Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga How dare they put a nightmare mode?

Back then, the only reason why I didn't play hard mode was because I didn't realize that the difficulty option actually existed. After one whole year of not playing the game due to my crushed ego (Finished it three times at "pathetic" mode), I decided to play it again, but with a more masochistic touch by getting out of my comfort zone by putting it on hard mode and being a warrior with barely any Vitality. I finished the game three times.

And now that I am about to download flames of vengeance (It's been sitting at my email for quite a while, untouched), I hear this crap about the badarse nightmare mode larian added.



Why Larian Studios? Why must you punish me? What have I done to deserve this?

Is this something a fanboy deserves?

If it is any consolation, nightmare difficulty mode is not actually a nightmare, and several people have deliberately handicapped their characters to keep the game challenging, or make it more so.

Nightmare mode was added in the second patch for DKS, due to changes made when they remastered D2:ED which made the game easier. The 'hard' difficulty in DKS was no longer hard, so by popular demand another difficulty level was added, and some adjustments made to the earlier balancing tweaks.

One of the main causes of the difficulty drop in DKS was changes to the enchantment system (which the random item generator also uses) that made enchantments more effective and available at lower levels, so there could be random weapon drops early in the (unpatched) game with +40 magic damage, etc. Spell damage was also changed so any magic damage bonuses or enchantments on weapons would be applied to spells (and on each missile of a Magic Missile volley), making duel wielding most effective for a mage (the off-hand penalty was not considered for spell damage, so the duel wield skill would not need to be boosted for a mage that avoided melee combat).
There were also changes made to quest experience in the starting section of Broken Valley to make it easier to level (it is possible to get a couple levels higher by the time you get access to the full Broken Valley, compared to the original release of D2:ED).

I think a big reason for the nightmare mode was because we asked for it

Indeed, as like Raze said in his post




It's a nice challenge !

Hmmm... I wonder what character build I should go for when I do the nightmare mode...

Well, if you want it to be nightmarish, forget ranged options.

I think using ranged magic + priest spells might make it easy.

It depends ! When you only make a pure ranger or pure Priest ... then it's not easyer like other builds (I believe).
But indeed, using a bow makes things more easy in some way ... thinking about how strong Explosive Arrows are, or Splitting Arrows ... Way of the Ranger ...

On the other hand :
as long as you've big fun playing on nightmare mode with your favorite build, that's most important !!
(for me)

I play as a Priest and use a bow mostly for :
1) shoot a arrow to track the attention of a enemy or group of enemies ...
2) using Stun Arrows or Poison Arrows to Stun or lower the speed of some enemies (because I'm a slow player and wish to have more time to react).
And if I find a yewellery item with a skill on I like I use it ! Recently I found such item with +2 to Splitting Arrows (handy to speed up the damage using it close by an enemy!)

I use a 2-handed sword mostly for :
1) to use Thousand Strikes (speed up MY attacks a bit )
2) to use Rush Attack (superbly after a Stunning Arrow) so I'm very fast close by to give Blind, Charm or Fear a go
3) to protect my Summon Ghost and directly attack those who attack my Ghost !

Furter on I always use Priest skills in battle : Charm, Blind, Fear, etc ...

All this thing together makes the battles more relaxed, fun & entertaining ...
But still, their are moments enough that are thrilling enough to give me the fantastic feeling I'm playing on the highest difficulty !
In fact (in some way) I play a pure Priest because I only put skillpoints in Priest Skills, except Stun Arrows and some non combat skills :
all the other skills (like Rush Attack, Thousand Strikes, Polymorph, Splittign Arrows, ...) I use are coming from skill boosts on yewellery and so on ...

The Death is lurking everywhere

Granted, I have to say this, the level designers have a bit of a "mean side" that sometimes surfaces in the game. A reviewer did notice this as "the player fighting against the level designer."

That aside, I can say with experience that Nightmare Mode in DKS is nowhere near the sadistic Hell mode in Diablo II (1.12 patch and up IIRC)

There is a sort of "fiendishness" in the game design but I did not detect the same "mischievous" air with nightmare mode.

Thinking about your question ...

A)If you like a real challenge you can do 2 things or more, depends on your creative mind
1) you can play your favorite build that suits your playstyle best BUT give yourself HANDYCAPS like stopping to invest statpoints or skillpoints ...
2) OR try to build a character that can't use magic or may not use some kind of weapons etc ...
3) Or you can try that kind of build you've the most problems with to survive (warrior, ranger, priest, mage, ...).

B)If you like a challenge but you find it important to have fun and don't love a "sadastic" difficulty
choose your favorite build, don't give yourself "too difficult handycaps" and take the nightmare difficulty

I started playing the game in normal. But when Zagan, the fly on steroid, hurt my ego by making me quick-load in such a hectic manner which was beyond the threshold of my approval- I went hardline. There I crushed that 'bugger' numerous times to restore my pride and went on to complete the ED part. Then I did almost half of the quests in FoV but stopped and started the game all over, finished ED on more time - still with Hard difficulty setting. No need to try the Nightmare since I control my own level of difficulty by suppressing different skills/abilities/items and implimenting my own handicaps as Joram indicated. Here are few of my self-inflicted penalties:

1. No stat points after Level 11/12 - it was around L17/18 for the first time.
2. No skill over 10 - without jewelry that is.
3. A total ban on any stat boosting beverage - with the exception to BEER of-course
4. No special/preset weapons and armor! - This is the most punishing of the lot, still working on it and would be almost impossible if my character was an archer. But my battlemage currently isn't using any special item, only epic and unique.
5. Sometime I refrain myself from using my best attacks, just for fun and experiment.

Yes, number 4 would be hard on an archer. After I bought the first unique bow available I never saw a random one anywhere near the quality of pre-set bows.