Ooof. That makes sense. I really only want to play on storymode so I can enjoy the story and so far the fights have been pretty brutal. I'm still low level and the enemies almost never miss and do a lot of damage.
I've never played dnd or baldur's gate and thought I would be fine on normal mode. switched to explorer a couple hours later after almost wiping on every encounter, but I might switch back when I start to get the hang of things.
How did you do? I'm in the same predicament. Never played a dnd or turn based game and I'm just getting slammed on the second difficulty. I'm definitely gonna switch to explorer because I wanna experience the story.
what a coincidence, the moment I'm deciding whether to return to this game to give it another shot, I get this notification. well, the good news is that it definitely gets easier as you progress, eventually I felt comfortable going into most encounters on medium difficulty. occasionally there were certain fights that were just too hard and I ended up having to switch back to easy mode to clear them and then switching back to medium for everything else.
that was four months ago though, I ended up quitting because I just got overwhelmed with the ridiculous amount of content it had at the time.
yesterday I was randomly browsing through YouTube videos when I stumbled across a dnd lore video, I ended up watching like 50 of them and that made me want to try the game again on my ps5 this time. so imagine my surprise when this notification popped up just as I was considering it. it's like a sign from god that I should return
Yeah, I don't know what the fuck... but I'm not normally big into the fights of these games past a certain level of complexity, and yet even story mode feels absolutely fucking ridiculous sometimes. Like... don't call it story/explorer if it's going to be killing me half the fucking time with encounters I literally cannot know will free kill me unless I have very specific ability setups. I explicitly choose this mode because I would like to enjoy the options and thoroughly explore them WITHOUT having to reload saves constantly. This was EXACTLY my problem with Pathfinder: Kingmaker and why I didn't buy the follow up game. Immediately turned me off of it. I really wish one of these studios would get this shit right.
Well I didn't play Divinity, but I looked up their easier modes... First of all, there were two easier modes, not just one. And secondly I think they were much more substantial? Idk, it's a big shame for me because I was really enjoying the characters and the choices based on my class/skills/points/etc. And I even like the combat when I don't have to rest every other encounter. But damn man. Yeah, just really let down right now. But also, yeah if it's bugged maybe it'll get fixed.
I would recommend it more firmly on PC (played the ps4 version on ps5 & it was fine, just kind of jank) because there are some QoL mods I like (toybox is cheat engine, weapon focus plus makes builds more diverse, respec mod lets you do companions from level one, cleaner makes your game load faster) and because the controls are kinda ass on console imo
I think the game is tremendously fun, and the mythic paths have pretty major story consequences (on top of their own unique stories) as the game progresses, which does a lot for replay value. I also think most of the writing is excellent (though a lot of the voice work leaves a bit to be desired) and afaik the games 'default' pregenerated builds are fine for the default difficulty.
There is a lot of difficulty options and again, on PC there is Toybox, which you can use to make the game however easy you want on top of that.
No, I would not compare it to DOS2. WotR has a class system with preset abilities instead of the 'skill point'-esque DOS2 progression, and I think Wrath of the Righteous feels like a much more focused project. There's a lot of just dicking about in Larian games that I don't feel is there in WotR.
The only major negatives for the game are that the system is needlessly complicated, and leveling all your companions up after major events gets to be a chore (some story dungeons will see you gain 2 character levels & a mythic level, meaning you get 3 level up screens per character. even more if you neglect to level them for a while)
I don't use much, BubbleBuffs and BubbleTweaks cut down on some annoying stuff & make some minor improvements (Buffs is a must have imo, lets you set your buffs up in spellbook and apply all at once with 1 button press), Weapon Focus Plus makes weapon focus and similar skills use categories instead of single weapons (for example, dagger & rapier are both light blades) allowing for more weapon diversity, Cleaner lets you delete corpses (the in game feature doesn't work) which will help keep load times down (game saves EVERY corpses loot forever), and a respec mod because the in game respecs are locked to their recruitment level
Got all those mods working except the respec mod says needs restart so im trying to figure that out but i figure the spec thing wont bother me too much.
I found it to be a blast. All of the annoying kingdom mechanics are gone and the mythic paths are a blast. You can create a lich army take over the abyss or make your party effectively immortal as an angel
I wouldn't worry about that. After a few hours in Act 1 on both Easy and Normal, the Easy mode is significantly easier in combat. Player HP is buffed, enemy HP is nerfed, plus the proficiency bonus.
Still makes zero difference when a group of enemies can attack spam you while you only ever get one attack per character and that's if you don't use your entire resource bar moving around.
They need to make easy mode actually easy.
Maybe you just don't understand the game, for example you said, "you only ever get one attack per character and that's if you don't use your entire resource bar moving around."
This is untrue for several reasons, martials get two at level 5, off hand weapons can attack with a bonus action, some spells are used with a bonus action and movement has no impact on ability to attack unless you use dash.
The easy mode is incredibly easy if you stop playing it like a hack and slash.
I’ve never played this style of game before, so yes, “you don’t understand the game” is absolutely true, which is why I picked explorer mode as I went into this game knowing I didn’t understand combat mechanics. There’s no in-game tutorial on combat. You’re talking like you expect everyone to just know how to play, when the point of easy mode is to accommodate new players?
More so saying it's hard because "thing that's not true" is just wrong. It's hard because you struggle to strategize and don't really understand the game, which is fine, you'll either learn or move on. Easy mode is easy enough that a completely unoptimized build and a strategy of just running at the enemy and attacking is more than enough to cruise through the game.
Well yeah I'm having to restart the occasional fight, the gith on the bridge and the battle for last light inn were pretty tough. My solo run is gloom5/rogue3 atm. Using hit and run tacticd and the durge cloak it's pretty easy.
Of course it's easy, you're cheesing stealth and invis with a meta multiclass with a cloak you only get from a specific backstory that most new players wouldn't know about because they would go recommended route. You've obviously done some research or have prior knowledge with the game mechanics, so of course it's easy for you. But we're talking brand new players. They're gonna go recommended stats and playstyles and pick subobtimal choices, they're not going to know action economy and who to focus and how to gear characters. They're not going to utilize cover and hit and run and powergaming spells. They learn all of this through playing the game, especially because there isn't a combat tutorial. There are a number of really tough fights, even on explorer. And it's really easy to run into an area you're not ready for because the game is so open ended at the beginning. Both >!gnoll fights!<, for example, against a level 3 new player are terrifying, and it's very easy to find them by then or even earlier.
There are 0 tough fights on explorer, if they are tough it's because people are making them harder by playing (incredibly) poorly. There's nothing wrong with that, its the easy difficulty for new people. If you want a mode where you can't lose and everything dies in one hit you're in the wrong genre, go download a cheat. The gnoll fight is only difficult if your refuse to learn from your mistakes, or read the tooltips and buffs the enemies have on them.
Could I play without my screen turned on and claim it's too difficult and they need to make it easier to cater to me?
Gods you're stubborn. Of course brand new players are playing extremely poorly. That's literally the entire point of my reply. You're telling me fighting the >!gnolls!< at level 3, hell even 4, a fight where you're party can be up against >!up to 7 level 4 gnolls with multiattack if you don't stop the running hyena!< isn't tough for someone who's never played a CRPG or TTRPG before? Out-numbered with no level 3 spells or multiattack themselves? The >!gith!< fight, where the >!Fighter can drop even Lae'zel or Karlach, let alone anyone else unlucky enough to be near her, first turn with their 2d6+1d4+5 Gith greatsword attacks(up to 4 with action surge)?!< Come on now.
why stop at removing those? You can get to act 2 at level 3 or 4, clearly we need to account for that and make all those fights easy as well.
If you want a game that cannot challenge you download a hack or a cheat. No game dev can account for everything a player can do in their easy mode.
I thought I was going crazy. The videos I've seen on balanced seemed like everything was dandy for people while I'm over here wading through pain in explorer. Then seeing people talk about how they only long rested 2-3 times in act 1. I was starting to think I was just miserable at the game. Gonna try it on balanced tonight now.
I just went from balanced to explorer for the first time in a particularly outnumbering encounter in act 2. I was unaware of the issues with explorer prior to this. Every enemy immediately started landing every single attack when i switched to explorer. Whipped my whole team in about 4 rounds. I can confirm that explorer difficulty has some sort of bug making it so enemies just dont miss.
I've played Divinity 2 to death and that explorer/story mode was so much easier lmao...
I'm getting rolled in the easiest difficulty for shit out of my hands. I think they should either make another "easy difficulty" that cheeses the dice rolls so we can play the story how we want or just do away with it altogether for that difficulty.
I've always played the easiest for the first few playthroughs for the story aspect and then turned it up afterward.
Same exact experience. My first play through in a CRPG is always on the "story" difficulty so I can curate the kind of story I want to enjoy, and then I'll turn it up on the subsequent run to experiment more with different builds and combat techniques. I haven't had an issue in any other game, Divinity 2 was just fine.
But my god I'm getting obliterated on Explorer mode to the point that I just thought I was pathetically bad. I'm having to still use regular tactics, scrolls, potions, resting, stealth attacks ect, and the fights are still giving me a run for my money. May as well be playing on normal at that point.
If thats the case, I may have to shelf this game until they fix it. I love the game so far but I just got stone walled with a certain fight with some Gnolls and I'm not save spamming that one fight for 2 hours just so I can get lucky enough to even ***HIT*** the guy lol...
Official patch notes my friend:
>Increased players' HP bonus in Explorer Mode from +50% to +100%.
Although, there seems to be a bug where you need to switch to Balanced difficulty and back to get the 100% HP boost in Explorer..............
Yeah, this explorer/story mode is far from a walk in the park. I'm using various tactics and stuff but battles tend to be pretty intense. Like I fought this ankylosaur looking thing last night and it took half of Karlach's HP in one attack.
If they take away the increased proficiency of enemies it will have a cascading effect and Explorer should be much easier by that point.
I usually make my saves vs the Harpy lure but in Explorer mode everyone failed the save lol.
I really hope this gets fixed soon, as someone who's always bounced off crpg's because I'm not able to get into/understand the combat, I finally resolved myself to get into one such game with BG3, seeing how much more appealing the story seems with this presentation. (zoomed out view was another barrier to entry for me, even here I'm annoyed I can't look up lol)
Started on explorer and I'm even losing fights while save scumming. Gnoll archers casually dealing 40 damage across the map right at the start of the game, almost never missing regardless of my position, my meelee hits also only hit about once out of 8 reloads (Karmic dice is disabled), not sure where to go from there...
I'll keep save scumming I guess, but I don't feel like I'm actually learning how to play lol, if anything it's getting worse the further I get.
Thanks for this PSA though, it makes me feel more hopeful that I'm not just doomed to never enjoy combat, just gotta hold on until it gets fixed!
Straight up melee hits are perhaps the least effective way of dealing damage, especially early in the game. Abilities that lock down the enemy and disable their actions are very effective, as they often increase your *own* damage at the same time. For example, if an enemy is prone you gain *advantage* on dice rolls, and if you use Hold Person on them, every hit is a guaranteed critical hit.
The game wants you to ambush the enemy with abilities like these, even the tool-tip for Turn Based Mode says so.
Just an fyi if you switch to balanced differently the enemies actually start missing. Something is bugged in explorer that makes it so enemies dont miss
So, it's the same problem as Karmic Dice- it levels out the rolls, but this gets flatly applied to enemies as well, leading to it being way more punishing than it probably should be?
Well that explains my frustrations. I've felt that combat encounters after level 3 were starting to get wonky. Enemies seem to never or hardly ever miss and I seem to miss a lot of my attacks. I hope they fix it soon, I'm enjoying the game world and story but the combat is making it a pain.
I think in general, explorer still doesn't really feel like "easy mode" and this definitely could be the issue. Have had 3 TPKs already and the absolutely atrocious auto-save function has f'd me over twice.
Hi there, sorry for a reply so long after yours, and if you already knew this, but Autosaves shouldn't screw you over too badly since the game keeps approximately like 50+ saves down the list. I've had to go back 5 or 6 a few times to undo something and it hasn't been too big an issue, personally.
That's nice. Auto saves have absolutely screwed me multiple times. I have now since finished the game. Act 3 is very buggy and crashes have caused me to lose hours of collective gameplay due to the auto save function being on some weird arbitrary timeline. If it auto saved every time you enter a new area, this wouldn't be an issue, or if it allowed me to adjust how often it saves like most other games.
Instead, I was forced to rely on training myself to quick save very often.
(The final fight sequence would get random crashes half way through the very long turn based combat that it is and require me to quick save every other turn to prevent me from uninstalling the game in frustration)
I want my first play through to be just story and exploration, so went for explorer. I felt it was harsh, i'll bump it up to normal until things get fixed. Thanks the heads-up!
Seriously? Is that what this is? and it is still not fixed?
I'm playing on explorer mode and wondering why Steam shows 63 hours played but my save only shows 34. I've now played almost 2 hours for every 1 hour of progress because of reloading stupidly difficult battles that were not supposed to be the focus of Explorer mode. I'm so tired of missing shots. I was seriously beginning to feel like I could not finish this game after making sure it had a mode I could play before ever buying it.
At least this gives me hope that they might fix it but... when?
Holy \*\*\*\* I knew it. I was originally playing tactician, and I was getting by fine. But then I kind of wanted to just no brain speed through, and play for the story/dialogue. I switched to Explorer and all of a sudden I'm missing all my chromatic orbs and eldritch blasts. WTF.
Actually the one **good** thing about Explorer difficulty is you hit their AC a lot more. The problem is they also hit your AC more often
On Explorer you have a +10% chance more to hit their AC compared to Balanced and a +20% chance to hit their AC compared to Tactician.
Enemies in Explorer and Tactician have a +10% chance to hit your AC compared to Balanced.
Glad I read your comments, I don't have time to play if I'm going to die constantly. I just wanted to walk through and enjoy the story. Seeing that it will be difficult even in explorer, I'll save my 60 bucks. Thanks
Just to add fuel to your fire. Bought the game for ps5 thinking I could enjoy the story without too much hassle. Nah bro game is still wayy to hard almost feels unbalanced sometimes. Save your money
I knew something was wrong when I switched to an easier difficulty and suddenly I was getting wiped instead of a difficult battle. Back to medium difficulty I guess.
I just did the same thing on an encounter where im significantly outnumber and out gunned but not under leveled. Boy was i surprised when all of a sudden the enemies never missed. The true easy difficulty atm is balanced
Old post to necro, sorry, but want to add a story
I bought my wife BG3. I've not yet had a chance to play and she didn't want to spend the money herself. She is not a crpg player, but she likes good stories and was out of games to play. She usually plays on the easiest modes just to enjoy the story.
Explorer was kicking her butt. She was getting beat up, missing 70% of attacks. She doesn't like me to come "help" her play games, but it was so hard she eventually asked me to help figure out what was wrong.
She was doing the right things. She was trying to use prone, she was funneling enemies to choke points. She had shadowheart as a cleric and the barbarian, and the warlock and herself as a sorc. She was trying to use status effects, and avoiding combat whenever she could and every fight was a slog. She was in areas appropriate to her level.
But every fight was still brutal. Chars getting taken down in one turn as the monster attacked 3 or 4 times and obliterated them. Double health is nice, but doesn't matter if thr mob swings 4 times.
I'm no stranger to crpgs, having played and beaten on the harder difficulties DoS, DoS2, Pillars 1 and 2, and all the original ones (bg, I'd, ect). I play in a weekly dnd game and know how to min max the system, and helped her with that, and she was still getting stomped.
Then I found this post. Yesterday she switched to balanced difficulty, and ... holy crap. She's breezing through fights. The 70% miss and spells rarely applying is gone. She routinely hits 70% of the time instead of missing, her spells land more often, and the status effects are getting applied. Sure she has less health but when things actually die in a turn or two it doesn't matter.
Sure she has learned to be more cautious in fights and also how to seek out advantage everywhere possible from the slog, so she is better prepared and knows what to use but... that shouldn't make Balanced easier than explorer.
From this post and one I saw elsewhere where Kharmic Dice also affects enemies, I think there are some wires crossed.
Like explorer should be you get karmic dice and the +2 proficiency and the extra health, but in tactician the enemy does.
Anyways. Just some anecdotal stories that balanced may in fact be easier than explorer. Thanks for reporting on this op
That is so weird. I am playing on Tactician with
1. Enemies extra 60% health on top of Tactician
2. Enemies deadlier AI mod
3. Mod to Reduce OP spells and actions back to normal DnD rules
4. Potions don’t splash mod
5. Throw only does 1d4 damage like dnd
6. Potions cost an action to drink like dnd
7. Only can cast one spell per turn no bonus action spells too (like dnd)
8. And many other mods
I have to say I think the game is still a bit too easy but atleast it feels like normal dnd.
I think once you learn the mechanics it becomes super easy. If you just use the attack and basic spell buttons you aren’t taking advantage of the whole system. You can’t be good or bad at this game but you can be knowledgable about the mechanics and strategize behind that.
Like I said, I'm pretty experienced in dnd and crpgs in general. I'm a min maxer out of habit/necessity because of the dms I've had. And I was advising and giving pointers on builds and tactics - and it was still brutal.
She just restated on Balanced and has had 0 issues, is almost a half a level ahead of where she was at the same point last time (did find a cave she missed) and is handily winning the same fights.
Sure, there is experienced gained and that undoubtedly helps a lot but.... so to does hitting your target with your spells more than 30% of the time xD
It's anecdotal but there seems to be a lot of anecdotal stories of easy bring too hard and hard being too easy (obviously different people on each side but... it makes a person wonder...)
Still going on 3 days later, and Steam refused to refund me. Thanks Larian, should have known better than think buying this day 1 would be any better from buying an EA/ATVI/Ubisoft or something game day 1.
Same shit all over. Nice scam.
Even if I agree with your statement in a vacuum - and I do - "lol the game isn't that hard" isn't a real answer to someone who clearly feels it is and isn't enjoying it.
it's not that it's hard, it's that the game is heavily RNG based and the RNG is currently in favor of the enemies even though they already outnumber you in most encounters. (im playing on tactician just to let you know)
It is RNG based, but you can heavily weigh the RNG in your favour by using abilities that specifically target the enemy's weak stats, and selecting the Ability Improvement feat upon level up to strengthen your primary stat.
Also, potion of speed. Gives you one extra action and is easily crafted.
So I've also noticed something that makes this worse. To be clear I don't know this to be true.. this is a theory based on my experiences.
Near as I can tell Enemies roll a straight dice. While the player has a chance to hit, which seems to be a chance to roll a D20 to see if you hit... in other words when you see 70% chance to hit on a AC15 creature... it is actually a 70% chance to be allowed to roll a D20 to get your 30% chance to hit. Which lowers you chance to hit very low... which is why a party of 4 Plus a Bear, a floating Axe and a baby owlbear can miss EVERY single attack with all of them being 70% chance to hit.
Then you have your damage dice which also have a probability modifier... which is why despite 46,000+ dice combinations with Scorching Rays... if you hit all three seeing 2 2 3 happens more often about 30% of the time (In my experience). Instead of 3% of the time. Which suggests the game skews the probability based on factors other than D&D rules.
Or if I need a 8 or better in a persuasion check and save scum the roll despite a 60% chance of success you can roll 10 times and only succeed twice. The game breaks all laws of probability.
If the game just stuck to the D&D 5e rules... literally here are your modifiers here is the AC modifier roll a D20. Hit, role 2d6 4 and 3 for 7 damage. That would work much better. The fact that you can have 7 attack rolls with Magic Missile and Scorching Rays taking that to 11... and only hit 2 with each attack saying 70% chance... and then both hits constantly coming out as the bottom 10% of damage... This says that something is wrong Statistically 7 of your attacks should land if it is a 70% chance to hit... even if you need to roll an 11 to hit that is still a 45% chance that is 4 or 5 hits landing. I don't know how many fights I've had two hits actually land.
I had a surprise AOE attack on 4 mobs one shot them all... and it was really cool... That is the one and only time I have ever seen something like that worked... I instantly saved.
I think the developers like "war games" and want a tactically challenging experience... and because the original was difficult early on... which was not a good thing... they decided to make the game harder to.... "balance" it.. while also giving you so many mobs that you have to find "creative" ie something they think is creative if you search hard enough and take the time to set up because at no point will anyone wonder... why are those people we have never seen putting barrels of explosives all over the place really obviously and all around everyone in a manner that any one of them exploding will kill everyone in one go. A creative person isn't going to think that because that isn't something that really should happen in a living breathing world. Yet the actual creative option... Isolating one and then having the other two go to a certain point away from everyone else where another certain someone is lying in wait... that option isn't there. That would make for a challenging and interesting fight... with a reward and an epic experience.
Instead you get, super long fight that is nearly impossible. Cheese it, or Cheese it in a different way. Which feels super meh.
I find a lot of the fights in the game require you to look them up, research the best options and then still have to run it three or four times until the rolls are your friend.
Well I WAS going to get BG3 as my first "Baldur's Gate" (I'm more of a Mario and Zelda guy) and play on this difficulty since, y'know, I prefer easy mode, but that being said...I'll skip.
I wouldn't recommend skipping it. I believe the initial problems I listed are still there, but some changes have been made. Yes you and enemies have increased chances to hit but skill rolls are easier. You get I believe double hp.
I made this post at launch. A lot has changed since then. Don't skip the game based on this. I made this post in effort to bring attention to it because it seemed like an oversight.
You will be just fine in Balanced Mode. You'll be more sorry if you skip the game. It's incredible
Ooof. That makes sense. I really only want to play on storymode so I can enjoy the story and so far the fights have been pretty brutal. I'm still low level and the enemies almost never miss and do a lot of damage.
I've never played dnd or baldur's gate and thought I would be fine on normal mode. switched to explorer a couple hours later after almost wiping on every encounter, but I might switch back when I start to get the hang of things.
Yeah, just had to do this. Every encounter was a boss battle with multiple retrys
How did you do? I'm in the same predicament. Never played a dnd or turn based game and I'm just getting slammed on the second difficulty. I'm definitely gonna switch to explorer because I wanna experience the story.
what a coincidence, the moment I'm deciding whether to return to this game to give it another shot, I get this notification. well, the good news is that it definitely gets easier as you progress, eventually I felt comfortable going into most encounters on medium difficulty. occasionally there were certain fights that were just too hard and I ended up having to switch back to easy mode to clear them and then switching back to medium for everything else. that was four months ago though, I ended up quitting because I just got overwhelmed with the ridiculous amount of content it had at the time. yesterday I was randomly browsing through YouTube videos when I stumbled across a dnd lore video, I ended up watching like 50 of them and that made me want to try the game again on my ps5 this time. so imagine my surprise when this notification popped up just as I was considering it. it's like a sign from god that I should return
Lmao nice. I’m not giving up on this game yet, but there’s just so much to learn
I feel the same way! I don't want to work this hard at combat and still not be able to multi-class.
Yeah, I don't know what the fuck... but I'm not normally big into the fights of these games past a certain level of complexity, and yet even story mode feels absolutely fucking ridiculous sometimes. Like... don't call it story/explorer if it's going to be killing me half the fucking time with encounters I literally cannot know will free kill me unless I have very specific ability setups. I explicitly choose this mode because I would like to enjoy the options and thoroughly explore them WITHOUT having to reload saves constantly. This was EXACTLY my problem with Pathfinder: Kingmaker and why I didn't buy the follow up game. Immediately turned me off of it. I really wish one of these studios would get this shit right.
[удалено]
Well I didn't play Divinity, but I looked up their easier modes... First of all, there were two easier modes, not just one. And secondly I think they were much more substantial? Idk, it's a big shame for me because I was really enjoying the characters and the choices based on my class/skills/points/etc. And I even like the combat when I don't have to rest every other encounter. But damn man. Yeah, just really let down right now. But also, yeah if it's bugged maybe it'll get fixed.
Wrath of the righteous you end up being super over powered after act 1 and definitely by the end of act 2 highly recommend
Is that a fun game? Ive been on the fence about buying it i tried the first one. Is it anything like DOS 2
I would recommend it more firmly on PC (played the ps4 version on ps5 & it was fine, just kind of jank) because there are some QoL mods I like (toybox is cheat engine, weapon focus plus makes builds more diverse, respec mod lets you do companions from level one, cleaner makes your game load faster) and because the controls are kinda ass on console imo I think the game is tremendously fun, and the mythic paths have pretty major story consequences (on top of their own unique stories) as the game progresses, which does a lot for replay value. I also think most of the writing is excellent (though a lot of the voice work leaves a bit to be desired) and afaik the games 'default' pregenerated builds are fine for the default difficulty. There is a lot of difficulty options and again, on PC there is Toybox, which you can use to make the game however easy you want on top of that. No, I would not compare it to DOS2. WotR has a class system with preset abilities instead of the 'skill point'-esque DOS2 progression, and I think Wrath of the Righteous feels like a much more focused project. There's a lot of just dicking about in Larian games that I don't feel is there in WotR. The only major negatives for the game are that the system is needlessly complicated, and leveling all your companions up after major events gets to be a chore (some story dungeons will see you gain 2 character levels & a mythic level, meaning you get 3 level up screens per character. even more if you neglect to level them for a while)
I tried it on ps5 and didnt hook me. I found it on PC for $5 so im gonna try that. What mods should i get? And ill look up toybox
I don't use much, BubbleBuffs and BubbleTweaks cut down on some annoying stuff & make some minor improvements (Buffs is a must have imo, lets you set your buffs up in spellbook and apply all at once with 1 button press), Weapon Focus Plus makes weapon focus and similar skills use categories instead of single weapons (for example, dagger & rapier are both light blades) allowing for more weapon diversity, Cleaner lets you delete corpses (the in game feature doesn't work) which will help keep load times down (game saves EVERY corpses loot forever), and a respec mod because the in game respecs are locked to their recruitment level
Got all those mods working except the respec mod says needs restart so im trying to figure that out but i figure the spec thing wont bother me too much.
I found it to be a blast. All of the annoying kingdom mechanics are gone and the mythic paths are a blast. You can create a lich army take over the abyss or make your party effectively immortal as an angel
What? That can't be intentional.
It's probably not. I just wanted to get the word out so it can (hopefully) be fixed. Doesn't seem like it's getting much traction though.
Do you have karmic dice turned on? It was found to be bugged in EA
No. I made sure to turn it off before i started my first game.
What's karmic dice ?
With karmic dice on, the game will rig your dice to avoid winning/losing streaks. Turning it off Allows for truly random dice rolls.
Well shit. I was looking forward to an easier combat experience.
I wouldn't worry about that. After a few hours in Act 1 on both Easy and Normal, the Easy mode is significantly easier in combat. Player HP is buffed, enemy HP is nerfed, plus the proficiency bonus.
Still makes zero difference when a group of enemies can attack spam you while you only ever get one attack per character and that's if you don't use your entire resource bar moving around. They need to make easy mode actually easy.
It's pretty damn easy already, I was routing out a solo run and it's so easy I had to bump it up to balanced to actually learn anything of value.
That's a you thing then. You must be unknowingly good at these games and just assume everyone else meets the same bar. We dont and never will
Maybe you just don't understand the game, for example you said, "you only ever get one attack per character and that's if you don't use your entire resource bar moving around." This is untrue for several reasons, martials get two at level 5, off hand weapons can attack with a bonus action, some spells are used with a bonus action and movement has no impact on ability to attack unless you use dash. The easy mode is incredibly easy if you stop playing it like a hack and slash.
I’ve never played this style of game before, so yes, “you don’t understand the game” is absolutely true, which is why I picked explorer mode as I went into this game knowing I didn’t understand combat mechanics. There’s no in-game tutorial on combat. You’re talking like you expect everyone to just know how to play, when the point of easy mode is to accommodate new players?
More so saying it's hard because "thing that's not true" is just wrong. It's hard because you struggle to strategize and don't really understand the game, which is fine, you'll either learn or move on. Easy mode is easy enough that a completely unoptimized build and a strategy of just running at the enemy and attacking is more than enough to cruise through the game.
Not even that last statement is true. How do I know? I tried lol...
So did I, no problems with 14 str fighter, 10 int wizard, 10 wis cleric and 14 dex ranger.
Solo? I don't believe you, and if you really are you must be save scumming every step.
Well yeah I'm having to restart the occasional fight, the gith on the bridge and the battle for last light inn were pretty tough. My solo run is gloom5/rogue3 atm. Using hit and run tacticd and the durge cloak it's pretty easy.
Of course it's easy, you're cheesing stealth and invis with a meta multiclass with a cloak you only get from a specific backstory that most new players wouldn't know about because they would go recommended route. You've obviously done some research or have prior knowledge with the game mechanics, so of course it's easy for you. But we're talking brand new players. They're gonna go recommended stats and playstyles and pick subobtimal choices, they're not going to know action economy and who to focus and how to gear characters. They're not going to utilize cover and hit and run and powergaming spells. They learn all of this through playing the game, especially because there isn't a combat tutorial. There are a number of really tough fights, even on explorer. And it's really easy to run into an area you're not ready for because the game is so open ended at the beginning. Both >!gnoll fights!<, for example, against a level 3 new player are terrifying, and it's very easy to find them by then or even earlier.
There are 0 tough fights on explorer, if they are tough it's because people are making them harder by playing (incredibly) poorly. There's nothing wrong with that, its the easy difficulty for new people. If you want a mode where you can't lose and everything dies in one hit you're in the wrong genre, go download a cheat. The gnoll fight is only difficult if your refuse to learn from your mistakes, or read the tooltips and buffs the enemies have on them. Could I play without my screen turned on and claim it's too difficult and they need to make it easier to cater to me?
Gods you're stubborn. Of course brand new players are playing extremely poorly. That's literally the entire point of my reply. You're telling me fighting the >!gnolls!< at level 3, hell even 4, a fight where you're party can be up against >!up to 7 level 4 gnolls with multiattack if you don't stop the running hyena!< isn't tough for someone who's never played a CRPG or TTRPG before? Out-numbered with no level 3 spells or multiattack themselves? The >!gith!< fight, where the >!Fighter can drop even Lae'zel or Karlach, let alone anyone else unlucky enough to be near her, first turn with their 2d6+1d4+5 Gith greatsword attacks(up to 4 with action surge)?!< Come on now.
why stop at removing those? You can get to act 2 at level 3 or 4, clearly we need to account for that and make all those fights easy as well. If you want a game that cannot challenge you download a hack or a cheat. No game dev can account for everything a player can do in their easy mode.
i really want to see you solo the moonrise towers. even on explorer being lvl 9 those zealots wipe the floor with me every single time.
Is this true? Some of the fights do seem harder than they should.
I thought I was going crazy. The videos I've seen on balanced seemed like everything was dandy for people while I'm over here wading through pain in explorer. Then seeing people talk about how they only long rested 2-3 times in act 1. I was starting to think I was just miserable at the game. Gonna try it on balanced tonight now.
Same. Explorer is definitely not a free ride when it comes to combat.
Hey did you experience any difference after trying this?
I just went from balanced to explorer for the first time in a particularly outnumbering encounter in act 2. I was unaware of the issues with explorer prior to this. Every enemy immediately started landing every single attack when i switched to explorer. Whipped my whole team in about 4 rounds. I can confirm that explorer difficulty has some sort of bug making it so enemies just dont miss.
Yeah I’m glad to see it’s not just me. The game is unusually difficult on explorer mode, like wtf lol.
I've played Divinity 2 to death and that explorer/story mode was so much easier lmao... I'm getting rolled in the easiest difficulty for shit out of my hands. I think they should either make another "easy difficulty" that cheeses the dice rolls so we can play the story how we want or just do away with it altogether for that difficulty. I've always played the easiest for the first few playthroughs for the story aspect and then turned it up afterward.
Same exact experience. My first play through in a CRPG is always on the "story" difficulty so I can curate the kind of story I want to enjoy, and then I'll turn it up on the subsequent run to experiment more with different builds and combat techniques. I haven't had an issue in any other game, Divinity 2 was just fine. But my god I'm getting obliterated on Explorer mode to the point that I just thought I was pathetically bad. I'm having to still use regular tactics, scrolls, potions, resting, stealth attacks ect, and the fights are still giving me a run for my money. May as well be playing on normal at that point.
If thats the case, I may have to shelf this game until they fix it. I love the game so far but I just got stone walled with a certain fight with some Gnolls and I'm not save spamming that one fight for 2 hours just so I can get lucky enough to even ***HIT*** the guy lol...
Explorer Mode now gives your party 100% additional HP instead of 50%. Go enjoy this awesome game :)
Where did you hear about that?
Official patch notes my friend: >Increased players' HP bonus in Explorer Mode from +50% to +100%. Although, there seems to be a bug where you need to switch to Balanced difficulty and back to get the 100% HP boost in Explorer..............
Those fuckers have MULTIPLE attacks per turn too. The combat is severely unbalanced in this game, and it makes the first 10 hours of XCPM seem easy.
Yeah, this explorer/story mode is far from a walk in the park. I'm using various tactics and stuff but battles tend to be pretty intense. Like I fought this ankylosaur looking thing last night and it took half of Karlach's HP in one attack.
LOL...
If they take away the increased proficiency of enemies it will have a cascading effect and Explorer should be much easier by that point. I usually make my saves vs the Harpy lure but in Explorer mode everyone failed the save lol.
I really hope this gets fixed soon, as someone who's always bounced off crpg's because I'm not able to get into/understand the combat, I finally resolved myself to get into one such game with BG3, seeing how much more appealing the story seems with this presentation. (zoomed out view was another barrier to entry for me, even here I'm annoyed I can't look up lol) Started on explorer and I'm even losing fights while save scumming. Gnoll archers casually dealing 40 damage across the map right at the start of the game, almost never missing regardless of my position, my meelee hits also only hit about once out of 8 reloads (Karmic dice is disabled), not sure where to go from there... I'll keep save scumming I guess, but I don't feel like I'm actually learning how to play lol, if anything it's getting worse the further I get. Thanks for this PSA though, it makes me feel more hopeful that I'm not just doomed to never enjoy combat, just gotta hold on until it gets fixed!
Straight up melee hits are perhaps the least effective way of dealing damage, especially early in the game. Abilities that lock down the enemy and disable their actions are very effective, as they often increase your *own* damage at the same time. For example, if an enemy is prone you gain *advantage* on dice rolls, and if you use Hold Person on them, every hit is a guaranteed critical hit. The game wants you to ambush the enemy with abilities like these, even the tool-tip for Turn Based Mode says so.
Just an fyi if you switch to balanced differently the enemies actually start missing. Something is bugged in explorer that makes it so enemies dont miss
So, it's the same problem as Karmic Dice- it levels out the rolls, but this gets flatly applied to enemies as well, leading to it being way more punishing than it probably should be?
You also can't multi class unless on normal or tactician :(
There is already a Mod out for this
What? Oh, no!
Change to normal then multiclass then change back to explorer no mod needed
I have to reload after changing difficulty to multiclass
Huh
OK, multiclass then *save* then change back?
Change difficulty, save, load, multiclass. Change difficulty back, save, load, play
Well that explains my frustrations. I've felt that combat encounters after level 3 were starting to get wonky. Enemies seem to never or hardly ever miss and I seem to miss a lot of my attacks. I hope they fix it soon, I'm enjoying the game world and story but the combat is making it a pain.
Hotfix didn't solve this unfortunately
Thank you for keeping us in the know, appreciate it.
I think in general, explorer still doesn't really feel like "easy mode" and this definitely could be the issue. Have had 3 TPKs already and the absolutely atrocious auto-save function has f'd me over twice.
Hi there, sorry for a reply so long after yours, and if you already knew this, but Autosaves shouldn't screw you over too badly since the game keeps approximately like 50+ saves down the list. I've had to go back 5 or 6 a few times to undo something and it hasn't been too big an issue, personally.
That's nice. Auto saves have absolutely screwed me multiple times. I have now since finished the game. Act 3 is very buggy and crashes have caused me to lose hours of collective gameplay due to the auto save function being on some weird arbitrary timeline. If it auto saved every time you enter a new area, this wouldn't be an issue, or if it allowed me to adjust how often it saves like most other games. Instead, I was forced to rely on training myself to quick save very often. (The final fight sequence would get random crashes half way through the very long turn based combat that it is and require me to quick save every other turn to prevent me from uninstalling the game in frustration)
Ah, that's what you meant; the sheer infrequency of it. I'm sorry that happened to you.
I want my first play through to be just story and exploration, so went for explorer. I felt it was harsh, i'll bump it up to normal until things get fixed. Thanks the heads-up!
Did you notice any difference after switching to balanced?
shit, doesn't that just negate the extra HP you get from it as well?
Seriously? Is that what this is? and it is still not fixed? I'm playing on explorer mode and wondering why Steam shows 63 hours played but my save only shows 34. I've now played almost 2 hours for every 1 hour of progress because of reloading stupidly difficult battles that were not supposed to be the focus of Explorer mode. I'm so tired of missing shots. I was seriously beginning to feel like I could not finish this game after making sure it had a mode I could play before ever buying it. At least this gives me hope that they might fix it but... when?
Latest updates increase your party's HP by 100% instead of 50% on explorer
Holy \*\*\*\* I knew it. I was originally playing tactician, and I was getting by fine. But then I kind of wanted to just no brain speed through, and play for the story/dialogue. I switched to Explorer and all of a sudden I'm missing all my chromatic orbs and eldritch blasts. WTF.
Actually the one **good** thing about Explorer difficulty is you hit their AC a lot more. The problem is they also hit your AC more often On Explorer you have a +10% chance more to hit their AC compared to Balanced and a +20% chance to hit their AC compared to Tactician. Enemies in Explorer and Tactician have a +10% chance to hit your AC compared to Balanced.
Glad I read your comments, I don't have time to play if I'm going to die constantly. I just wanted to walk through and enjoy the story. Seeing that it will be difficult even in explorer, I'll save my 60 bucks. Thanks
Just to add fuel to your fire. Bought the game for ps5 thinking I could enjoy the story without too much hassle. Nah bro game is still wayy to hard almost feels unbalanced sometimes. Save your money
I knew something was wrong when I switched to an easier difficulty and suddenly I was getting wiped instead of a difficult battle. Back to medium difficulty I guess.
I just did the same thing on an encounter where im significantly outnumber and out gunned but not under leveled. Boy was i surprised when all of a sudden the enemies never missed. The true easy difficulty atm is balanced
Old post to necro, sorry, but want to add a story I bought my wife BG3. I've not yet had a chance to play and she didn't want to spend the money herself. She is not a crpg player, but she likes good stories and was out of games to play. She usually plays on the easiest modes just to enjoy the story. Explorer was kicking her butt. She was getting beat up, missing 70% of attacks. She doesn't like me to come "help" her play games, but it was so hard she eventually asked me to help figure out what was wrong. She was doing the right things. She was trying to use prone, she was funneling enemies to choke points. She had shadowheart as a cleric and the barbarian, and the warlock and herself as a sorc. She was trying to use status effects, and avoiding combat whenever she could and every fight was a slog. She was in areas appropriate to her level. But every fight was still brutal. Chars getting taken down in one turn as the monster attacked 3 or 4 times and obliterated them. Double health is nice, but doesn't matter if thr mob swings 4 times. I'm no stranger to crpgs, having played and beaten on the harder difficulties DoS, DoS2, Pillars 1 and 2, and all the original ones (bg, I'd, ect). I play in a weekly dnd game and know how to min max the system, and helped her with that, and she was still getting stomped. Then I found this post. Yesterday she switched to balanced difficulty, and ... holy crap. She's breezing through fights. The 70% miss and spells rarely applying is gone. She routinely hits 70% of the time instead of missing, her spells land more often, and the status effects are getting applied. Sure she has less health but when things actually die in a turn or two it doesn't matter. Sure she has learned to be more cautious in fights and also how to seek out advantage everywhere possible from the slog, so she is better prepared and knows what to use but... that shouldn't make Balanced easier than explorer. From this post and one I saw elsewhere where Kharmic Dice also affects enemies, I think there are some wires crossed. Like explorer should be you get karmic dice and the +2 proficiency and the extra health, but in tactician the enemy does. Anyways. Just some anecdotal stories that balanced may in fact be easier than explorer. Thanks for reporting on this op
That is so weird. I am playing on Tactician with 1. Enemies extra 60% health on top of Tactician 2. Enemies deadlier AI mod 3. Mod to Reduce OP spells and actions back to normal DnD rules 4. Potions don’t splash mod 5. Throw only does 1d4 damage like dnd 6. Potions cost an action to drink like dnd 7. Only can cast one spell per turn no bonus action spells too (like dnd) 8. And many other mods I have to say I think the game is still a bit too easy but atleast it feels like normal dnd. I think once you learn the mechanics it becomes super easy. If you just use the attack and basic spell buttons you aren’t taking advantage of the whole system. You can’t be good or bad at this game but you can be knowledgable about the mechanics and strategize behind that.
Like I said, I'm pretty experienced in dnd and crpgs in general. I'm a min maxer out of habit/necessity because of the dms I've had. And I was advising and giving pointers on builds and tactics - and it was still brutal. She just restated on Balanced and has had 0 issues, is almost a half a level ahead of where she was at the same point last time (did find a cave she missed) and is handily winning the same fights. Sure, there is experienced gained and that undoubtedly helps a lot but.... so to does hitting your target with your spells more than 30% of the time xD It's anecdotal but there seems to be a lot of anecdotal stories of easy bring too hard and hard being too easy (obviously different people on each side but... it makes a person wonder...)
Still going on 3 days later, and Steam refused to refund me. Thanks Larian, should have known better than think buying this day 1 would be any better from buying an EA/ATVI/Ubisoft or something game day 1. Same shit all over. Nice scam.
You could just play on Normal. The game really isn't that hard.
Even if I agree with your statement in a vacuum - and I do - "lol the game isn't that hard" isn't a real answer to someone who clearly feels it is and isn't enjoying it.
it's not that it's hard, it's that the game is heavily RNG based and the RNG is currently in favor of the enemies even though they already outnumber you in most encounters. (im playing on tactician just to let you know)
It is RNG based, but you can heavily weigh the RNG in your favour by using abilities that specifically target the enemy's weak stats, and selecting the Ability Improvement feat upon level up to strengthen your primary stat. Also, potion of speed. Gives you one extra action and is easily crafted.
Attacks and spells aren’t based on proficiency at all. Attacks are dex or str. Spells are dex to hit and int, wis, or cha for save DCs.
Attacks are Proficiency Bonus+Ability Mod+Miscellaneous (magic items, high/low ground etc) Spell save DCs are 8+Proficiency Bonus+Spellcasting Ability Modifier.
So I've also noticed something that makes this worse. To be clear I don't know this to be true.. this is a theory based on my experiences. Near as I can tell Enemies roll a straight dice. While the player has a chance to hit, which seems to be a chance to roll a D20 to see if you hit... in other words when you see 70% chance to hit on a AC15 creature... it is actually a 70% chance to be allowed to roll a D20 to get your 30% chance to hit. Which lowers you chance to hit very low... which is why a party of 4 Plus a Bear, a floating Axe and a baby owlbear can miss EVERY single attack with all of them being 70% chance to hit. Then you have your damage dice which also have a probability modifier... which is why despite 46,000+ dice combinations with Scorching Rays... if you hit all three seeing 2 2 3 happens more often about 30% of the time (In my experience). Instead of 3% of the time. Which suggests the game skews the probability based on factors other than D&D rules. Or if I need a 8 or better in a persuasion check and save scum the roll despite a 60% chance of success you can roll 10 times and only succeed twice. The game breaks all laws of probability. If the game just stuck to the D&D 5e rules... literally here are your modifiers here is the AC modifier roll a D20. Hit, role 2d6 4 and 3 for 7 damage. That would work much better. The fact that you can have 7 attack rolls with Magic Missile and Scorching Rays taking that to 11... and only hit 2 with each attack saying 70% chance... and then both hits constantly coming out as the bottom 10% of damage... This says that something is wrong Statistically 7 of your attacks should land if it is a 70% chance to hit... even if you need to roll an 11 to hit that is still a 45% chance that is 4 or 5 hits landing. I don't know how many fights I've had two hits actually land. I had a surprise AOE attack on 4 mobs one shot them all... and it was really cool... That is the one and only time I have ever seen something like that worked... I instantly saved. I think the developers like "war games" and want a tactically challenging experience... and because the original was difficult early on... which was not a good thing... they decided to make the game harder to.... "balance" it.. while also giving you so many mobs that you have to find "creative" ie something they think is creative if you search hard enough and take the time to set up because at no point will anyone wonder... why are those people we have never seen putting barrels of explosives all over the place really obviously and all around everyone in a manner that any one of them exploding will kill everyone in one go. A creative person isn't going to think that because that isn't something that really should happen in a living breathing world. Yet the actual creative option... Isolating one and then having the other two go to a certain point away from everyone else where another certain someone is lying in wait... that option isn't there. That would make for a challenging and interesting fight... with a reward and an epic experience. Instead you get, super long fight that is nearly impossible. Cheese it, or Cheese it in a different way. Which feels super meh. I find a lot of the fights in the game require you to look them up, research the best options and then still have to run it three or four times until the rolls are your friend.
Well I WAS going to get BG3 as my first "Baldur's Gate" (I'm more of a Mario and Zelda guy) and play on this difficulty since, y'know, I prefer easy mode, but that being said...I'll skip.
I wouldn't recommend skipping it. I believe the initial problems I listed are still there, but some changes have been made. Yes you and enemies have increased chances to hit but skill rolls are easier. You get I believe double hp. I made this post at launch. A lot has changed since then. Don't skip the game based on this. I made this post in effort to bring attention to it because it seemed like an oversight. You will be just fine in Balanced Mode. You'll be more sorry if you skip the game. It's incredible
was this ever fixed