What made you appreciate hard difficulty more than normal? From what I recall they’re exactly the same, hard just replaces some regular units in packs with stronger versions (and adds some extra mobs to packs?). From what I’ve seen on various forums people recommend against playing on hard for this very reason, Normal or PotD are the recommended difficulties. Mobs don’t get any stat bonuses until you hit PtoD.
Playing on Hard is fun, the enemy composition being harder makes for some interesting tactical changes over Normal, pushes you use consumables and other options you don’t really need to (usually) on Normal, but doesn’t feel “cheaty” in the favor of the game (by adjusting the enemies stats). Just why I play on Hard, at any rate. I’ve never come across anyone warning someone off playing Hard, now I think of it.
I much prefer increased pack size/stronger variations over simple percentage buffs to mobs (which seems like the lazy way of increasing difficulty.) Besides, fighting off a swarm led by an “Emperor Rat” (or some other) feels heroic; getting whupped by a couple of abnormally hard hitting “frail rats” does not.
Yeah, exactly same reasoning as Scott and Soondifferent for me. Part of what disappointed me my first time through PoE was how easy every encounter was except 2 or 3 (Adra dragon, Raedric’s keep final fight the first time you get to it, and IIRC some big ogre clusterfuck which I don’t remember well other than it being annoying). On hard-expert it’s not like every single encounter is a struggle, but I’ve had a few fights I had to reload and be more generous with the spell and ability uses (Captain of the guard fight in Raedric’s keep actually caught me with my pants down). It also limits your camping supplies to 2 and thus discourages rest spamming which I normally try to avoid doing anyway.
It also amplifies one of the aspects of PoE that annoys me, which is in their attempt to have better enemy AI they’ll make a mad dash for casters/squishy backliners a bit more, and even with two fighters in the front and one of the fighters being able to “Engage” 4 targets at once, you still usually end up with enemies just walking past and beating up your wizard. Infinity Engine AI is dumber but you can somewhat more reliably hold enemies back from your squishy party members.
And another minor annoyance (Specifically with expert this time) is you can more easily eyeball AoE spells in Infinity Engine since they’re always static, but AoEs are determined by stats in PoE. So once you start to get a handle on blind-firing burning hands you put a +2 INT hat on your wizard and/or one of those “Rings of overwatch” or whatever and then burn the hell out of Eder next encounter. Overall still liking expert better but that is one thing that’s been a smidge annoying. Can also avoid it myself by not giving area-boosting stuff to damage dealing casters.
Yeah, I don’t know what the beef against Hard is. I prefer it - PotD is a little too neckbeardily frustrating with the obnoxious defenses everything has, and Normal is definitely too easy.
Bonus AOE from INT only adds Foe AOE - won’t ever burninate friendlies by putting on a fresh new hat.
Oh? In that case I’m just being sloppy then, thought it added to both.
Nope! That’s what the two different-colored cutouts for spell targeting are for.
So is Hard difficulty more difficult now than at release? I played on Hard then and found the mid / end game pretty easy except for a handful of fights.
They re-tooled the 3rd act and everything past that to have an option (when you get that far) to have higher level encounters, so the end-game should be more challenging if one were to do a lot of side-quests, bounties, and the like to hit high levels these days. I haven’t been able to check it out myself, but I have a party rolled up to play around with that after I beat the second expansion.
It’s not terribly harder in my playthrough up through Raedric’s Keep, no. Then again I know a lot more about the game now than I did in my first playthrough.
And yeah, inverse difficulty curve in POE for sure. Mostly I just can’t be arsed to drag asses through that GOD DAMNED TEMPLE on PotD.
I don’t think I hit max level on my play through at release.
It’s been so long since I played, I’m guessing I’ll start a new game to play the White March content. I always have a hard time jumping into a game after I’ve been away for a while. I also have a hard time replaying content so I’m at a bit of a loss.
I remembered that part, but with expert enabled you don’t get spell targeting guides any more and just have to throw them and hope for the best.
I’m finding PoE replays fairly well given the “Fast mode” you can toggle out of combat and being able to largely skip through dialog. Relatively little down time running through the same areas. Been reading new dialog as it shows up (Been taking the opposite path on as many quests as I can) but for the most part it’s just a lot of fast clicking.
Sheesh, I feel inadequate. You guys saying it was so easy for you…hell, I get my ass handed to me fighting small groups of no-name critters, and have to rest so often the stock in camping supplies has gone through the roof.
I’m really starting to warm up to guns. I read a good tip on Obsidian forums that suggested grabbing The Disappointer (requires 2 mechanics I think) from the very first map and replacing the Terrible enchant with Accurate as soon as you can. I was able to do it in the first village and the damage on my Cipher is monstrous for this level - 40+ hits all the time.
You can replace enchantments? That would have been good to know!
Guns are awesome. Having a huge alpha strike makes a lot of things a lot easier.
To be honest I’m not sure how it works. Maybe you can only overwrite existing enchants but not the ones you add yourself?
Heh. If I were God-King of Pillars I’d nuke the whole dumb crafting system, but they promised it to backers, so…yeah.
I’ve no idea how you could overwrite any enchantments, I was poking at it just this morning and the existing one’s don’t seem clickable. Maybe it only works with that specific “Disappointer” rifle, which might be worth testing.
I finished up the White March and additional 3.0 content (there is a continuation to the big 2.5 update quest that leads to the definitive “hardest fight” in the game, whoo-boy) and I just adored the second part of the White March and it’s ultimate conclusion. I really like the next content, from spells and abilities to the new soul bound weapons (and armor!) though the process of unlocking soul bound items (some of them, at least) continues to be my least favorite mechanic. It’s not terrible, just kind of annoying for about a quarter of the items. They tend to be really powerful, so I suppose it makes sense.
I may well keep going with my third party just because I feel like I want to keep playing!
I only dabbled with Pillars up to now because I forced myself to hold off for both expansions, but now it’s time!!!
Going to start fresh with a monk and blow away most of my weekend lol.