Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Grymforge, level caps, and difficulty(Spoilers)

I won't mince words. Grymforge is prohibitively difficult at level 4. It clearly isn't meant to be PLAYED at level 4. I was able to barely eek through the Nere fight by pushing half the dwarves into the lava before the fight started, then breaking him out. And even then I lose two people in the fight. I used every spell slot and sorcery point, every long rest ability, and I barely survived, even WITH cheesing it.

That's NOTHING compared to the utter bs that is Grym. Grym is not an acceptable fight. IMMUNE to all damage except two turns after he touches lava, which you can't really predict since his AI is broken, and even when he does, what do you have? Immune to everything except force, thunder, bludgeoning, piercing and slashing. 225 hp. Able to oneshot anyone in the party if he lands quake and a slam. Oh and it consumes an action to make the lava appear for not even a full turn. ONE of those things would be absurd. He has all of them.

The fact it can take 5-10 minutes to load compounds this

I understand wanting to make new areas and content, but you need to make sure it can actually be played at the level cap. Even with level 5 this would be insane to do without cheesing. At level 4? Don't bother wasting your time on Grym. It's not worth wasting your time watching him oneshot your party.

I like sorcerer. I like a good portion of Grymforge. I'll like it a lot better when you're allowed to be properly equipped for it. Because right now you simply are not.

Designing balanced combats is definitely not Larian's best skill. That said, it's hard to balance a game when this one if full of unbalanced mechanics...

You're right. By the time you'd normally reach this, I expect you'd be level 6 or 7. The game gives you absurd amounts of potential XP before advancing to the next act. So much, in fact, that I'm level 4 for more time than not.

At this point with an optimized route in mind a player can easily enter the grove after clocking level 3 already and then do Level 4 one hour or two after that at most.
So yeah, you already spent more time in the EA being capped at 4 than experiencing progression. And that was even before then new area was added.

Yes, I agree that giving us level 5 or even 6 would be great.

There was enough XP in the game to reach level 6 easily already in patch 4, especially when you play meticulous... XP gatherer characters (Saturday is euphemism day for me), like I always do.

Just curious ...
Did you count somehow, or is that just estimated guess?

Well, on my first run, I was level 3 before I got to the Druid Grove, and hit level 4 w/out ever seeing the Underdark, or even the spider boss. I didn't get the Shadow Druid plot done either. It's a pretty safe bet that, if the XP rewards stay like they are, we'll be in the 6/7 range, pretty easily.

I didnt argue about that, i was just curious about used method.

Yep, not arguing it either, just pointing out that, will all the content that I actually didn't get to, a couple more levels past 4 seems like more than a reasonable estimate.

Personaly i would certainly belive 5 ... that one is granted.
6 is most likely ...
but 7 only if you dont miss litteraly anything ...

BUT!
And that is big butt! (never gets old :D)

In previous PFH Swen litteraly told us that there was not yet made decision about including level 5 for Act 1 ... i would like to focus on the wording "Act 1" not in Early Acess ...
I mean, sure, many people around here say that if they would not plan it, they would simply not talking about it ... so yes, it probably mean that in some distant future we will get level 5 in EA, not much doubt about that ...

But those words have other, quite important meaning ...
It could easily mean that Larian plan to give level caps in Acts, so they can easily gues estimated power of players ... wich would mean that no matter how many XP is there, we would never be stronger than level 5 at Grymforge.

That would be a massive mistake, and it seems highly unlikely

If the add level caps during an act in the final game such that you have to waste XP i will not play the game anymore.

It would really be a stupid decision...

A final level cap at the end (maybe lvl. 10) would be ok. But not during the first act.

I shall play advocatus diaboli for a second ...
Since i agree with you it would be a really bad decision, and it would piss me off aswell.

Yet...
I dare to presume that this sentence is more wish than statement ...
But i have to ask anyway ... why does it seems unlikely? It would not be first decision Larian made and players didnt like.

I agree they should finally give us level 5 in patch 7, but to the OP - you are not supposed to fight the Grym, you're supposed to kill it with the giant hammer in the middle. Grym is not a combat encounter, it's a puzzle.

Statistically speaking, blocking progression is bad. One needs only to read the forums now to see that, so I'm not sure they'd cap Acts. They're already receiving negative feedback on it, and we were told that this is what we were going to get. It's not out of the realm of possibility, but I can't see it. Yes, maybe that is wishful thinking.