I suspect the Darkest Dungeon level won't be in EA. At least, that's what I'd do. Either way they haven't said that I recall.
I'm also kinda mixed on the Arbalest. She doesn't hit very hard and her abilities, while useful, don't stack up very well against the healers who would normally take her spot. Sort of like the Plague Doctor, every time I go to add her to the party I ask if I'd rather have a second healer-type instead and the answer is almost always yes.
Man-At-Arms is just beast though. I basically don't have to worry about him at all in terms of going from full to Death's Door in a turn. You certainly don't want for appealing tank options in this game. They've taken some accuracy penalties away from the Leper, so while the base accuracy of his attacks is still shit (65-ish) a couple of good trinkets can buff it to the point he's on par with the other tanks.
I've now made it further in this game than any other so far. Cleared all the Apprentice Level bosses, dabbled in some veteran runs. In like 12 hours, I did it with only two characters killed and ZERO Afflictions or Virtues occurring. I get now why players who have seen the end of the EA content say the mid to late game loses some difficulty. Lvl 2 armor and weapons really go a long way toward nullifying the starter monsters as threats, because the HP, PROT and DODGE increases are not trivial, and resolve resistance to stress is huge. Your crits starting getting monstrous as well. Level 2 gear seems to be the point at which you start having a fighting chance against everything. Skills, by comparison, only seem to be worth leveling for the additional accuracy and the higher debuff chance (since higher level monsters all have higher level resists.) The crit increases don't really seem to be worth it, and if the damage modifiers change, it must only be at higher levels. Heals still seem to be worth investing in though since the healing value does immediately scale up.
I suppose if you were hoping DD would be a giant wall of frustration and hopelessness late game, a never-ending meat grinder of an insurmountable challenge, I can see why it getting easier might be disappointing. I frankly welcome NOT getting my nuts stomped on every run.
Currently I have a Leper with 8 PROT between his gear, trinkets and quirks, and the guy is almost untouchable except by bosses and crits. It's so gratifying to watch 0s show up for damage when monsters try to attack him. Even a couple points of PROT is enough to nullify some weaker attacks (like Rabid Rush from the Weald hounds, or Scatter shot from the Brigand Shooters.) Investing in lvl 1 or 2 armor ASAP seems to be helpful.
Also investing in the Sanitarium now seems like it's more important. Like I said, obsessions seem to crop up a lot more now and diseases as quirks get more common outside of the ruins. Earning Quirks still seems almost completely random, which is a disappointment. I don't think all of them are, because I've noticed the people that end up with "Curious" tend to be the people I do most of my searching with. But when you abandon a run right as it starts and end up with 4 positive Quirks, it does make you question what's actually going on under the hood. And I'm forced to suspect: nothing more than RNG really.
For those that were frustrated by getting shit like "Godless" and "Witness" on the same character, many of them are mutually exclusive now, so they replace each other when earned. The system isn't perfect still, but the faults are entirely in your favor now. (For example, you can have Tippler (can only drink in town) along with Witness (cannot pray.) This essentially means Witness is a negative quirk with no effect. Hurray for you. I imagine they'll fix that.)
Also they added the mechanic where if combat goes on too long you start taking stress damage, and Stun Resistance buff to prevent chain stuns. All in the effort to stop the player from milking HP and Torch light and Stress heals during fights. Well, that's sort of true. The round cut off seems to be 10 rounds. At least, that's as long as I've let fights run and I still haven't seen stress barks in this version. You can do a lot of healing in ~6 rounds, especially with heal crits, and Stun Resistance is only 25% per stack, so you can still chain stun to a degree, at least on the weaker monsters early game. So milking fights to bolster your HP and reduce stress are still definitely a thing you can do, in moderation. Which is good, because ending fights with 5 HP is a recipe for disaster in your next fight.
It was 6am and I was still playing before I realized it. It's the first good sit down I've had with the game since I've bought it, as the length of this post probably tells you.
So it still seems to be that Lvl 0 and 1 are the hardest levels to get through as a player. Now that I have almost a full roster of level 2/3 guys, the game seems much, much easier. Every run isn't "Oh god, are they going to triple crit my healer?!??!!" They will, but, at least your healer stands a better chance of surviving once they're not a scrub anymore.
The game can still be fairly frustrating at times, especially early on when you don't feel like your bank roll and your sanity can handle a total party wipe or losing your best healer. I've developed a bit of a click-through problem with the game as well. (I've probably lost 5k to 10k gold clicking the wrong mission or forgetting to buy more than 1 torch and having to abandon the level, or clicking the wrong thing on loot windows even though I know better), and that's entirely due to the repetition. Fallen London gives me the same problems, because you're doing the same core activity (clicking a box) for 95% of game play.
Still, I finally feel like I've figured out how to play the game at my speed which is pretty important to me. I take it very slowly. I probably didn't kill any bosses for the first 8 or so hours. Which might seem silly to you guys, but given how I steamrolled pretty much everyone besides the Swine Prince, I'm pleased, because I don't want every fight to be a chair gripper. The only part I don't like is that you slowly phase out easier missions until you're not even guaranteed to see an apprentice mission every week. Which can put you in an awkward position when you have no characters or a viable party to run that week. My water mark for doing ok is being able to stay above 10k in gold, and I've managed to do that pretty much since the 4th week or so. One thing that helped was realizing medium + runs can be BIG money makers if you're willing to sacrifice all the heirlooms you encounter for treasure. I've had runs net 15k gold doing that.
My usual load out is:
8 food
5 torches
1 of every item
for Short Apprentice Runs
12 Food
6 - 7 torches
1 of every item
for Medium anything runs.
Doing that I almost never face starvation unless I'm forced to eat food to heal, and I can usually keep my torch between 100 and 50% the whole game. (Although I almost always bring a class that can generate light.) Some money tends to be wasted on the extra items that don't get used, but having them all means I can tap each curio for the best treasure at least once per game. (I ended up using a spoiler sheet for what the curios do. That also has helped me really maximize my profits per run, and minimized the trauma.)
So all in all...I feel like early game balance is coming along better, and weaker parts of the game (trinkets) are starting to get balanced to the point they're useful. (The easiest trinket decisions to make are like, damage reduction for PROT and Healing for your healers, and DODGE reduction for your tanks for PROT and damage buffs. DPS characters tend to need everything more which makes trinket decisions for them harder.) It does feel like the game is brutalizing you a little less, and that's good to me, because the front-loaded difficulty was definitely keeping me away from this game. If a game makes me rage out in the first two hours just trying to establish myself, it makes me think I'll be raging 2x as much once it gets harder, which causes me to not play. DD seems like it's starting to address this problem.
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Topic: Darkest Dungeon II. Emotionally traumatize some adventurers. Wagon Life. (Read 219717 times)