I felt like I had hit a good momentum with how combat felt and how steadily I could get resources I needed and gear that was level appropriate. Then I beat the Riven Twins, at around level 13. Suddenly every zone is labelled “dangerous”, enemies are dropping level 21 gear and killing me in one or two hits. Dig spots hardly/never drop clay, and other similarly “low tier” resources seem to be gone entirely from enemy loot drops (wolf claws, etc). I’m really enjoying this game, but things like this entirely killed my momentum. I like the idea of the world scaling to my level and quest progress, but it shouldn’t be able to make the whole game world 8+ levels above me and make farming the resources I need to even try to catch up even harder to get now. Perhaps the starting areas should stay starting areas, as reliable sources of low tier resources and weaker enemies? I don’t mind the trek to the Nameless Passage if I want to fight harder enemies or get higher tier resources, but I DO mind Mariner’s Keep suddenly outscaling me in every way.
Exactly what just happened to me. Combat was feeling good, beat the twins after a dozen or so tries, thought it was time to go to the next main mission since I couldn’t find any other side quests. Is this place a gauntlet that I have to clear every area without dying? 3 random ones in a row? I’m trying not to look up spoilers, but I’ve only managed to clear 2 areas in a row, in around 30 attempts, and it’s definitely not happening before I run out of embers to try. So I figured the game is telling me to go grind gear and levels in the first area or the quarry area, but then every zone is level 21 and I have been getting absolutely slaughtered by everything. While slowly upgrading my gear that I don’t really think I should be wasting my resources on, I am grinding my way toward 21 so I can put on the good stuff that is dropping, by replaying the same areas I’ve been through more times than I think should be necessary, and killing between 0-3 monsters per life before getting destroyed. I feel like I’m missing a whole tier of loot that I never had access to, but why? Did I beat the twins before I should have?
i’ve seen some people saying that beating the twins apparently forces the world to scale to 21! which if thats the case, i def wouldva delayed doing it cuz i was not literally prepared, gear/materials wise, to move up in difficulty like that lmao
Oh, so in my attempt to not see any spoilers, I missed the fact that this early access is only the first act, which makes total sense. I just assumed that the recent preview all the streamers played was the demo, and that now we had the full game but with bugs and such. So many different versions of “early access” these days lol. That’s on me for not reading before I bought it though, which I would have anyway, because the game is incredible!
It would help to have a message stating that there is no more main story content after the town square scene after beating the Riven twins. It seemed like the game was giving me the next main story mission, sending me to the Cerim Crucible, which is what the endgame is so far apparently. That’s fair enough, but I was seriously thinking “THIS is how you have to progress to act 2?!”
I’m glad I caved in and looked it up, because I was about to spend the whole day grinding the same starting areas over and over until level 21, and then trying to “beat” the crucible! I would’ve gone mad lol!
Yes, this is identical to what happened to me. Everything scaled up and I still had pretty piss poor armor and a weapon that was doing well but now feels lackluster.
I had to grind up on the old areas and some of the introductory crucible areas to get to 21, but now I’m getting a massive amount of mixed stat drops that I can’t use, but I did manage to get a nice great axe that I am rocking now.
But yeah, it suddenly jumps up and you don’t really have the equipment/mats/etc. to confront that jump and it forces you to grind for a while hoping something of benefit will drop since the blacksmith doesn’t have any great weapons to get going on the difficulty spike.