Difficulty way, WAY, to high

[LordSith]

Personaly, I have played the game for 2hours yesterday.

It was really fun...
BUT reloading each time to get a right initiative order and no web/aeo killing spell was tiring.

GP to level up is such a bad thing. You have the xp, but can't do it.

Those Attacks of Opportunities on anything should get mentionned. How did I know that drinking a potion starts an enemy AOO.. my character tries to drink a potion, dies. Reload.
I check his inventory? AoO, dies, reload.
Silence is an area fixed spell, not a "cast on all persons in an area then remaining on them" which is not what is used in all other games using that system? useless, dies because of spells cast by those I cast Silence on but who left the silenced area, reload.

I have long range spell? every fight start at 15m distance and apparently my bowmen are noobs who can't shot at longer than 6 cases. Even myself after 3 months of bow lessons, I was able to shoot at 15m. They are fuckin' adventurers no beginners.
Worse, they always hit their team mate or someone who is not their target if he is in the way. Apparently characters and enemies are 1 case height/large/long. I didn't know humans were cubic. (And that's fucked up.) It ruins immersion when they are incapable to hit someone they targeted. Make more little case then. Each case is a 5m move!!

That's not what I call fun.

I'm tired of reloading to get right initiative order...

[Gabbek]

Currently if you're searching for an easy mode you should definitely go with either cleric or a bishop and one of three domains which summon a creature - justice, abberation, undeath.
Grab feats which improve summoned creatures and you won't have any issues for quite a while.
I consider it really cheesy, because of how powerful they are... but that's one way, for now
Justice feels the most "fair" out of those three.

You could also try a team with 2 drakes - they do a really good job of dealing lots of damage, early on.

Summons is the way to go at the moment, in my opinion.

[Grammarsalad]

Yeah, the game is just too difficult and frustrating, right now. I'll probably try it again in a few months. A few things I'd like to see in the future:

1) The ability to buy equipment before starting your adventure. Also, you should be able to purchase items that compensate for weaknesses in party composition. Eg buy a 10 ft pole to test trapped doors, etc.

2) An option to reduce or eliminate the gold requirement for leveling up. I just hate it

3) Encounters with EL that better match your probable party level. That could mean easier encounters or starting characters automatically level up a few levels before starting the module.

[Rasputin]

The fight with the Spider Queen.

You gotta be kidding me.

I won't even bother with the math. She leads off with a 9th level spell that does 10,000 damage. Yay.

You're trapped in the area, by the way. Hope you saved first. It might have autosaved before you went in, like the crypt area. I forget.

Anyway, after trying the battle a dozen or so times and getting curbstomped by the CR19 spider and her CR17 minions like I am a preschooler, I set my HP for my characters to 20,000 and locked it there and tried again.

The CC she laid down (as well as dominating 2/3 of my party) rendered my characters either useless or deadly to each other.

It reaches a point well past the ridiculous where one wonders why one continues to try.

[Shamino]

I actually like the friendly fire and it happens for the monsters too, so please leave that in at least as an option.

The EL for the encounters is definitely on the high side though. According to the DMG, pretty much every encounter has been in the Very Difficult and Overpowering categories, but it should be only around 20% of the encounters with that difficulty, which implies at most one per long rest, with the other encounters having EL (including environmental and circumstance modifications) very close to party ACL,and so draining 20 to 25 percent of party resources each. The effective EL in the KOTC 2 encounters is actually even higher due to very strong AI, difficult environments, frequent surprise rounds, and other challenging circumstances, and restricted long rest opportunities. I do enjoy these additional challenges and things to consider, but it does mean that the EL of the encounters themselves should probably be halved in order to have a decent chance of survival. I'm not looking for a cake walk, but I don't like reloading so much that it just feels like luck to beat an encounter.
These are some of the most interesting and original encounters I've ever seen in a CRPG or even in pen n paper RPG, so I really congratulate you on that! The CR of the creatures in the encounters is just too high though, so it should be easily fixable without diminishing the awesome flavor and the inherently challenging nature of the encounters themselves.
I do feel the GP to level up is also too much. I need to level up as soon as I earn it, and I recall from KOTC 1 how many thousands of GP end up getting poured into Enchanting wands and items, and I remember that wands and enchanted items were vital in KOTC 1 to survive. An interesting idea though with the GP costs. I would prefer to spend that money to resurrect my dead characters at any time without a Raise Dead scroll though, so I don't have to reload after winning a fight, but losing one or more characters. Either that, or what about Hero Points or Fate Points which get spent to avoid death? Maybe each character gets a certain number per level up? Probably something like one "Life Token" per level value, so 1st level gives 1 free death, gaining second level adds two more, gaining third level adds three more free deaths, etc. Then reloads only need to happen when your whole party gets wiped out, which stiill happens quite frequently.

Please see my other posts for some party durability game options that could help avoid having to reload so frequently.
https://www.heroicfantasygames.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=892
Also, maybe an automatic EL balancing agent based on player difficulty settings
https://www.heroicfantasygames.com/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=832&start=10#p5680

[Hesmah]

Well I finally managed to beat the goblin king encounter. Different party than originally. It was suitably epic, but it really is a bit ridiculous and AI decisions play bit too large effect. Enjoying the game a lot, but it does need some tweaking.

[Delvaron]

I’m going to echo that every single enemy being a spell caster and usually higher level than the pcs is tough to swallow granted you give us a ton of high level scrolls. But it just makes every fight a game of rocket tag. Can I win initiative and stick a debilitating spell or outright killing spell or full attack. There is almost no cast a buff or wall spell to slow a group down and deliberately take them down with good tactics. Which I think was the best part of KotC 1.

Another sad thing is almost every monster in the game Staring in the high sewers to outside the castle (where I am now) concealment or immune to critical hits so as well sneak attacks making one of my characters almost worthless unless some how I cast true seeing on him every single fight or even still that doesn’t work because we are using the base 3.5 crit/sneak attack rules. I know I keep saying this but maybe we should look at the Pathfinder rules for monsters and critical hits/sneak attacks. Along with the Pathfinder unchained rogue sneak attack. (Rules are free to look up)

Finally the concentration checks are tougher than they should be for the system as you are usually 3 points behind what you would be with 3.5 skill checks (Level+3 for max skill ranks+ con) and we are using level + con. A suggestion would be make it level + casting stat which may make it tough for your hybrid casters like sorcerer having to do Int for arcane Wis for divine on same character.

[bluehinter]

Chiming in to say that a lot of things that make sense in the D&D rule book don't really make sense in a computer game, where modern gamers expect the game itself to tell them when something won't work, is out of range, or will have a negative effect.

First and foremost, Cancel Action needs to go. Yes, it sort of makes sense playing a real-time game where decisions need to be made quickly so the the next player can get their turn, but there is absolutely no place for that in a modern single-player computer game, especially one that provides you so little information as to whether a particular skill/spell will do what you want it to. Unless it triggers damage, an event, interaction, or requires a dice roll, EVERY action should be reversible, with no loss of action penalty.... even including movement.

Touch/Short/Medium/Long Ranges should be clearly visible graphically.
Ideally, this should be something that pops up when an action is selected but before you pull the trigger, so to speak, but if that's too difficult, then having a player-centered HUD grid (that can be turned on and off) would be the next best thing. This, combined with the take any action back as long as it didn't trigger something rule, would make the game about 200% more user friendly for people who just want to play a game, but haven't memorized the complete 3.5 D&D rule set.


Automatic autosaves at key plot junctions or points where the party is likely to get massacred if they make the wrong decision. This is something that should be part of the editor as well. Case in point would be when deciding whether to burst through the first door or right before walking into the room with the virgin sacrifice, getting the bird guy to drop you off on the other side of the chasm, etc. EDIT: Literally just ran into the first of these in the very next room. But there should be way more of them.

It is very easy to completely bone yourself and get into a situation from which there is no possible escape. A good example is the bit right after the moon phase tombs (which was brutally difficult, and I eventually had to cheat and add a camp fire with the editor, since all my characters had multiple stat drains and no means of erasing them) where you have to split your party, sending two up a ladder into the fire cave and the rest stay down below and fight a cursory battle. I sent my drake Storm Warrior and human Death-knight, arguably my two most powerful melee fighters up the ladder, but they got massacred *EVERY* time. A wizard or cleric armed with ice spells might have stood a chance, but because I was stuck and didn't feel like going back and having to fight all 6 tomb guardians over again, I had to cheat with the game editor and spawn some fire protective gear, because my melee characters simply got grappled and murdered in a couple of hits. (I can't even imagine going into that fight if I hadn't spawned the camp fire and repaired my stat drains.)

Additionally, just a UI thing, but when you hit the Escape key, that screen should pause all background music/ambient sound and bring up four options for Save/Restore/Main Menu/Quit. Almost every modern computer game uses Escape as the default "Pause" screen, for both muting the game for a moment and save/restore functions. Nothing against the file menu, but every time I get 4 bad rolls in a row and need to restart, I instinctively hit the Escape key, then have to remember it's File --> Load Game to access the save/restore commands.

There should be a Y/N confirmation before stepping onto a known damage square. Yes, the mouse-over does tell you to expect damage, but when move/interact are the same button an extra bit of confirmation can be nice.

Friendly fire... I'm totally cool with. It makes sense, and it warns you ahead of time (and the same rule applies to monsters) The only recommendation I'd make is including a red highlight or little friendly fire damage icon on friendly targets while determining the travel path of your ranged weapon/spell.

The chance to select pre-game starting equipment would be nice, but I'd be happy to have my starting crew pre-equipped with a wider variety of low-tier equipment based off their class/weapon/armor proficiencies. (Honestly, who goes into the dungeon without so much as a pair of shoes or a single healing potion?) This can be somewhat randomized or partially based on stats. (ex: Wizards and Clerics get between 1 to 1d6 random starting scrolls scaled on their Wisdom, Charisma can dictates starting cash and the quality of certain items, etc.)

Finally, lower level encounters should definitely dial back on the monsters' propensity for using overpowered area-effect spells like web, fireball, and stinking cloud.
I believe this is more-or-less built into the editor, but it's definitely something that needs to be addressed in the starting campaign, where the players' magic users start out woefully underpowered, but the enemies can wipe out your entire team in a single round before your melee fighters can even cross the room to get close enough to attack them.

[jms123]

Automatic autosaves at key plot junctions or points where the party is likely to get massacred if they make the wrong decision. This is something that should be part of the editor as well. Case in point would be when deciding whether to burst through the first door or right before walking into the room with the virgin sacrifice, getting the bird guy to drop you off on the other side of the chasm, etc.

Good points, I wanted to add that if there is an extended dialog prior to a tough fight starting, I'd also like an autosave right at the start of the fight. The first big cult fight is a good example, I had to go through that dialog with the same options a bunch of times (and it is slowed down by some scripted on-screen events in the middle of it). If it had autosaved right before the start of the fight (at the end of the dialog but before rolling initiative), I could have saved myself a ton of time.

[LordSith]

Pizarra fights.

Some random magician cast "tentacle horror" which deals such as 24 Hp damage, and does multiple attack (last time I reloaded in between, it was going for 6 attacks. Now I reload each time that spell is cast, and it has been like that for hours in 1.01 and now in 1.02).
At that point my team is level 1 with 1 character level 2.

... what a joke.

I'm out until difficulty is revised.
The game is cool, but the difficulty totally ruins the game.

I don't play CRPG to master enemy script and reload until all things are put in right RNG pattern.
If I want that, i play a die&retry platformer.