itch.io

Well, winterfall itself is not a domain, so that is a hint for why the enemies will not disappear. But you do have a point that it is a bit strange. In draknor, almost everything dies (the animals in the caves don't, but all humans and demons do). In winterfall, only the demonic enemies disappear.

>Probably every single corrupted meat there was in the region excluding whatever might exist past the excessive 5 bomb+ rock I never bothered with. I just checked. I had 29.

Yeah, the boss has a skill that deals ATK*meat damage. So with 29 meat, it's like being hit by freight train.

>That's really, really dumb. Of course I want to kill everything in the region, human/oids drop money.

Somewhere, a demon general is laughing at human folly. The cursed meat is supposed to be the trap mechanic of that area, better to try and kill as few as possible until you kill the boss.

>It's not like anyone has ever told me how. Just "nuh uh people totally do it."

There's no one easy trick to it. In my experience you have to use your limited resources wisely, while still using a lot of consumables, skip a lot of trash mobs and have tactics tailored for every boss (which will frequently mean having seen their turn orders previously and "blind"countering some stuff). Hard to tell someone how to do that without writing a 50 page strategy guide, which is very time consuming.

Using star knightess is also not cheating, and if you restrict yourself to never using it that's an additional optional challenge.

>Is there more? I don't know, I never even get a "yeah that's all."

Pretty sure that's all, but the only one that's actually important is day 100 for demon generals.

>I'm at a point now where it feels like every playthrough I've ever done raising physical attack was a mistake, and I should have just pumped magic as high as possibly so light just nukes things in to oblivion.

My feeling is that the current consensus is that ATK is slightly better than MATK (but MATK used to be much better), but ATK is also more complex compared to stone mind + radiance + light = mucho damage.

How much corrupted meat did you have in your inventory? Beelzebub does crazy damage if you have more than a handful.
You also don't need to absorb those 100mp curses. Better to not do it in fact, it's kind of a trap. 

"Even on story mode, apparently the game has completely abandoned any pretense that pure is a legitimate option."
And yet lots of people manage pure on not just normal but higher difficulties.

"There's a reason nobody does your wiki for you. And the reason nobody on your team has done it is probably because none of you have any clue either."

The developer definitely has a clue, and has beaten every boss in the game without popping the collar on pure. More strategy tips on the wiki would be nice though, I agree on that.

>You are mistaken if you think that this isn't the case for me, but if you think it's good balance to still be susceptible to RNG even when you ARE strong enough, then we just disagree. No amount of real consistency can be achieved.

Most RPGs are like this though. If the rng gives you a bad roll 10 times in a row, you often just lose and have to try again, no matter how prepared you are. If the RNG hating you was surviveable, it would make all the statistically normal outcomes easy.

>They were only doing 1 damage after all. So a boss on story mode dealing 1 damage, you wouldn't think is about to kill me right? It winds up, sure, something to think about if I was playing seriously on a higher difficulty, but it was flashing yellow so I just decided to test out if I'd kill it. I didn't. So this story mode encounter that was dealing 1 damage, with its enhance and wind up uses pierce, one shotting me on story mode. *The point isn't whatever you think it is.* I'm using *examples* for how egregious many enemies multiply their damage and disregard your defense.
It is true that damage threshold systems (as opposed to reduction) have this behavior.  It's much less of an issue lategame, and I think it's also not a great argument. The stat boost on nightmare was not chosen randomly, it has been balanced with the systems that are in the game in mind. That 30% stat boost will almost always mean more than 30% more damage taken it at worst an issue in explaining how much harder nightmare is. 

>Notably you completely omitted a response to John and Paul's magic vulnerability you CAN'T effectively defend against, ESPECIALLY post-avaritia.

Most enemies that use spells do so on a predictable turn, so you can guard against it. 

>But again, if you don't ignore the broader point, her existence then makes John just a protect-bot.

Or you could protect with aura, or slime, or defend with charlotte and let the chips fall where they may. And once you get protect II, no one needs to spend 100% of the time protecting anyway. 

>You know, except it's not because avaritia > dark attack > tactical crit generally one shots ANY ally through their guard, especially if they reach enhancement.

Great, he still absorbed a massive crit that could have killed Aura. 

>Sure I'll just dodge the moves like I'm playing Elden Ring. Oh wait it's a turn based RPG where even the standard difficulties are quite grindy. There's no such thing as 'stepping up your game'. There's grinding for more stats (something that uses precious time) and relying on luck. Your tactical advantage dodges are luck. Flash bombs avoiding damage are luck. It's luck and grind all the way down, which contradict many of the timed events and rewards in the game.

What exactly is it that you find grindy? Enemies never respawn, and there's very few forced encounters, you can ignore/stealth a lot of them. There's a fixed and fairly small amount of skills and materials (especially gold). The only grind potential I can think of is workshop job and bartending. Those are indeed bad uses of time, as you mention. They're also not necessary, "no workshop or bartending" would barely qualify as a challenge run imo. Tactical advantage + flash bomb will mean that you dodge a large majority of hits. If a single hit kills you on normal, probably you have a bad strategy (like letting a buffed enemy hit you) or you are understatted for the fight. And unless you specifically enjoy a challenge, you should remove collar for the especially tricky fights.

As for skill expression, you are obviously correct that this is not a real time game, so quick reflexes will not help you. But there is a lot of optimization to do in using items, smithing the right materials, learning complementary skills, learning enemy attack patterns and reacting to them appropriately as well as planning your days for quick progression. Probably more things as well that I just can't think of right now.

>Even one of the other threads posted today mentioned they play on story because of poor difficulty.

I strongly disagree that the difficulty is poor. You and many others may not find it enjoyable, which is why story and casual exist. But personally this game has a really enjoyable difficulty.

> I'm probably one of very few people trying to engage with the game outside of its porn elements.

There's a decent amount of us I think, but probably a minority yeah.

> This is especially true of non-guild combat members like Edwin against the apparition that contributes zilch

He contributes 50 extra hp, which is actually quite a lot at that point in the game, especially if you guard with him to reduce damage taken.

>but the game relies so heavily on bosses not targeting the wrong characters, because 9 times out of 10 they have the capacity to one shot someone.

Charlotte is very squishy to physical attacks yeah. That's why protect exists. The game can be a bit rng at times, but if you need more than a few tries against a boss due to rng, it's usually because you're not strong/skilled enough and are trying to brute force it (which is a valid tactic if and only if you think it is fun).

> Albrecht on nightmare who only randomly survives basically goblins. (Because in practice, enemy numbers are actually far higher than 30% stronger. If I have 19 defense and take 2 damage from a goblin, on nightmare I would be taking 14.) -Fixed missing paren 

Maybe don't play on nightmare if you don't want a nightmarishly hard time? Albrecht is a scrub and you are rescuing him from goblins, surprise surprise he would lose to them without you.

>A physical attacker renders Charlotte obsolete. You either have to JUST protect her, or guard with her ad nauseam to the point that fights are easier if she *didn't* exist - but you always want characters along with you on quests in order to gain that experience. Don't you think it's a little silly they exist just to guard and be meat shields?

Charlotte adds a lot of attack boost with heat up, she does pretty good damage with fire, and characters gain the same amount of xp regardless of your choices. I think she is the most useful companion on nightmare (Paul is worst).

> I understand I often get ignored. I get pretty lengthy, but I think I try to be fair despite being opinionated.

Making length explanations is good, but from this post alone you come across more as a whiner who demands to play on the highest difficulty and while not being ready to step up your game to meet the bar. You're probably not supposed to be able to beat nightmare pure without ng+ bonuses AT ALL, and even with bonuses you have to play a very optimized way, and the rng can't be too harsh on you.

Do you have defensive stance on?

I don't have an android, so I don't know how to do it, but I assume that as long as you can access the save file you can use a save editing site like https://www.saveeditonline.com/.

For eyes of greed, just do your shopping at the end of day or use emerald tea.

For legs of sloth, that curse you can dodge.

Just use a save game editor if you need cheats.

And yet there are people who have beaten it on nightmare without reaching the first mental change room.

The game is good, fairly well balanced but also hard. You can also just use the built in cheat button to kill generals after day 100.