FWIW, IMO, Druids are way fucking harder than other things their level. Corrupted, Feral or Ogre, Druids can wreck your shit.
Well, I ran into some Ogre Druids, and did OK against them. I only had a party wipe when I somehow managed to pull two groups of ogres at once (total of maybe 3 druids and 5 normal ogres). To be fair, I think my entire party leveled up in between these encounters.
I actually rather enjoyed fighting ogres because their main thing seems to be HULK SMASH, so when I hit Eder with the per-encounter super-bonus-deflection talent he has something like 80 deflection and the party can usually make its way through a single ogre damage free, and when there’s more than one I also have Durance cast the priest spell that gives bonus deflection so he gets up to 100-ish (IIRC) and its fun times. Druids do make it a bit tougher, though.
Those druids in the Gorge had the locust spell bug when I played but I insisted needed to beat them instead of waiting for a patch. It must have taken me two hours just for those two mobs. (only to later find out that the bug messed up your active stats forever so I had to reload and wait anyway…)
What was the locust spell bug?
iirc it was not expiring after combat, you had to save/reload to get it to go away (and in my case it broke a few of my passive stats, so I had to kill off my character and remove/re-add party members to fix it). Biggest bug I ran into by far.
I remember those druids in the Gorge. Except my two druids (PC and Hiravias) got the alpha strike, who murderized them with Overwhelming Wave and Calling the World’s Maw. Druids have absurd nuking power, and the high tier spells that nuke and disable are amazing.
Ah, thanks BTF.
Calling the World’s Maw is incredible. I cast it constantly.
I got hit early by some kind of horrible triple-nuke or something in the ogre druid fight (I suspect it’s the same one everyone is talking about) that dropped my whole backline (aka everyone but Eder) to like 10% health. That was touch-and-go for a minute there, but Durance’s fast-casting heals carried me through before the stupid locust swarms could actually drop anyone.
OK–I finished the ogres and now I’m debating going to the next level in the paths or coming up for air and trying the stormwall druids again. We shall see…
BTW, I really love this game. As it stands now, it’s a clear BG3 for me, in a way that DA:O never was.
Yeah same. BG3 for sure. Looking forward to the expansion and sequels.
I am liking the game more than BG except for the combat. The setting seems more laid back than Forgotten Realms. The characters also aren’t as ridiculous.
Turns out that the Endless Paths are not a monotonic increase in difficulty…
levels 3 and 4
Level 3, with the ogres, was way, way harder than level 4, with the trolls and slime. I walked all over that level (and it’s not like I’d leveled up or got new gear between them). Level 4 also had way better loot–a sabre for Eder and a hunting bow for Sagani.
The more you play, the more you realize there are some quite specific rock/paper/scissors things going on with the various spells from the various spellcasters, in relation to various mob types. The presence of absence of some abilities can make all the difference against certain types of mobs.
Thankfully, though, the Priest has decent counters to most of the specific mob type problems one might encounter, and on the higher difficulties you really have to begin to learn how to use them. The Druid, Chanter and Cipher also have some counters too.
Yeah, I’m guessing that if I were to throw down a protection from the elements or something the druid fights would be a lot easier. I’m just hesitant to cast spells because… resting. (Playing on hard.)
Of course that’s silly because I always end up needing to rest when one of my guys runs low on health, and then theres Sagani with 0 athletics (a hunter without athletics? really? of course it’s my fault too because I’ve had one level up with her and forgot to fix that).
I have a party member unconscious within range of enemies. The other two escaped alive. I can’t rest, leave or do anything it seems, until the enemies are defeated. The enemies are too strong to defeat.
Is it a matter of reloading?
If you run your dudes far enough away you’ll end up out of combat and be able to do things. I don’t know if having a dead dude in the mix prevents that, or if disengagement means he dies. Some of the maps are too small to disengage in too.
And I’m back! What have I missed the last 4 weeks playing Bloodborne?
It’s funny that when I took an extended break in Caed Nua, I was literally 3 fights away from a turning point in the game. Maybe I would’ve been playing it this entire time. Darn shadows and phantoms ruin everything.
True story. They are the worst. You know how you’ve figured out the combat system and you’ve got your fighters and your spellcasters? Nope, nice try. Oh yeah, let’s have the higher level ones summon the lower level shadows, too. Because it wasn’t fun enough before.
Fortunately there aren’t too many of them (in my experience, so far). The only other enemy I’ve met that can do something like that is the occasional rogue (I’m guessing, hard to tell exactly), but in that case it feels like an interesting combat variation because there’s only one enemy in the party that can do it, whereas with shadows it just feels like the enemy is cheesing you.
If you really stopped when you were clearing out the shadows from the top of Caed Nua, then yes, you’ve got some good stuff to look forward to.
Reputation in Defiance Bay
So I managed to majorly piss off the Doemen-somethings by saving the Valyrian merchant. I really don’t think it was worth it. At least I’ll comfort myself by thinking that they seem like nasty people.
Finally got Pallegina, too. Good to have another fighter-type since I switched out my barbarian hireling for Sagani. Of course I traded out Aloth for Pallegina, so I’m guessing it’s a net loss in firepower, but oh well.
As I said upthread, probably the most incomprehensibly bizarre decision the devs made was to have the first “proper” dungeon filled with the little shits - I mean, the first dungeon should be teaching you the basics (which because of the bottlenecks it does to some extent), but the shadows and such completely confuse that learning process and make the combat system initially feel more irritating and chaotic than it really is for the most part.
I think that dungeon must be a big factor in the hatred for the engagement system that some folks have. First impressions and all that.
Completely agree. Having teleporting, engagement breaking, blockade negating shadows set the initial tone for the the game’s combat was a terrible error.