The game is too easy past the Sewers

Wicked Feedback
1

Unless this is specific to the weapon/build I was using. (lots of health, some stamina, full int seraph staff at the time), the game felt way easier after the second boss (way too easy for a souls-like). Up until that point I thought the tuning was about right for a game like this but then I felt too tanky, dealt too much damage and had enough food that dying became very rare. I don’t think my items were crazy either it was all armor I picked up around the time I killed the first boss (didn’t overlevel or anything, didn’t bother with consumables).

From that point onwards it didn’t feel like a souls-like game at all anymore, I even killed the final boss first try. Maybe some balancing is in order? Keep in mind I have yet to make a second character, maybe the experience is different.

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I agree the pacing is super weird, it could be because the game is in early access and missing quests that would even things out. I think I had a similar experience of just breezing through everything after the sewers.

That being said, have you seen the number of people crying about the crucible? we could be in the minority.

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It definitely plays differently than most souls-likes in its current state. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but build scaling is way different once you know what you’re doing and you get the right gems/bonuses. My first playthrough was probably 20 hours because I explored every bit of the map I could and upgraded the town fully. But I’m on my eighth character now and I typically just go straight to crucible by level 10-13 depending on the build. A couple of times I’ve played on a new realm if the build struggles in the early game, but like one time I went to the twins because I had their weapon and literally one ability killed them.

That being said, I’ve watched a few other people play and they struggle. Even people like Fighting Cowboy (youtuber) who have channels based around guides for games like this, were just providing false information because they played the game for 15 hours and called it there before diving into the game’s mechanics deeply. So yeah, we might be a minority.

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this is just act 1 or just a small snippet of Act 1 I’m guessing the enemies will get harder

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Agreed, most end game builds are broken and too OP.

I’m full plate dual dagger lifestealing stamina focus gain monster.

A lot of the balance has to do with bugged not working or working differently as intended attribute bonuses etc.

They need to scale player power way down.

And should make mobs scale to player level a bit more.

I want the game to provide a tactical challenge 24/7.

This way the game will be way longer in play time and provide way more content.

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Yeah some builds are crap compared to others. Way more balancing needs to be done.

But people need to provide feedback for the devs. What is underpowered and what is OP.

Atm stamina/focus/health regen on hit is broken with fast weapons and need to be scaled down seriously.

People are cheese stunlocking The crucible boss myself included.

Especially considering pvp is coming, we cant have out of bounds overpowered vuilds in the game.

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It’s a very modern and common issue which troubled me these last years that I affectionately call the Malenia Dilemma.

Let me explain.

The first observation I make is this one.

If you take games like Elden Ring, Path Of Exile, Diablo 4 or pretty much any MMORPG, the number of potential builds is above the million possible combinations.

But if you really want to finish these games at their highest level, in most cases, there is less than 10 viable builds.

If you add to that extra accessibility features like extra healing capabilities, more powerful super attacks and so on, you end up in the Malenia Dilemma: developers can and have to crank up the difficulty to legitimate the existence of these META builds, leaving behind all the players who wants to play their very specific non META fantasy.

And this is the direction where the Crucible in No Rest For The Wicked is heading now.

And don’t get me wrong I love No Rest For The Wicked. I just want clarify for myself and maybe for some others why things are the way they are.

I’ll provide an example by talking about me.

I don’t like power fantasy builds.
By that I mean I don’t like builds with super powers or magic, like Focus attacks in No Rest For The Wicked, or, Weapon Skills in Elden Ring.

I’m not saying that it is by essence a bad thing, it is just not my thing.
Like you maybe like potatoes and I don’t.

My gig is a sword, daggers or a claymore using only the basic attacks and as naked as possible to be as fast as possible.

In No Rest For The Wicked I play a daggers and cloth armor build without leveling my attributes and I rolled on the Main Story but it will surely not work as well in the Crucible.

That’s how I played all the Souls-Like up to the infamous Malenia where I had to completely rewire my playstyle to get rid of her (because I’m not as good as Let Me solo Her, who, by the way, also uses a META build).

So, my personal conclusion on all of that was that Elden Ring and maybe all of the next From Software games won’t be for me anymore and, maybe, the Crucible in No Rest For The Wicked won’t be for me too.

And it’s not the end of the world, it is just how things are.

The only solution I see to alleviate this problem is to reduce the power gap between the worst build possible and the best META build by, maybe, reducing build complexity.

Which is pretty hard to do in modern gaming because most people, including me, expect new features to play around with in any new game or sequel.

3 Likes
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well then maybe character stats should also be factored into mob strength.
Where you set you par in certain stats (armor, damage, focus regen, that could be like a list of affixes, which combined are categorized into a certain meta playstyle), and enemy stats are getting adjusted depending on that.

i know pretty convoluted, but that would be sth for an ai tool that would constantly adjust difficulty for players, depnding on the amount of deaths, hits they take, damage they deal, heal items they use, etc. and the kind of difficulty players actually expect from the game

A downside of that system would be, that character progression feels aimless, but on the other hand it can smooth out difficulty from one region to another or towards character level. with the ultimate goal being: beat the crucible boss

I know it’s confusing, i’m just spittballing my unstructured thoughts, but i always awanted a system behind the curtain, that tweaks the experience to its best possible state, because THERE IS NO ONE SIZE FITS ALL…

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I get what you mean.

The problem I see is that most META super abilities provide utilities (protection, movement, area of effects …) over the usually insane damage.

Which means that not only you have to tweak the enemy damage but also their behavior.

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I get the sentiment but I personally dislike scaling content very much. It undermines character progression too much in my opinion, it’s bad if you feel like you are on an endless treadmill. Some good lessons to learn from games like Path of Exile in that regard (I think they do difficulty scaling correctly, where you have the ability to modify the difficulty and the rewards get better accordingly, rather than the game just scaling with you)

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For me sewer much easyer then nameless path. All 3 campaign bosses are too easy (twins even look bad compared to the other two).

Crucible is ok (or even hard if you spawn 2-3 mobs in 1 place) and final knight is great if you play without focus spells.