You actually dont need to spend that much time in the city to get to level three. And be fully decked out for that level.
In the last playthrough i did the tutorial cave, to re-check how it plays and what it teaches new players and to check again what equipment and loot it gives.
Plenty of stuff altogether with the beach outside. Two small fireball scrolls you can save for later if you want - which can come very handy in some of the first combat encounters in the west.
From there to the town, to major Cecil house first floor - which i cleaned up, then to Esmeralda - where i cleaned up the basement and upper floor, then to the underground and the few small rooms and locations it leads to, then up to the outside through the well and to saving Wulfram quest.
That already gave me pretty fancy armors, bows, enough loot to trade and buy whatever i want in the city, and plenty of special arrows. Not to mention potions and other such smaller things.
And level 3 + xp.
I also lucked out and got a very nice golden shield with several stats - one of them giving shields +1 so i didnt even need to invest a point in that for my Knight.
From the talents, obviously, you take bigger and better since that gives you a free attribute point early and maybe all skilled up if you want as a second one.
I did mess up in character creation and accidentally left Weatherproof talent on my Wayfarer, which is pretty much pointless. But ok, no need to get completely perfect anyway.
When someone makes a broad, general statement like this, I have to ask: Did you actually try that with all 11 of the starting classes, in various combinations? Because that does makes a difference.
It's a serious question, and I'm interested in the answer. What class combinations did you play with?
All of the ones i tried were more or less various mixes and hybrids.
Mostly based on Rogue, Shadowblade and Wayfarer templates, with additions of various spells, of course.
While playing with a Roguish build i dont use backstabbing or much of sneaking, instead focusing on witchcraft spells and curses and agility - daggers. Or just sword and shields and a few basic warrior skills.
But before this last romp, i always took both companions with me. And then i never used any special arrows with the wayfarer at all - because there was no need to, really.
Now, i made Scarlet a Knight with Air magic, and Roderick a Wayfarer with Earth and Water spells, plus a little of Scoundrel - Rogue skills (only one spell so far in that - haste).
I intentionally didnt want to use any fire based spells, especially Firefly which is just insanely powerful with fire element functioning as it does, just to see how much that would hamper me. Except those two scrolls of small fireballs which i found and saved fair and square.
I didnt even use them until i got waylaid by that band of three archers, three fighters and a mage, behind the ruins in the north part of the western area, which is actually a more difficult fight then the Lighthouse one. (no barrels around)
I spent one there and one in the first fight against zombie boars and undead in the middle of the map. they helped but didnt win the fights for me.
I took out three zombies in front of the northern gate with that Arhu giant contraption thing. Although i didnt have to since my wayfarer can do it himself with one fire arrow and one steam cloud arrow.
Anyway, yes, depending what builds you make you could have a bit easier or bit harder time cleaning the west. Anything with fire spells will make it much easier.
I guess the hardest to play would be two melee builds? Specialists, maybe?
Then again, even fighters in OS have some ranged skills, like crushing fist and bull-rush.
And if you specialize - you dont have to waste points on any other attributes or skills... so that should be very doable anyway.
I actually cant figure out which builds would be obviously weaker...
I'll agree with this as well. I do like difficulty changes which are more than just "more enemy health and more damage received".
Dragon Commander is a good example: on Hard, the first campaign map adds a bunch of Hunter units to the strategy map, which make it harder to take the country to the west. Hard-mode AI is also smarter and uses skills better than normal mode AI.
I agree that kind of thing probably can't be done perfectly in the month left.
I was basically thinking that if they didnt waste time on making a proper hard mode now - they could use that to make the main normal mode better and more polished. And hopefully do the same for the mod editor.
While, as i said, they could release the proper hard mode later and even use that to get a boost in PR, refresh sales and whatnot.
However there are signs the AI is getting better. It already takes into account which of its available skills would be effective and which would not be when deciding what to do.
I witnessed this personally. I learned that the archer "Mysterious Opponent" in the burial mound used to open her turn with an explosive arrow. So I pre-empted this by casting Rain first. She didn't use the explosive arrow, instead she disabled both my characters with freezing arrows.
Definitely. Though its really a shame that particular puzzle doesn't work as it previously did, or require to split the characters. It would be quite fun to deal with both of those opponents just with a single character.
Ai is better, improved, but it could be made better still. Not just super deadly - but more interesting to play against.
The Ghoul at the lighthouse now teleports to your characters and dishes some serious damage before teleporting out of your range. Which it didnt do before. It managed to kill one of my Hunters twice.
But those oil barrels are still just right next to it.
Which is not a problem. For the normal difficulty.
