Finding the game crushingly difficult

[Bartlebe]

Hey guys,

Not sure if it is only because i'm new at the game or if there are some balances issues afoot, but i'm having trouble getting past the Halfling and Gnome quests complete. I'm always under leveled and not nearly powerful enough to beat the end bosses.

I can beat the easy dungeons that don't give quest credit but I get crushed in the normal ones.

What am I missing about the strategy here?

[MeVII]

Greetings:

Alot of it is strategy, and planing ahead. It plays like a giant overcomplicated game of chess.
I am actually finding it quite easy. I have played up to past the Halfling rescue, and and this point ...
... have not upgraded my town at all.
... have not spent any gold at all.
... have killed more than one Lev 10 boss while my human fighter was still level 9.

The better you manipulate the tools the easier it will be ... to give a complex (but rather common) example ...
Your level "x" and trying to kill a level "z" creature.
You can hit it once without dieing.
You are 1xp away from level "y" which is still below "z".
Expending all your magic on burnderaz you attack "Z".
You then attack "z" for your one shot.
BEFORE this you brought another creature "A" to the point it can be killed in one hit.
You kill it, doing so you level up to level "Y" and so replenish your health and mana.
Creature "z" has not regenerated because you have not exposed any new tiles.
You return to "z" use byseps and attack takeing the one hit you can survive.
but you still can not survive another attack
However you calculate that you can kill "Z" in two more hits.
You do not cast Byseps (saving the mana) and attack again and as a Fighter you avoid death on the retaliation.
You then finally cast Cydestep, giving you yet another, and your final needed hit.
"Z" dies, and now your halfway to the next level.

This is just one example, the mix and match combinations of spells, potions etc usually provide multiple (although convoluted) solutions to combat problems.

I hope this helps shed some light into things for you.

Good luck.

MeVII

[DalaranJ]

Also if completing the gnome and halfling quests is your' primary concern, you don't have to beat the boss to complete them. You only have to leave the dungeon alive after completing the quest. The gate scroll works this way too. You should definitely buy the gate scroll.


The game is basically crushingly difficult for awhile. It's just that most of us have been playing the freeware version for over a year.

[Bartlebe]

Your example with all the X's, Y's and Z's was totally incomprehensible to me.

Thanks for the effort. I'll study some guides I guess.

[Jaxzar]

I must agree with MeVII. For a seasoned vet of the alpha (I'm probably a little under-seasoned compared to MeVII and some of the other gamers here) this game is very, very similar strategy wise. I mean, at the moment it's mostly the same game from a strategy point of view (of course, I haven't unlocked/reached any of the gods yet and it seems that's where a great deal of the strategy has changed).

Here's a good description of the general phases of a dungeon which I picked up on from playing the alpha a lot, and reading through the wiki. Of course, you can play how you want, but this seems to be a natural trend:

A. Exploration Phase
Levels 1 to 3 should be spent trying to make less-risky decisions and exploring without wasting too much undiscovered dungeon. As a rule potions should not be necessary, leveling up and exploring should be the only ways you are healing yourself. Try to make do on as little as possible, especially early on.

B. Rapid Leveling/Grinding Phase
Levels 4 to 6 should be spent killing only monsters of a higher level than you, as much as possible (as described by the above post). If you are at level 4 and you kill only level 4 monsters, you're not going to get anywhere. On the other hand, if you kill a level 7 monster at level 4, you've just earned tons of bonus experience, and you have that many more monsters left to kill. Think of unexplored dungeon, potions, and monsters all as resources, and you are constantly trying to get by using as few of these resources as possible. If you were a good little explorer in phase A, you should have 1) a lot of different options to choose carefully from as to the best level-up path, and 2) a lot of unexplored dungeon to heal yourself with.

C. Boss Battle Phase
By level 7 you should be strong enough to at least survive a few whacks at the boss. The idea is to use up all the health and mana you possibly can, then kill a low-level mob to heal yourself. This should begin, as was said before, pretty darn close to leveling up. That way you can use your level up heal to its full potential (the wiki refers to this as a level-up steamroll). It's a fairly necessary strategy if you want to do well. Otherwise you won't be able to level up, or you'll waste too many resources on leveling up and not enough on killing the boss. This is where your early and mid game either comes back to haunt or help you. If you killed off every other monster but the boss, you don't have a lot of options at level 7. However, if you have saved plenty of low level monster "resources" (and potions) for yourself, killing the boss is pretty straightforward.

As MeVII pointed out, some insane things are actually possible when you really think ahead. In a recent dungeon, I began attacking the boss at level 6 and finished it off at level 7. Part of it is luck, but it plays a lot smaller role here than it did in the alpha (where you could easily get walled in by high level monsters - without a PISORF or WEYTWUT nearby that's pretty much a dead end, as you don't have much leverage in the early levels).

Hope this helps!

[Carl]

<3 the Taurog worshipping dwarf rogue in beta. Those death protections are awesome.

[MeVII]

Greetings:

Sorry my help wasent very helpful. The funny thing is as soon as you discover a few of your own tricks,
youll look back and say "Ohhhhhhhh! I get it."

Also, remember, games are the oppsite of food.
Think hot sauce.
With food, you can always add more hot sauce very easy if you want it hotter,
but its virtually impossible to remove excess you dont want.

With games, its easier to remove / lower things that dont work right or things that are too hard,
than it is to add new content in, guessing as to the approximation of how much or how hard it should be.
As a matter of fact what we are experiencing in the beta now is just that,
the best approximation of the developers, some of it is to high, some of it is two low.

Betas are usually over compensating or set to overkill deliberately.
To find the bar to begin with, and then lower it from there.
It is theoretically possible that 100% of beta testers will find things that are "impossible" to complete.
Dont fret the difficulty to much. Just add your input and explain what you tried.
Its that kind of feedback, from varying ages, people, play styles, and player skill levels,
that give the developers the tools they need to adjust the game for optimal difficulty to fun ratio.

Good luck!

MeVII

Your example with all the X's, Y's and Z's was totally incomprehensible to me.

Thanks for the effort. I'll study some guides I guess.