruel world and teleported directly in the middle of the entire party and didnt last 1 round.

So thats the winning strat if you do not want a fight at all.. in any way shape or form.

On normal/classic difficulty: Snuck around to the east platform facing him, teleported him onto me, and after combat started and the initial plays by the AI were finished I killed the aero mage, a marauder, and the boss with battering ram + crippling blow. Clean up afterwards was pretty normal.

I actually enjoyed this fight on both multiplayer and single player.

Single player I had most of my party (Me as Enchanter, Lohse, Sebelle) on the very top of the North platform raining Hell down on the adds. The Red Prince was quickly sent to the ground level to hold off any melee from reaching my ranged. When the Voidbeast teleported to my ranged, my Enchanter promptly teleported him back to the ground level into a waiting trap of electrified water and it was quickly over.

I just found this encounter last night. I was like wtf is this?? lol

I was level 5 but still.. should not have been as impossible as it was even at that level.

Yep, this one was frustrating.

I ultimately threw a smokebomb over my party. That caused the AI to cluster together, allowing my prince to prebuff haste, rage and just battering rammed all of them followed by crippling strike for an easy pentakill..