The fight against Braccus court of sceletons in the far east was much harder imo, the hardest in the game. But then I met them at level 5 and the lighthouse party at level 10. Guess why my experience is different than yours. For me the lighthouse fight was really a cakewalk...
Lord Crash, any fight can be too hard/too easy if you're too low/high a level for it.
Being three levels below the enemies will make for a tougher fight, and there's no fight in the beta which is challenging at level 10, because no enemy in the beta is above level 8.
Absolutely true.
I think the lighthouse fight and Braccus court of sceletons are the two best encounters in the beta - if their level is high enough. Imo both should at least consist enemies with level 8 or 9 or even higher. But I agree that both encounters offer some nice variety of melee fighters, rangers and different mage types.
Again me - as a fan of D&D and of the omnipresent mage as Stabbey might call me - I would vote for more deadly spells that have a low chance of succeeding. Not only for the player but especially for enemies. "Finger of death" or "entomb" are good examples from D&D. If they suceed one character has almost no chance to survive. Party members hit by deadly spells like "turn to stone" of "entomb" were even impossible to bring back by normal means or usual resurrect spells.
Are you suggesting that D:OS add some spells that if they succeed will screw a character unless there's a very specific recourse to curing them?
Okay, but on a scale of screwed from "just need a resurrect scroll", to "need a golden tongue from a winged basilisk which only appears by the light of the waning crescent", what do you think is the sweet spot?
Well, hard to say. The spells I meant were some kind of "perma-death" spells. That means that you had to decide whether you want to reload the whole encounter (because saving wasn't allowed during combat) or you want to proceed with the respective character staying dead (of course if your main character was hit it was game over). Some people who are friends of perma-death mechanics and hardcore roleplay choose the latter but many others choose the former.
Example: an enemy basilisk casted "turn to stone" on a party member. Now there were two possiblities: either you have a "turn to flesh" spell or scroll available to bring him back to life or you don't. In the worst case some area damage hits the stone statue causing it to burst into pieces which was guaranteed perma-death with no chance to resurrect.
Or another example: mind-flayers had some very nasty ablities to drain your intelligence. That means if they were able to hit you they reduced the intelligence of the respective party member permanently without any chance to cure it (intelligence at zero means death). Fighting against these (very powerful and dangerous) enemies without proper resistencies and/or gear was more or less a suicide mission.
Another thing were lasting effects. You could be cursed or diseased for example and the effects didn't go away just after a few rounds. You have to actively cure them, either by spells (which made them valuable) or by visiting a temple (which were often quite far away with many dangerous combat encounters on the way).
As I see spells in D:OS right now there is no really decision making what spells and skill to use apart from using something that the enemies has weaknesses for or low resistencies at least. In most cases you can just use every spell or skill without any trade-off for the one using it and the whole party. There is no possible negative effect to use your most dangerous and powerful spells and skills as often as possible. That's also true for environmental combinations. They work every time. There is no incentive to not use them apart from using them on enemies of the same environmental school. I wished there would be some kind of additional trade-off based on probablities which would make combat encounters more dynamic and far less expectable. Without that I could just use the same strategy over and over again (which is still true but the chances to suceed would be lower).
