Would this party survive Torment difficulty?

[uncleseano]

Without trying to go down a hybrid route, so only pure archetypes could I get away with:

 

* Sword & Board Tank Human

* Archer Nephil

* Priest Human

* Make Human

 

Nothing crazy, or is it doomed failure down the road?

 

Any advice?

 

As a side note I've completed A1&A2 with that group on normal and found it easy peasy. I've also finished Exile 3 many years ago. (Jeff posted the copy to me back then, gas stuff!)

 

So I'm not a total noober at the series. What say you all?

 

 

[Randomizer]

Maybe, because it's not the party, but what order you explore in and your tactics in a fight. Still if you've played before you have a better chance. 

 

The major difference between normal and torment difficulties is that your area effect spells usually also hit your party. You'll understand the first time a misplaced daze works on some of your characters.

[Slawbug]

I respectfully disagree with that last part.  The major difference between Normal and Torment is that enemy stats are twice as high.

 

The AoE thing is a fun change, and it takes a little getting used to, but once you do get used to it, it's easy to play around.  You just have to plan for it a little, but Torment requires planning for battle anyway.

[Randomizer]

The stat multiplier just means that fights take longer and you can rarely kill monsters with just one shot. The AoE thing means a change in tactics because you can no longer just rain damage down on a swarm surrounding your front fighters with immunity. After the first round, it usually means that you can hit fewer targets with a spell unless you can keep them back from the party.

[uncleseano]

Well good thing that I didn't realise that friendly fire was off on normal!

 

So I'm well trained in that regard. Hell, The last two games would've been *much* easier knowing that nugget of info

[Slawbug]

14 hours ago, Randomizer said:

The stat multiplier just means that fights take longer and you can rarely kill monsters with just one shot.

Respectfully, Randomizer, that is a ridiculous statement, especially from someone who's so fond of saying that you need more Endurance on Torment 😛

 

Yes, monsters are at least twice as hard to kill.  They also do twice as much damage, are much more accurate, have much higher evasion, have better initiative... and a lot of harder monsters and unique encounters have actual scripting on Torment (and sometimes Very Hard) that they do not have on Normal -- including extra actions per round (which all do twice as much damage) and access to particularly strong AoE attacks that they do not have on Normal.

 

Yes, the AoE thing means you change your tactics, and that's why it's so much less relevant -- you adjust your tactics and then it's almost irrelevant.  Lots of things die in round one to adrenaline-rushing spellcasters (and yes, on Torment, it is fair to assume that the player is using strong tactics); for those that don't, if you are relying on AoE's, that's what knockback effects are for.  I mean, that was already a strong tactic in previous games simply to keep melee monsters away from you while you blew them up.  Also, the friendly fire thing has far less of an impact on cone AoE's than circular AoE's, and a lot of the best attack spells are cone AoE's.  (And of course, it has no impact at all on Divine Retribution.)

 

You cannot simply "change your tactics" and then pretend enemies aren't hitting you twice as hard!  There's no getting around that bit.

[Randomizer]

Enemies hitting you twice as hard means only about double penetration damage since your armor/resistances are percentage and not a fixed amount. So that extra endurance means you have the extra health to survive it over normal difficulty. The to hit chance and initiative aren't significantly different from normal difficulty in practice. The unique abilities on harder difficulties are more significant, but are very recent addition to Spiderweb games. The extra scripted attacks per round are a real difference especially since they occur even for stunned and slowed monsters.

 

Take the fight with Elhoic beneath Castle Troglo, the fight goes to sometimes a second round of Soul Jars on higher difficulties, but how you fight and what happens to your party still stays the same. The extra damage you take in the fight comes from more rounds of fighting and not that the monster's attacks have a greater chance of hitting. There are more attacking summoned monsters from the fight taking longer and not from their abilities being increased.

 

Only in the demo section when you have a low to hit chance do you notice monster's having higher evasion chance. By the time you reach the Slime Pit, you should have a maximum to hit chance for your entire party. 

 

Quote

You cannot simply "change your tactics" and then pretend enemies aren't hitting you twice as hard!  There's no getting around that bit.

The enemy hits you because you aren't killing monsters in the first round before they hit you. 

[Randomizer]

Slarty -- I will say even on torment difficulty you can run as closer to a glass cannon party with no additional endurance than any recent game. However you reach a point after the Isle of Bigail where you start running out of places to go where you can find experience to significantly level up besides buying it from Zang. That becomes the major way to get those few extra levels instead of increasing endurance.

 

I went through lots of trying to do areas before and after getting two extra levels to see that just a few points to endurance lets you clear them out without need invulnerability potions (fixed number in the game) or raising dead members in combat.

[uncleseano]

I decided to give the middle finger to my torment run. I've rolled back to Hard and am starting again. Even though I got to levels and completed the Goblin cave and was going through the Wolf pit it wasn't fun. I guess that's the most important thing. I don't want to min/max I want some wiggle room to roleplay & make interesting builds. Like paladins, or pole wielding archers etc. So hard difficulty it is for me so

 

So, last question. 10 is the max skill point allocation yeah? You can go to 12 if you leave skill trainers until you reach that cap yeah? As in skills can be raised from trainers twice?

Edited July 22, 2018 by uncleseano

[Lilith]

3 hours ago, uncleseano said:

I decided to give the middle finger to my torment run. I've rolled back to Hard and am starting again. Even though I got to levels and completed the Goblin cave and was going through the Wolf pit it wasn't fun. I guess that's the most important thing. I don't want to min/max I want some wiggle room to roleplay & make interesting builds. Like paladins, or pole wielding archers etc. So hard difficulty it is for me so

 

So, last question. 10 is the max skill point allocation yeah? You can go to 12 if you leave skill trainers until you reach that cap yeah? As in skills can be raised from trainers twice?

 

That's correct, apart from the base skills like Melee Weapons and Mage Spells, which don't have a limit to how high you can raise them.

 

Also, you know that you can change the difficulty at any point during play, right? If the game gets too easy or too hard, you don't have to start over.

[uncleseano]

 Yeah I know that. I wanted to see how the gobo caves were on hard as they're my reference point now. Well, it's fun now. Easy but with the fear of getting mobbed and I was one shotted by the shamen.

 

Hard is my bag now baby

[Slawbug]

On 7/21/2018 at 8:15 PM, Randomizer said:

Enemies hitting you twice as hard means only about double penetration damage since your armor/resistances are percentage and not a fixed amount. So that extra endurance means you have the extra health to survive it over normal difficulty.

As discussed at length above, that second sentence is not true.

 

The to hit chance and initiative aren't significantly different from normal difficulty in practice. The unique abilities on harder difficulties are more significant, but are very recent addition to Spiderweb games. The extra scripted attacks per round are a real difference especially since they occur even for stunned and slowed monsters.

The to-hit chance difference is quite significant -- it really does mean you have less flexibility in not assigning stat points to your primary attack stat.

 

And the extra scripted attacks are not a recent addition.  They have been around for the last six Spiderweb games, which means for the last eight years.

 

The extra damage you take in the fight comes from more rounds of fighting and not that the monster's attacks have a greater chance of hitting.

Every single hit you take deals TWICE AS MUCH DAMAGE.  Every.  Single.  Hit.

 

Absolutely, other things also contribute to the extra damage you take, but "double damage" is not a minor detail.  That said, as you point out, you're really going to end up taking more than twice as much damage in the most critical fights.  Which only reinforces my point than an extra 5 or 10 HP is not going to save you. 

 

 

On 7/22/2018 at 8:10 AM, uncleseano said:

So, last question. 10 is the max skill point allocation yeah? You can go to 12 if you leave skill trainers until you reach that cap yeah? As in skills can be raised from trainers twice?

This is quite minor, but to add to Lilith's answer, Luck can only be manually raised to 5.

[uncleseano]

I guess is it important to go to 12? The first trainer in the game can teach weapon skills. It is recommended to level say, melee to 8 and then get two for 10 or level to 10 and push it to 12?

 

EDIT: Just pumped nature lore of to the needed to get all the things and just saw a trainer for it in the Tower. Would've saved me some points... grrr...

Edited July 26, 2018 by uncleseano

[Lilith]

On 7/26/2018 at 7:59 AM, uncleseano said:

I guess is it important to go to 12? The first trainer in the game can teach weapon skills. It is recommended to level say, melee to 8 and then get two for 10 or level to 10 and push it to 12?

 

EDIT: Just pumped nature lore of to the needed to get all the things and just saw a trainer for it in the Tower. Would've saved me some points... grrr...

 

I wouldn't say it's super important, but it helps. Melee is a special case since it's one of the uncapped skills so it doesn't really matter when you buy training, but for skills with a cap, getting to 10 with skill points and then raising to 12 with training does give you a bit extra power for high-value skills like Hardiness.

[uncleseano]

Is there a list of capped versus uncapped skills?

[Randomizer]

Uncapped skills are: melee weapons, pole weapons, bows, thrown weapons, mage skills, priest skills. All other are capped.

[uncleseano]

Cool, so like the base attack skills?

 

That clears up the last of my stuff. Thanks