Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Suggetion: Harder Difficulty.

This isn't a new idea, but I really think this game would benefit from it. I'm talking about adding an option to make the game harder, something like an insanity (or a Divinity) mode. So you would have easy < normal < hard < insanity.

To argue about the need of this new difficulty, I'll talk about my experience with the game, which of course I really enjoyed, thus I'm here trying to make it better.

I'm a veteran RPG player, so I began the game on hard, cause I know the hardest mode usually is the most fun.
In the early game I surely died a few a times, cause I was still learning what everything did, experimenting with combos and whatever I could find or think of.
I saw the trait "Lone Wolf" early on and thought that would add even more difficulty and fun to the game, so I decided to play on hard with only 2 characters. I also learned about the perception ability to find secrets and decided to invest in it as a "main" stat.

By the time I built the Source Hunters, I was with a glass cannon mage that could control the four elements and combo by herself, and a tankier all-in melee.
Now, on hard, with both lone wolves and 13 perception on my mage, I never even come close to dying, the game clearly got too easy without me even trying to do the best possible combat-oriented party.


The new mode would be completely optional, it would appease a more "hardcore" audience, while newer players could just ignore it, also, this would be nice as some kind of small NG+ addition, I would replay the entire game if I had a significantly harder combat option.

Agreed.

The game needs a nightmare mode or something. Hard is too easy.

Hi Trancid,

Great idea. I bet we see mods that will increase difficulty eventually, yeah?

I have a question which is in the spirit of your post so I thought to include it here rather than create more threads!

(I have recently purchased and am downloading from Steam now)

Rather than necessitating a harder difficulty, can we actively do something that would make the game harder over time?

If you were going to replay the game again, are there any abilities or talents that one might CHOOSE not to use, like an unbalanced trait that makes the game a little too easy? I was thinking about omitting Glass Cannon from my choices in game to manually increase difficulty after something I read on it.

Anyone have any opinions? I am going to begin my first playthrough soon! Very excited.

Hey Windspin,

I can help you a little with that, but I myself don't like the idea to simply "nerf" myself so the game gets in a decent difficulty.

These are the most OP things I've seen until now:
The combination of lone wolf + glass cannon, one gives you a massive boost in HP% and the other reduces your HP% and doubles your action points, too much sinergy. I don't think either of them are OP on their own.

I didn't play it myself, but seems like level 5 sneak is broken on combat, as in, you can cheese your way through every battle.

Teleport as a low level skill was probably made to add more fun to the game, which I agree it does, but it's overpowered early on. (I would get it anyway, cause I enjoy using it)

I'm not sure how you can avoid this in a "fun" way, but level 5 man-at-arms with all the related passive traits is also OP, I have this on my "all-in takier melee".

Combos overall are sort of overpowered, but these are core to the fun of the game, you shouldn't avoid them really, this is THE thing that needs a harder difficulty to not be overpowered.

I'm sure there are plenty other things that are a little out there, like skills that put an elemental shield over your character, but I don't really know them all.

They already exist. There is one at Nexus and in the mod forum here it would describe ways in which you can make the game harder.

Lone Wolf + Glass Cannon is actually less powerful than four people in your party by middle/late game. Ultimately it is a very fun alternative way to play the game.

But if you want to increase the difficulty? Go with Two Characters with No Lone Wolf or Glass Cannon.

For me, half the fun in a RPG is building the character however I want, to have to worry about being too powerful in the hardest game mode, is usually a design issue.

In my first games 10 years ago I always used to choose the highest difficulty in all of them until I noticed that in most games it only increases the health and damage of enemies, i.e. the same game but with unjustified longer combats.

Great examples in difficulty increases was Diablo 2, where you need to end the normal difficulty to unlock the next level, and it is not about only more health and damage but more complexity where you need to achieve a perfect build to survive the first combat and you can't simply 'switch' the difficulty to easy, you ARE in that difficulty and you need to make your way or return to previous difficulty to get better items and more level. Also the game truly rewards that effort because if you want the best items you need to play in nightmare and then inferno, leaving the normal difficulty to casual players.

In this case, that menu option to turn the game harder maybe is a 'personal challenge' but the game does not encourage to play hard, you will not get more XP or better items for hard fights, in few words: such effort is not necessary to get the same result.

Difficulty scale must not be an option but a reward of finishing the previous difficulty and the 'necessity' to polish your build.

If you don't want a REAL difficulty scale and reward, remove that shameful difficulty selector and play like Baldur's Gate, a solid game with all the difficulty you need and where you don't even think to change difficulty.

I do agree with you, but they have finite resources, they may never get to do what you're saying, but it's easier to make the game actually hard for those who want it. I have to say, I don't want them to mindlessly add health to enemies, but the fact is, the hard mode in this game is too easy even if you don't have an optimal build fully made for combat.

In my mind the difficulties should represent these:
Easy: don't really care about combat
Normal: with a build focused on things other than combat, you can complete the game without much problem.
Hard: you must focus on combat or get your ass kicked.

Since the game is not like this right now, this new difficulty would be what "hard" was supposed to be. You have to make an optimal combat build to have a shot at it.

I agree that combat could be even rougher on the hardest difficulty, but I don't agree that the ultimate difficulty should force you to build your characters purely for combat. Granted, this is a highly combat-oriented game, but it is still an rpg adventure and I think those aspects are just as important. I would love for a game of this type to finally implement difficulty variations in the rpg aspects. A typical scenario in an rpg is that you can either resolve a situation by combat or by talking your way past it. On normal difficulty this could present an average fight, or require a mid-level skill rank in Charisma or whatever is appropriate. On hard, this should present a tough fight, or require that you've seriously devoted points into your Charisma/speech skill to be able to overcome such challenges. Or even make the non-hostile resolution much more complex than a simple skill check.

Sure, D:OS doesn't really have that many of these situations and the ones you are presented with are often very easy to resolve without combat. While the fun combat often makes you rather take the fight than talk your way past it. But my whole point is that I don't like the idea of higher difficulties forcing the player to play the game less as an rpg and more as a straight action game. This is way too common in today's rpg's.

True, I didn't elaborate, but what I meant by using this as a small NG+ possibility is that you already explored the game as much as you could, and now you have the option to do a "hardcore" run, where you must focus everything in being the strongest possible, just to be able to beat the game in the new mode.

Actually, since this will always be just an optional configuration, they could enable it freely and maybe just warn the player something like: "Not recommended for the first playthrough. This mode is for veterans of the game who wants to face really hard combat, experimenting with the strongest builds and tactics they can muster for every ecounter, you may not be able to fully enjoy other non-combat aspects of the game in this mode".