Difficulty feedback before 1.0

Wicked Feedback
1

Since 1.0 is nearing, I wanted to give feedback regarding the difficulty on Path of the Unspoken. This is based purely on the Path of the Unspoken difficulty, and all suggestions and feedback are also directed at this mode. So for people who prefer a different difficulty, don’t worry, nothing would be affected.

This is also based on playthroughs of multiple different characters across the two most recent updates. I have played INT casters, DEX bow/spear builds, and STR 2-hand + sword-and-board builds.

TL;DR at the end.

With that out of the way: through all my playthroughs, the Path of the Unspoken difficulty still feels lacking in terms of challenge. I think this is due to several things:

Zone Scaling

The zones need to scale much more aggressively. Currently, it is way too easy to outlevel everything up until Lowland Meadows and Marin Woods. You outlevel everything far too quickly, and this happens just from exploring a bit; not from doing any heavy farming or grinding.

Enemies

I think the enemies are in a good place. Maybe they could use a bit more health and damage on Path of the Unspoken, but making zones scale faster and more aggressively should largely solve this.

Player Power / Progression

I feel like player power scales way too fast. Caster builds especially will destroy everything with basic runes. Upgrading Sacrament happens quickly, which in turn gives you better items and upgrades, further accelerating your power scaling.

Doing bounties and challenges can also provide extreme boosts. In general, the progression curve needs attention on Path of the Unspoken.

Balancing

Overall balance still needs some work. The last patch—which reduced the power of some enchantments and gave bows much-needed adjustments; was a step in the right direction.

I mainly played elemental casters (staves/wands), and this area really needs adjustments. Spells and runes scale far too quickly. You can completely trivialize the game with just a Magus Wand and Lightning Blast.

Adding charge mechanics to spells could be an option. For example, the longer you charge a spell, the more damage it does—creating more risk/reward scenarios.

In short: spells are still too strong, and other systems likely need to be toned down as well.

Death Penalty

This is a very divisive topic, but I think it’s an important one. At launch, repair costs could be impactful, but since then they’ve been made completely meaningless.

Love them or hate them, the old repair costs served a purpose: they helped keep player power progression in check. Currently, there is nothing stopping players from constant power progression. I can repeatedly attempt the hardest bounties early on with zero consequences and still reap all the rewards.

I understand not everyone likes a punishing death penalty, but it could help to have an optional middle ground between normal and hardcore—a “moderate” mode with significantly increased repair costs. This would help regulate progression and create more meaningful risk/reward scenarios, while remaining entirely optional.

TL;DR:

Path of the Unspoken does not offer enough challenge.

  • Zone scaling needs to be more aggressive
  • Enemies may need slight adjustments (especially more health)
  • Player power scales far too quickly
  • Balance still needs work (especially spells)
  • An optional mode with harsher death penalties could help significantly
2

All zones should be >= player level once the story is completed. I mentioned that many months ago when I last played. And the “burn stuff in fire” should really be more punishing.

That aside post-breach hotfixes quite a bit ruined difficulty on their own - like “ledge protection” or endless flinching of enemies after every hit, to the point people did mocking videos.

At some point they promised “realm modifiers”, but I have gut feeling they forgot or scrapped that.

3

Definitely agree on completing the story that all zones should scale. And I really do hope that Realm modifiers will come, although we still have to see how much the new class system will shake things up, we have no idea how much that will affect the difficulty.

4

I completely agree with what you said. I’d also like to add that I believe boss encounters could be more challenging overall.

Perhaps bosses could have an additional health bar or some form of extended phase, especially now that we have the Together update and cooperative play. Playing with friends as the group’s frontline tank, I’ve noticed that I barely get the chance to make use of the stagger mechanics or damage mitigation tools available to my build. My teammates, who are focused on magical damage, are often able to bring bosses down very quickly.

Even though I don’t have much experience with Souls-like games, I feel that boss fights could be more demanding and last long enough for players to fully engage with the mechanics and roles they’ve built their characters around.

5

You bring up a good point.

Combat in general should be designed for players to fully exploit the play style of their choice. I’ve seen many such cases of games that give the players abilities like crowd control, but then those effects don’t really do anything to bosses.

So in the end the meta is usually having a high damage party. I think the design philosophy should be that if the devs give the players a skill/ability/power, they should be able to use it very often and not just situationally.

The game should be at least difficult enough for everyone in the party to shine within the role that they choose to play as, beyond doing high damage and erasing enemies as quickly as they can.

6

And I’m stuck. I can’t beat the Lost Huntress. The damage I deal is so low, like a water pistol, making the bosses into damage sponges. I started the game with a two-handed weapon and a heavy build. I love “Uga Buga” style builds in Dark Souls, but I hated it here because how agile enemies can be.

Mid-game, I started a new game with a bow to see if it would be less frustrating, but it wasn’t. I’m eight levels above the recommended level, yet I don’t feel any stronger when I increase my Dexterity. No matter how many points I put into it, the only way to increase damage seems to be by upgrading my weapon.

All my armor and bow are maxed out based on the available materials. I’m not interested in farming for hours to copy YouTubers’ meta builds. At this point, I’ve run out of resources and ideas on how to progress. It feels like it’s time to throw in the towel and go play something else.

I’m pretty sure that people saying that this game’s too easy already have 1000 hours in this game and are playing with very optimized builds. I beaten several dark souls, and jesus… this is even harder then sekiro ffs!

7

Hey KillScreen,

To my ears this sounds like something very solveable, would you be willing to share some screenshots from your build? If you can show your stats and perhaps weapons at minimum I think we can find some solutions for you :wink: .

If you’re willing, please do it in the Tips & Tricks category or in the builds channel in the Discord!

Silas