Been in Driftwood for about 15 hours now and I'm loving it so far. I'm playing on Tactician and while I did notice the significant boost in enemy's combat effectiveness, it hasn't bothered me. It's my nature to min/max in any RPG I play, so I arrived on Reaper's Coast feeling well suited for the combat which would ensue.
To be honest, up to that point, only two fights had given me a challenge: Alexander and the crocodiles you fight for the Teleportation Gloves. I spend quite a lot of time tinkering with stats, gear and skills to perfect my party composition. It's still far from ideal in terms of pure effectiveness, but I didn't like the idea of making a pure physical damage party so I admit I do have a fairly balanced mix of magic/physical damage in my party. Aside from my archer, my party members would probably qualify as 'hybrids'.
First thing I did was go to the Paladin Camp. I picked up a lvl 12 Paladin shield lying on the ground which had over twice the armor values of my current epic shield (which was looted from Dallis' chest during the Lady Vengeance fight). I equipped it to see what my Shield Throw damage would be and my jaw dropped. I considered how being able to hit for that hard would trivialize combat, so I dropped it back on the ground where I found it. I'll go back and pick it up again once I'm level 12
