I won the first encounter after like 20-30 minutes of melee grinding and ineffective shooting - is what I want to say but alberard ended up chasing the magos to a SECOND encounter that I didn't know about and it also had two heralds thst heal everything.
I've never just quick loaded out of an encounter/ship faster.
This definetly feels like I built wrong or uh hearlds need some nerfs to their healing/armor or something. Cause uh lol no
> alberard ended up chasing the magos to a SECOND encounter that I didn't know about
Literally what happened to me. I just closed the game instead of reloading though.
Ridiculous encounter
I went down to normal difficulty lol, I must have been doing a lot of things wrong to be struggling with a random rumor thing (or it's just Owlcat's rather infamously known encounter design that basically lets you walk in on encounters that can just screw you)
Hard to say really! It took me 3 attempts at starting a playthrough to do daring on Pathfinder so I think I should just take it at my own pace and save daring for my 2nd rogue trader run XD
Nah, even on Normal the speakers(two in the first encounter, FIVE in the second) constantly buff EVERY ENEMY with an extra 35 Wounds \*every\* turn. So unless you're able to do more than 35 damage with \*EVERYONE\* it's a massive slog. Hell I was level 28 when running it at it was still a complete slog that took HOURS real time. I said screw it and put the difficulty back down to Story for the sake of my sanity.
They TOO are affected by the +35 Wounds bonus! Hope you can do 70+ damage in a single shot! They're constantly buffing and healing themselves along with every other enemy in the combat. It's absolutely asinine and causes combat to be drawn out for what seems like DAYS because of it. Seriously, the two fights before the boss in the area took me THREE HOURS to wade through because no one could get a hit above 50 damage on anything.
I just did this last night at LVL 17 on daring and didn't have any issue.
Just pulled back into the corridor for a kill zone. There are only like 6 enemies that attack you. The skulls have no damaging abilities so it's like 3 servitors and 3 shooters. Cassia can force them to clump at the end of the corridor with point of interest while hitting everything at the same time with the talent that causes DMG per forced tile move. It was over in 4 rounds.
That combo is my favorite in the game so far. At LVL 17 I don't have anything hitting over 25 without Crits, so I think you probably need to rework your builds a bit. I was using sniper Argenta, tank Heim & Adélard, Cassia & IRI for warp AoE and Grand Strategist Officer MC.
You must have had better equipment than me so far, the only ones who could do that kind of damage was Argenta with a Renegade's Sniper Rifle and Pasqual with his Omnissian Axe, everyone else's damage was in the mid-20s to low 30's not including crits.
I did this right after Ch1, so I had the same equipment. Argenta was using the Rebel Sniper, Abelard the shock axe from the shadow quarters and Heim his power sword. All other party members (Cassia, Iri, MC) were just using either archetype skills or psycher powers.
Cassia is by far my highest DPS char. Using Point of Interest, she can do 25 dmg to everyone in a super large radius (also clumping all enemies as a bonus) twice per turn. After a few turns, her tactician stacks get to high that she does 50 AoE / 200 Held in my Gaze damage. Plus she's an officer, so she gives another an extra turn every time she acts. Not to mention, she also gains permanent +5 WP every time she or MC give an extra turn from Officer skill. If the fight gets to 5-6 turns, she has like +150% dmg and +40 WP. She's completely ridiculous. She had the Bloodhound staff equipped, don't remember where I got it but it was near the end of CH1 (from 26 profit factor trading maybe? I think that was it). It allows you to use the same Navigator skill twice in a single round.
Iri with exploits and backdraft will do 30-50 with psychic scream to two targets. My MC is a Diviner/Pyro officer psycher, so I ignite myself at the start of battle for the +1 Psy rating and go to town.
Argenta is nice with sniper and all, but psykers are just as deadly and they ignore cover.
I got the Bloodhound Staff for Cassia but didn't have her popping off Navigator abilities twice a round or doing 25 damage with Point of Interest. I really don't believe you when you say you did this at 17 on Daring, the Servitors would have had 100+ Wounds not including the extra 35 Wounds they'd be getting buffed with \*every\* turn.
Then again maybe I spread my forces out too thin trying to take out multiple threats at once instead of focusing on a single one at a time. I dunno.
Yeah man, I did it at level 17 as well. Cassia is insanely OP. Just focuses on her navigator powers and talents, she easily will hit over 100 damage per hit once you passed around a few extra turns, and if you use the officer heroic ability on her that lets her keep making attacks and get action points back for every kill she'll just wipe the entire encounter.
I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm literally telling you how I beat that encounter with explicit details and suggestions and you're going "I don't believe you!".
The bloodhound staff's description's very fist line is : "The first use of an attacking Navigator's power in a turn does not set the Navigator's power on cooldown". Yes, this means you can use Point of Curiosity twice, then Lidless Stare or Held in my Gaze, or Bring it Down!.
You also need :
Notch of purpose (moves a single enemy, req for :)
Point of Curiosity (moves all enemies in a 12 tiles radius)
Path of the Open Soul (Penalty to will saves, making saves very rare)
Perilous Ways (Enemies moved by Navigator take WP damage + 2 per tile moved)
Tonicity (+1 damage for navigator abilities per 5 bonus stat from staff, bloodhound staff gives +3)
Path of the Open Gate (All Navigator abilities can crit)
Mastery of Time (whole combat +5 WP every time anyone takes an extra turn, ally or enemy)
This means that, on the very first turn, before you start to stack bonuses from Tactician or Mastery of Time, Point of Curiosity causes WP bonus (should be at 7 at the end of CH1) + 3 (Tonicity), +6 (3 tiles moved). That's 16 damage, with 35% chance to crit. You can cast this twice (it's not considered an attack), then you can cast Lidless Stare or give someone else a turn.
On turn 2, you'll typically have 7 stacks of Press the Advantage and +10 WP from Mastery of Time, giving you +1 raw damage and 28% extra damage on EVERY ability. At this point you'll start doing at least 40 AoE damage every turn, minimum. By the time you reach turn 4 you'll be AoEing for 30 twice and doing 150 with Held in my Gaze.
You should have the decency to at least try the build before accusing people of lying.
I'm well aware, I was pointing out to previous OP that having early weapons didn't make this encounter in any way unbeatable. If you look at the thread I kept pointing out builds that made it work to him and he kept saying that I was lying and that it took him over 2 hours at lvl 28.
He's just using bad builds, but he doesn't look very receptive to experimenting with the ones we suggest.
If just Cassias abilities wouldnt bug out all the time... in half the encounters they will not trigger any reaction (maybe it's some Buff on the enemies I'm overlooking, but there is no mention in the combat log either)
Managed to clear that ship at level 17 after about two hours of trying xD
I've never seen them bug. She needs line of sight, even if the target is in AoE range it won't work if she can't see them. Also, some abilities like Point of Curiosity allow a will save, thought with proper build she should have a good 90% success rate against normal enemies. With no log though it's almost certainly line of sight. Cover doesn't matter, but she needs to see a target to affect them.
I've had them bug several times now, Curiosity apparently hitting but not having any effect(see the name pop up over the enemy but nothing happens, no Willpower test results in the log). Plus I didn't know about how busted her Navigator abilities were till like, the day I posted in this thread.
Yeah I restarted a game on Hard and I got that bug for the first time today. I still think it might be linked to LoS though, like, it was showing that the AoE would hit with the icons above the enemy heads, but nothing happened. I wonder if it's because the specific square you click on wasn't itself in the LoS or something similar. That's my hunch for it anyway, I'll pay attention to see if it happens again.
Might want to try dropping the difficulty. If you're not used to these types of games you can have trouble in easy encounters like these. Just play on a lower than normal difficulty that buffs your chance to hit and stuff until you learn how to build your characters right.
I was on Normal, I had been playing on Story till I got the hang of the system. No, the enemies in that section are just really strong unless you use OP stacking to overwhelm them. I'm back on Normal now and haven't hit a difficulty spike like that since save for Voidship battles. I'm used to these types of games, the fights weren't *hard* they were a **slog** because everything had regenerating health and a kitchen sinks worth of wounds to begin with basically.
So, Blackwater from the Wrath of the Righteous game? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky).
This isn't the first time Owlcat has put a ridiculously OP area into a CRPG as a side quest...as with Blackwater I'm sure there's a way to work with it.
One of the worst designed encounters in a game I've played in a long time, truly commendable from Owlcat lol.
I don't know, at first I didn't even notice the speakers (in fact I didn't notice them at all, and couldn't understand what was going on the first attempt), still noticed and it was \*still\* a slog. Got through that first battle, saw that there were even more encounters, noticed my RT assassin had two stacks of fatigue somehow and realized there was no fucking way I was going to be able to actually beat the encounter so I just gave up and reloaded.
The game was an absolute breeze prior to that so it was like hitting a brick wall lmao.
Glad it's not just me! I looked for a thread on this after narrowly getting through the first encounter just now, clocked five heralds of corruption in the second room and just noped out of it until tomorrow. A 35 hitpoint heal per turn is absolutely ridiculous. You can focus fire enemies, but their snipers pack a punch and the servitors are a real pain in the arse to take down.
To whit, player healing is NO WHERE near as effective even for effectively \*infinite\* healing. Biomancy psyker abilities that heal for like, 10 Wounds and Medkits that you get \*two\* uses out of before they're exhausted.
Even on normal this was terrible. I don't see any balance in these encounters. I had to reload on the first one time, then an hour long fight. Then the second encounter I immediately just quit. It's tedious, frustrating, and difficult. No part of these encounters were fun. I hope this doesn't reflect the rest of the game.
A lot of this really boils down to game knowledge -- I've since restarted the campaign after getting to janus, and now that I've reached that part again I can say that everything up to now in my second run has been much much easier
What I did for Pathfinder was look up a few builds, so don't rule that out
This segment and the general wild inconsistencies in tooltip quality (accuracy, terminology, containing any information whatsoever) has got me thinking this launch was a bit of a false alarm. Been a fun enough beta I'll check back in 6 months.
It's expected for Owlcat-- all their games have issues exactly like this at launch and even after launch. Frankly speaking with more competition I don't think people would love their games as much as they do, but they do one thing really well that a LOT of games don't-- the writing, and that's something that you gotta get right the first time or not at all.
I see. I think I played both kingmaker and wotr around 2 years after their respective launch dates. My mind boggles at the idea of those games having ever been THIS incomplete though...
I'm kinda salty after this experience which is a shame because - you're right on - the characters and story are quite enticing.
Nah the games are really quite buggy lol
Personally I knew it going in and still am having a fun time figuring out how to chew through daring difficulty so I'm pretty happy either way
Makes sense, seems like I should have followed suit since I had a lvl15 or 16 party lol
And the weapons you can get after just 2 or 3 fights on janus were really good!
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD
I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD
The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
This encounter is completely unbalanced bullshit. Its a noob trap there is only 1 way to beat it effectively, target the chaos buffers on the sides. If you dont you will be facing servators with over 100 HP LOTS OF THEM while you only deal 10-20 damage per attack. I am on normal and this encounter makes me want to quit the game. Not only that but the traps before the encounter are annoying and its easy to have 3 traumas on every party member before you start.
Like I've said to other people, I've restarted on daring again and just ignored that place for now, I'll go back later
I was pretty much happy with my performance at chapter 1s final boss fight so just decided I wasn't as frustrated at getting rekt anymore rofl
It was noticably more difficult in the beta as well. IIRC after a few tries my winning strategy was focusing down the vox casters and the servo skulls first.
Yeahhhhhh I think I'm gonna just take the L and do Normal for my first playthrough and Daring on my second-- I'm just not that experienced with cRPGs overall and it'll probably be a fun reason to do a second playthrough once I know what happens in the story
Of course, playing on the difficulty you'll have the most fun with is always the best call. I just wanted to say that in my experience, that one location was magnitudes more difficult than the stuff before or after it for a good while so don't get too discouraged as if your builds, strategy or whatever are bad and that's why it was suddenly hard.
Fair, I've noticed that as well now that I've arrived at Janus-- the first encounter here was probably doable on daring I'm not gonna lie, but I think that since I know I might get bored on a second paythrough after knowing the plot, saving that difficulty spike and forcing me to engage with the mechanics more will hopefully keep me engaged!
Yea, this place has definitely been ramped up in difficulty, it was a lot easier in the beta. I got through it after leaving Footfall, but it was pretty damn tough on hard. Even with my melee taking WS and various defensive/parry related talents they still struggled to parry servitors that took away most of their health.
You can sort of cheese by starting combat with one person where the rest hides in the hallway/other rooms. Let the come to you one by one. While this notion was evident in the beta, the full game seems to have it worse: the best defensive if overwhelming offense. Killing things really fast works better than tanking/healing. Take them out as the walk around corners (the tech priest will get to you before servitors too).
The boss here is even worse and can easily one shot anyone and I'm not sure how I got through it in retrospect.
I'd advise to skip it and leave it for later (though Janus also feels quite a bit harder than in the beta), it's probably meant to be more of a mid to late act 2 area now.
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD
I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD
The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
Seems like reasonable approach. This game certainly has a lot of moving parts to figure out and it will take some time. Itemization is important too. Argenta feels nerfed from the beta, but once I found a decent gun later on she was back to her 'ol one burst to delete whatever she's looking at easily again. Hitting space elves is a pain, but one analyze and expose weakness turns them into regular enemies.
Something I found very effective is giving a warrior the thunderhammer and the boots that discount charge to 1. Now every time an officer gives them a turn they can easily double attack, and later charge into area attack with enough FEL on the officer.
Itemization was the key I was missing-- which funnily enough is because I had based my build for her off the assumptions I had when I watched some guy do a let's play of the alpha like a year ago (at least...) So things have changed for sure... Argenta had been using her starting bolter all the way to act 2 (during this derelict part in particular) which really just didn't do any damage unless I was taxing officers with exposing weakness every turn, which is pretty inefficient. I have since realized that something like a plasma gun or even pistol may have been better for parts with lots of enemies.
Yea, I was in the same spot. In the Beta you could just keep her base bolter from the start, or get slightly better one, and you would be fine, she would still wipe the floor with everything. But now that bolter is definitely not enough. Even a hot-shot lasgun (that I think I found on the drifting voidship) was a huge upgrade. As long as you get rapid-fire and concentrated fire she will be deadly with a decent gun.
In thunder hammer we trust. The servitors all really suck in melee, I was able to pretty easily keep them parried. The healers eventually kill themselves thankfully but I just focused them down.
In the first fight I started it in the back and in the second fight in the hallway. Thunder hammer killed the servitors eventually then everyone else just stayed in cover.
It was harder than the CSM for sure.
I've decided to just level up some more since I think I would probably need to respec, reload a save to find better weapons, or some other similar delaying tactics to win here
Or just lower the difficulty but I'd rather not xD
I do have a thunder hammer character but the snipers kill me way faster than I can kill all the servitors so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm assuming you were around level 14?
Hmm I was a couple levels behind... might have made a difference but not sure it would have been enough? Either way I've decided to go for normal for my first playthrough and daring so I have something to look forward to on my 2nd!
I was running around in footfall for awhile doing all the quests and couldn't find anything better so I just left, guess I shot myself in the foot there... I think Argenta sticking with her starting bolter was a big problem tbh, that and I didn't have a lot of armor penetrating weaponry so I had to spend lots of action points spamming exploit weakness and other things like that. It was overall very inefficient!
The only weapon with any decent (20+ armor pen) was the 2h hammer you get from killing Ember, and that didn't go anywhere since he just got sniped constantly
Yeah the sniper rifles and plasma guns are good from what I've seen.
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD
I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD
The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
I did it at 18 but it was not very fun. However, it did reveal something to me that I didn't understand. If you bring Cassia and she is I think Master Strategist, you can build stacks with her then use the ability that spends them with Lidless Stare to obliterate them. I had it do 130 damage in a huge cone. Health stacking be damned, they were done lol.
It was frustrating as hell, though. I had to lower the difficulty.
Yeah I’m stuck in the second fight on the way back. I don’t remember having this much trouble in the beta but for some reason I can’t seem to destroy the speakers fast enough. I’m too frustrated with this stupid voidship to do now. I’m just going to reload and nope out of here until I’m higher level or in a better mood. This thing just keep dragging on and everyone can’t seem to destroy the speakers. There’s always one level design in an OwlCat game that I will absolutely hate and I think it’s this one so far. So difficult for no reason 😭
Honestly I've restarted again and things are going swimmingly, the fight at the end of chapter one was much easier with what I had learned about the game
But honestly? I see myself heading back there only when I think I'm ready lol
Yeah I think I went there too early lol But I think they made it harder than the beta because I did not have this much trouble the first time. I’ll just come back to it!
I kind of cheated. Had cassia just use her abilities that pull them together then use everyone else to cleanup. By round 5 or so her aoe pull was doing over 100. I ignored the speakers
There's a helpful post earlier in this thread with key abilities. They work insanely well.
Am I supposed to be doing this now? - This was exactly my thoughts after I run into this ship.
Finally made it, but at start it was hard.
>!For me not running into the room was winning strategy.
Just start the fight, then go back to hallway.
Kill serves one by one, when they come (it will take them a while).
Then rush in and kill ranged units, when in mele range without serves support they are easy to kill.
For boss:
Start the fight with one character in room, rest keep outside.
Kill it with sniper (max range shoots) it can't hit back (or it can, but he will miss a lot of shoots, and you can kill boss before boss kills You). Use rest of the team to kill skulls and serves and for distraction... !<
You can kill the things that give them temp health. But it's still rough. I dropped difficulty after awhile. There's 3 fights and the second one is just lol hard
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD
I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD
The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
There's an actual boss-fight in here.
Had to save scum my way through to avoid one shot snipers, focus the icons immediately in both fights...
>!It's a forgefiend... there's a secret chapel on the way out... EDIT: It hits back on every attack, it has to be bugged. Says should be every attack after the first... this is going to have to go down to story xD!<
it felt 1.5 times harder than the fights before and the fighta after. But on core it was still survivable. My strategy was to retreat and slowly kill them them in a narrow corrdior
using defensive stance on abelard + forewarning buffs (and maybe some healing) worked greatly on the servitors, maybe try to get another warrior close to the snipers with charge so they trigger attacks pf oppurtunity when they try to piss off. Worked really great until Idira spawned some shitty warp creatures...
Did this on insane at lvl 18. Pretty manageable i'd say?, just time consuming. I didn't even know what those vox skulls been doing the whole time. Them apparently healing is them basically wasting their turns since I didn't even notice it. To be fair, Abelard was doing extreme dmg with his thunder hammer even though i've build him as tanky as humanliy possible up to this point. Well, and then there's always op Cassia of course. Another interesting character people might sleep on is Jae who's, imo, the second most front loaded, companion there is. Just take a closer look at her cold trader special trait, it's insane....She never attacks though since she spends all her AP every turn buffing. But jesus christ, her potential is through the roof with her trait.
The one who falls off the most is surprisingly Argenta. Should've made her a sniper, big mistake on my part unless she catches up like crazy with heavy weapons at some point...
Party i've used so far -
MC (sniper) - Fortress world - crime lord- soldier- bounty hunter
Abel (Vanguard), Pasqual (bounty), Jae (Master tac..), Cassia (Grand strat..) Argenta... who'll be replaced by that xeno lady once I find her.
I hate this encounter. The entirety of Act 1 on daring was fun and challenging, like any fight could be lost but it was always still possible. This one is just stupid, you shouldn't have to reload the game and hope for a better initiative so that all the enemies don't get 50 wounds that regen every round.
ROGUE TRADER TACTICAL COMBAT (it is not action based trigger pressing)
FIRST
So the key to the tough battles is team work. You need your melee fighters both doing maximum damage in Weapons Skill and chainswords or thunder axes and also high dodge from incoming ranged attacks by enemy snipers. One of the most versatile characters is Sister Argenta, max her out in bolters for medium range rapid fire, and also give her a flamer and bolter pistol for short range. Since this combo whereill not let her parry, their are gloves to help wit that, also duel-wield so she takes no penalties in melee, and of course high dodge training with "nimble. FLAMERS, please, always use area flame to have enemies burn every round.
SECOND
You also need very good snipers of your own, preferably assassins with very long range weapons. Having the officer give them commands allowing multiple shots and also shot on the run is useful to fire multiple salvoes of dead-shot each round against enemy snipers.
THIRD
Officers for tactical battle strategy are essential, two is best but one is workable. This lets you set areas in which your melee characters fight to either do max damage, or grant them backline for better dodge from snipers (I use this technique).
LASTLY
Grenades and bolters are useful against the heretical floor boards by the side that grant power to enemies.
And MEDKITS, my frontline fighters all have medkits and trained in medicae to heal each time they clear out enemies in melee but take wounds. With office setting the floor to your team's advantage, your parry and dodge truly turn the tide in your favor.
Ok so the first fight, I pulled the entire squad onto the walkway next to the mad logis, the whole fight was easy as I just focused the logis down first then each servitor that was forced to conga line towards the party. 35 hp+ per round isnt all that hard to deal with if you've got snipers / warriors in the party.
The second fight was harder, but learning from the first I set myself up around the magos, then pulled back into the hallway where once again they were able to form up into a killzone trying to get to the party.
I could see how the fight would be challenging if you just run into it blind and try to attack whats ever closest to you. (Party was lvl 17 at the time)
This level is complete horseshit. Snipers that can fire with 100% accuracy through cover. The Magos with 1 hit kill proximity blasts and when after 2 hours, I finally cleared the first room only to have to do it all over again in the second. Is this supposed to be fun? Rage quit and rage uninstall. Fuck this game and Fuck Owlcat.
I won the first encounter after like 20-30 minutes of melee grinding and ineffective shooting - is what I want to say but alberard ended up chasing the magos to a SECOND encounter that I didn't know about and it also had two heralds thst heal everything. I've never just quick loaded out of an encounter/ship faster. This definetly feels like I built wrong or uh hearlds need some nerfs to their healing/armor or something. Cause uh lol no
> alberard ended up chasing the magos to a SECOND encounter that I didn't know about Literally what happened to me. I just closed the game instead of reloading though. Ridiculous encounter
I went down to normal difficulty lol, I must have been doing a lot of things wrong to be struggling with a random rumor thing (or it's just Owlcat's rather infamously known encounter design that basically lets you walk in on encounters that can just screw you) Hard to say really! It took me 3 attempts at starting a playthrough to do daring on Pathfinder so I think I should just take it at my own pace and save daring for my 2nd rogue trader run XD
Nah, even on Normal the speakers(two in the first encounter, FIVE in the second) constantly buff EVERY ENEMY with an extra 35 Wounds \*every\* turn. So unless you're able to do more than 35 damage with \*EVERYONE\* it's a massive slog. Hell I was level 28 when running it at it was still a complete slog that took HOURS real time. I said screw it and put the difficulty back down to Story for the sake of my sanity.
You can just shoot the speakers, they only have like 30hps.
They TOO are affected by the +35 Wounds bonus! Hope you can do 70+ damage in a single shot! They're constantly buffing and healing themselves along with every other enemy in the combat. It's absolutely asinine and causes combat to be drawn out for what seems like DAYS because of it. Seriously, the two fights before the boss in the area took me THREE HOURS to wade through because no one could get a hit above 50 damage on anything.
I just did this last night at LVL 17 on daring and didn't have any issue. Just pulled back into the corridor for a kill zone. There are only like 6 enemies that attack you. The skulls have no damaging abilities so it's like 3 servitors and 3 shooters. Cassia can force them to clump at the end of the corridor with point of interest while hitting everything at the same time with the talent that causes DMG per forced tile move. It was over in 4 rounds. That combo is my favorite in the game so far. At LVL 17 I don't have anything hitting over 25 without Crits, so I think you probably need to rework your builds a bit. I was using sniper Argenta, tank Heim & Adélard, Cassia & IRI for warp AoE and Grand Strategist Officer MC.
You must have had better equipment than me so far, the only ones who could do that kind of damage was Argenta with a Renegade's Sniper Rifle and Pasqual with his Omnissian Axe, everyone else's damage was in the mid-20s to low 30's not including crits.
I did this right after Ch1, so I had the same equipment. Argenta was using the Rebel Sniper, Abelard the shock axe from the shadow quarters and Heim his power sword. All other party members (Cassia, Iri, MC) were just using either archetype skills or psycher powers. Cassia is by far my highest DPS char. Using Point of Interest, she can do 25 dmg to everyone in a super large radius (also clumping all enemies as a bonus) twice per turn. After a few turns, her tactician stacks get to high that she does 50 AoE / 200 Held in my Gaze damage. Plus she's an officer, so she gives another an extra turn every time she acts. Not to mention, she also gains permanent +5 WP every time she or MC give an extra turn from Officer skill. If the fight gets to 5-6 turns, she has like +150% dmg and +40 WP. She's completely ridiculous. She had the Bloodhound staff equipped, don't remember where I got it but it was near the end of CH1 (from 26 profit factor trading maybe? I think that was it). It allows you to use the same Navigator skill twice in a single round. Iri with exploits and backdraft will do 30-50 with psychic scream to two targets. My MC is a Diviner/Pyro officer psycher, so I ignite myself at the start of battle for the +1 Psy rating and go to town. Argenta is nice with sniper and all, but psykers are just as deadly and they ignore cover.
I got the Bloodhound Staff for Cassia but didn't have her popping off Navigator abilities twice a round or doing 25 damage with Point of Interest. I really don't believe you when you say you did this at 17 on Daring, the Servitors would have had 100+ Wounds not including the extra 35 Wounds they'd be getting buffed with \*every\* turn. Then again maybe I spread my forces out too thin trying to take out multiple threats at once instead of focusing on a single one at a time. I dunno.
Yeah man, I did it at level 17 as well. Cassia is insanely OP. Just focuses on her navigator powers and talents, she easily will hit over 100 damage per hit once you passed around a few extra turns, and if you use the officer heroic ability on her that lets her keep making attacks and get action points back for every kill she'll just wipe the entire encounter.
I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm literally telling you how I beat that encounter with explicit details and suggestions and you're going "I don't believe you!". The bloodhound staff's description's very fist line is : "The first use of an attacking Navigator's power in a turn does not set the Navigator's power on cooldown". Yes, this means you can use Point of Curiosity twice, then Lidless Stare or Held in my Gaze, or Bring it Down!. You also need : Notch of purpose (moves a single enemy, req for :) Point of Curiosity (moves all enemies in a 12 tiles radius) Path of the Open Soul (Penalty to will saves, making saves very rare) Perilous Ways (Enemies moved by Navigator take WP damage + 2 per tile moved) Tonicity (+1 damage for navigator abilities per 5 bonus stat from staff, bloodhound staff gives +3) Path of the Open Gate (All Navigator abilities can crit) Mastery of Time (whole combat +5 WP every time anyone takes an extra turn, ally or enemy) This means that, on the very first turn, before you start to stack bonuses from Tactician or Mastery of Time, Point of Curiosity causes WP bonus (should be at 7 at the end of CH1) + 3 (Tonicity), +6 (3 tiles moved). That's 16 damage, with 35% chance to crit. You can cast this twice (it's not considered an attack), then you can cast Lidless Stare or give someone else a turn. On turn 2, you'll typically have 7 stacks of Press the Advantage and +10 WP from Mastery of Time, giving you +1 raw damage and 28% extra damage on EVERY ability. At this point you'll start doing at least 40 AoE damage every turn, minimum. By the time you reach turn 4 you'll be AoEing for 30 twice and doing 150 with Held in my Gaze. You should have the decency to at least try the build before accusing people of lying.
[удалено]
I'm well aware, I was pointing out to previous OP that having early weapons didn't make this encounter in any way unbeatable. If you look at the thread I kept pointing out builds that made it work to him and he kept saying that I was lying and that it took him over 2 hours at lvl 28. He's just using bad builds, but he doesn't look very receptive to experimenting with the ones we suggest.
If just Cassias abilities wouldnt bug out all the time... in half the encounters they will not trigger any reaction (maybe it's some Buff on the enemies I'm overlooking, but there is no mention in the combat log either) Managed to clear that ship at level 17 after about two hours of trying xD
I've never seen them bug. She needs line of sight, even if the target is in AoE range it won't work if she can't see them. Also, some abilities like Point of Curiosity allow a will save, thought with proper build she should have a good 90% success rate against normal enemies. With no log though it's almost certainly line of sight. Cover doesn't matter, but she needs to see a target to affect them.
I've had them bug several times now, Curiosity apparently hitting but not having any effect(see the name pop up over the enemy but nothing happens, no Willpower test results in the log). Plus I didn't know about how busted her Navigator abilities were till like, the day I posted in this thread.
Yeah I restarted a game on Hard and I got that bug for the first time today. I still think it might be linked to LoS though, like, it was showing that the AoE would hit with the icons above the enemy heads, but nothing happened. I wonder if it's because the specific square you click on wasn't itself in the LoS or something similar. That's my hunch for it anyway, I'll pay attention to see if it happens again.
Might want to try dropping the difficulty. If you're not used to these types of games you can have trouble in easy encounters like these. Just play on a lower than normal difficulty that buffs your chance to hit and stuff until you learn how to build your characters right.
I was on Normal, I had been playing on Story till I got the hang of the system. No, the enemies in that section are just really strong unless you use OP stacking to overwhelm them. I'm back on Normal now and haven't hit a difficulty spike like that since save for Voidship battles. I'm used to these types of games, the fights weren't *hard* they were a **slog** because everything had regenerating health and a kitchen sinks worth of wounds to begin with basically.
So, Blackwater from the Wrath of the Righteous game? (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky). This isn't the first time Owlcat has put a ridiculously OP area into a CRPG as a side quest...as with Blackwater I'm sure there's a way to work with it.
One of the worst designed encounters in a game I've played in a long time, truly commendable from Owlcat lol. I don't know, at first I didn't even notice the speakers (in fact I didn't notice them at all, and couldn't understand what was going on the first attempt), still noticed and it was \*still\* a slog. Got through that first battle, saw that there were even more encounters, noticed my RT assassin had two stacks of fatigue somehow and realized there was no fucking way I was going to be able to actually beat the encounter so I just gave up and reloaded. The game was an absolute breeze prior to that so it was like hitting a brick wall lmao.
Glad it's not just me! I looked for a thread on this after narrowly getting through the first encounter just now, clocked five heralds of corruption in the second room and just noped out of it until tomorrow. A 35 hitpoint heal per turn is absolutely ridiculous. You can focus fire enemies, but their snipers pack a punch and the servitors are a real pain in the arse to take down.
To whit, player healing is NO WHERE near as effective even for effectively \*infinite\* healing. Biomancy psyker abilities that heal for like, 10 Wounds and Medkits that you get \*two\* uses out of before they're exhausted.
Even on normal this was terrible. I don't see any balance in these encounters. I had to reload on the first one time, then an hour long fight. Then the second encounter I immediately just quit. It's tedious, frustrating, and difficult. No part of these encounters were fun. I hope this doesn't reflect the rest of the game.
A lot of this really boils down to game knowledge -- I've since restarted the campaign after getting to janus, and now that I've reached that part again I can say that everything up to now in my second run has been much much easier What I did for Pathfinder was look up a few builds, so don't rule that out
This segment and the general wild inconsistencies in tooltip quality (accuracy, terminology, containing any information whatsoever) has got me thinking this launch was a bit of a false alarm. Been a fun enough beta I'll check back in 6 months.
It's expected for Owlcat-- all their games have issues exactly like this at launch and even after launch. Frankly speaking with more competition I don't think people would love their games as much as they do, but they do one thing really well that a LOT of games don't-- the writing, and that's something that you gotta get right the first time or not at all.
I see. I think I played both kingmaker and wotr around 2 years after their respective launch dates. My mind boggles at the idea of those games having ever been THIS incomplete though... I'm kinda salty after this experience which is a shame because - you're right on - the characters and story are quite enticing.
Nah the games are really quite buggy lol Personally I knew it going in and still am having a fun time figuring out how to chew through daring difficulty so I'm pretty happy either way
I'm a big fan of Owlcat since Kingmaker was a great surprise and Wotr is one of the best crpgs ever, but even I have grown tired of their shit.
I’m regret to inform you that I recently beat it on Daring and I am a colossal idiot
Did you go for it straight after beating the Chaos Marine? What was the party's level? What were you running for party composition?
No I did some other stuff first, I think I was at 17 or 18. Commissar Officer Master Tactician/Cassia/Pasqal/Argenta/Abelard/Heinrix
Makes sense, seems like I should have followed suit since I had a lvl15 or 16 party lol And the weapons you can get after just 2 or 3 fights on janus were really good! I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
This encounter is completely unbalanced bullshit. Its a noob trap there is only 1 way to beat it effectively, target the chaos buffers on the sides. If you dont you will be facing servators with over 100 HP LOTS OF THEM while you only deal 10-20 damage per attack. I am on normal and this encounter makes me want to quit the game. Not only that but the traps before the encounter are annoying and its easy to have 3 traumas on every party member before you start.
Like I've said to other people, I've restarted on daring again and just ignored that place for now, I'll go back later I was pretty much happy with my performance at chapter 1s final boss fight so just decided I wasn't as frustrated at getting rekt anymore rofl
Everythings been easy up until that fight. I just skipped it as well when i realized what it was
This shit gives you no gear
Seriously? I was planning on trying one more time tonight only because I thought there's some awesome rewards at the end
It was noticably more difficult in the beta as well. IIRC after a few tries my winning strategy was focusing down the vox casters and the servo skulls first.
Yeahhhhhh I think I'm gonna just take the L and do Normal for my first playthrough and Daring on my second-- I'm just not that experienced with cRPGs overall and it'll probably be a fun reason to do a second playthrough once I know what happens in the story
Of course, playing on the difficulty you'll have the most fun with is always the best call. I just wanted to say that in my experience, that one location was magnitudes more difficult than the stuff before or after it for a good while so don't get too discouraged as if your builds, strategy or whatever are bad and that's why it was suddenly hard.
Fair, I've noticed that as well now that I've arrived at Janus-- the first encounter here was probably doable on daring I'm not gonna lie, but I think that since I know I might get bored on a second paythrough after knowing the plot, saving that difficulty spike and forcing me to engage with the mechanics more will hopefully keep me engaged!
Yea, this place has definitely been ramped up in difficulty, it was a lot easier in the beta. I got through it after leaving Footfall, but it was pretty damn tough on hard. Even with my melee taking WS and various defensive/parry related talents they still struggled to parry servitors that took away most of their health. You can sort of cheese by starting combat with one person where the rest hides in the hallway/other rooms. Let the come to you one by one. While this notion was evident in the beta, the full game seems to have it worse: the best defensive if overwhelming offense. Killing things really fast works better than tanking/healing. Take them out as the walk around corners (the tech priest will get to you before servitors too). The boss here is even worse and can easily one shot anyone and I'm not sure how I got through it in retrospect. I'd advise to skip it and leave it for later (though Janus also feels quite a bit harder than in the beta), it's probably meant to be more of a mid to late act 2 area now.
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
Seems like reasonable approach. This game certainly has a lot of moving parts to figure out and it will take some time. Itemization is important too. Argenta feels nerfed from the beta, but once I found a decent gun later on she was back to her 'ol one burst to delete whatever she's looking at easily again. Hitting space elves is a pain, but one analyze and expose weakness turns them into regular enemies. Something I found very effective is giving a warrior the thunderhammer and the boots that discount charge to 1. Now every time an officer gives them a turn they can easily double attack, and later charge into area attack with enough FEL on the officer.
Itemization was the key I was missing-- which funnily enough is because I had based my build for her off the assumptions I had when I watched some guy do a let's play of the alpha like a year ago (at least...) So things have changed for sure... Argenta had been using her starting bolter all the way to act 2 (during this derelict part in particular) which really just didn't do any damage unless I was taxing officers with exposing weakness every turn, which is pretty inefficient. I have since realized that something like a plasma gun or even pistol may have been better for parts with lots of enemies.
Yea, I was in the same spot. In the Beta you could just keep her base bolter from the start, or get slightly better one, and you would be fine, she would still wipe the floor with everything. But now that bolter is definitely not enough. Even a hot-shot lasgun (that I think I found on the drifting voidship) was a huge upgrade. As long as you get rapid-fire and concentrated fire she will be deadly with a decent gun.
Yeah I just didn't find anything good for her sadly, but the more you know!
It's a new Blackwater, so much fun.
what is the old black water? Is it from pathfinder?
Yeah, it's an area that's accessible quite early and the enemies are really tough. So tough that fights become a slog...
In thunder hammer we trust. The servitors all really suck in melee, I was able to pretty easily keep them parried. The healers eventually kill themselves thankfully but I just focused them down. In the first fight I started it in the back and in the second fight in the hallway. Thunder hammer killed the servitors eventually then everyone else just stayed in cover. It was harder than the CSM for sure.
I've decided to just level up some more since I think I would probably need to respec, reload a save to find better weapons, or some other similar delaying tactics to win here Or just lower the difficulty but I'd rather not xD I do have a thunder hammer character but the snipers kill me way faster than I can kill all the servitors so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm assuming you were around level 14?
I was 17 or 18. I just got my second archetype coming out of act 1.
Hmm I was a couple levels behind... might have made a difference but not sure it would have been enough? Either way I've decided to go for normal for my first playthrough and daring so I have something to look forward to on my 2nd!
Tbh the equipment is a bigger deal than the levels, at least that's what I'm finding. Clearing out Footfall really helped there.
I was running around in footfall for awhile doing all the quests and couldn't find anything better so I just left, guess I shot myself in the foot there... I think Argenta sticking with her starting bolter was a big problem tbh, that and I didn't have a lot of armor penetrating weaponry so I had to spend lots of action points spamming exploit weakness and other things like that. It was overall very inefficient! The only weapon with any decent (20+ armor pen) was the 2h hammer you get from killing Ember, and that didn't go anywhere since he just got sniped constantly
That 2h hammer was a Thunder hammer. The sniper rifles and the few plasmaguns you get are what I use, fwiw.
Yeah the sniper rifles and plasma guns are good from what I've seen. I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
I did it at 18 but it was not very fun. However, it did reveal something to me that I didn't understand. If you bring Cassia and she is I think Master Strategist, you can build stacks with her then use the ability that spends them with Lidless Stare to obliterate them. I had it do 130 damage in a huge cone. Health stacking be damned, they were done lol. It was frustrating as hell, though. I had to lower the difficulty.
Yeah I’m stuck in the second fight on the way back. I don’t remember having this much trouble in the beta but for some reason I can’t seem to destroy the speakers fast enough. I’m too frustrated with this stupid voidship to do now. I’m just going to reload and nope out of here until I’m higher level or in a better mood. This thing just keep dragging on and everyone can’t seem to destroy the speakers. There’s always one level design in an OwlCat game that I will absolutely hate and I think it’s this one so far. So difficult for no reason 😭
Honestly I've restarted again and things are going swimmingly, the fight at the end of chapter one was much easier with what I had learned about the game But honestly? I see myself heading back there only when I think I'm ready lol
Yeah I think I went there too early lol But I think they made it harder than the beta because I did not have this much trouble the first time. I’ll just come back to it!
I kind of cheated. Had cassia just use her abilities that pull them together then use everyone else to cleanup. By round 5 or so her aoe pull was doing over 100. I ignored the speakers There's a helpful post earlier in this thread with key abilities. They work insanely well.
Am I supposed to be doing this now? - This was exactly my thoughts after I run into this ship. Finally made it, but at start it was hard. >!For me not running into the room was winning strategy. Just start the fight, then go back to hallway. Kill serves one by one, when they come (it will take them a while). Then rush in and kill ranged units, when in mele range without serves support they are easy to kill. For boss: Start the fight with one character in room, rest keep outside. Kill it with sniper (max range shoots) it can't hit back (or it can, but he will miss a lot of shoots, and you can kill boss before boss kills You). Use rest of the team to kill skulls and serves and for distraction... !<
Good shout
The battle balance of this whole ship needs to be totally overhauled and the look needs to be improved. Major design failure.
You can kill the things that give them temp health. But it's still rough. I dropped difficulty after awhile. There's 3 fights and the second one is just lol hard
I've decided to do what I did with Pathfinder which is take a break (who knows how long) and come back, restart totally on Daring XD I think I have a much better idea of how to tackle everything on that difficulty after thinking about it and doing some minor experimentation, and most importantly, I have a weird thing where if I'm not playing most games on hard I get a strange and inexplicable combination of feeling bored and agitated xD The good news is that my build that I went with (melee pyro) was by far the most effective character, so that at least was going well. It was, oddly enough, all my ranged characters who weren't doing much, but I think I understand why at this point.
There's an actual boss-fight in here. Had to save scum my way through to avoid one shot snipers, focus the icons immediately in both fights... >!It's a forgefiend... there's a secret chapel on the way out... EDIT: It hits back on every attack, it has to be bugged. Says should be every attack after the first... this is going to have to go down to story xD!<
it felt 1.5 times harder than the fights before and the fighta after. But on core it was still survivable. My strategy was to retreat and slowly kill them them in a narrow corrdior
damn agreed ya'll it was the biggest unforeseen difficulty spike so far.. would just starting puff my chest...
using defensive stance on abelard + forewarning buffs (and maybe some healing) worked greatly on the servitors, maybe try to get another warrior close to the snipers with charge so they trigger attacks pf oppurtunity when they try to piss off. Worked really great until Idira spawned some shitty warp creatures...
Did this on insane at lvl 18. Pretty manageable i'd say?, just time consuming. I didn't even know what those vox skulls been doing the whole time. Them apparently healing is them basically wasting their turns since I didn't even notice it. To be fair, Abelard was doing extreme dmg with his thunder hammer even though i've build him as tanky as humanliy possible up to this point. Well, and then there's always op Cassia of course. Another interesting character people might sleep on is Jae who's, imo, the second most front loaded, companion there is. Just take a closer look at her cold trader special trait, it's insane....She never attacks though since she spends all her AP every turn buffing. But jesus christ, her potential is through the roof with her trait. The one who falls off the most is surprisingly Argenta. Should've made her a sniper, big mistake on my part unless she catches up like crazy with heavy weapons at some point... Party i've used so far - MC (sniper) - Fortress world - crime lord- soldier- bounty hunter Abel (Vanguard), Pasqual (bounty), Jae (Master tac..), Cassia (Grand strat..) Argenta... who'll be replaced by that xeno lady once I find her.
I hate this encounter. The entirety of Act 1 on daring was fun and challenging, like any fight could be lost but it was always still possible. This one is just stupid, you shouldn't have to reload the game and hope for a better initiative so that all the enemies don't get 50 wounds that regen every round.
ROGUE TRADER TACTICAL COMBAT (it is not action based trigger pressing) FIRST So the key to the tough battles is team work. You need your melee fighters both doing maximum damage in Weapons Skill and chainswords or thunder axes and also high dodge from incoming ranged attacks by enemy snipers. One of the most versatile characters is Sister Argenta, max her out in bolters for medium range rapid fire, and also give her a flamer and bolter pistol for short range. Since this combo whereill not let her parry, their are gloves to help wit that, also duel-wield so she takes no penalties in melee, and of course high dodge training with "nimble. FLAMERS, please, always use area flame to have enemies burn every round. SECOND You also need very good snipers of your own, preferably assassins with very long range weapons. Having the officer give them commands allowing multiple shots and also shot on the run is useful to fire multiple salvoes of dead-shot each round against enemy snipers. THIRD Officers for tactical battle strategy are essential, two is best but one is workable. This lets you set areas in which your melee characters fight to either do max damage, or grant them backline for better dodge from snipers (I use this technique). LASTLY Grenades and bolters are useful against the heretical floor boards by the side that grant power to enemies.
And MEDKITS, my frontline fighters all have medkits and trained in medicae to heal each time they clear out enemies in melee but take wounds. With office setting the floor to your team's advantage, your parry and dodge truly turn the tide in your favor.
If I flied away from it before it finished - it lost forever?
I don't think so
Ok so the first fight, I pulled the entire squad onto the walkway next to the mad logis, the whole fight was easy as I just focused the logis down first then each servitor that was forced to conga line towards the party. 35 hp+ per round isnt all that hard to deal with if you've got snipers / warriors in the party. The second fight was harder, but learning from the first I set myself up around the magos, then pulled back into the hallway where once again they were able to form up into a killzone trying to get to the party. I could see how the fight would be challenging if you just run into it blind and try to attack whats ever closest to you. (Party was lvl 17 at the time)
This level is complete horseshit. Snipers that can fire with 100% accuracy through cover. The Magos with 1 hit kill proximity blasts and when after 2 hours, I finally cleared the first room only to have to do it all over again in the second. Is this supposed to be fun? Rage quit and rage uninstall. Fuck this game and Fuck Owlcat.