Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused suggestions: Hard difficulty, Hard modes

Good day. I see a lot of posts with suggestions to lower difficulty of the game in many ways, so i felt like we need more posts to support hard difficulty.
My general suggestion is to not ditch the hard things completely, but keep them for a separate difficulty mode ( very hard, tactician, hardcore whatever ). So i don't have anything versus people who are struggling in some fights i consider a cakewalk, i'm here to try to make a few suggestions which will help Everyone enjoy this game in the end.

A few good practices (imo) to make an enjoyable OPTIONAL (i will use HC to make it short, from hardcore) difficulty challenge for players who seek it without hurting other players:

- Divinity Original Sin 2 inspired.

a) Non-intuitive/non-obvious fight opportunities. Player decides to fight in situations where he/she "shouldn't"
I will put generic example first, then i'll put some DOS 2 examples separately in spoiler tags.
Example: Low level player/party fights with a few low level goblins. In the middle of the fight a Really Huge Scary Winged creature lands nearby, takes dead goblin body (for a dinner or some mysterious ritual whatever) and flies away. Usually this will feel like a cool
cut-scene, and player will continue combating goblins. But if player somehow decides to quickly attack creature or attacks it accidentally - the creature won't fly away and turn i'ts attention to the player. This will drastically change the fight. The player now will have a choice to flee combat (this will change basic fight versus goblins to a fight for survival)
or even to stay and try to fight it. In any case for this interaction player will be rewarded by unique outcome/lore/dialogue/equipment/consumable whatever.
DOS 2 Examples: - Divinity Original Sin tactician mode inspired.

a) Stronger enemies (better stats / hp / damage etc)

b) Harder AI. Monsters are better at positioning and reacting to players actions. Example: in normal mode player fights a big ogre who is very dangerous in melee, player is able to kite him around with some fast character and dispatch him from safe distance. In HC mode, the ogre gains ability to pick up some stone or other object sometimes and throw it at player if he is unable to catch you in melee range. And/or he gains rage ability, when he is angry he gains some speed boost for a short time.
Also monsters are using more consumable items like scrolls, potions, spells, traps, grenades, etc. By "more" i mean not quantity, but quality and diversity.
Example: in normal mode u fight an enemy goblin mage/shaman, he has a big aoe fireball spell and he can shoot small single-target fireballs with his staff. In HC mode this goblin has an additional summoning spell and a few magic grenades in his pocket to use them if he is silenced and unable to cast his spells.

c) More monsters. Very interesting feature imo. In higher difficulty usual monster packs (some of them or every single pack) accompanied by additional monsters. This is interesting not just because player have to deal with a few more goblins in a goblin fight, but because some unexpected enemies can appear and change the fight drastically.
Example: player is going HC difficulty, he is going to attack a goblin camp. He did this fight before in normal mode, so he knows what to expect. The fight starts and player can see that there are 6 goblin skirmishers instead of 4 out there, and 4 goblin archers instead of 3, that makes encounter harder (which is what player wants if he going HC mode) but then, suddenly player realizes that there is a HUGE elite goblin berserker / angry goblin chieftain, visiting from neighboring tribe / sister of a tribe's shaman awakened by sounds of a fight / any other unique monster appears from a tent / nearby cave / locked cage / underground / behind a player party etc. This makes a fight not just more challenging but more interesting and unexpected.

d) Environment. At hardest difficulty some new or additional stuff is present in battles, like traps (put by cunning sneaky goblins), totems affecting both player and enemies, weather effects (global which buffs/debuffs all party/enemies or local which deals damage or hinders vision/movement at some parts of the fighting zone), curses on party members if you enter some dangerous territory/make some specific decisions in quests or dialogues etc.

- pillars of eternity 2, path of the damned difficulty options inspired.

The good general practice from this game is that player can manually check/uncheck each of these things before the start of a game, so they aren't tied to difficulty selection and player don't forced to deal with options he doesn't like by choosing hardest difficulty mode.
Personally i don't like some of the options below and i don't see how can some of them be implemented into this game as it is, but i put them anyway in case it will lead people to some other ideas.
a) Main quest is time limited. Every stage of main quest chain has some time limit to complete it. There is plenty of time, but it adds some challenge and forces player to make some planning and do not ignore main quest.
b) Some monsters gain additional auras/passive abilities, like reflect part of physical damage, or buff nearby allies etc. I think similar feature was used in DOS tactician mode, and i enjoyed it a lot, it adds some unpredictable additions in familiar fights, and of course brings a bit of challenge.
c) Combat restrictions. If any party member is knocked out in combat - he dies instead. Player/party can't flee from combat. In DOS case this option can significantly limit the amount of resurrection scrolls available through the game, or add a long cooldown to them.
d) Limited the time for each turn in combat (i personally don't like this option, but it opens some interactions with skills/talent, some skills can affect duration of this time window).
e) Equipment starts to degrade with use ( if it wasn't breakable before ) or starts to break faster.
f) At night and at in-doors areas player/party has reduced light radius (vision/detect radius) if he/she not using a torch or other light source. ( I played with this option and was skeptical at first, but then it turned out in an interesting gameplay situations. Because this limit to light radius doesn't apply to enemies (they can see in the dark like normal) game becomes kinda spooky in caves/dungeons and makes player to think about light sources and/or stealthy scouting ).
g) Food/supplies has expiration date.
h) Non-combat weak npc (small girl) joins player at the start of the game and follows him/her till the end. The goal is to not let her die, otherwise you lose. This npc isn't a party member and can't level up/equip gear/use items or magic. And she brings some lore/atmosphere into game by talking from time to time.
i) Health regeneration restrictions. The variety of means to restore health of party members is limited. (Imaging playing DOS without ability to use healing spells out of combat to heal your party, or rest using bedroll 9999 times per hour) This option makes player to use cooking/crafting more, buy some food from market/taverns and find other means to restore health which were ignored in normal mode. This option can add "camp supplies" item, without it party is unable to rest at the camp, and each rest consumes this item. Imo this restore health section brings up very interesting challenge to the game.
j) Some information in the interface is hidden. This can be anything from description of enemies strengths/weaknesses and enemy level to player stats calculations.
k) A few very powerful optional bosses are scattered through the game. These encounters is specially made for a high level challenges, they require more preparations and effort to beat than other game content, including bosses and fights through main quest and dlcs. I think it's a good thing to have, by no means player have to fight those overpowered fights if he/she doesn't feel like it. Player won't lose any important lore, or powerful items if he/she skip those fights. But if player wants to test his/her skills/party composition, or just have some fun after game is finished, he/she can load a save before the game's end and go hunting.

-Additional suggestions.

a) Economy. Hardest difficulty/optional challenge can reduce some of the following: player's gold income / quantity of items / consumables found in the world. It can also affect vendors stock and prices amd/or limit the quantity of some selected important consumables like resurrection scrolls/ camp supplies/ food etc both in the world and in vendor's inventories.

Concluding i want to share my own impressions about difficulties of a few games. Divinity
Original Sin 1 and 2 tactician mode - was interesting (from challenge point of view) at first few hours, but then a cakewalk with a few exceptions (fights). I would like to have some harder than a tactician experience both in early game and especially in mid/late game.
Pillars of Eternity 1/2 highest difficulty setting without challenges/permadeath mode = very similar experience, a few interesting fights at beginning, and a few more through the game, but otherwise too easy. However when i started next playthrough with some of the challenge options enabled - the game (from a challenge point of view) became much more deep and interesting (and hard in a good way).
I am enjoying spending time on preparations to the fight, thinking through my build and party composition, using crafting, environment and everything i can, spending hours to win an unfair fight.
Important note. I didn't play Baldur's Gate 3, and i won't until game's full release. It is because i see the early access as a one huge spoiler that will make my first playthrough of the finished game.. well.. spoiled =) So i apologize about not knowing current game features and mechanics, and difficulty details.
I may edit this in the future if i come up with something else.