I got the game on release but didn't have much time to play and also waited for some bug fixes. But I did read the forums.

And damn I was so scared of the Tavern fight. Everybody was complaining so much, that it was impossible, that it takes almost two hours in turn based. I play both TB and RT, depending if it's trash mobs or not. But the tavern fight I didn't even try TB since when the fight started I saw like 30 dudes waiting for their turns. So first try I went in blind just to see what to expect. I did loose not knowing what to do. But I did see where and what enemies are spawning.

Second try was obvious: put rangef units on roof tops. Block entrances wiht grease and entaglement. When forces started to oberrun I put my party behind the crusaders at the Tavern entrance and occasionally running with Dps to the bombers to kill them and then return behind the crusaders.

Fair enough, I play on normal and Tavern defenses were down to 3/12, but I still won on the second try at Lvl4. And it was over in about 10min. And I fairly enjoyed myself. I think the fight is very well done. Stakes are high, pressure is on, you get to use the map with elevation and other crusaders.

Tl;dr: I now have no idea why everyone complained so much, I really enjoyed the Tavern defense. I can't to see where this journey goes from here.

I played it in both core (blind) and then hard both on turn base mode, and I quite liked it both times.

It's true that it is really a long fight (probably the longuest of the whole game), but that also means it's interesting in a different way : some spells (grease, bless, divine fervor...) may expire during the fight, and it requires a lot more ressources managements (or of a different kind). Also It's interesting that at that low level, allies are not totally useless and they can help a lot with dealing with low level ennemies.

I find It's really well balanced : the tavern parts you need to defend require a few shots from the arsonists to be destroyed : not too few as to not allow mistakes (or bad rolls), but not too much as to be too easy.

So no, not everybody hate this fight :)

My answer: human beings are different, some like what others don't.

At the end of the day, some people enjoy certain kinds of challenges, some don't, There is nothing wrong with people who don't.

It's avoidable; the penalty for losing (0/12) isn't extreme; it's easy if you function well under pressure (and some love being under pressure). .. others don't. Some people are very good at focusing on an objective while lots of other things are happening ... others aren't.

All I have to say.

At the end of the day, it's only the folks selling the game who need to know whether people love or hate it. Forumgoers can argue till they are blue in the face. Uncle Owl really is the one who should care if people hate it.

If somebody throws the game in the trash and will never spend another dime on their products ... like I said, that's how people vote with their dollars. They need to care.

I didn't think it was hard; I personally thought despite what Irabeth said, it wasn't self-evident the endless waves of crap would end after killing 12 arsonists (btw, I assume this is the end state criterion); I just thought it was tedious.

Not everybody enjoys the same stuff.

P.S. fine to give people advice on how to finish it ... no point in telling them to like it, that just seems pointless to me.

i would think one problem is that you can be level 3 or level 5 when it starts and it is huge difference on how challenging it can be.

And it is common people hold their scrolls and don't think spending money to get couple cloudkills and what ever.

Tavern defense teaches you to read in-game text, pay attention to contextual clues and properly leverage choke-points. If you don't do those things then you can literally spend hours targeting foes who don't matter before eventually being overwhelmed by them. And if needing to improve isn't on your radar screen, then you're liable to conclude the game is at fault for confronting you with an impossible/unskippable battle, even though ironically it is neither impossible nor unskippable.

Oh I definitely understand the "pain is a teacher" didactic philosophy.

The thing is, let's be honest, we all are folks who enjoy a narrow niche of gaming. Is pain the best way to bring new people into loving the niche? We all get to enjoy more if Uncle Owl stays in business. Are you helping by being a douche to the newbs?

Some could question that design choice. Or that behavior.

Just saying.

Oh and one more thing: if you want people to improve, you do it better with honey than vinegar. At least one Sensei definitely gets that.

Originally posted by D-Jak:

I got the game on release but didn't have much time to play and also waited for some bug fixes. But I did read the forums.

And damn I was so scared of the Tavern fight. Everybody was complaining so much, that it was impossible, that it takes almost two hours in turn based. I play both TB and RT, depending if it's trash mobs or not. But the tavern fight I didn't even try TB since when the fight started I saw like 30 dudes waiting for their turns. So first try I went in blind just to see what to expect. I did loose not knowing what to do. But I did see where and what enemies are spawning.

Second try was obvious: put rangef units on roof tops. Block entrances wiht grease and entaglement. When forces started to oberrun I put my party behind the crusaders at the Tavern entrance and occasionally running with Dps to the bombers to kill them and then return behind the crusaders.

Fair enough, I play on normal and Tavern defenses were down to 3/12, but I still won on the second try at Lvl4. And it was over in about 10min. And I fairly enjoyed myself. I think the fight is very well done. Stakes are high, pressure is on, you get to use the map with elevation and other crusaders.

Tl;dr: I now have no idea why everyone complained so much, I really enjoyed the Tavern defense. I can't to see where this journey goes from here.

Low skilled and casual players play to relax.
They hate challenge.

So they will hate Tavern defence, first part of game where some tactics and thinking is required (on harder difficulties).

Filthy casuals must die.

Ya know, I see people talking this way on MMO forums. "If only we could get rid of all the filthy casuals".

Sure, homes. You and the 5% leet hardcore-"raid or die" uber-guild raiders can have the game all to yourself, until Blizzard goes out of business. Enjoy.

Casuals keep games afloat. Fact.
You may not want to see the stats on how many people start games like this and never finish. Why?
Filthy casual got frustrated, threw it in the trash.

Hate on them. Don't know if it's a good business model, though.

Oh, and as I keep pointing out, combat difficulty is not the only thing people can find frustrating with a game experience. These forums are full of other kinds of frustrations.

Some, if they really are caused by dev bugs, are definitely not their own fault.

I don't hate it, it's pretty awesome. Granted, could be better. With less "infinite cultists".

I found tavern defense to be enjoyable. I played in TB. My only concern near the end was whether the game was going to crash in on itself with the number of corpes littering the map. Happily, it did not, though performance was noticeably clunkier by the end.

Otherwise, I thought it was a pretty awesome siege.

Interesting. Personally I went blind into my first game on purpose and the tavern defense mission was one of the highlights in that experience. My team was far from ideal for the task but I was playing turn based mostly because I dont want to miss anything happening and I finished the mission with loss of one building on normal difficulty.

Sure, could have been done a lot more efficiently with knowledge of what to expect but I honestly dont see how I could have lost that fight so badly as to justify all the complaining about it. *shrug* Maybe its easier to overlook the relevant targets in realtime mode, I would not know about that.

And the complaint about it beeing too long... well, if I am having fun with something I dont see why I should want it to end sooner. :P But I guess thats just me again.

Originally posted by seeker1:

The thing is, let's be honest, we all are folks who enjoy a narrow niche of gaming. Is pain the best way to bring new people into loving the niche? We all get to enjoy more if Uncle Owl stays in business.

Completely agree with this. I only play brutal unfair but a friend of mine loves story mode because he's only interested in seeing how events unfold. Both are fine and I'm glad he purchased the game as it means more CRPGs for both of us down the road!

Some of us never even got to see the tavern defense. Maybe it's because I like to use up every per-day resource before resting but after exploring every bit of Kenabres and doing a final rest after that the horde still didn't come even though it seemed like more than 3 days.

I'm somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

I don't like reading the Combat Log. I could build around minmaxing and optimization. I tend to go more toward "what do I wanna try" not necessarily how efficient it is. When I pick party members it's not always tactical, sometimes it's thinking around who would be best for the mission, RP-wise. Of course Aru goes with me everywhere in the Abyss - who's best for helping me negotiate with demons and their ways?

I would prefer less combat, not more. Note I didn't say none. I would prefer more options to avoid it. Why are there not more character builds focused around that? I always find it weird when people say "I beat Wrath". Now, I have never "beat" any CRPG I ever played. I got an ending. It was usually one I wanted. Not always. But that's how cookies crumble.

And yes, I do use mods to ... customize, rectify, make things more to my liking. Occasionally they help me unbork my mess, or the developer's mess.

That's what *I* enjoy. And we're all here to enjoy it, right?

Personally I didn't hate it, I just believed it went on longer than it needed to.

A scroll of stone spikes cast at the first door that breaks open makes that side of the battle trivial. On lower difficulty the enemies can’t survive walking through the spikes so you just need one archer on the rooftop to take out the alchemists that spawn there. On core+ cultists can survive with various HP totals left and the dretch DR makes them immune to the spikes.

You can toss a web spell at the door on the other side to catch or at least slow down the batch of enemies that come through there. Then it’s just the two spawn locations on the wall. If you wanted you could use a second stone spikes scroll on the wall and many of the enemies would be dead or very low HP before they got off the wall. That’s a bit more risky though since the alchemists don’t move too much so you might have to walk through your own spikes to kill them.

One spell to avoid is create pit. It can really drag out the battle since you have to kill the alchemists to trigger the next part of the battle. If you trap one in a pit you’ll have to either wait for the spell to end while constantly battle wave after wave of cultists or dismiss the spell early to kill them.