Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Larian please add another difficulty. Game is too easy

It depends on your play style as much as anything.

I play on normal with mods to make things more 5e and less Larian, seldom if ever prebuff as in as soon as you get out of bed, rarely buff at all apart from bardic inspiration - don't even have bless available now. Party is bard, Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach. Modded everyone to have the ability stats I would give their class and recently, on hitting level 8, respecced my bard to b6/sorc 2, Shadowheart is a Tempest domain cleric3/pally 5, Lae'zel straight fighter and Karlach barb7/fighter 1. Can't say if this makes a difference yet as I've only very recently done it. I'm part way into Shar's Gauntlet.
AC is around the 18/19-21 range. Adamantine armour on Lizzie and Shadders. Shadders has the Lathander mace. Lizzie has the gith greatsword from the creche (not the silver thing as I've never seen Voss since Act 1). Bard has Harold Xbow and that's about it for uber gear. I too prefer the old +1 this or +2 gear to Larian's gimmicky nonsense.
My biggest lack up to now has been a decent AOE damage spell and trusty old magic missile.
Most fights are how I like them - winnable if I take care and don't do something stupid. I'm not a big fan of intense micro-management fights (far too lazy for that). If there's a possibility of talking my way out of a mini-boss fight I take it.

I've watched LPs where the guy breezes through fights where I have won but nowhere as easily - I think that is down to them using the vanilla rules whereas I'm modded.

Have to say, I’m not noticing an enormous difference between regular and tactician. I’ve probably improved a bit and know what’s coming a lot of the time now, but expected a lot of fights to be much tougher.

One thing I have found to be incredibly difficult on tactician is killing the Commander on the nautiloid.

I'm happy to say that I did manage to kill him and the mind flayer. The other two cambions? Not a chance. But taking out the Commander and the mind flayer on tactician felt like a real victory.

I think I died a dozen times in that fight before changing out Shadowhearts spells for command hehe. I never managed to kill the other Cambions though. I think that battle is down to luck, like whether dude misses in his opening attack or the flayer lands a crit or something. But you can still sorta punk him and run off with his sword which felt pretty good to me.

For the general difficulty, Tactician was entertaining for me on the first run, but I agree we need anther level.

I'd rather they added a 4th tier of difficulty than changing what they already have, and for that one perhaps try some different angles. People dislike trash mobs, but I wouldn't mind some added monsters to encounters. To me this is more satisfying than meeting the same guy again with just with a ton of buffs, least with another enemy things like pre-position reset the meta. I don't mind potions and consumables, inflating hp or making the resistances off the chats is less interesting to me than like if an Angkeg just showed up, or there was a 4th Ogre or whatever.

I agree with earlier suggestions that perhaps the point buy would be a fun way to scale it, reduced XP, fewer resources or a more challenging form of rest etc. People grumble about random encounters or ambushes but I think you need something like that as a randomizer, where the camp can be periodically attacked and we have to expend resources to properly defend it.

Also to stage in more sequential battles that stretch the short/long rest and push the player to expend more of these very high value consumables and scrolls. Basically little preambles or epilogues to the familiar fights. An added mini-boss here and there or gang of bandits with some flavor to their getups.

I think another feature would be to add retainers and dependents as a feature of the camp, meaning that the more people you keep around the more it costs in camp supplies or things of that sort. A good use of regular equipment and supplies would be arm a B team and then have to keep them alive periodically. Camp animals might be subject to kidnappings or raids might interrupt us with setpiece battles similar to what Halsin does if you go psycho path in Act I.

Any sort of respec via Withers type stuff should probably be limited to like once per play or just be extortionately expensive so it's not a go to, but still available for stuff like multiclassing companions. I think on the higher difficulty scales companions should not be able to respec their primary class, but only their subclass, which would help them to become more of resource. Ie if you have to try and keep them alive, and if they die you can't just transform someone else into a completely different role than what they start out as to refill that slot. You know so you can't just respec Shadowheart to be a striker/fighter with 20 STR if your Lae'zel goes down lol. Here the player could attempt the no rez run, where you have to treat the potential companions the same way you would healing potions and scrolls hehe. Maybe in that one Withers will let you make 3 hirelings and you can fully customize them, but they're really expensive? Making resurrection more difficult with penalties to constitution for our regular followers might have the camp hangers on become more of a resource to manage in that way too. Maybe there could also be some sort of blood sacrifice where you can exchange one companion for another via Raphael for resurrection if it comes to that, but just higher costs generally. Could be interesting.

Mostly though I'd just like to see more enemies and traps or things which test the meta of it more with some randomizers of that sort and just dampen the bonuses/resources. Otherwise eventually you kinda end up in the same place regardless, so I think things like that could make a difference. Long as it isn't a slog, or a wipefest, I think they could add more enemies to a number of the setpiece battles and I'd probably have fun with that, long as there's some sort of initiative thing to make sure the party doesn't get hosed waiting endlessly for a turn. I think some fights would be better than others, depending on how many characters are already in the area. But definitely for exterior wilderness or transition type areas, I think some more surprises there to keep us on our toes that's additive in that way.

Currently we have, If you don't cheese the game:

Explorer = Very Easy
Normal = Easy
Tactitian = Normal


If you do cheese the game:

Explorer = Incredibly easy
Normal = Laughably easy
Tactitian = Insultingly easy.

Really want a D&D hardcore mode.

Self specs: 42 Years old, CRPG veteran and gamer since 1989. Experienced in 90s DOS games, 80s/90s arcades, all windows systems since 3.1, consoles up to PS2. Using Mister FPGA with modern OLEDS and CRTs for retro consoles. Indie games gaming with Nintendo Switch.

You assume You assume people know the game and play the right skillings, which is not what a professional developer will assume.

Really what you demand is not more difficulty levels, but fixing the problems with Haste etc

Another difficulty level for me would mean : more powerful monsters and clever AI. I see compolaints here that can easily be corrected by the players themselves. Too high AC ? Well don't use that super armor, wear something lighter. Too many rests ? What if you send all food to camp so you don't have enough on you for a full rest ? I didn't try it, but wouldn't you also get the dream scenes on a partial rest ? Don't level up when you can. Fight the goblin camp at Lv 2 and Moonrise Towers at Lv5 if you find those unchallenging. Don't use potions and grenades unless you"re getting hammered and on the verge of losing. Put your party in difficult positions, instead of advantageous ones. It seems to me that you can make any battle as difficult as you want.

Now I wish it was the other way round, and one could make some confrontations easier. I don't have super armor. It seems I find only the failed homeworks from magical school. Right now I'm down in the mindflayer nest under moonrise towers. The party is depleted in spells and HP. I can't long rest or fast travel here, can't find a way back out, and I'm supposed to do what will probably be the biggest boss fight from chapter 2 in this state.

Too easy? hmmm....

Too obvious.

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There are videos out there of people doing Elden Ring naked, with one arm tied behind their back and armed only with a rolled up newspaper.

I'd be down for a harder difficulty, but I can wait on that while they fix Act 3.

I sure hope you have a save from before because this sounds like you're hopelessly stuck.

You absolutely should have had a full rest before entering this dungeon.

I did full rest before entering, but the battle in the barracks and especially the undead was hard.
But Meanwhile I found a healing device, like they had on Nautiloid in the intro, and that got my party back in shape for the final confrontation with Ketheric.
I downed him, but then things went south rapidly. Every party member and Nightsong were killed by that Myrkul beast in the blink of an eye.

So I haven't posted for a few days cos I'm doing another solo run through BG2. Previously I only did so on the 'normal' difficulty, this time on the EE 'Legacy of Bhaal' difficulty with loads of ridiculous mods to make my solo character more uber OP.

Its still very challenging for a solo run on that difficulty, even with a cheated 25 all stats, more gear upgrade recipes, shadowkeeper for multiple kits on a triple class (Fighter / Mage / Thief, Kensai kit, add extra x2 backstab multiplier to match assassin, add extra 1 spell slot per level to match specialist mage).

The thing is though the mage buffs in BG2 basically make you an invincible juggernaught of death, combined with staffs of the magi, staffs of striking, and staff of the ram to just cleave through everything. Having not played in a while, I struggled with the dragons and such until I rediscovered breach, then Improved haste > breach > whirlwind / greater whirlwind / assassinate tears up all that stuff with +200% HP nicely. Soloing is actually easier than full party cos you don't need to worry about friendly fire, just buff your resistances and spam skull traps / fireballs / sunfires while bashing away, invis self with the staff / potion / spell, another backstab.

Well in BG3 as nice as the game is, you can't do any of that cheesy OP broken fun. Can the game actually be soloed on Tactitian without barrelmancy? Its too early to tell but maybe one day with and without such mods I will get around to trying.

Well. I've cleared out entire rooms with naught but a not-so-cheesy regular assassin/gloomstalker/fighter no problem. If you have movement speed and the ability to hide, you can solo pretty much the entire game without too much hassle. Most 'hard; fights have environmental advantages that can be exploited, multiple avenues of attack and escape and so forth. And that's *without* using the cheese builds.

The game has *so* many options for you to experiment, that yes, it is certainly doable solo on each class.

And, true, 5E doesn't let you stack multiple protections all at once because of the Concentration mechanic, but in all fairness, I like it better this way. High level Mage Fights in BG2 are the most boring ever, and you always had to pack your spellbook all the same obligatory spells like Spell Immunity Divination and Ruby Rays of Reversal just for that. You'd have maybe one or two spells that actually did something fun, the rest was protections and dispels.

well, if you have access to darkness or fog cloud, you can just hide there and the enemies won't even go searching for you (unless they are immune to blindness), so with hide as bonus action you can just peek out and take free pot shots at them. considering how most stealth classes get free access to fog cloud, larian is probably even aware of that.

Idk if I’ve suggested it in this thread yet, but if Larian wants us to trust the dice AND give us a higher difficulty, a true to tabletop mode would be nice:
Ironman saves and auto saves, no quickloading, karmic dice off, highest difficulty, permadeath, if PC dies game loads back, harsher carry weight no send to camp, no inspiration, limited consumables, RAW, limited long and short rests based on each Act.

I just started a Tactician playthrough and I completely agree. I use a few more buff and debuff spells, but most fights are boringly easy. The complicated ones are the ones where you are trying to save someone else, just as it was at standard difficulty, but that is not really related to the difficulty setting, but the nature of the fight. Still in Act I, so it might be better later on, but I highly doubt it as I am a completetionist, so I tend to be at at very high level when I reach new areas, so maybe the game should have some kind of scaling system, where the world scales up with your level to a certain degree.

+1

I agree with this. (except for the RAW stuff, which I don't care about in the slightest)

I would also suggest that the long rest be limited to one per way point. Where activating the ancient sigil allows you to take one long rest, then that sigil no longer works for that purpose.

I agree with a lot that's been said here. The game is too easy even on tactician, even with only one companion, even solo. And I'm no sin tee, just a casual gamer with a limited amount of time to play, although I do min max. It is outrageous that Astarion can take on a act 2 twisted trees horde or surgeon at level 6, with just a elixir of vigilance, haste poition and oil of combustion. And I didn't even multiclass him into gloomstalker or assassin, left him as a thief. I found that DAO even DAI on nightmare with trials solo was more challenging. But, I guess once you know the system you can play it to your advantage as with every game.

Just to be clear, I do LOVE the game, it's like an interactive movie. Once all the bugs were ironed out and performance is stable, that'll be one of my favorites along with DAO. But I think another difficulty level or something like trials should be added.

The game starts out fairly hard but then drops off in difficulty once you start leveling. It's almost as if you outlevel the content.

I think maybe they had a lot more content in act 3 at one point, cut a lot of it out, this leada to compression of the leveling timeline without rebalancing the previous content. Thus, you level to quickly. It's supposed to be a longer road to 12, but 15% of the content was cut and leveling rate escalated as a result.

Pure speculation of course.

Your first point is correct because that was the case with DOS2 as well. Difficulty in Fort Joy was higher than the rest of the game because you were more limited in your capabilities. I think Larian games just have difficulty curves which flatten around the end of the first third, and then begin to descend at the midgame.