Comments/Stories on High Level Play

[darkchair]

Feel free to remake this post, just laying out the idea really

High-Level Play Experiences

The purpose of this thread is to record our experiences with the game on higher difficulties.
[I consider Master Hero+ to be high level play. Still deciding on platforming difficulty. Feel free to debate this opinion]

Post great experiences you had, challenges you couldn't get past, and help each other out.



5/2/2012
Continent 1 CP 2


Yesterday I needed to complete a wind shelter mission to push back the wind so I could then go to the ocean shallows to unlock coral and sea essence.
After dying multiple times trying to complete the wind shelter on foot, I finally decided to swallow my pride and just transform into a bat to get past all the areas. That turned out to be extremely easy and personally disappointing.

With the wind pushed back I immediately went to the ocean shallows. Gorgeous place. Flying sea worms are initially wacky and then terrifying once you catch the aggro of more than one. ~70ish damage is no joke. The jellyfish are quite strong as well at ~45 damage a shot.
Eventually I got to a cave region and entered the caves. Lots of underground(sea?) buildings, with lots of bat scrolls which is nice. Finding myself in a couple situations where a worm is flying around hallways where you can't get by them, I wondered if there was some possible way to deal with possibly getting cheesed by worms. Then I stumbled upon Lesser Teleport! So convenient, so fun, and so necessary for situations like above.
I got lucky (I guess) as I only needed to beat one jellyfish boss for both level 1 and 2 to touch system 3 and get the unlocks.
Pretty terrifying (even with the later capacity to teleport), one of the best experiences by far.

Another experience I had was completing a map mission to get umbra essence for leveling up Death Touch to 4 ASAP when I hit the next level of CP.
At first I was skeptical about the changes to the Fix Anachronisms mission (the change from instantly losing to reflecting damage). Boy was I wrong.
This mission is also pretty terrifying at Master Hero level. Its about getting a good surgical extermination and killing the vulnerable enemies while avoiding the indestructible natives as much as possible. I personally had a Skelebot Junkyard flavored cave level, with skelebots being the natives and primarily espers being the prey. I set up a bunch of platforms immediately as I learned early on to give me some mobility. Immediately skelebots from bellow were throwing spells at me. Dodging through the spells, I had to kill the espers as they floated around the open area while jumping from platform to platform of my own creation. Every misstep I made was a fall into the gang of skelebots to whack me around. Skelebots blocking your shots suddenly (in the face no less) does tons of damage to you.
The final enemies I needed to kill were the worst, dust storms running around with the gang of skelebots! I jumped in for a surgical extermination. Luckily I caught them vulnerable eventually with a death touch. Could have been much worse.
Took me around 3 or 4 tries but the job got done.

EDIT: Yeah, just saw the notes yesterday. For clarification I really enjoyed the anachronism missions like above. I would like an option to play these painful mission types if possible.

And wow where did that date come from 

[zebramatt]

It's funny you should mention windshelter and anachronism missions - they both just got an overhaul in the latest patch!

P.S. 12th of May 2012??

[darkchair]

5/16/2012  Oh boy its summer time.


Lots of changes since my last post obviously.

We'll start with the first and most important development since, Crashed Land Speeders.
Oh boy. Jump to tier 3, everything is going to be great! New spells and stuff!
Walk over to a mission. What's this pile of junk? Can't be a big deal, I just owned those jellyfish bosses! Incorrect.
Homing bullets everywhere, freaking out, run away. Next two map missions I try have the same crashed land speeder guarding the entrance.
And I was about to gripe about this game being too easy! Thank god.
Eventually learned you can splash back the projectiles, which solved a lot of issues. Bought double jump on my first shot at the new store, incredibly helpful for crashed land speeders.
Then I went through the arduous process of leveling up Energy Slice. Coral was quite a hassle to get. Quite consuming to find. Eventually I got to tier 4 of Energy Slice. Not having leveled up any piercing spells until now, this made the crashed land speeders much more manageable.
Then the new monsters came. Gazebos compliment crashed land speeders pretty well as they are quite difficult to get rid of as well as quite powerful. Urban Crawlers got upgraded (I think, maybe just a tier thing). All around Abandoned towns went from very meh to the most interesting of places to get through.
Had a character finally die again, fell down into the depths of a skelebot junkyard chunk. Being spammed by crashed land speeder shots coming through the narrow tunnels, I was pretty much screwed. Could have teleported out, but I decided to play Bravery and let my character die an honorable death rather than run like a coward! Of course she died.

And then this whole continent progress update. Went and did a lieutenant real fast. The guy had a ton of health... and a ton of damage. It was just your usual skelebot boss though so it was pretty easy to evade and whittle him down without other things harassing me.
I'm not sure but things might do more damage now? Might be just because of my decreased continent tier shielding.
Also realized today that I just went up to tier 2 without getting as many orbs as possible. Wondering if I screwed myself over that way?

Totally approve of the oozes on the walls in caves. I'd like them to do a bit more damage but they definitely make things more interesting.

Stopped by evergreen forest only once for a mission. Those rat guys are pretty infuriating, and the stinging nettles were a mystery for a bit.

[darkchair]

6/23/2012 Sorry it's been a while

As usual this game is changing frantically, which is mostly good.

So a general update: I've beaten the first overlord and have moved to the second continent. I have also increased the difficulty to The Chosen One.

The overlord was... pretty underwhelming. I was pretty much forced to use the fabulous power of shields, but that then made the fight easy to a point of boredom. I wish there was more of a middle ground. (This was on Master Hero difficulty)

Regarding Missions: The switch to TCO has made boss towers and gangs considerably harder, I might have to stack more health now. But the real issue is Battlefield missions. These are very difficult, in that they not only demand perfection, but also require a good bit of luck. I've tried completing a Battlefield on TCO about 10 times, not enough to make the mission seem impossible, especially on the hardest difficulty. But this is definitely the most difficult mission I have ever experienced. The other missions are usually very easy relatively. I wish they were harder, I've started to make cases for some of them on Matnis.

Regarding Balance: A big issue I've found is that shields are fantastically good. There is no downside to spamming them constantly, which inflates your effectvie health to supernatural levels and makes the game considerably easier. I've argued that shields should be nerfed in ways, For now I'm simply going to pretend they do not exist, and play without them. We'll see how decimated I become.   
Not sure where else to put this, but the character type I've decided to roll with is the Bronze Age characters. I love my mobility, and double movement speed is too much for me to pass up. I have yet to find a Wild Garden Age character, so I can't make an assessment on them. I'm disappointed in what I feel is how underpowered Medieval Characters are.

Regarding Having Fun: So my second continent was pretty exciting at first. I started in a Thawing Ice Age settlement, with the only other area available being The Deep. I'm completely in love! Everything about the place is perfect. It's terrifying and beautiful, the music is great, and the challenge is genuine and horrifying. Pretty much everything I could ask for in a game. I've had some terrifying times in certain missions, like trying to rescue Medieval characters, barely making it out of a the cave rescue mission with just 15/450 health is terrifying and wonderful. Journey to Perfection also got considerably more interesting, have hundreds of deadly bats all over the mission was a blast to try and manage and time their destruction so I could carve a path to the chest.

In general, if the game isn't doing it for you, and you want more of a challenge, I would use the option to start on the second continent.


EDIT: Of course 5 minutes after I post this I get trashed by my first Gargadon Boss. Oh boy here we go.