Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) Technical Problems Very Easy setting bug?

I started the game at very easy setting after some tries to find out what were the differences between the dificulty settings.
I found out that very easy gave me more health and mana than the other settings and I thought that this could be a good start to kill Fergus without using a single potion (one mage with something like 340 mana at start give quite a little of level one magical missile attacks).
After several minutes (maybe one hour), I did shut down my computer and the next day I reloaded the game. I fought my second ghost then and died in two hits while my first ghost was killed without any problem the day before.
I thought : "what the ...?"
Then I noticed, that my mage (that had increased in level since Fergus' death) had only 280 mana and the life was lower also.
I hit space to pause and escape to go to the menu and checked the difficulty level ... it was very easy.
I thought that there was a bonus only when you were at low level to help out a little, then, (being a developer myself) I thought about bug ... hehe
So I changed the difficulty level to action, applied the settings, changed back to very easy and applied the settings.
Back to game: miracle ... got 380 mana (I think), but unfortunately only 280/380 and something like 75/95 in health.

Since then, each time I start the game, I must switch the game setting to Very Easy BEFORE loading my save game if I don't want to have lower mana and health ...

By the way, does someone know exactely what are all the changes between the difficuly levels (with numbers, like monters have 40% more health and hit 50% harder in hardcore ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />)

On Very Easy and Action difficulty settings, after you exit BD and start the game again, the vitality and magic point formulas revert to the same formulas used in both the Tactical and Hardcore difficulty settings. Until the next patch, you will have to use the workaround of changing the difficulty setting to keep the higher values.

V(Tactical,Hardcore) = 10 * Constitution + 55
MP(Tactical,Hardcore) = 15 * Intelligence + 70

The approximate vitality and magic point formulas on the Action difficulty setting are similar to those above, but with multipliers of 15 and 22.5, respectively. On Very Easy, those multipliers are 20 and 30 for the vitality and magic point approximate formulas.


The DK's armour class (A) is directly proportional to his level, and differs between difficulty settings. The approximate relationships compared to the value on the Action setting are;

A(VeryEasy) ~ 0.9 * A(Action)
A(Tactical) ~ 1.1 * A(Action)
A(Hardcore) ~ 1.3 * A(Action)


On Hardcore, many of the opponents are doubled. On level up, each character has a 30% chance to get a bonus skill point (so there is a 9% chance that both will).


Welcome to the forum. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

Thank you Raze for these precisions.



Well, I did not notice this? It is good to know. But how does it evolves? In very easy, I started at 5A I think, and at level 4 I think that I was still at 5A. So how does it evolves? It raise a huge amount every 5 levels or 10 levels? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
For instance 10A at level 5, 15A at level 10 ... (in action setting) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />



Do you mean that the armor is greater in hardcore? That's sound illogical ... it is supposed to be more difficult and "hardcore" speaks for itself ...
And what about the resistances? As I see that the DK also has starting resistances, does they evolves with level up?



You mean doubled in number? 2 guards instead of one.
I also read on a webpage that resistances were differents on hardcore... this may also be true for damage, stats or even IA (spells used, flee, ...)? Do you know anything of it?



So, I could start in very easy with 2 skill points then change to hardcore and with many reloads when leveling up (around 11 per level up) I could max up the skill points by 2 every levels and 3 every 5 levels ...
This make something like 22 skill points at level 10 for each characters ... Could make the game boring <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/badsmile2.gif" alt="" />

The DK's armour class in Action difficulty is directly proportional to his level. Since the result is rounded to the nearest integer for display purposes, you will not see a change every level. There are some periodic deviations from a straight line for the other difficulty settings, but the approximate relationships I posted above are fairly close. On Very Easy, level 4 should give you a base armour class of 6 (levels 5 to 15 would be 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13).

A(Action) = (5 * L + 32)/7

The DK's armour class is higher in Hardcore, but the monsters are also stronger. If the DK's armour goes up by 30% compared to Action, but the monsters are doing twice as much damage and you have less hit points, it will still be harder than Action. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />


Some resistances (for both characters) have a component that is directly proportional to a specific primary stat (ie a straight line, but again, rounded off in the display). Survival helps elemental resistances, Constitution helps Poison Resistance and Intelligence helps Spiritual Resistance.


On Hardcore, only some random encounter, non-plot related enemies are doubled. The guards in the starting cell block are are not doubled. There are pairs of ghosts in the cells close to the arena, rather than one, and I think someone said there were more rats, as well.


Your characters' resistances do not change based on difficulty level. I don't think enemy resistances change either, but didn't check. IIRC the different difficulty levels were added late in the design process, so AI should not be that different. The number of spells an opponent can cast is related to their magic points, so changes due to difficulty level will have an influence in that respect. If the most powerful spell they know takes most of their magic points, it will be cast rarely, but if it takes only half it will be used more. When an opponent decides to flee or cast a healing spell would depend partly on their hit points, so the maximum vitality would effect that.

One of the peeks of the week described a bug where boosting an imp's magic points greatly improved their attack performance; Beyond Divinity Peek of the Week #22.

Thank you for everything Raze.

I restarted in Hardcore yesterday (instead of Very Easy ... what a change <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />).
I also made some test, and I can assure you that there is more rats (not the double, but more ... I had 4-5 rats in the prison area in very easy and 8 or more in hardcore) (I can't give an exact number ... they are moving <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />)

I also looked about the stats of the guards when killed (in the list of the ennemies) and the resistances changed as well, as the chance to hit,...
I also read somewhere that the Shaman (I don't know who it is, and I DON'T want to before encountering him, enough spoilers read already ...) has 80 resistance for the first 4 resistances (elementals I suppose) in Very Easy but 100 in hardcore (so immune).

The chance to hit / be hit will change in any case. These values are calculated based on your current stats, so increasing agility will increase your chance to hit and decrease your chance to be hit. Part of these values are based on your luck, so there is a small random component you can observe by opening and closing the trophy list multiple times.

My strategy focuses almost exclusively on sharp and pointy objects, so I have not really been paying too much attention to resistances, besides checking the main characters' resistances in different difficulty settings. In the beginning of act one I sometimes switched between crushing and slashing weapons, but late in act one I changed my hero to a crossbow pretty much full time. With the hero doing crushing and piercing damage and the DK doing slashing, I don't run into too many opponents I have to even consider resistances for.

Well, for my tests, I created default characters (warriors with warrior stats) in both Very easy and hardcore difficulty ... it is how I can say that chance to hit differs between the two modes as in both cases I've the same stats and level (level one).