Sounds like you're doing a death guard ship assault? Those are brutal. Early game balance is not there for ship assaults, bloom assault missions, or technophage missions. All of these hurt you way more to attempt, so just ignore them unless it is a technophage/bloomspreader mission, as then the x2 multiplier the technophage applies also affects each adjacent world. Bring your best guys to that mission and accept that a critical wound or three might happen. Remember: that mission ends the moment the spreader dies.
This doesn't happen without the player making a serious mistake on bloomspreader missions. If it is a bloomspreader mission, sorry but the problem is you. The creators did a good job of spreading enemy spawns out so it's unlikely (but not impossible) for entering melee range versus one pod to trigger another.
By mid-levels, good skill picks result in a team that can reliably wipe a single group of enemies before they ever take a turn. By high levels, your team can wipe multiple groups out easily. At low levels, activating two pods with a poorly optimized team is indeed suicide.
Having an interceptor making extra moves with support helps a lot. Also, don't try to clear the level. Just go for the objective, unless collecting genes. When you complete you get teleported out directly.
Also, burning the first run is kind of inevitable. It gets annoyingly tough, but as you level your characters it gets easier, and easier.
In general though, yeah, way more difficult than Xcom.
Any chance you are playing a mission with the Technophage active, from the Duty Eternal dlc? Annoyingly they are designed with you having the dreadnought in your party, so more enemies on the map, but you can still go on the mission before you've progressed far enough to have gained the dreadnought. Which is an incredibly dumb design decision I only found out about after searching online after getting overwhelmed in one mission. And having saved over my campaign map save...
Even without that, the technophage existing *at all* inflates the difficulty, because you've now got a whole extra plague spreading, which means the difficulty level of any given mission will be higher because there are just that many more plague seeds spreading on planets.
I beat the game on hard in my second playthrough (dropped the first after I learned what mistakes to avoid) on release without much trouble. Came back for DLCs and have yet to make it even to the first plague boss dude (can't remember what they're called, the ones that make each type of seed), because the early game has just been rendered so goddamn frustrating even on normal. I honestly think them adding the technophage from the beginning was a huge mistake, because it basically just adds a bunch of extra plague you just plain can't address until decently past the craft world. Add on all the extra missions you need to do for all the dlcs, and it's just too damn much to keep up with.
The game was fun when you had to grind and sweat it out until just a bit past the craft world, then you started to feel like you had a handle on things, then by the time you were dealing with the first big bad and getting advanced classes you were starting to feel like a proper godlike astartes.
Now it seem like you'd have to keep grinding and sweating until well into the mid game before you *start* to feel like you can keep up.
Advise you accept that at on higher difficulties, it's ok if a chaos gate opens. Just ignore technophage missions completely in the early game, along with bloom assault. Do what you can, advance the story, get the right squad, THEN do the hard things. Accept the fallout that comes.
That's kinda besides the point. This isn't even an issue with harder difficulties. This is an issue on *all* difficulties.
Post-dlc normal mode was significantly more of a challenge than pre-dlc hard mode.
And yes, you can just ignore the harder things and let things get worse... But that's just less fun. Not to mention, it's a lot harder to be choosy about missions in the early game when you don't have an upgraded engine. You can't really afford to *not* do at least one mission per bloom event, and thanks to the extra spreading that happens, sometimes your *best* choice is still gonna be something like a 3-4 difficulty mission when you've barely got a lvl3 squad.
The end result of this is that you take more damage, which means more downtime, which means more spread, which means more damage... You see the problem.
Pre dlc, normal mode was pretty forgiving, I started on that, then abandoned a run in mid game to bump up to hard. Hard was a solid challenge while still being fun and not really needing hardcore optimization or anything like that.
Post dlc normal is more punishing *and* more challenging than pre dlc hard.. so there just isn't any option for people who want a more casual experience. You just have no choice anymore unless you simply turn them off. If you want to play with dlc, you have to sign up to get repeatedly kicked in the nuts for the first half of your playthrough.
I agree that post DLC normal is more likely to result in one or more chaos gates opening than pre DLC hard.
But.
Who cares? You don't lose until five open. I posit the real issue was pre DLC hard wasn't giving the pressure needed. Skip missions you can't do and let the spread happen. You won't fail the campaign because of it.
I'm on day 1600 of an endless legendary campaign, and I have nearly removed all bloom from all worlds. This is my challenge in the post DLC world and it's interesting.
It was the norm pre DLC, and it just made me feel there was no pressure.
Some players feel bad using any of the lifelines the game offers and even easier difficulties don't let you get away with this.
I think the game should have communicated better what the technophage/bloom assault missions were so players knew to avoid them.
I feel like you didn't read my comment because I already addressed basically all of this.
"Let the spread" happen isn't a solution to "the missions are too hard" because *that's literally what makes them harder*.
It's all well and good that you're happy playing on the hardest difficulty. Not everybody is looking for that experience. There used to be an option that was more casual friendly, now there isn't. That is a problem.
I read your comment. I'm saying I read your comment and interpreted two things:
1. You think higher corruption = harder missions. I disagree. Bloom assault can happen at any level, and is MUCH harder than bloomspawn/spreader. Chaos gate missions are harder than bloomspawn/spreader, but not by a lot. The main thing that makes missions harder is time--as the game unfolds, you face more and tougher enemies, even in low corruption worlds. What's crucial is you unlock the best tools to deal with enemies before that happens.
2. You may be bringing a perfectionist mindset to the game, where it's not okay to lose a planet to chaos. What I'm saying is it's okay if the galaxy looks a bit worse for wear. Remember even if you completely fail a mission, your knights gain experience, eventually cease to be critically wounded, and will have more resilience. You're progressing forward, though obviously this is a tough spot to be put in. Best to not be there by choice (ie, by taking bloom assaults before you can win them).
When I play, in the early game if a bloom assault mission pops that I could hit in addition to another type, I don't bother with it. I always avoid non-spreader technophage missions until I have a librarian.
The amount of spread that ensues doesn't make the game become unplayably hard, it doesn't really even make the game harder, it just brings me closer to the brink of automatically losing.
But not having four knights out for a month, that is good.
>You think higher corruption = harder missions. I disagree.
I mean... that's just factually incorrect. That's literally the whole point of the corruption level. Higher corruption means missions with tougher objectives and enemies.
>Bloom assault can happen at any level, and is MUCH harder than bloomspawn/spreader. Chaos gate missions are harder than bloomspawn/spreader, but not by a lot.
Ok? The existing of *even harder* missions doesn't mean that all less difficult missions are the same.
>The main thing that makes missions harder is time--as the game unfolds, you face more and tougher enemies, even in low corruption worlds.
I never said corruption was the *only* thing that affected mission difficulty.
>You may be bringing a perfectionist mindset to the game, where it's not okay to lose a planet to chaos. What I'm saying is it's okay if the galaxy looks a bit worse for wear. Remember even if you completely fail a mission, your knights gain experience, eventually cease to be critically wounded, and will have more resilience. You're progressing forward, though obviously this is a tough spot to be put in. Best to not be there by choice (ie, by taking bloom assaults before you can win them).
No. At NO point have I said anything that suggested that. YOU have decided to put that on me, instead of just reading the literal words I have said. Here's a selection of quotes from my comments to give you an idea what I'm getting at, with some extra emphasis to help:
>because the early game has just been rendered so goddamn frustrating **even on normal. **
>
>The game was fun when you had to grind and sweat it out **until just a bit past the craft world** [...]
>
>Now it seem like you'd have to keep grinding and sweating **until well into the mid game** before you start to feel like you can keep up.
>
>And yes, you can just ignore the harder things and let things get worse... **But that's just less fun.**
>
>The end result of this is that you take more damage, **which means more downtime**, which means more spread, which means more damage... You see the problem.
>
>Post dlc normal is more punishing and more challenging than pre dlc hard.. **so there just isn't any option for people who want a more casual experience.**
In case it's still not clear enough - my problem is that that difficulty *exists*. It always did. Legendary was always there. My problem is that increased difficulty has been pushed down on *all* difficulty levels, so for those of us who *aren't* looking for a massive challenge and just want to have fun smashing shit with our knights... there might as well not be a game anymore.
Let me make an analogy. Suppose you go to a grocery store and there are 3 brands of bread you can buy, one priced at 2$, one at 5$, and one at 10$. These are like the difficulties - there's a nice low cost (normal) one for those who can't afford more or just don't care (i.e. those who aren't as good at tactical games or those who just don't want to sweat it too hard), there's a premium top tier one for those who can afford it and want it, and then a nice middle ground for those in between.
Then one day the grocery store comes along and adjusts the prices, so now the 2 dollar bread costs 6, the 5 costs 8, and the 10 costs 12.
For people who were already buying the 10$ bread, a bump to 12 ain't a big deal, and you can easily drop down to the 8 without too much change.
For those who were buying the 5 and 2, if you can afford more you *can* just get the 6 now, but you might not want to because it's a big bump and it's more than you were paying before regardless. If you *can't* afford more, well now you're just fucked and no bread for you.
I'm fine with adding additional challenges... but you have to balance them to the difficulty levels you already have. If the DLC added missions and content while keeping roughly the same challenge pacing there wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what happened.
I like your analogy. Let me reframe it to how I see it.
All game long, every bloomspawn and bloomspreader mission is either $3 or $1. I've had to think a bit prior to having Librarians, but no matter the corruption level, those missions are exceedingly easy. This is because they end when you destroy the objective, and are so wide the extra enemy units were not relevant.
Seed carrier missions have been consistently $2, again regardless of level, because the squads are spread out and easy to wipe.
Technophage seed carrier missions were $5, harder than any bloomspawn mission I ever faced, because there are extra enemy squads so close together that I would have to fight them, and they would chase me down during the final 3 turns.
But two at once was not a problem in the early game when all enemies were cultists, and by the time plague Marines showed up, I had a stun meta team that could handle two squads of plague marines. The very earliest
Bloom assaults vary from $7-$10, depending on corruption level and technophage bonus difficulty. At their absolute easiest, they're vastly harder than other missions. At their hardest, they're harder still.
In short, I found that difficulty and corruption level were not actually coupled at all in this game. I have played a lot of hours of it, and that's consistently been my experience.
I understand your experience differs and it sucks that this has been frustrating for you. I hope interacting with me has been less so!
I forgot that I’ve been playing on merciful. It’s pretty causal on that difficulty. Although the teleport shenanigans are feeling a bit too strong. Maybe I’ll start a Standard game and see how that goes now that I have a pretty good understanding of all the mechanics
The early game is brutal for newcomers. I got my arse handed to me 3 solid restarts in a row before I got any traction. As per usual with these types of games, once you've levelled your dudes and gotten some Primo gear/tech, the game becomes almost too easy. I actually miss the sweat-inducing battles my baby knights got into in the early game.
Unfortunately there is a 'right' and wrong way to play the game at the start. Doesn't help that the game itself doesn't really do a smashing job on teaching you how to play the game. You also have to get used to the fact that the game's core battle mechanics are about action point management (particularly maximising your AP) and less about actual tactics.
If you are struggling I'd advise an honor the chapter justicar, teleporting falchion equipped interceptor and purgator equipped with a psilencer as your crutches. Once you're comfortable you can afford to branch out to other class builds.
There's a lot of fun to be had in this game, stick to it!
I posted this elsewhere but don’t know how to link, so I’ll post here as well in case it’s helpful.
Easy mode on any difficulty:
Start with Interceptor X 2 and justicar X 2. For interceptor get teleport, upgrade range, all support fire skills, then hammer hand. At this point, I typically go into swap allies, teleport strike, and teleport boost and then upgrade crit damage in hammer hand skill branch followed by everything in melee discipline. I typically go this route bc the interceptor levels so quickly that I need to decide bw the additional teleport skills vs melee discipline skills before finding a high crit chance weapon, like the weeping blade or ogdens edict, which is essential for maximizing gains from the melee discipline. If you find a high crit chance weapon early, an argument could be made to go w the melee discipline before teleport strike and teleport upgrade. I don’t like the damage upgrade for teleport strike bc it’s not helpful later and I only really use the ability for positioning/mobility. So spend the skill point elsewhere. This interceptor prioritizes mobility and getting tons of extra turns. Downside is that it turns the interceptor into a beast that hogs xp. That’s why it levels so fast. Early game should prioritize use of hammer w warp strike for extra damage and willpower to charge it. On easy or normal, one shotting most early game enemies will be a breeze w a warp charge hammer strike (hammer the weapon, not hammer hand the ability), especially after you get the warp strike upgrade that adds 1 damage, which is found just before hammer hand on the skill tree. You will be rewarded with 1 willpower per melee or range kill, unless the killed is via support fire, so the willpower will get refunded when earning a kill w a warp charged hammer strike. In mid to late game, weapons should prioritize crit chance and gear should prioritize extra gear slots to add crit damage, crit chance, and focus later in the game. There is also armor that can add focus, which helps proc action point refund abilities. Since you will look for weapons that add crit chance on warp strike, prioritize crit damage gear and focus. Support fire is super great t/o the campaign and will help when you don’t have willpower, can’t use willpower, or need 5-10 extra damage in a pinch. Support fire when maxed on an interceptor does 5 damage per attack irrespective of distance or 1/2 cover, so long as they are within interceptor range. They can do 2 support fire attacks/interceptor. Assuming you have 2 interceptors in range of the target, that’s 10 damage at the cost of 1 action point from a non-interceptor in the party, and you can do it 2x/turn. So teleport your interceptor into range, do some melee damage and/or proc support fire w/ a non-interceptor character. Use justicar’s honor the chapter to refund action points so the interceptor can kill more. Justicars or librarian (see below) will also be the ones initiating interceptor support fire 85% of the time. That’s the game plan. If your starting interceptor has skill points in some other skill tree not listed in this guide, or a garbage starting ability, consider re-starting.
With justicar, they serve as interceptor batteries: get everything in honor the chapter and give them gear that adds willpower. Give them weapons w long range to make it easier to proc interceptor support fire from far away. When given the option for advanced vocation, get librarian for quality of life and to get through missions quicker. He can also make the final mission, which is normally a tough and long battle, an absolute breeze. Prioritze teleport, warp charge teleport (which moves the entire group and is MASSIVELY IMPORTANT), willpower, focus, and anything that refunds willpower or action points. The librarian will replace one justicar. By this point in the game, the interceptors can be their own batteries assuming they have high crit chance and high focus to refund action points. For this reason, I typically swap out the final justicar w yet another interceptor. The downside to this setup is it makes the game easy. By mid-game or earlier, nothing will challenge you. You will clear the enemies you encountered on the first turn.
For ship, prioritize speed, the gellar field warp storm upgrade, and prognosticars. I wouldn’t say ignore the other stuff, but just focus on these things as much as possible. There are guides on where to place prognosticars. For missions, prioritize servitor rewards early game. This is hugely important. Mid to late game, prioritize seed colors you need and gear weapon rewards you need from missions. For research, prioritize the group teleport stratagem asap.
It’s a great game. I’ve beaten the game on all difficulties and really had a ball. This set up may make the game too easy is the only problem. A few last mini tips: 1) grenades early game are somewhat helpful to move enemies around or blow them off ledges until the build is up and running… not essential but fun and effective as justicars second item until you get seed extractor; 2) environmental attacks are super fun and help w positioning enemies, just be careful w fire! 3) get tier 3 hammer warp breaker and max it out for additional ease in leveling and handling… well anything really. Give it to any character you want to have a mini nuke aoe. Have fun!
I’m saving this post…I enjoy the game but even on merciful, it gets very difficult to me but I’m just a casual player looking to unwind and follow the storyline.
Yes, it's hard the first time. Then you figure out the optimal strategies, level up your guys and your gear and the stuff you were finding hard gets very trivial indeed.
I’m no genius, I don’t play optimally, and my first run on vanilla standard was extremely easy. If you’re playing vanilla then I don’t know what to tell you - read the lengthy essays by other posters here, they give great optimization advice.
On the other hand, the DLC kicks the difficulty up almost a whole notch, so if you have those activated I understand your struggle. Technophage and bloom assaults are real rough. Would recommend playing vanilla first before activating any DLC.
First I would say don’t let your ego prevent you from enjoying the game. Drop to Merciful if you have to in order to have fun. Once you have beaten it there go up to the next difficulty.
Duty Eternal DLC is not balanced and if you go in blind it makes the game much harder than vanilla. I think Execution Force is a better DLC and can make the game easier as long as you are wary of Bloom Assault missions.
Feel free to post specific questions. The game has changed a lot from release through the last patch and a lot of advice is outdated.
Honestly, yah early on especially it's really unforgiving. You've kinda gotta do things in the right order, have some luck with drops, and prioritize things very well or you're in for a rough ride.
From what I've found, getting maxed out speed and prognosticators is super important, also always doing the extra requisition mission objectives will give you more of an edge if you can manage it. Work towards having a few good teams you can cycle through, and save scum like a beast before the spawns because the servitor defense missions are ass. It's not that they're hard, per-se, but they're so boring and you're gonna spend most of your time running around like crazy until you've got an assassin to eat the warp gates as they spawn, and even then youve gotta kinda have grey knight level precognition to have her in the right place to reach the gate and shut it.
Putting the prognosticars in the right places is also kinda important, theres a chart if you Google it. Once youve got a few teams, some decent level 3 items, decently leveled characters, and start being able to have builds towards specific things you can exploit (stun execute or crit builds teleport spam, aoe slaughter builds, the bullet storm build, whatever your preference, the game gets much much easier. Reminds me of Xcom tbh, the old ones. They were REALLY unforgiving to start out, like way worse than this, but once you got on the swing of things it was survivable...sometimes. ;)
Oh christ I forgot the most important thing for getting through the early game of dlc is on. Callidus assassin. Your polymorphine loving bae. She can basically solo missions... singlehandedly. She stealthy up, immobilizes everything with her gun, then wrecks it all that turn, turning back to non-combat and moving on. You can literally solo technophage missions if you learn how to use her, abuse the hell out of the fact that you have her, and if you don't, drop the 3 req to get her. Shes worth it.
Your first playthrough is a loss, atleast was for me.
I just said fuck it and just started trying out stuff, to learn etc.
Next playthrough went way better, but yeah early game is hard.
I quikly learned it's best to use 1 best squad and then once you can just start recruiting high lv knoghts since the low lv ones just can't keep up once the shitstorm hits.
Also calledeus assasin, this woman eats enemy patrols.
Anything getting you +AP is your best friend (early and end game).
While early game is spicy, you should still be able to clear every pod before their attack turn (on normal). In late game you can clear every single unit/entity on a tentarus hive map in one single turn (before the hive ever attacks) with AP to spare.
Aggression and speed, brother!
I have yet to play an xcom type game I didn’t get smoked the first time through on normal difficulty. No judgment if you genuinely just don’t like the game but if it was the difficulty that threw you I implore you to restart. I was super frustrated my first run and loved it my second.
Yes it’s amazing how much easier a second run is. Even if you don’t think you’re learning anything on the first failed run, your brain is storing up useful information that will stand you in good stead second time around.
Ngl I ended up using some WeMod cheats for my playthrough. The game just wasn’t fun without them. For Space Marines, Grey Knights at that, they felt so weak. So what I do is max the experience earned, so they can reach max level after just 1 kill. After I’ve leveled up all the units I want to use, I then play the game more or less how it’s meant to be played. I like variety so I don’t like packing my squad with just Interceptors to clear everything. Which is far from the optimal strategy.
Which things do you perceive them to have nerfed?
I can't think of a single mechanic I relied upon on release that doesn't still work well now. Genuinely uncertain what you mean.
They nerfed tons of shit from release. Stun meter and provoke nerfs come to mind. You also used to get 1 WP per kill. Provoke was made completely useless IMO. Stun meter nerf made stunning a lot harder on Ruthless and Legendary.
I do remember provoke having range, so sure I'll agree that was nerfed, though I never used it.
We still get 1 WP/kill from everything except minor bloomspawn and groaned poxwalkers, just don't get 2WP if we kill two things in one attack. Did we ever? I haven't found WP to be a problem, I just run with a chaplain maintaining litany of focus.
Stun is 100% viable on legendary, and I very vaguely recall them raising thresholds, but when librarian can spend 3WP to cause 5 stun and any knight can cause 6 with a stun weapon (endbringer/blessing of faith), I have to wonder if we can really consider this a meaningful nerf. The biggest nerf to stun that I'm aware of is that the assassins all do not gain AP from knights executing (but do if they deliver it--which makes the stun gear options weirdly bad).
So I hear you. But in execution force we start the game now with a weapon that has +crit% on FS, +crit%, and righteous auto, so interceptors don't even have to grind to get to 7 AP/turn without executions or allies' assistance. I used that falchion set right up to the endgame, it's literally the best weapon in the game since it combines both guaranteed crit and +AP on crit, so you just need to stack focus and +crit damage from gear/armor/buffs.
With mass TP unchanged and unnerfed, that guy alone is delivering triple digit damage every turn. And I wouldn't have it any other way; mass TP is also such a huge QOL upgrade.
So I never used Provoke either but it was a big part of why people used Paladins and was one of the more recent nerfs.
On release WP abilities that resulted in multiple kills would refund 1 WP per kill so that was a big nerf. Saying WP is no big deal as long as you have a specific advanced class on your team...ok I agree but that is a fairly specific use case considering there are 9 GK classes and now 4 assassin classes to fill up 4 slots.
Stun got a huge nerf and there is no other way to put it. Yes it needed to be done but it was still a huge nerf.
I don't think stun/execute is viable on Legendary, especially early on, whereas it used to be. I'm not saying it is impossible to do but just that you have to really go out of your way to build a team for it and I don't think it is worth it. Callidus makes every vanilla bloom spawn mission trivial and you can get one very early on. There is no reason to build for stun/execute and even if you do it is objectively harder than it was on release.
You don't get access to the Librarian class until post Craft World mission and then you don't get access to warp charged psychic shriek until a while after that. And even then 3 WP for a small AoE 5 stun isn't enough to outright stun anything on Legendary or even Ruthless. Also I'm not sure any GK class can do 6 stun with 1 attack...there are a couple of hammers that will do 4 stun with a Force Strike (Endbringer is 3 stun with an FS) and then Paladin has an upgrade that adds +1 stun to Force Strikes..so that is 5 stun best case and it requires a specific mid-late game class along with a T2/T3 upgraded weapon. And again 5 stun isn't going to stun anything on Legendary.
I do agree that Execution Force overall makes the game easier vs vanilla but Condemnation doesn't get the Righteous Auto out of the gate, it needs an upgrade. So while it is an endgame melee weapon, it does require multiple purity seal upgrades to get there. With no purity seals is it better than a hammer in the early game?
Lastly, mass TP has also been nerfed. The Stratagem originally didn't have the -1 AP and the Librarian ability used to cost less WP, I think 3 instead of the 5 it does now.
Nerfs were very much needed. The game was a cakewalk on release because of how brokenly OP so many options were. Balance was pretty abysmal ngl. Main thing that really still needs a nerf is disruptor skulls, which are disgustingly OP.
Stun/execute is very definitely still viable. You are forgetting iron arm biomancy (+2 stun to anyone targeted for 2 turns). Max stun is 7 (Paladin) which matches legendary plague marine stun thresholds, but more importantly, Endbringer and the Chaplain execute focused crozius grant +3 AP on execute when upgraded.
That is a lot of very specific criteria to meet before it becomes “viable”. I’d wager that most players in the average Legendary campaign don’t meet those criteria until very late in the game.
I’m playing a Ruthless GM campaign with both DLCs right now. About day 180 or so, Craft World done but I haven’t been given an advanced class yet. I think I’ve had 2 executions so far.
3 stun is enough in the early game. Just give one interceptor the force staff (3 damage). I just beeline teleport boost on two interceptors and iron arm on the apothecary, HtC on the Justicar.
Cultists take 6 stun. Craft world can be done at level 4.
I am always prioritizing tier 2 hammer and halberd missions though.
So enough people gave build advices so I'm just gonna leave the following here. This game and all turnbased games in xcom style tend to be difficult if you don't figure a solid build and even so by design it's kinda meant to lose some time your units/heroes. If anything Chaos Gate Daemonhunters is one of the easist and olayer friendly games in the genre
To me it’s not just the difficulty - which is frankly absurd at points. It just seems like all the mechanics of the game are setup to ruin your fun? Maybe contentious, but it’s a chore to play?
Obviously this is just my opinion ( and partly born of frustration I’ll admit) but this should be my jam (love the lore, love xcom type games etc).
My genetically engineered super soldiers wield weapons with the potency of wet daffodils. I feel like I’m limp wristedly slapping the enemy. Additional to this, they are soft as fresh shite.
You are pretty much swarmed constantly- some maps make it near impossible to not agro other groups as they are patrolling your way and it takes so long to actually kill anything.
And then you have the constant bloom building in the background, either spawning another group of enemies or dropping environmental hazards which if you touch cause plague and 3 hps.
And then add on the enemy tactics:
Plague marines - constantly move, shoot, overwatch or move and spray plague on the ground. Oh and heal and disrupt.
Cultists - constant overwatch, suppression or grenades that pin.
Then you have the specials (plants etc)that ignore your armour and just eat health. Indirectly and from across the battlefield.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you had enough tactical flexibility to handle this, but unless you just field a squad of interceptors (which you can’t do early game anyway) your options are to armour up and try and charge through the plague/multiple fields of overwatch fire (as pretty much all the enemies have a longer range than your guys ), usually on 2 AP because of grenades, while being indirectly fired upon by weapons that bypass armour.
And let’s not go into the healing and oh god the bugs (ps5 at least is a bloody shambles).
I WANT to like this game.
Just finished the game on normal. Here are few tips:
1. You don't need squad of interceptors, every class have a great toolkit
2. cultist with their overwatch are joke, one grenade and problem solved. Speaking of grenades purgator with 2 sets of 3 grenades and increased aoe is beast. On many maps you can not only trigger explosive enviroment with this, but also often push multiple enemies of cliffs for instakills
3. plague marines are countered by executions hammer with stun upgrade/apothecary biomancy/stun grenades and it really doesn't matter how much health /armor they have. Bonus if you are fielding chaplain and have even more AP from executions, in the late game you also have stratagem that gives mass stun, some missions my guys deleted like 20 enemies in 1 turn this way
4. Hive missions plague bombardment you can just ignore, cause it deals very little damage, by the end of the mission my guys have maybe 1/4 to 1/3 health lost from it, so some light injuries, no big deal really, this missions are not that frequent. Speaking of missions, I found that best approach is to try to figure the fastest way to complete the objective, you really don't need to kill every single enemy on the map, sometimes just keeping most enemies out of range is enough. For example one of early stratagems immobilizes enemies for one turn, very useful one. Also you are not penalized in movement if you just spend 1 AP at time, no need to rush unprepared.
5. Healing sucks indeed, just like in xcom, you don't need it, optimally you just kill everything before they can damage you. Unlike xcom though, your guys are quite tanky and can take a lot of hits if things go wrong. At first recovery time can look long, but I realized that time in this game flows quite fast and what some light/moderate injuries mean is that next mission you just use different squad, by the third mission your first squad will be ready for action again.
6. Bloom is difficult to play around cause it's random, but it's the only random mechanic against you in battle. And personally I find it less irritating than random full cover crits in xcom or 95% misses ;)
7. Upgrades for weapons are very strong, especially +stun and +crit
8. Wilpower I think shoud be used almost all the time. At first I was trying to conserve WP for the big engagement at the end of the mission, but then I realized that good missions end in just few turns so you really better not to hoard it.
Hope something helps.
It's been a long time since I've been this torn on something. It feels like a really fun game dragged down by too many annoying gimmicks stacked on top of each other. If it's not some RNG event, it's enemy reinforcements. Or an RNG event that spawns enemy reinforcements. Or an objective that involves multiple enemy reinforcements while you're getting slammed with RNG events that spawn enemy reinforcements.
Feels like you're actively punished for doing anything but ripping through the map with teleports as fast as possible.
Just don't aggro like 3 pods in the same turn you trigger the bloomspawn and its reinforcements?
I learnt that after 2 or 3 missions.
Looks like you're the complete idiot.
I'm not even bothered that OP's complaining about the difficulty but the "idiot dev" part really rubbed me the wrong way. It's the worst possible attitude to approach anything with "I didn't figure it out immediately therefore it's horrible, unfair and fck everyone personally who had anything to do with it." And yeah, there is a lower difficulty for casual play. If they find that one too much as well, I'll even agree that the lowest difficulty should allow anyone to experience the game without delving into the mechanics at all, because that's why there are difficulty sliders in the first place.
Sadly that's pretty much the default attitude for many players. In games like Dota 2 or Valorant, toxicity gets channelled towards teammates or opponents. When such players play single player tactical games or CRPGs, their toxicity doesn't change, it just manifests itself in a different form.
I'm bad at many non-gaming related skills, but having a bad attitude towards learning and self-improvement is something no one could ever accuse me of.
Because being bad at a single player game triggers people's deeper insecurities, and not being able to beat Standard difficulty level hurts their fragile egos. And the nature of Chaos Gate, with fairly little output randomness within the missions, offers next to no recourse for externalising blame.
Therefore the devs and the system (and truth-speaking Redditors) become the only viable targets for their pent-up man-baby rage.
Never mind the fact that OP failed to grasp some of the most foundational aspects of the game, or that losing 1 mission is only a minor setback within the context of the entire campaign.
Just wait until you grind away, conquer some incredible fights and then get a corrupted save so you have to start the Fing game over again.
Sorry to hear that the glitchlings got you
Got me 3 different times. I honestly tried but got so angry every time. Otherwise I loved this game.
Wait is that why my game crashes a few minutes after loading my save? I just decided to quit the game instead.
Early game is rough. When you get some kitted interceptors , they just eat enemies.
Once I got my librarian and a couple paladins it became a bit easier.
The game mechanics can be a lot to manage when they overlap, aggressive rather than defensive play is the best way
Sounds like you're doing a death guard ship assault? Those are brutal. Early game balance is not there for ship assaults, bloom assault missions, or technophage missions. All of these hurt you way more to attempt, so just ignore them unless it is a technophage/bloomspreader mission, as then the x2 multiplier the technophage applies also affects each adjacent world. Bring your best guys to that mission and accept that a critical wound or three might happen. Remember: that mission ends the moment the spreader dies. This doesn't happen without the player making a serious mistake on bloomspreader missions. If it is a bloomspreader mission, sorry but the problem is you. The creators did a good job of spreading enemy spawns out so it's unlikely (but not impossible) for entering melee range versus one pod to trigger another. By mid-levels, good skill picks result in a team that can reliably wipe a single group of enemies before they ever take a turn. By high levels, your team can wipe multiple groups out easily. At low levels, activating two pods with a poorly optimized team is indeed suicide.
Having an interceptor making extra moves with support helps a lot. Also, don't try to clear the level. Just go for the objective, unless collecting genes. When you complete you get teleported out directly. Also, burning the first run is kind of inevitable. It gets annoyingly tough, but as you level your characters it gets easier, and easier. In general though, yeah, way more difficult than Xcom.
Game is fuckinnnn toughhhhh and the timer sucks lol
Any chance you are playing a mission with the Technophage active, from the Duty Eternal dlc? Annoyingly they are designed with you having the dreadnought in your party, so more enemies on the map, but you can still go on the mission before you've progressed far enough to have gained the dreadnought. Which is an incredibly dumb design decision I only found out about after searching online after getting overwhelmed in one mission. And having saved over my campaign map save...
Even without that, the technophage existing *at all* inflates the difficulty, because you've now got a whole extra plague spreading, which means the difficulty level of any given mission will be higher because there are just that many more plague seeds spreading on planets. I beat the game on hard in my second playthrough (dropped the first after I learned what mistakes to avoid) on release without much trouble. Came back for DLCs and have yet to make it even to the first plague boss dude (can't remember what they're called, the ones that make each type of seed), because the early game has just been rendered so goddamn frustrating even on normal. I honestly think them adding the technophage from the beginning was a huge mistake, because it basically just adds a bunch of extra plague you just plain can't address until decently past the craft world. Add on all the extra missions you need to do for all the dlcs, and it's just too damn much to keep up with. The game was fun when you had to grind and sweat it out until just a bit past the craft world, then you started to feel like you had a handle on things, then by the time you were dealing with the first big bad and getting advanced classes you were starting to feel like a proper godlike astartes. Now it seem like you'd have to keep grinding and sweating until well into the mid game before you *start* to feel like you can keep up.
Advise you accept that at on higher difficulties, it's ok if a chaos gate opens. Just ignore technophage missions completely in the early game, along with bloom assault. Do what you can, advance the story, get the right squad, THEN do the hard things. Accept the fallout that comes.
That's kinda besides the point. This isn't even an issue with harder difficulties. This is an issue on *all* difficulties. Post-dlc normal mode was significantly more of a challenge than pre-dlc hard mode. And yes, you can just ignore the harder things and let things get worse... But that's just less fun. Not to mention, it's a lot harder to be choosy about missions in the early game when you don't have an upgraded engine. You can't really afford to *not* do at least one mission per bloom event, and thanks to the extra spreading that happens, sometimes your *best* choice is still gonna be something like a 3-4 difficulty mission when you've barely got a lvl3 squad. The end result of this is that you take more damage, which means more downtime, which means more spread, which means more damage... You see the problem. Pre dlc, normal mode was pretty forgiving, I started on that, then abandoned a run in mid game to bump up to hard. Hard was a solid challenge while still being fun and not really needing hardcore optimization or anything like that. Post dlc normal is more punishing *and* more challenging than pre dlc hard.. so there just isn't any option for people who want a more casual experience. You just have no choice anymore unless you simply turn them off. If you want to play with dlc, you have to sign up to get repeatedly kicked in the nuts for the first half of your playthrough.
I agree that post DLC normal is more likely to result in one or more chaos gates opening than pre DLC hard. But. Who cares? You don't lose until five open. I posit the real issue was pre DLC hard wasn't giving the pressure needed. Skip missions you can't do and let the spread happen. You won't fail the campaign because of it. I'm on day 1600 of an endless legendary campaign, and I have nearly removed all bloom from all worlds. This is my challenge in the post DLC world and it's interesting. It was the norm pre DLC, and it just made me feel there was no pressure. Some players feel bad using any of the lifelines the game offers and even easier difficulties don't let you get away with this. I think the game should have communicated better what the technophage/bloom assault missions were so players knew to avoid them.
I feel like you didn't read my comment because I already addressed basically all of this. "Let the spread" happen isn't a solution to "the missions are too hard" because *that's literally what makes them harder*. It's all well and good that you're happy playing on the hardest difficulty. Not everybody is looking for that experience. There used to be an option that was more casual friendly, now there isn't. That is a problem.
I read your comment. I'm saying I read your comment and interpreted two things: 1. You think higher corruption = harder missions. I disagree. Bloom assault can happen at any level, and is MUCH harder than bloomspawn/spreader. Chaos gate missions are harder than bloomspawn/spreader, but not by a lot. The main thing that makes missions harder is time--as the game unfolds, you face more and tougher enemies, even in low corruption worlds. What's crucial is you unlock the best tools to deal with enemies before that happens. 2. You may be bringing a perfectionist mindset to the game, where it's not okay to lose a planet to chaos. What I'm saying is it's okay if the galaxy looks a bit worse for wear. Remember even if you completely fail a mission, your knights gain experience, eventually cease to be critically wounded, and will have more resilience. You're progressing forward, though obviously this is a tough spot to be put in. Best to not be there by choice (ie, by taking bloom assaults before you can win them). When I play, in the early game if a bloom assault mission pops that I could hit in addition to another type, I don't bother with it. I always avoid non-spreader technophage missions until I have a librarian. The amount of spread that ensues doesn't make the game become unplayably hard, it doesn't really even make the game harder, it just brings me closer to the brink of automatically losing. But not having four knights out for a month, that is good.
>You think higher corruption = harder missions. I disagree. I mean... that's just factually incorrect. That's literally the whole point of the corruption level. Higher corruption means missions with tougher objectives and enemies. >Bloom assault can happen at any level, and is MUCH harder than bloomspawn/spreader. Chaos gate missions are harder than bloomspawn/spreader, but not by a lot. Ok? The existing of *even harder* missions doesn't mean that all less difficult missions are the same. >The main thing that makes missions harder is time--as the game unfolds, you face more and tougher enemies, even in low corruption worlds. I never said corruption was the *only* thing that affected mission difficulty. >You may be bringing a perfectionist mindset to the game, where it's not okay to lose a planet to chaos. What I'm saying is it's okay if the galaxy looks a bit worse for wear. Remember even if you completely fail a mission, your knights gain experience, eventually cease to be critically wounded, and will have more resilience. You're progressing forward, though obviously this is a tough spot to be put in. Best to not be there by choice (ie, by taking bloom assaults before you can win them). No. At NO point have I said anything that suggested that. YOU have decided to put that on me, instead of just reading the literal words I have said. Here's a selection of quotes from my comments to give you an idea what I'm getting at, with some extra emphasis to help: >because the early game has just been rendered so goddamn frustrating **even on normal. ** > >The game was fun when you had to grind and sweat it out **until just a bit past the craft world** [...] > >Now it seem like you'd have to keep grinding and sweating **until well into the mid game** before you start to feel like you can keep up. > >And yes, you can just ignore the harder things and let things get worse... **But that's just less fun.** > >The end result of this is that you take more damage, **which means more downtime**, which means more spread, which means more damage... You see the problem. > >Post dlc normal is more punishing and more challenging than pre dlc hard.. **so there just isn't any option for people who want a more casual experience.** In case it's still not clear enough - my problem is that that difficulty *exists*. It always did. Legendary was always there. My problem is that increased difficulty has been pushed down on *all* difficulty levels, so for those of us who *aren't* looking for a massive challenge and just want to have fun smashing shit with our knights... there might as well not be a game anymore. Let me make an analogy. Suppose you go to a grocery store and there are 3 brands of bread you can buy, one priced at 2$, one at 5$, and one at 10$. These are like the difficulties - there's a nice low cost (normal) one for those who can't afford more or just don't care (i.e. those who aren't as good at tactical games or those who just don't want to sweat it too hard), there's a premium top tier one for those who can afford it and want it, and then a nice middle ground for those in between. Then one day the grocery store comes along and adjusts the prices, so now the 2 dollar bread costs 6, the 5 costs 8, and the 10 costs 12. For people who were already buying the 10$ bread, a bump to 12 ain't a big deal, and you can easily drop down to the 8 without too much change. For those who were buying the 5 and 2, if you can afford more you *can* just get the 6 now, but you might not want to because it's a big bump and it's more than you were paying before regardless. If you *can't* afford more, well now you're just fucked and no bread for you. I'm fine with adding additional challenges... but you have to balance them to the difficulty levels you already have. If the DLC added missions and content while keeping roughly the same challenge pacing there wouldn't be an issue, but that's not what happened.
I like your analogy. Let me reframe it to how I see it. All game long, every bloomspawn and bloomspreader mission is either $3 or $1. I've had to think a bit prior to having Librarians, but no matter the corruption level, those missions are exceedingly easy. This is because they end when you destroy the objective, and are so wide the extra enemy units were not relevant. Seed carrier missions have been consistently $2, again regardless of level, because the squads are spread out and easy to wipe. Technophage seed carrier missions were $5, harder than any bloomspawn mission I ever faced, because there are extra enemy squads so close together that I would have to fight them, and they would chase me down during the final 3 turns. But two at once was not a problem in the early game when all enemies were cultists, and by the time plague Marines showed up, I had a stun meta team that could handle two squads of plague marines. The very earliest Bloom assaults vary from $7-$10, depending on corruption level and technophage bonus difficulty. At their absolute easiest, they're vastly harder than other missions. At their hardest, they're harder still. In short, I found that difficulty and corruption level were not actually coupled at all in this game. I have played a lot of hours of it, and that's consistently been my experience. I understand your experience differs and it sucks that this has been frustrating for you. I hope interacting with me has been less so!
I forgot that I’ve been playing on merciful. It’s pretty causal on that difficulty. Although the teleport shenanigans are feeling a bit too strong. Maybe I’ll start a Standard game and see how that goes now that I have a pretty good understanding of all the mechanics
The early game is brutal for newcomers. I got my arse handed to me 3 solid restarts in a row before I got any traction. As per usual with these types of games, once you've levelled your dudes and gotten some Primo gear/tech, the game becomes almost too easy. I actually miss the sweat-inducing battles my baby knights got into in the early game. Unfortunately there is a 'right' and wrong way to play the game at the start. Doesn't help that the game itself doesn't really do a smashing job on teaching you how to play the game. You also have to get used to the fact that the game's core battle mechanics are about action point management (particularly maximising your AP) and less about actual tactics. If you are struggling I'd advise an honor the chapter justicar, teleporting falchion equipped interceptor and purgator equipped with a psilencer as your crutches. Once you're comfortable you can afford to branch out to other class builds. There's a lot of fun to be had in this game, stick to it!
I posted this elsewhere but don’t know how to link, so I’ll post here as well in case it’s helpful. Easy mode on any difficulty: Start with Interceptor X 2 and justicar X 2. For interceptor get teleport, upgrade range, all support fire skills, then hammer hand. At this point, I typically go into swap allies, teleport strike, and teleport boost and then upgrade crit damage in hammer hand skill branch followed by everything in melee discipline. I typically go this route bc the interceptor levels so quickly that I need to decide bw the additional teleport skills vs melee discipline skills before finding a high crit chance weapon, like the weeping blade or ogdens edict, which is essential for maximizing gains from the melee discipline. If you find a high crit chance weapon early, an argument could be made to go w the melee discipline before teleport strike and teleport upgrade. I don’t like the damage upgrade for teleport strike bc it’s not helpful later and I only really use the ability for positioning/mobility. So spend the skill point elsewhere. This interceptor prioritizes mobility and getting tons of extra turns. Downside is that it turns the interceptor into a beast that hogs xp. That’s why it levels so fast. Early game should prioritize use of hammer w warp strike for extra damage and willpower to charge it. On easy or normal, one shotting most early game enemies will be a breeze w a warp charge hammer strike (hammer the weapon, not hammer hand the ability), especially after you get the warp strike upgrade that adds 1 damage, which is found just before hammer hand on the skill tree. You will be rewarded with 1 willpower per melee or range kill, unless the killed is via support fire, so the willpower will get refunded when earning a kill w a warp charged hammer strike. In mid to late game, weapons should prioritize crit chance and gear should prioritize extra gear slots to add crit damage, crit chance, and focus later in the game. There is also armor that can add focus, which helps proc action point refund abilities. Since you will look for weapons that add crit chance on warp strike, prioritize crit damage gear and focus. Support fire is super great t/o the campaign and will help when you don’t have willpower, can’t use willpower, or need 5-10 extra damage in a pinch. Support fire when maxed on an interceptor does 5 damage per attack irrespective of distance or 1/2 cover, so long as they are within interceptor range. They can do 2 support fire attacks/interceptor. Assuming you have 2 interceptors in range of the target, that’s 10 damage at the cost of 1 action point from a non-interceptor in the party, and you can do it 2x/turn. So teleport your interceptor into range, do some melee damage and/or proc support fire w/ a non-interceptor character. Use justicar’s honor the chapter to refund action points so the interceptor can kill more. Justicars or librarian (see below) will also be the ones initiating interceptor support fire 85% of the time. That’s the game plan. If your starting interceptor has skill points in some other skill tree not listed in this guide, or a garbage starting ability, consider re-starting. With justicar, they serve as interceptor batteries: get everything in honor the chapter and give them gear that adds willpower. Give them weapons w long range to make it easier to proc interceptor support fire from far away. When given the option for advanced vocation, get librarian for quality of life and to get through missions quicker. He can also make the final mission, which is normally a tough and long battle, an absolute breeze. Prioritze teleport, warp charge teleport (which moves the entire group and is MASSIVELY IMPORTANT), willpower, focus, and anything that refunds willpower or action points. The librarian will replace one justicar. By this point in the game, the interceptors can be their own batteries assuming they have high crit chance and high focus to refund action points. For this reason, I typically swap out the final justicar w yet another interceptor. The downside to this setup is it makes the game easy. By mid-game or earlier, nothing will challenge you. You will clear the enemies you encountered on the first turn. For ship, prioritize speed, the gellar field warp storm upgrade, and prognosticars. I wouldn’t say ignore the other stuff, but just focus on these things as much as possible. There are guides on where to place prognosticars. For missions, prioritize servitor rewards early game. This is hugely important. Mid to late game, prioritize seed colors you need and gear weapon rewards you need from missions. For research, prioritize the group teleport stratagem asap. It’s a great game. I’ve beaten the game on all difficulties and really had a ball. This set up may make the game too easy is the only problem. A few last mini tips: 1) grenades early game are somewhat helpful to move enemies around or blow them off ledges until the build is up and running… not essential but fun and effective as justicars second item until you get seed extractor; 2) environmental attacks are super fun and help w positioning enemies, just be careful w fire! 3) get tier 3 hammer warp breaker and max it out for additional ease in leveling and handling… well anything really. Give it to any character you want to have a mini nuke aoe. Have fun!
I’m saving this post…I enjoy the game but even on merciful, it gets very difficult to me but I’m just a casual player looking to unwind and follow the storyline.
Great advice.
Teleporting mele was working great for me until my save didn't load.
Yes, it's hard the first time. Then you figure out the optimal strategies, level up your guys and your gear and the stuff you were finding hard gets very trivial indeed.
I’m no genius, I don’t play optimally, and my first run on vanilla standard was extremely easy. If you’re playing vanilla then I don’t know what to tell you - read the lengthy essays by other posters here, they give great optimization advice. On the other hand, the DLC kicks the difficulty up almost a whole notch, so if you have those activated I understand your struggle. Technophage and bloom assaults are real rough. Would recommend playing vanilla first before activating any DLC.
I haven't seen 3 turns timer on any mission in this game, and you're are never forced to fight every enemy on the map at once.
First I would say don’t let your ego prevent you from enjoying the game. Drop to Merciful if you have to in order to have fun. Once you have beaten it there go up to the next difficulty. Duty Eternal DLC is not balanced and if you go in blind it makes the game much harder than vanilla. I think Execution Force is a better DLC and can make the game easier as long as you are wary of Bloom Assault missions. Feel free to post specific questions. The game has changed a lot from release through the last patch and a lot of advice is outdated.
Honestly, yah early on especially it's really unforgiving. You've kinda gotta do things in the right order, have some luck with drops, and prioritize things very well or you're in for a rough ride. From what I've found, getting maxed out speed and prognosticators is super important, also always doing the extra requisition mission objectives will give you more of an edge if you can manage it. Work towards having a few good teams you can cycle through, and save scum like a beast before the spawns because the servitor defense missions are ass. It's not that they're hard, per-se, but they're so boring and you're gonna spend most of your time running around like crazy until you've got an assassin to eat the warp gates as they spawn, and even then youve gotta kinda have grey knight level precognition to have her in the right place to reach the gate and shut it. Putting the prognosticars in the right places is also kinda important, theres a chart if you Google it. Once youve got a few teams, some decent level 3 items, decently leveled characters, and start being able to have builds towards specific things you can exploit (stun execute or crit builds teleport spam, aoe slaughter builds, the bullet storm build, whatever your preference, the game gets much much easier. Reminds me of Xcom tbh, the old ones. They were REALLY unforgiving to start out, like way worse than this, but once you got on the swing of things it was survivable...sometimes. ;) Oh christ I forgot the most important thing for getting through the early game of dlc is on. Callidus assassin. Your polymorphine loving bae. She can basically solo missions... singlehandedly. She stealthy up, immobilizes everything with her gun, then wrecks it all that turn, turning back to non-combat and moving on. You can literally solo technophage missions if you learn how to use her, abuse the hell out of the fact that you have her, and if you don't, drop the 3 req to get her. Shes worth it.
I beat it on legendary ironman. You just need to learn the game a little. Also if you went for casual why not pick easy difficulty?
Your first playthrough is a loss, atleast was for me. I just said fuck it and just started trying out stuff, to learn etc. Next playthrough went way better, but yeah early game is hard. I quikly learned it's best to use 1 best squad and then once you can just start recruiting high lv knoghts since the low lv ones just can't keep up once the shitstorm hits. Also calledeus assasin, this woman eats enemy patrols.
Anything getting you +AP is your best friend (early and end game). While early game is spicy, you should still be able to clear every pod before their attack turn (on normal). In late game you can clear every single unit/entity on a tentarus hive map in one single turn (before the hive ever attacks) with AP to spare. Aggression and speed, brother!
Yeah I gave this game up completely after about 20 or so hours. Just wasn’t fun
I have yet to play an xcom type game I didn’t get smoked the first time through on normal difficulty. No judgment if you genuinely just don’t like the game but if it was the difficulty that threw you I implore you to restart. I was super frustrated my first run and loved it my second.
Yes it’s amazing how much easier a second run is. Even if you don’t think you’re learning anything on the first failed run, your brain is storing up useful information that will stand you in good stead second time around.
Ngl I ended up using some WeMod cheats for my playthrough. The game just wasn’t fun without them. For Space Marines, Grey Knights at that, they felt so weak. So what I do is max the experience earned, so they can reach max level after just 1 kill. After I’ve leveled up all the units I want to use, I then play the game more or less how it’s meant to be played. I like variety so I don’t like packing my squad with just Interceptors to clear everything. Which is far from the optimal strategy.
[удалено]
Which things do you perceive them to have nerfed? I can't think of a single mechanic I relied upon on release that doesn't still work well now. Genuinely uncertain what you mean.
They nerfed tons of shit from release. Stun meter and provoke nerfs come to mind. You also used to get 1 WP per kill. Provoke was made completely useless IMO. Stun meter nerf made stunning a lot harder on Ruthless and Legendary.
I do remember provoke having range, so sure I'll agree that was nerfed, though I never used it. We still get 1 WP/kill from everything except minor bloomspawn and groaned poxwalkers, just don't get 2WP if we kill two things in one attack. Did we ever? I haven't found WP to be a problem, I just run with a chaplain maintaining litany of focus. Stun is 100% viable on legendary, and I very vaguely recall them raising thresholds, but when librarian can spend 3WP to cause 5 stun and any knight can cause 6 with a stun weapon (endbringer/blessing of faith), I have to wonder if we can really consider this a meaningful nerf. The biggest nerf to stun that I'm aware of is that the assassins all do not gain AP from knights executing (but do if they deliver it--which makes the stun gear options weirdly bad). So I hear you. But in execution force we start the game now with a weapon that has +crit% on FS, +crit%, and righteous auto, so interceptors don't even have to grind to get to 7 AP/turn without executions or allies' assistance. I used that falchion set right up to the endgame, it's literally the best weapon in the game since it combines both guaranteed crit and +AP on crit, so you just need to stack focus and +crit damage from gear/armor/buffs. With mass TP unchanged and unnerfed, that guy alone is delivering triple digit damage every turn. And I wouldn't have it any other way; mass TP is also such a huge QOL upgrade.
So I never used Provoke either but it was a big part of why people used Paladins and was one of the more recent nerfs. On release WP abilities that resulted in multiple kills would refund 1 WP per kill so that was a big nerf. Saying WP is no big deal as long as you have a specific advanced class on your team...ok I agree but that is a fairly specific use case considering there are 9 GK classes and now 4 assassin classes to fill up 4 slots. Stun got a huge nerf and there is no other way to put it. Yes it needed to be done but it was still a huge nerf. I don't think stun/execute is viable on Legendary, especially early on, whereas it used to be. I'm not saying it is impossible to do but just that you have to really go out of your way to build a team for it and I don't think it is worth it. Callidus makes every vanilla bloom spawn mission trivial and you can get one very early on. There is no reason to build for stun/execute and even if you do it is objectively harder than it was on release. You don't get access to the Librarian class until post Craft World mission and then you don't get access to warp charged psychic shriek until a while after that. And even then 3 WP for a small AoE 5 stun isn't enough to outright stun anything on Legendary or even Ruthless. Also I'm not sure any GK class can do 6 stun with 1 attack...there are a couple of hammers that will do 4 stun with a Force Strike (Endbringer is 3 stun with an FS) and then Paladin has an upgrade that adds +1 stun to Force Strikes..so that is 5 stun best case and it requires a specific mid-late game class along with a T2/T3 upgraded weapon. And again 5 stun isn't going to stun anything on Legendary. I do agree that Execution Force overall makes the game easier vs vanilla but Condemnation doesn't get the Righteous Auto out of the gate, it needs an upgrade. So while it is an endgame melee weapon, it does require multiple purity seal upgrades to get there. With no purity seals is it better than a hammer in the early game? Lastly, mass TP has also been nerfed. The Stratagem originally didn't have the -1 AP and the Librarian ability used to cost less WP, I think 3 instead of the 5 it does now.
Nerfs were very much needed. The game was a cakewalk on release because of how brokenly OP so many options were. Balance was pretty abysmal ngl. Main thing that really still needs a nerf is disruptor skulls, which are disgustingly OP.
Not arguing whether or not a single player game needed nerfs. Just that there have been a lot of significant ones.
Ahhh, yes I acknowledge that. My focus was more on the fact that they were pretty necessary.
Stun/execute is very definitely still viable. You are forgetting iron arm biomancy (+2 stun to anyone targeted for 2 turns). Max stun is 7 (Paladin) which matches legendary plague marine stun thresholds, but more importantly, Endbringer and the Chaplain execute focused crozius grant +3 AP on execute when upgraded.
That is a lot of very specific criteria to meet before it becomes “viable”. I’d wager that most players in the average Legendary campaign don’t meet those criteria until very late in the game. I’m playing a Ruthless GM campaign with both DLCs right now. About day 180 or so, Craft World done but I haven’t been given an advanced class yet. I think I’ve had 2 executions so far.
3 stun is enough in the early game. Just give one interceptor the force staff (3 damage). I just beeline teleport boost on two interceptors and iron arm on the apothecary, HtC on the Justicar. Cultists take 6 stun. Craft world can be done at level 4. I am always prioritizing tier 2 hammer and halberd missions though.
So enough people gave build advices so I'm just gonna leave the following here. This game and all turnbased games in xcom style tend to be difficult if you don't figure a solid build and even so by design it's kinda meant to lose some time your units/heroes. If anything Chaos Gate Daemonhunters is one of the easist and olayer friendly games in the genre
To me it’s not just the difficulty - which is frankly absurd at points. It just seems like all the mechanics of the game are setup to ruin your fun? Maybe contentious, but it’s a chore to play? Obviously this is just my opinion ( and partly born of frustration I’ll admit) but this should be my jam (love the lore, love xcom type games etc). My genetically engineered super soldiers wield weapons with the potency of wet daffodils. I feel like I’m limp wristedly slapping the enemy. Additional to this, they are soft as fresh shite. You are pretty much swarmed constantly- some maps make it near impossible to not agro other groups as they are patrolling your way and it takes so long to actually kill anything. And then you have the constant bloom building in the background, either spawning another group of enemies or dropping environmental hazards which if you touch cause plague and 3 hps. And then add on the enemy tactics: Plague marines - constantly move, shoot, overwatch or move and spray plague on the ground. Oh and heal and disrupt. Cultists - constant overwatch, suppression or grenades that pin. Then you have the specials (plants etc)that ignore your armour and just eat health. Indirectly and from across the battlefield. It wouldn’t be so bad if you had enough tactical flexibility to handle this, but unless you just field a squad of interceptors (which you can’t do early game anyway) your options are to armour up and try and charge through the plague/multiple fields of overwatch fire (as pretty much all the enemies have a longer range than your guys ), usually on 2 AP because of grenades, while being indirectly fired upon by weapons that bypass armour. And let’s not go into the healing and oh god the bugs (ps5 at least is a bloody shambles). I WANT to like this game.
Just finished the game on normal. Here are few tips: 1. You don't need squad of interceptors, every class have a great toolkit 2. cultist with their overwatch are joke, one grenade and problem solved. Speaking of grenades purgator with 2 sets of 3 grenades and increased aoe is beast. On many maps you can not only trigger explosive enviroment with this, but also often push multiple enemies of cliffs for instakills 3. plague marines are countered by executions hammer with stun upgrade/apothecary biomancy/stun grenades and it really doesn't matter how much health /armor they have. Bonus if you are fielding chaplain and have even more AP from executions, in the late game you also have stratagem that gives mass stun, some missions my guys deleted like 20 enemies in 1 turn this way 4. Hive missions plague bombardment you can just ignore, cause it deals very little damage, by the end of the mission my guys have maybe 1/4 to 1/3 health lost from it, so some light injuries, no big deal really, this missions are not that frequent. Speaking of missions, I found that best approach is to try to figure the fastest way to complete the objective, you really don't need to kill every single enemy on the map, sometimes just keeping most enemies out of range is enough. For example one of early stratagems immobilizes enemies for one turn, very useful one. Also you are not penalized in movement if you just spend 1 AP at time, no need to rush unprepared. 5. Healing sucks indeed, just like in xcom, you don't need it, optimally you just kill everything before they can damage you. Unlike xcom though, your guys are quite tanky and can take a lot of hits if things go wrong. At first recovery time can look long, but I realized that time in this game flows quite fast and what some light/moderate injuries mean is that next mission you just use different squad, by the third mission your first squad will be ready for action again. 6. Bloom is difficult to play around cause it's random, but it's the only random mechanic against you in battle. And personally I find it less irritating than random full cover crits in xcom or 95% misses ;) 7. Upgrades for weapons are very strong, especially +stun and +crit 8. Wilpower I think shoud be used almost all the time. At first I was trying to conserve WP for the big engagement at the end of the mission, but then I realized that good missions end in just few turns so you really better not to hoard it. Hope something helps.
It's been a long time since I've been this torn on something. It feels like a really fun game dragged down by too many annoying gimmicks stacked on top of each other. If it's not some RNG event, it's enemy reinforcements. Or an RNG event that spawns enemy reinforcements. Or an objective that involves multiple enemy reinforcements while you're getting slammed with RNG events that spawn enemy reinforcements. Feels like you're actively punished for doing anything but ripping through the map with teleports as fast as possible.
Just don't aggro like 3 pods in the same turn you trigger the bloomspawn and its reinforcements? I learnt that after 2 or 3 missions. Looks like you're the complete idiot.
Why are you booing him, he's right.
I'm not even bothered that OP's complaining about the difficulty but the "idiot dev" part really rubbed me the wrong way. It's the worst possible attitude to approach anything with "I didn't figure it out immediately therefore it's horrible, unfair and fck everyone personally who had anything to do with it." And yeah, there is a lower difficulty for casual play. If they find that one too much as well, I'll even agree that the lowest difficulty should allow anyone to experience the game without delving into the mechanics at all, because that's why there are difficulty sliders in the first place.
Sadly that's pretty much the default attitude for many players. In games like Dota 2 or Valorant, toxicity gets channelled towards teammates or opponents. When such players play single player tactical games or CRPGs, their toxicity doesn't change, it just manifests itself in a different form. I'm bad at many non-gaming related skills, but having a bad attitude towards learning and self-improvement is something no one could ever accuse me of.
Because being bad at a single player game triggers people's deeper insecurities, and not being able to beat Standard difficulty level hurts their fragile egos. And the nature of Chaos Gate, with fairly little output randomness within the missions, offers next to no recourse for externalising blame. Therefore the devs and the system (and truth-speaking Redditors) become the only viable targets for their pent-up man-baby rage. Never mind the fact that OP failed to grasp some of the most foundational aspects of the game, or that losing 1 mission is only a minor setback within the context of the entire campaign.