Insane difficulty surprised me

Elvenblade

Aftermy last playthrough I got sentimental and started up IwD 2 again after all this time, but simply couldn't get over the fact how good the EE games look. Even with the widescreen mod I couldn't get it looking as good, the interface didn't scale with the higher resolutions.

Oh well, back to IwDEE then. This time with the following party.

Undead Hunter
Berzerk/Druid
Cleric/Ranger
Fighter/Thief
Illusionist
Skald

Now on insane difficulty.

For the first part of the game it actually seemed a lot easier than normal difficulty, mainly because you receive double xp, including quest xp, resulting in a faster level progression. Being a level higher or two makes goblins and skeletons a piece of cake to plow through and the skalds music helps alot in reducing the times you get hit.

Dragon's Eye is where things started to get interesting. Beetle gasbombs hitting for 20+ damage, tons of swordspider and trolls hitting like a truck made the first levels quite the challenge. Had to really abuse chokepoints and aoe spells to the maximum.

Level 3 has always been my favorite in dragons eye and I was pleasantly surprised when I moved eastward towards the second and third undead lieutenant and all of a sudden was flanked by Presio's apprentice, some imbued wights and poison zombies from behind.
Presio fell quickly in a 1v1 with my Paladin and all that remained in her lair was a never before seen warrior and some zombies.

Level 4, holy moly! First part of this was very much like on normal difficulty but I was caught by surprise later when I moved on towards the summoning room and suddenly had 4 yuan-ti mages protected by stoneskin and normal missiles protection. These fellas had the nasty habits of casting dire charm and they were protected by elites who can quickly shred you with their arrows if you don't close in on them quickly enough.
Had to quickload some 5+ times or so. Those elites usually deal up to 30 damage per hit :O

And what did Beamdog do to the ai of those mercenaries you free? In vanilla they actively went through the whole level searching for enemies, now they just cluster outside their prison....

Level 5 didn't have any new enemy spawns it seems, so with enough caution I made it through to Yxunomei without much trouble.
My favorite tactic against her is to leave my party in the slaughter room before here chamber, have my thief set some traps in the corridor where the mages spawn and have a tank go talk to her. I let my tank stand still until she has finished her cloudkill spell, if she starts casting it and you move back to your party while she's still casting, the spell will land right on top of your tank even if she's way out of range (this is true for all enemy mages in IwD, no?)
Meanwhile my spellcasters blanket the corridor with aoe spells, web, entangle, spikes, grease, EVERYTHING! Yxu is usually the only one that has a chance to get close to the party while the rest of the yuan-ti succumbs to aoe spells and ranged attacks and on her own she's pretty easy to tear down.

So yeah, insane difficulty is proving to be quite entertaining. Looking forward to the severed hand.

JuliusBorisov

I'm enjoying playing on the Insane difficulty.

Just a note, though: in the game options you can turn off getting additional XP based on your difficulty. It makes the game more challenging.

DJKajuru

I've played on Insane , once , that's how I found out there were extra spawns , but then I got obssessed with those without suffering double damage. Thanks Beamdog for adding that option!

sarevok57

I like playing on insane with heart of fury mode while starting at level 1, gooooooood times, especially when you have 5 fighters and one swashbuckler ( 2 of those fighters will eventually be casters) if you want a HUGE challenge that is the way to do it

ineth

Elvenblade said:

For the first part of the game it actually seemed a lot easier than normal difficulty

Really?

I tend to find the battle against the ogres in the orc cave, one of more difficult parts of the game when playing on Insane.

Not as difficult as level 2 of Dragon's Eye though, because as you've experienced as well, trolls and sword spiders and bombard beetles are not something to be trifled with when they do double damage.

After that it gets easier though.

Some parts actually much easier than if you had played on Normal difficulty all along. The ice golems in the Gloomfrost caverns come to mind as an example - if you can get your AC past a certain point and/or can cast enough protective spells on yourself, you can breeze through them. If not, then every single one of them presents an up-hill battle, and there are a lot of them, so clearing that cave becomes a real chore.

Elvenblade

ineth said:

Elvenblade said:

For the first part of the game it actually seemed a lot easier than normal difficulty

Really?

I tend to find the battle against the ogres in the orc cave, one of more difficult parts of the game when playing on Insane.

In that fight I retreated back a bit to a narrower chokepoint and once most of the orcs were clustered together my illusionist turned them into easy targets with the help of color spray and sleep. The skald song helps a lot also.

BelegCuthalion

Insane with no extra double XP is the way to go for me in iwd. With the XP bonus it felt ridiculously easy to me soon. Without it's a challenge without being totally frustrating.
End of HoW is a real tough one though in that mode, I wish my chars had few more levels for that one...

ineth

Elvenblade said:

In that fight I retreated back a bit to a narrower chokepoint and once most of the orcs were clustered together my illusionist turned them into easy targets with the help of color spray and sleep.

Yes, that's basically what I did the first time I played on Insane, but it was not enough. Here is how the battle went:

• Used the entrance to their chamber as a choke point, waited for them to pile up.
• Had the wizard cast Sleep, which put all the ogres and most of the orcs to sleep in one fell swoop.
• So far so good.
• Then I surrounded one of the sleeping ogres with all my melee chars, and got the ranged chars ready too.
• Everyone attacks that one sleeping ogre at once.
• That salvo of hits wasn't nearly enough to kill the ogre. He wakes up.
• Ogre lands a hit --> one of my melee chars instantly dead.
• Ogre lands another hit --> another one of my melee chars instantly dead.
• Ouch.