First off, I always play It with a friend, and we are pretty experienced veterans on the DOS games. We know how to abuse every mechanic in the games and make the best out of the progression in the games. We have played all major patches from DOS2 so far, and we never actually felt it was dificult at any point. But I felt compelled to give some feedback on the latest patch, so here I am. Gonna start with the most important to me.
Loot changes: I didn't enjoy this very much. The new unique loot around is fine and I'm happy with It, but the game lacks enjoyment from random gear drops I got. I felt excited when looting corpses after a fight, now 90% of the time they just drop gold or nothing at all. So now fights are either addition to my gold count or unique item drops, and some unique are pretty weak too. The gold income balance is a bit off with the skillbook prices and the high tier gears, but that surely will change, so I'm not worrying too much about that.
The real problem with this system is the lack of unique vender for each class. If we are gonna be dependant on merchants to upgrade our characters, make the progression more consistent. As it is, you depend just as much on RNG, as you could go on levels and levels without a single merchant actually selling a single Bow for instance, and that really sucks. DOS1 had a vendor for each class for gear and skillbooks. We already have separate skillbook vendors on DOS2, it shouldn't be hard to make Marksman vendors some guaranteed Bows on stores.
Apart from that I also really disliked the new gear stat requirement. This only takes away diversity and character development. I already had to decide If my mages would be more MR or Armor based, or If I wanted to take a hybrid approach. Now I don't have that option anymore, just go full MR or sacrifice precious stat points for more variety in gear. Yeah maybe Marksman shouldn't be wielding a two handed weapon, but given the nature of the new CC system gear shouldn't have the same treatment.
Surfaces changes: In theory It should add dificulty to the game, but most of the time all it does is turn mages into huge inconvenience machines. In this patch I have never felt that this added anything at all, except when I fought inside the Fort so NPCs wouldn't randomly walk on surfaces and get hostile on me. It could be a good thing to make surfaces last forever inside combat, but outside of it it's just either one big annoyance to deal with, like hey just wait so I can cast X or Y spell to clean that up, or just a big opportunity to cheese every single fight stacking surfaces around enemies before.
Durability changes: This is just one of the best changes I saw in the game so far apart from AI revamp. But I noticed that now I can attack chests and stuff without delay outside of combat, and that doesn't drain my weapon durability, at least using a Wand. I don't think this is supposed to happen.
New AI: It can be pretty brutal sometimes when fighting a group of enemies that have alot of skills in the arsenal, specially vs 2+ mages. But there are a lot of pathing problems still and the AI still making really dumb plays like using a mobility skill into my enemies and then running back to where they were. Proper spacing and positioning can counter the revamped AI just fine.
Some sidenotes:
Thievery is pretty weak with the gold change, buff it.
Staves are weaker than 2 wands and probably never worth using it, specially because you loose the chance to equip a shield if needed, make it worth.
Why are crossbows 3AP? They are not worth using it at all. Either make it really worth 3AP or make it 2AP.
As stated above, cut down prices from skillbooks and magic gear, or make a better system for discounts.
I might have forgoten a couple of things but these are the most important topics I wanted to share.
