Feedback on difficulty in Path of the Unspoken, and death penalty

Wicked Feedback
1

Currently I have completed 2 playthroughs, and am in the middle of a third one:

1st one: caster with wand (completed)
2nd Strength with claymore and sword and shield (completed)
3rd pure Dex bow, adding a spear and shield soon. (in progress)

When into the breach released we had the 20% extra xp bonus on path of the unspoken, which made you out level the content way too easy. With that removed it feels better. However you still out level the areas until the black trench way too easy.

After the black trench the pacing with leveling feels a lot better when entering lowland meadows and Marin Woods. And fights in those areas have a nice dance and rhythm to them, I actually had to put some effort into them. Before it feels way too easy. And this is without the use of any XP items and/or consumables.

I would really like to see the area levels scale more aggressively on path of the unspoken, for the shallows, orban glades, mariners keep and for nameless pass. This should solve most of the problems for path of the unspoken.

And I really feel the game is still way too soft on dying, especially on this difficulty. I can just don’t feel any tension ever:

  • enemies don’t respawn; only the health resets of the ones left alive. This means I can just mindless rush in, kill 1 enemy and repeat.
  • Durability and the costs associated with it are negligible. You have to die an obscene amount of times before your gear breaks (even with cloth armour) and the repair costs amount to pocked change.

With the game being this soft or death, a lot of tension during the fights evaporates.
Adding an optional extra death penalty option would be great we have a hardcore option, but it would be really nice to get something like a “mediumcore” option as well.
My personal preference for mediumcore would be: XP loss on death (only loss of progress) and a hefty increase on repair costs

Because currently its either all or nothing.

2 Likes
2

Completely agree. I am 8h in and repair costs are meaningless, I die as a teleport. I’m playing hardest difficulty with claymore. I put zero points into anything but str, it’s too easy.

1 Like
3

Do you think it would make more sense for Unspoken to be a modifiable difficulty?

Think Lords of the Fallen or Hades modifiers? You make the game as difficult as you want it to be.

4

I personally enjoy the mutual experience we get as players when it comes to challenge. This game is already going to far with the numerous difficulty options. What’s the point of sharing a unique build if it’s built for an arrangement of 6/12 selected difficulty settings? Just balance the game properly I thought this was a “souls-like”?

5

You can already change a realm’s difficulty on the fly. I’m not sure that union would be broken.

6

XP loss: NO (this shit exists in poe2)

Repair costs: NO

7

Strongly agree. I’m playing unspoken difficulty as a first time player. 50hrs in, dying is a convenient way to teleport, gear durability is trivial with how abundant money and repairing powder are. I was thinking 5% exp penalty on death, losing money, or break gears faster might be good to make me think twice before doing something stupid and not bruteforcing bosses with pure damage. I also think enemies are too squishy. I remember in Elden Ring at least everything in the overworld resets and make it a complete nuisance to go through everything again due to limited availability of potion stacks. Food is so readily available in this game, you do not have much incentive to think of your hp bar.

8

No to penalties. The difficulty is more of to add a challenge, not to add useless and nonsensical punishments.

The fact that increasing the difficulty makes MORE enemies spawn (and this multiply with the coop presence), and that they have more stats in general, is the way to go.