Party composition definitely affects early difficulty too. I’m rolling with a very basic Paladin, Scoundrel, Turret Ranger, with almost all damage being directed at single targets. Would like to swap out one of the Dex guys but haven’t worked out which yet. My Scoundrel has the Glass Cannon card and I don’t think I can part with him ;)
Overall, I’m finding it really excellent, lots of depth to be discovered etc.
Edit: Battle Academy is great; I’m gonna be picking up DLCs in Steam sales for a while to come :)
Aha, prompting me to mention one more thing I AM doing, which is deliberately running with a team where there is one hero with very high STR, one with DEX and another INT. This way there is very high success rate for events, more benefits, fewer penalties, and possibly less exhaustion, and I can also easily make good use of the relevant stat-boosting equipment and gems. If I had say, two with DEX, and was missing a hero focused on STR or INT, that might mean worse event outcomes and a competition for equipment and gems between the two DEX heroes.
I am saving this for a probable second run after I finish the first. Then I might stick on hard but go with a funky composition, or might bump up to Nightmare.
Scoundrel was my favourite within early-access. He was horribly over-powered, with easy access to a deck which featured near-infinite or simply very high volume loops of damage cards.
Thanks for the feedback on difficulty everyone. It sounds like I may want to bump it to hard, but not be afraid to go back down to normal if it starts getting tedious or too difficult. We can switch difficulty at will, right? Is there any downside, like it screws up balance or something?
Thanks for the good words on my review @Pedro ! I appreciate it. Did you find it on Steam, or my site OneGuyTooManyGames.com? I haven’t put anything new up there in ages and was considering not renewing my registration for it.
There are some restrictions, I remember a pop-up screen when I started a game, but I think it was “you can’t go above Hard mid-game and you can’t go back up to Nightmare if you started there and went back” or similar. If you are talking about Normal/Hard/Easy I think you’re fine.
As to how it works or what might be screwed up, I doubt anyone here has done any testing to be able to give you numbers or answers really - so personally, I’d assume it works as written. If you set it to Normal, it’s Normal from that point on.
Campaign mode was designed to be much easier for newcomers, as well as serving as an introduction to the game. It was made to be casual and less taxing :).
However, we certainly recommend you to hop into Realm Mode on a high difficulty to see if you also feel that way. They’re vastly different modes so we would love to hear your thoughts!
Difficulty tends to be fairly subjective and there is no perfect ground for it, even through the balancing we have done over development. Nonetheless, we’d still like to hear what you have to say :).
My scoundrel just got an extra AP via some fancy gauntlets so can cycle through quite a few cards now :)
Your Steam review is quite near the top of the store page but your website review is the one I found…DuckDuckGo returns it as the third result if you search for Battle Academy Slitherine (because there’s a Pokemon one too apparently) Review :) I liked reading about the mod you did too but didn’t install it.
Yeah, must be a bit of a wrench letting a website lapse.
So far I’m glad I bumped up the difficulty. I’ve taken some damage but haven’t lost a hero yet. But, I’m pursuing the rift lord and it’s a level 15 location. I’m only level 9. I guess the only way to level up is to grind some battles around the town locations. Some seem to repopulate after resting in town.
On ‘Hard’, I am still finding it fine to take on fights indicated at anything 1-5 levels above those of my heroes. At level 3, I was able to take on level 6. At level 10, I could take on level 15.
Your level 9 vs 15 may be a stretch, unsure.
Lots of nodes do repopulate. They do so when you rest in town, or rest at a rest point, and also if you visit a shrine and pray.
One thing deterring me from Nightmare is that whilst I might welcome the extra challenge, I might not welcome it for every single of the very many fights. I think I will reserve Nightmare for the more roguelike, Endless Run mode, rather than the narrative Campaign.
I did try and Endless Run on Nightmare in early access, and reached the current-at-the-time level cap of 60 for the heroes, at which point I lost interest, since that took away a sense of progression. I think the high difficulty is a great fit with the Endless run mode, since you are supposed to fail at some point, and the challenge is to push that point a bit further.
This is what I found, too. The level indicated for fights seemed good for comparing whether the battle will be a step up or not, but I did not find it needed to match my characters’ levels.
I tried hard for Act 1 but had to go back to Normal for the big boss battle. Getting my butt handed to me in Act 2 on normal. I bow to all of you who can beat this so easily. I still am enjoying the game on Normal so no big deal that I stink at it!
I just took out the big baddie in Chapter 1 after switching to hard. I’ve stuck with the first 3 characters - and mostly been leveling them up in one discipline. The game definitely got more interesting as I got new abilities and improved others. Steam says it took 26 hours to get through chapter 1 and I’m guessing I’ve had the game idling for 8 of those hours.
There were a lot of battles in those hours and I think I’m ready for a break. It’s a good game, but it can overstay it’s welcome some. Also, I think I prefer the more focused card games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train.
Yeah, I can understand that. There are a lot of systems.
I found marks absorbed for several hours this evening with Gladiator guild manager. It’s a much simpler game (though more going on than many autobattlers), but that’s kind of what I’ve been in the mood for.
I’m just into Act II now - the game timer said 13 hours to complete Act I but I’d also had a couple of 3-hour games getting used to it before restarting.
It didn’t take long for me to have a complete party wipe in Act II, on the Hunting the Rogues mission, so I’ve turned it down to Hard now. There is some good stuff turning up at the (expensive) merchant’s now, which is unfortunate as I spent all my money on health potions in anticipation of the Act I boss. I wish I had that 1000 gold again :(
I’ve also been trying out some other characters for my third/back-row guy. Finished Act I with Pierre the Mage, but wasn’t really happy with him so am trying out the Warlock now (lots of bleed, which works differently to how you’d expect in that it adds to damage taken rather than does damage).
I can’t make head nor tail of the Bard, even though she’s recommended for beginners. And I haven’t fully grasped the SP or Channeling mechanics yet either. There seem to be very few opportunities for channeling with the heroes/cards I have, but I might be missing something.
I have experience with Channelling. It is a very powerful mechanic, essentially requiring playing some pre-requisites to enable you to cast some very powerful spells including spells requiring more Action Points (AP) than you would ever naturally have. Also, there are some passive buffs that can give you benefits based on Channel, such as giving you block equal to your Channel every round.
However, I think that none of the starting decks set you up to have either of A and B
A. Sufficient cards to reliably generate Channel
B. Very powerful cards that benefit from Channel
So the challenge is to deck-build, and select items and gems, that will make this into a focus of a deck. It does take focused effort though, and I think is not likely to happen without specifically aiming for it.
I need to get rid of those channeling cards out of my decks then! I only have one spell that works with it for the Paladin, and the one I had for the Mage seemed to only appear when I had the chance to retain a card at the end of my turn, it never actually appeared during play; maybe I had some weird modifier on it…
Some quick thoughts. I finished the campaign on Torment last night and finished Nightmare/Torment on Realm multiples times prior to the campaign.
Generally, I think the game is good but I think it suffers from too many systems. It’s too convoluted and many of them don’t really add to the gameplay. For instance, I finished the campaign without using any stratagem or camping. I also actively avoided exploration and didn’t care about the challenge rolls. The bonuses from the challenge rolls was vastly out weighted by the work it took to increase my success. This is mainly due to the terrible UI.
I founded the Torment campaign too easy after the first Act. However, I have lots experiences in these type of games before so it might be me. The Realm mode on Torment is below Monster Train level of difficulty. Chances are if you can survive the first level you’re good to go. The best thing about Realm is that it strips all the fat of the campaign (seriously, why is there a need for 5 different stores).
Despite all I just said the game is good and there’s lots of love (especially in Realm).
@Pedro If you’re having trouble with the Bard. Choose Minstrel as your starting deck. The 4 cards you should focus on Is Intro to Swiftness, Verse of Swiftness, Chorus of Swiftness and Bardic Experience. Use Intro once to get the Green Tone. Then each turn use Verse (to get Inspiration) until you have 1 AP left. Then cast Chorus or Bardic Experience. Then focus on getting rid of all other cards or changing them to something that Expends. Max card draw and Dexterity should be your other focus. However, aim also for 14 Intelligence is important so you can get the bonus card draw talent on the blue track. Personally I never found Channel to be useful outside of Pierre.
Channel is incredibly powerful with the Mage deck. With 9 channel charges and powerful spells that cost zero and hit the entire board, and double- and triple-cast this one character clears enemies fast.
I use strategem all the time. grats on beating it on such a high difficulty without using half the stuff. definitely way more skilled than me. I had it up to hard and turned it back to normal in act II when things ramped up fast.
Thanks Hereafter! I re-specced her to Minstrel last night and had a quick look at the base deck and this looks suspiciously like a Win! button ;) I will try it out later on.
Levelling up heroes from level 0 to your current level is a lot of fun too. There is an item for sale from the guy in the tent at the start of Act II which allows re-speccing (for those who may not know this).
Torment difficulty is impressive! I shifted down one level after my party wipe but the game has become easier again (possibly to do with me getting a more effective third hero) so I might put it back up to Nightmare.
