Pardon me, but your argument seems to be that when you are a player with limited understanding of how the game mechanics work and thus don't make effective characters the first time around, which is entirely understandable and can happen for any new player regardless of his previous CRPG experience, you feel like a loser for occasionally enabling an easy difficulty setting because you feel that somehow this makes mock of your ability at the genre from playing other games in the past?
Why on earth would you feel that rather than considering this a valuable learning experience and spurring you on to either a) develop your characters stats so they'd be able to handle these sort of things without your changing tactics, or b) develop your tactical skills as pertinent to the game?
Do you really want to play CRPGs where you, when you've got inadequate knowledge and have a party that for whatever reason significantly underperforms, don't face any challenge when playing it at the normal difficulty setting?
Combat isn't about cheese to win on normal. It is about tactics and being the right level to take on the challenge.
Like you, I have been playing CRPGs for the longest time (in my case going back to Temple of Apshai and later on Might and Magic, Bard's Tale, and the Ultimas, and like you I have no beta knowledge to rely on, but everything that is needed to perform well is clearly understandable in-game, so even as my level 6 party can laugh at how poor I was at using the tactical avenues available to me at level 4 due to lack of experience and my level 10 party can laugh at how my level 6 party didn't get anywhere near the power out of the tools it had available at the time, I've had few problems. (Apart from taking on Braccus Rex too early. THAT was a clear sign to earn a level or two and then return.)
Which brings up the question of whether you'd have been better off waiting with taking on that particular challenge in the first place rather than sticking at it.
My party was level 6 when facing Dietmar and afterwards going for Evelyn's secret lair, which means my characters will have been significantly more powerful than they were at level 5. Have you fulfilled all the side quests in Cysael? Have you killed all the undead in the lowlevel areas (basically, the undead west and north of Cysael). How about the watcher statues? There are so many ways to get XP that you shouldn't have to face Dietmar & Co. at level 5. You could even go kill a few of the level 6 Orcs on the Orc beach, as they come in fewer numbers than the large number of pirates with Dietmar.
There's a lot of XP out there just waiting to be gotten, and Dietmar and what follows in that area is something that should definitely not be attempted early in the game unless you want a real challenge, it is something for when you are done with most of Crysael and environments.
(And have sharpened your weapons and improved your armour, have stocked up on healing potions, and so on and so forth. When you go to that area you are heading to the resolution of some major questlines, and that's when the going gets tough.)
Last edited by Peter Ebbesen; 07/07/14 05:16 PM.
