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I'm playing on Champion difficulty. On this difficulty, no matter my gear upgrades, most enemies can kill me in ~2-3 hits and it takes me 10-15 hits to take them down.
In Sylvan's Cradle, I found I ditched blocking in favour of kiting + bow + headshots and that worked mostly well, if very time consuming when fighting 2-5 sword bound.
I finished Sylvan's Cradle and moved onto Welkin's Reach.
In preparation for going through Welkin's Reach, I did the following:
added augmentations to my crafting table
sometimes don't appear to apply effects to crafted gear?
tried isolating benches with augmentations, doesn't always work
upgraded to NTTC body gear with health giving fibre
created Tier 2+ axe, pick out of advanced lacunis
created a copper winchester rifle
made 200 moderate health potions
made some better food
tender steak
salad
lunar nectar
I figured this would be enough to get ready for what was in store combat-wise in Welkin's Reach, but I feel like I'm missing something as it's proving to feel really difficult.
I had an interaction with 2 scorpions and their attacks decimated my blocking abilities and I can't move fast enough to get out of the way of their attacks reliably. I went through 25-50 potions fighting two scorpions. It feels like they have a lot of health considering you have to go face-to-face with them to hit a critical on their head. Kiting them while circling or using a rifle/bow is incredibly time consuming and slow given their incredible charge speed.
The double bladed bound are a bit ridiculous. I had to do a silly Benny Hill kiting thing in Sylvan's Cradle to head shot the weaker bladed bound while running around like mad, but these guys have a lot of health and the bow/rifle is not very good at taking them down. I can do a 1-on-1 if there is only one of these two-blade-bound, but there are frequently 2-3 of them, and the other two just flank you and kill you + your companion in 5 seconds (or so).
I'm all for a challenge, I play souls games, tactical shooters, etc. In those games, the combat is very hard, but when you die, you think, "ah, yeah, I missed that dodge" or "yup, yup, I failed to block" or "mhmm... bad angle of approach".
I really don't feel like that here in Nightingale. It feels like the animations, hit boxes, blocking ability, gear-vs-enemy balancing, it's all a bit off. It's not horrible, but there's a disconnect in both the feel of the combat and also in the progression of your upgrades/gear to "get an edge" on the enemy. It makes it really frustrating to play at times.
| Category Tags | Combat, Tools/Gear |
| Mode | Online |
| Sentiment | Critical |
Both of the sword Bound are hard-hitting DPS types and I think the "trick" is supposed to be you block and quickly knock them down. Otherwise they rush, hit, and sidestep. If they rushed far enough you can get knocked back pretty far too. However on higher difficulty, this is just not viable as you still take too much damage through the block.
On Normal difficulty, IMO the ease mostly comes from the Recruit helping while you tank or block. However once you reach Magwytch (MSQ swamp biome) the new enemies are way overtuned.
The Krysos hammer wielders are okay in their first phase, but once they drop the hammer and start running, they are very hard to deal with. When they rush, you are pushed aside and they get some distance from you. Before you can close the gap, they are already rushing again, so you can't really stay close to stop the rushing, which causes strong knockback and stagger. Recruits and NPCs don't know how to get out of their way so they get battered around and if you revive them, they charge right in and get knocked out again.
The flamethrower enemies cannot be knocked down and they do a lot of fire damage and they explode when they are dead. NPCs just keep swarming them to be set on fire and them blown up. This is irritating during Defense missions.
Really recommend a balance pass on these two to tone them down. At least I see NPCs having better gear and not just a basic tool now.
Wante to point out that others seem to be having no troubles with the combat (maybe they're not playing Champion mode?)
I am really starting to wonder if I am doing something wrong. I'm mostly following a similar playstyle to how I played prior to patch 0.5 and that got me to the Watch and fully decked out gear on the same difficulty.
It feels like Champion is supposed to be a lot harder than before 0.5 now?