Need Motivation
 

Some spoilers ahead…


Coming off PoE playing this now. Party level 7 and while I love a challenge this is getting a bit ridiculous. I was getting crushed by the pirate boss Pontius who one shots my characters and/or fears them. so I ended up working my way through the fire knights to the Incandescent Wanderer. I can't touch this thing because of his waves of fire bomb spawns. This game is pretty brutal. I'm not exactly a noob at games like this but I'm sure feeling like it :) Initially I loved it but this game is really starting to feel like a chore.

What difficulty level are you playing on? I played on Classic mode and found battles challenging but rarely too hard. It still took me a year to finish the game though because I kept getting bored and switching to other games before eventually coming back to it.

What sort of builds did you go with for your Source Hunters, and what companions do you have? Most enemies have a weakness against something.. usually one of the four elements.

There's usually a "trick" to boss fights and such. In this particular case:
- Pirate: You can sneak behind him and use the lightning cannon thing. You get told to do this after doing the quest for the skull/zombie.
- Bombs: Shoot the bombs. Or even better: Teleport them using the teleport spell. They explode when they land, doing immense damage.

Thanks guys yes I have Nick and tried to sneak past. Was detected, got fisted, prone for 3 rounds and everyone else was feared. Full wipe in 60 seconds. Regarding the bombs I didn't know you could teleport them that's interesting. I did shoot them but they ignore my conjured and race past so they achieved good splash damage against me due to proximity. By the time I recovered hes spawned a second set.

I'm on classic mode. Party is a Rogue, archer, spell caster, fighter. I have (2) with Geomancer for adds and my spell caster is level 2 for both Geomancer and Pyro and level 1 for air. I did pump up Willpower for everyone to try to keep Fear and charm at bay but that hasn't proven very effective. Maybe I should add Hydro to my archer since she is single classed and I have no real water spells for these fights just grenades and arrows.

I might be wrong but I thought you could change difficulty at any time?

You can but I’d rather not. Rather figure out what is wrong with my approach before resorting to that. Most fights I can handle and so far the mini bosses have been fine.

Since you already have Geomancer and Pyro covered, I'd suggest taking Jahan for water and air spells. His personal quest is pretty interesting as well.

Be careful about spreading your abilities too thin. Iirc, you can only reach Master tier in two of them per character. My protagonists were a Fighter and a Mage, and I had my Mage max out Geomancer and Pyro while Jahan maxed out Aerotheurge and Hydrosophist. I rotated my companions depending on the quest and/or area I was in.

Gotcha. I managed to clear out both fire elementals including the one with the resurrection totem which was the harder of the two. Killed Pontius after that, with a few more points in WillPower he had a harder time fearing my party. I tried to get to the ballista again and that was a fail. It was easier to just do the fight strait up. Killed the source spider too. It appears I'm back on track but the game is pretty tricky!

King Boreas oh my. When he got to the fire element phase I got crushed. I have some spare attribute points so this is what I'm thinking:

• Add 1 point for Hydrosophist heal for everyone. Right now I only have one Hydrosophist point with my Ranger and then everyone else is using potions but I can't help other team members with that model
• I think I need to be able to spawn an opposing elemental for each "phase" of this fight.
• What about elemental resistance potions? Are they worth using? Haven't tried any yet.
• Is food worth anything for buffing prior? I haven't used food yet at all

Boreas is weaker against fire than anything else. Can you go right for the fire totem or does it only become vulnerable when he's using it? I can't remember.

Are the phases random or does he always do them in the same order?

I definitely used summons to draw aggro and soak up some damage, but that was standard for me in any boss fight.

I only had the one mage with healing spells, but my other mage was proficient enough in crafting early on to keep everyone stocked with potions. I only used food to heal outside of combat.

I rarely used elemental resistance potions, but I used the corresponding spells a lot.. especially the absorption shields. Cast it on your melee/tank and let the enemy waste their efforts on them while the rest of your party attacks with ranged/magic/summons.

Turns out the opposing elemental summons was exactly what I needed to do. I just let the elementals remove the adds why I pummeled him with physical damage from my tank and ranger and added a few poison arrows. He never reached phase 3. I forgot about the resistance potions but I did Bless for accuracy. Nick hits surprisingly hard too.

Funny this is the first franchise where Goblins aren't a joke

Wow what an idiot. Just realized how to make a medium health potion. These Larian guys have a sense of humor to say the least. I was looking for some obtuse mystical crafting combo

I really liked the crafting system in D:OS. In fact, I think it's one of the best I've seen in an RPG.

Which combo did you you discover? I remember two for medium health potions.

Pretty much focused on the resistance potions and health although I'm yet to even use any resistance potions. Gear is pretty effective to counter all that and I have enough that I can rebalance gear to focus on buffing as necessary. Otherwise I've focused on arrows and grenades. My Ranger is turning into a powerhouse and I use my Rogue for grenades.

I'm at level 14 now and I'm starting to focus skill points on buffing things like BodyBuilding and WillPower as the incoming spells are starting to be an issue. I know "mute" is coming and I've had to deal with incoming Charm. Some of these Master skills aren't very impressive so I'm not sure I'm going to go level 5 for 2 classes per character. Pyro, Ranger and Man Of War seem to be the big ones. Everything else I'm taking to level 4 unless there is a buff talent level requirement.

126 hours and counting yikes! I played PoE twice in 3 years and logged 195 hours. DoS is a LONG game if you do all content. Not sure how you can skip content either the level ups are super important

How are you at 126 hours already? Are you on vacation or something? :)

Fwiw, I finished in 210 hours.

It just adds up! No I'm working - from home. Lots of time on the weekends, a few hours minimally per night. Such a time sink but the weather sucks so this is video game season for me. Hence the backlog

Just reading these comments is making me yearn to replay this one yet again. And yeah, goblins are no joke here!

The game is starting to annoy me again. I took out Grutilda and cleaned the whole town but what is with the number of AP's these enemies have? Grutilda opens the battle by moving, casting at least two spells, attacking twice, moving, attacking twice again. I got lucky in attempt 2 by keeping my distance and getting summons up to hem her in and then nuking the whole mess from Orbit. The game is increasingly becoming about getting my nukes prepared. Meteor Storm, Rain of Arrows etc. For a game about tactics that's not exactly variety. I think the first half the of game was far more enjoyable.

Back on a positive note taking out Death Knight patrols is great fun. Love the swamp battles too. I still think the game cheats with enemy AP’s but it is what it is

OK level 20 just got into the inner sanctum. Why am I just getting Rogue master skills? coup de grace only available from the Homestead Air Gate as far as I can tell. I think its a design flaw if you are getting good stuff right before the end - that would have been a fun skill several hours ago. This game is brilliant. I have some complaints but its probably the best CRPG I've ever played. Maybe the most frustrating one as well however. Puzzle heavy, easy to get stuck due to offbeat design. Some pretty imbalanced fights which can get exhausting but still pretty amazing. LONG.
Anyway I appear to be talking to myself :)

You've powered through it fairly quickly considering the length. I wish I had found the game as compelling as you seem to, but I'm not a fan of the writing or overly humorous style in the D:OS games. For me, D:OS is't even the best Larian game.

I agree about the master skills and that having some of them only available in Homestead was lame. (Although I believe there is some randomness involved there as well). Tbh, I didn't care for Homestead in general. I didn't like having to constantly go back there to see things unfold.

I think the biggest insult was the Source King Key. Found in Cassandra's tomb. I'm level 20 and I finally get the key and the chest has level 7 crap in it because that chest is discovered at level 7. What are they thinking? Anyway fighting the death knights at the end and I screwed up the battle had to quit. Will take another crack at it tomorrow. Then the Dragon and its over. Steam says 191.5 hours. I have (2) puzzles incomplete and had to move on. Source temple and the elemental rooms in the starting area. But now I'm on end game rails not sure I can go back.

Fwiw, you could have opened that chest much earlier with a Magical Unlock scroll. There's only a handful of those scrolls in the game though, so I'm not sure it would have been worth using one there.

I opted not to use the scroll knowing there was a key “somewhere”. So yeah I banked it. But why bother with a key to a noob chest at end game? Crazy Larian!

OK honestly this is the WORST ending battle of all time. I'm comfortably beating the stupid void dragon and Astarte does down and I lose? She does nothing but stand there and take damage. Go hide in a corner if you are that worthless. What the hell kind of mechanic is this. 25 minutes of my life wasted in one battle for nothing. RANT.

Done. 194 hours. This is I think the best CRPG ever made - but a caveat there because I haven't played Pathfinder yet. There is room for improvement with DoS as it can be extremely frustrating, obtuse and sometimes imbalanced but its a masterpiece in my book. There is a solution to every battle which reveals itself even when you fail.
I like that. Its not just blistering hard like some of the end game PoE battles or BG2. Its a thinking person's tactical game. I don't mind the humor as some do and after 200 hours I'm surprisingly not sick of the game - I want more. Luckily there is a sequel so there is that. I'm going to play the PoE expansion and maybe PoE2 first but I'm extremely impressed. A good sign for BG3 I think!

Wow this game totally ruined PoE White March for me. Where are my smoke grenades and ice walls for those distant cannoneers? RTwP seems so “actiony” now and boring. Story is decent but the world feels so static.