Do you even remember the tutorial of dark souls? The first monster stands completely still. The next monsters walk slower than a snail. Then there’s a stationary archer.
I think it’s in your head. Just skip the prologue if it’s too simple for you 
Some enemies have way, way too much health compared to the damage I’m doing.
I picked up a weekly quest - A Savage Pair, which is danger level 3. I’m level 8. With the amount of damage I’m doing, it will take me at least 10 minutes to kill one of the two. And they’re in a group of 4 enemies. I managed to separate them to fight 1 of them at once, but I decided to just give up and run away after only getting its health down to about 80% after 2 1/2 minutes.
Don’t remember having this problem before the patch.
Yeah, something is weird. I killed Darak in 45-60 seconds, including all the minions. Same build.
I’m not sure that quest’s danger level is actually 3, lol.
Your recent hotfix has bugged my game. Nothing will respawn now in the orban glades and I can’t get herbs to respawn in other areas as well. Ive even waited over a day in game time, quit to main menu and relaunched the game. Im pretty much screwed on heals now so my run is bricked.
Also whats up with the damage/health scaling for enemies? I got the bounty for the deadly pair in the shallows and it takes forever to kill them. Even though Ive upgraded my weapon multiple times, it feels terrible to upgrade and not even notice the difference.
that’s what I’m taking about :
you make onboarding approachable through good level design, not paper-thin opponents.
Up until this hotfix the tutorial was perfect :
below deck you had plenty of time to dance around each enemy, parry / block (if you couldn’t parry) their attacks, and chip away at their healthbars. Or simply one-shot them with a backstab (usable again with the hotfix).
Not much to do here yet you learn the basics having fun in the process.
Once on deck, you had allies to back you up and distract the Risen. Again - not much of a challenge if you paid attention to your surroundings. You didn’t even need to be good at parrying enemy attacks to get through it in one piece.
Now you have an actually usable backstab, more generous parry window, more than enough health potions, and a bunch of massively nerfed enemies who suck at teaching you how to fight and simply make you want to skip the prologue, as you suggested.
Why bother adding a prologue that people will just skip as it fails to teach them anything and seems outright broken ?
Bounties are not properly scaling to danger level.
Only reason I was able to do that bounty at lv11 was because you can get one of the bruisers to hit the other as enemies have friendly fire, so I got one bruiser to kill the other.
But even then, the single bruiser hit so hard and took so little damage that I hit hunger limit, couldn’t get close to build focus because these mobs have tracking swings in a 360 degree around them, and I had to cheese.
I basically had to use up 11 whole bombs on that boss while hitting once or twice and then running.
On the other hand, story bosses die very quickly and the damage they do is pretty reasonable, they just need to live a bit longer. River Twins lost 50% of their HP to one frost spell.
Meanwhile regular mobs like the witches and the goliaths and nith pickaxes have way too much damn HP and do more damage than bosses while coming at you in packs of 2-3 and ragdolling you with endless aggression since poise is just terrible for the player while enemies seem to have hyperarmor against anything but charged attacks.
Only reason my lv15 mage made it through Nameless Pass is because my frost staff freezes enemies, but even with 22 intelligence and frost damage augment I had to hit enemies 6-7 times to land a kill, that is way too much for how numerous, mobile, and deadly they are.
I also have 23 points in stamina and am still gassing out all the time as a single combo chain drains up all my stamina.
The fact that you don’t learn anything from it doesn’t mean nobody does. Remember: this game is also played by people that have never played an arpg before, they need handholding that seems excessive for any arpg/souls veteran
I’m hardly an arpg/souls veteran - I played some Sekiro, and that’s it. Haven’t played Dark Souls, haven’t played Elden Ring, but I have played the tutorial when The Breach dropped (before hotfix 1) and it was hardly a challenge even for a full-on casual gamer like myself.
I get that some people need more time to learn the ropes, but the level design (you’re either facing one enemy at a time or have some allies to back you up and act as a distraction), along with a more generous parry window and the right tools (an ok sword and a shield to simply block and stagger your opponents) did an excellent job at teaching me combat basics.
And it required my attention in the process.
Now it’s just skippable content, as you’ve previously said yourself..
Yeah, I came back 6 or 7 levels later, and I still had to rely on them doing most of the damage to each other.
Simple fix, I hope? Lower the level of the enemies to match the danger level? Or just change the quest to show a higher danger level. 
Please dial down Fallen Ember drop rate
Since the last hotfix dropped, Fallen Embers seem the most common item you can come across. And they are supposed to be rare (their description says that much..).
If you’re trying to make life easier for endgame power-players, please don’t ruin the game for everyone else in the process. I get that No Rest is still in early access so making respecing the character cheaper to allow people to easily try out different builds might seem reasonable at this point, but in 1.0 I would expect the game economy to be more consistent and the game itself - less forgiving. Giving away fallen embers for free makes them feel worthless. Why even bother using fallen embers as a ‘respec currency’ ? Just add a reset button at the bottom of the stats screen and be done with it.
I imagine you’ve decided to make respecing the character costly to make people commit to their choices and truly try out different builds, since they all seem viable and fun at this point. But if you can switch between dex- and strength-based builds on a whim, you can do that constantly, depending on what best weapon you happen to own at the moment.
Adding fallen embers as a ‘respec currency’ was a good call, it’s much more immersive than a simple reset button (I hate those, as much as I hate transmog). And you should stay true to your initial vision, without watering it down to cater to some vocal minority who - like speedrunners - focus on a single facet of your game, while skipping the rest.
Thank you for the updates. But still making bow attack requires focus is kinda bad move. It was very fun to use with stamina before. I hope there is a chance to revert it 
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I usually need to use 5-7 of them to reroll a red mod into one that doesn’t impact my build too much, and then rolling the good ones takes ages. Sorry to say but them being common should be the case, if you want stat respecs to be more expensive that’s one thing, but fallen embers do way too much things for them to be that rare.
You have 7+1 slots where you need to use them (3 rings, armour, weapon (maybe +1 weapon, maybe even shield). I’ve never used them to reroll stats.
You could use 100 embers and not be able to roll a weapon or armour piece that doesn’t have downsides that affect the build. So… they kinda do need to be common.
stamina-based archer build allows you to just snipe enemies from a distance, without ever going up-close-and-personal with them. Seems OP and boring in my book.
With the latest hotfix, you can still take like 15 shots between ‘refills’ - owing to the fact that bow attacks too generate focus. It stands at 10 focus / shot but you get some back for damaging enemy healthbar.
20 focus a pop (before hotfix) seemed a bit stingy, 10 feels just about right.
Embers need to be common because you need a lot of it to roll a weapon with bazillion damage and no side effects ?
Come on.
I imagine that was the whole idea behind adding embers to the game:
powerful artifacts allowing you to alter the stats of both yourself and your gear, but not easy to come across.
The game is supposed to be an RPG, remember ? Randomness is a vital part of a true RPG experience.
As in real life : you don’t always get what you want.
Random loot drops make the game exciting - you never know what you’re gonna find in the next dungeon you visit.
What’s more - you can defeat most common enemies bare-handed with enough practice (I’m no souls-like veteran and I manage to pull it off constantly; all you need is study your opponent’s moves and attack when you see an opening). Weapons are a nice addition, but they are not essential tool of survival, at least in the early game. And then you find Fillmore who you can simply buy a weapon you like from.
because you need a lot of it to roll a weapon with bazillion damage and no side effects ?
No, because (just as I stated and you misrepresented) I want a weapon without a big downside. using all my silver to buy a big weapon, enchanting it and getting a downside that makes it unplayable (lose focus on being hit for example) is not being an RPG, it’s just a masochists dream.
The game is supposed to be an RPG, remember ? Randomness is a vital part of a true RPG experience
No it isn’t. Witcher doesn’t have that much randomness for example. Even soulslikes have a linear path for great progression: you get the weapon, you upgrade it with materials, you decide on the infusion if any, you get the materials, done. The randomness comes from games like Diablo or PoE, and those are both not nearly as punishing with it and do let you become a demigod. I don’t argue for that power level, just that getting an ember per chest lets me use about 15 per gaming session to reroll 1 or 2 mods into decent ones.
For the rest of your comment, it’s clear that you are a “git gud” kinda person and sorry to say but if you are against people thinking ahead and getting gear that compliments their skill level to beat the game, you are a gatekeeper of fun and I’ve got nothing else to say to you. I hope devs don’t listen to your feedback. In fact, looking at their 2nd hotfix content, I’m happy they don’t.
well - my definition of fun differs from yours, clearly. I like the thrill of getting a piece of gear to complement my build after an hour of grinding. There’s room for being strategic about your dream build, and there’s room for a little surprise once in a while.
When I get my hands on some shiny sword, I feel truly rewarded for my effort.
As for where the game sits now - I feel like I’m drowning in loot, so a bunch of speedrunners who couldn’t care less about the RPG aspect of No Rest can quickly switch between different builds and have fun beating up some top-tier bosses.
[EDIT]: I feel I failed to get my point across : I didn’t mean to troll or offend you, I just hope that current balancing issues are a temporary, EA-specific workaround, allowing players to engage with existing, core game loops, without forcing them to grind excessively to get the gear they want. And that Moons have some serious re-balancing pass scheduled for later, or are even planning to add a difficulty slider so that everyone can have fun their own way.
Hell, it would be great if they could allow us to fine-tune our experience, the way Undead Labs did with State of Decay 2:
- You want challenging combat and plentiful resources ? Go for it.
- You want a more balanced yet challenging experience across the board ? Just pick ‘normal’
- You want to focus on the story without needing to fight for survival ? Story mode is for you
Everyone’s happy.
I’m just slightly worried that existing balancing issues could make it to 1.0, leaving RPG freaks like myself in the cold. I expected the devs to first focus on getting ‘normal’ difficulty right, and then add the story and hardcore modes. But as it stands now, it feels like a story mode to me - each consecutive hotfix dials combat difficulty down while making resources more abundant.
seem you just need to get good LOL. I´m playing a dex build and I destroy every enemy
And if someone wants to play that boring bit safe playstyle, why not let them?
It’s not gonna affect anyone. Also once there is multiplayer, this is unlikely to have any effect on the economy because such a playstyle wouldn’t farm things fast enough anyhow.
It’s just an avenue for low skilled players to get past bottlenecks, which is an appreciated feature in many arpgs
I don’t fully agree with your argument that it’s not gonna affect anyone - focus-based archery feels more immersive to me, more grounded as an RPG element. Stamina-based archery feels like an ‘infinite ammo glitch’, that totally breaks immersion.
At this point No Rest is more of a hack-and-slash than an (a)RPG, so as an RPG fan I’m feeling rather neglected. But I keep hoping things will get better in the future (No Rest is still an early access title after all..)
You don’t need to craft arrows, but I imagine the devs still wanted this resource to be somehow limited. That’s why they’ve chosen focus, not stamina, because it does not replenish that easily.
Still - 10 pops between refills with the latest hotfix feels more than enough to make sniping viable.
if you want to play it safe, and snipe enemies from afar, go for it. But some ranged enemies are difficult to take down this way. Good luck sniping the ‘mushroom man’ throwing bombs at you while you’re trying to draw a bow 
That’s where main hand weapons come in : you make short work of any ranged glass cannon enemies (they usually go down in like 3 hits with a sword), and snipe more tanky melee ones from afar if you feel like it.
Best of both worlds to me.
I understand your point, but I’ll offer some datapoints on it:
- Diablo 2 had limited arrow quantity. It was broadly disliked. When the mod Project Diablo 2 made arrows infinite quantity, there was broad appreciation for the change across the playerbase.
- Diablo 3 & 4 also have unlimited arrows and while those games certainly have their issues, this isn’t considered one of them according to any of the media I’ve seen on it.
- Baldurs Gate 3 archers have unlimited arrows, and that game has been lauded over the levels of immersion.
- Path of Exile 2 has infinite arrows, as far as I’ve found on their forum nobody is unhappy about this.
- Elden Ring has limited arrows (but you can purchase / craft them in large quantities after a while). Bow builds are practically non existent, except for challenge runners who can also complete the game without getting hit a single time. Nobody playing this game for the first few times is actively using bows as their main weapon.
I’m sure there’s plenty more examples that underpin my thesis.
In summary: I understand what you’re saying but I think there’s practical evidence that shows that the infinite arrows approach is significantly more appreciated by arpg and rpg fans alike.