Expert difficulty questions

[Loudhy]

I am playing "expert" for a month now. There a some strange effects I don't understand.

It seems, that fighters cannot hit anything if the skill levels are below 40.
And even then they sometimes need 2 rounds to hit a paralyzed opponent. I'm through the monastery now but 90 percent of the kills were scored by alchemist and bishop.
It seems to me that a pure fighter party on expert is the ultimate challenge in this game.

The other thing is that the number of monsters in a group seems low. I've never seen so many single bats, roaches or groups with only two or three rats before.

Has anyone discovered the same effects ?

[img]graemlins/monster5.gif[/img]

[Mr Creosote]

I dont think there is anything in the game which stops hitting below a certain skill level. Its more a case that on expert the monsters gain a bonus to hit and you lose it, so you miss a lot. As the skills level increases and importantly your char levels you will hit more often.

Never noticed having smaller groups on Expert, always seems the same sort of groups to me regardless of which difficulty setting I play on.

Expert really does make the game tougher, but in some ways more boring, I now prefer to play on Normal.

[Loudhy]

Sorry, I meant, the fighters sometimes hit at the beginning but they need 4 or 5 attempts. My Lord Lvl 6 ( CC 30, Sword 33, Gleaming sword) has only 6 kills.

He rarely gained bonus points, because killing air isn't very effective


[img]graemlins/monster5.gif[/img]

[petertmorgan]

The thing about expert mode is that magic attacks are still automatic hits, so melee characters suffer early compared to your destructive spell-casters (the reduction in damage from magic on expert doesn't seem to matter much against low-level, low magic resistance monsters).

I found that character statistics are very important for melee attacks on expert mode (at least until CC and weapon skills get pretty high)- so if you don't have high dex and/or senses, you won't hit very often, and if you don't have high strength, you won't penetrate very often. The problem with the Lord character is that you don't have a lot of points to work with in the beginning.

With fighter on expert mode, I often don't use the berserk attack option in the beginning except maybe against the boss monsters (or other high hitpoint but low level creatures).

[Wereboar]

I agree with petertmorgan. On expert, i never berserk before Arnika. And it takes a while until a character is able to hit anything with bloodlust.

For the single opponents: Maybe they were above your level, which is rarer with normal difficulty.

[babar]

yes, on expert the combats can be looonnngggggg. But after your skill goes up or you get a weapon to compensate it gets a lot better. My current samurai with bushido blade has gotten 7x lightning strikes hitting everytime. The opponent's level makes a huge difference, you can easily whack lesser creatures while higher takes a while (without spell support).

I don't know about the monster distribution. I thought the following was kind of strange. On a recent solo, I had a low lvl guy get harrassed by groups of 5-6 greater seekers. I defeated 2 groups and then the computer decide to send a group of lvl 8 metallic slimes, whereupon I run like hell, and then the computer goes back to greater seekers. Later in the game I go back to the monastery and it's wall to wall metallic slimes.

[MasterPooBaa]

Yeah when i decided to run my party again on expert the melee ability was pretty woeful.
(party of 4, lord, sam, monk, ninja)

Fortunately they were imported from Wiz7, so leveling up gained them magical ability, so i decided to use mostly magic and lots of resting.

Made it out to arnika reasonably easy, and found that all that magic use had bolstered my skills considerably and i soon had the all important armourplate, missile shield, enchant blade and bless spells.

Using those turned my mediocre weapons skills into something alot better.

[Loudhy]

Babar, I would be happy to get groups like you. The best party I had on expert was killed by Brekek and up to then the seize of the groups were similar to normal difficulty ( f.e. 4 mauligators, 3-5 metallics, 3 greater seekers etc )

[img]graemlins/monster5.gif[/img]

[ 03-23-2004, 12:47 AM: Message edited by: Loudhy ]

[Wereboar]

I thought the following was kind of strange. On a recent solo, I had a low lvl guy get harrassed by groups of 5-6 greater seekers. (...)

Well, thats probably a side effect of playing solo. If your skills are very high compared to your level (holding off leveling or training), odds are that you'll often face stronger monsters. In the case of a solo, your skills might grow up quite fast.