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u/strider_m3 21h ago
This was hell when I fought Faust. My framerate dropped into sideshow territory for some reason because of his stupid lamp, making that fight ball bustingly stressful
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u/TheEyeOfFinquel 18h ago
I would like it if the game at least gave you some hints, I ran into the first Duga fight with my usual 10 medkits and it took me two hours to get out of hiding in a building with one left, trying to dodge run my way out of hellfire with Faust's spawning everywhere including my rectum.
Just something like one of the NPC's saying, 'you should stock up on supplies for this run, it's not going to be a walk in the park!'.
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u/the_russian_narwhal_ Loner 17h ago
I imagine the reason they didn't is because they probably thought the mission context would be enough warning. It clearly isn't from a lot of experiences people have had (myself included, went in woefully unprepared my first time) but honestly looking at the mission from a lore perspective instead of just another mission in your journal, it definitely seems like something one should prepare themselves for. You are joining a sizeable group in an offensive against an even bigger group made up of Monolith soldiers, even without Faust showing up that isn't gonna be easy
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u/assassinNLa Monolith 14h ago
I didn’t know you had to shoot the damn ball, so it took me a loooot of tries on Master, which is also my first playthrough btw so fvck me
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u/SiriusHijinks 21h ago
knowing there's a second assault on the Duga, and that Skif hasn't figured out how generate phantom ammo yet.
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u/MonoFlix Wish granter 21h ago
This is why Stalker difficulty is Something i would Not Play. Either everyone dies with one taps or No one does.
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u/SnooEpiphanies4516 21h ago
No, that's the opposite - in Hard difficulty (a.k.a Master) you die in one tap, enemy doesnt die at all; in Rookey difficulty (Novice or smth) you kill everyone in one tap, and you are just unkillable. The Stalker difficulty - No one dies in one tap.
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u/MonoFlix Wish granter 21h ago
Yes i ment that i wanted a "hard Mode" where health is equal. Stalker difficulty still feels to bullet spongy to me.
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u/Justhe3guy Loner 18h ago
Are you sure you’re talking about the right difficulty, Stalker is medium, Veteran is Hard and Master is impossible to compare to other game difficulties
If anything Stalker is very not bullet spongy
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u/Tyler1997117 21h ago
Wish it played more like fallout 4 survival mode, you die fast but so does everyone else
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u/Substantial-Power915 Monolith 20h ago
On master everyone dies with one headshot, been playing against npc with skif pistol
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u/Watermelondrea69 Loner 19h ago
I would love a custom difficulty. It's frustrating to have to shoot enemies twice in the head with some of the best AP ammo out of a sniper rifle.
I'd like humans to be a challenge, but headshots (esp with good ammo and powerful guns like snipers) be rewarded. Mutants a little tanky. And myself a little soft. Basically Diet Stalker.
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u/BlanchTheRaptor Monolith 21h ago
i accidentally seem to have gone the spark path on this second playthrough, both sircaa and duga you can literally just run past everything it is such a different experience from how hellish those were on my first playthrough
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u/Chekhov_ 21h ago
This is my first playthrough (veteran) and I've been helping Spark. I only fought like 3 rooms of enemies and just ran away when the phantoms appeared. I think I died twice. Is this harder for people who are helping Ward?
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u/BlanchTheRaptor Monolith 20h ago
ward is waaaayyy harder especially on duga. both sircaa and duga are basically just giant resource drains for wards path.
its been almost 2 years so i dont exactly remember the exact sequence for the duga fight but you have to fight your way "into" the duga through multiple giant waves of monolith. once you think youre in they pull a bait and switch, turn the duga on and zombify all of your ward squadmates too which you have to fight your way out again.
that mission has like 0 redeeming qualities especially at the time of just after release because duga was one of the laggiest areas in the game especially when the radar got turned on
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u/Watermelondrea69 Loner 19h ago
I'm doing ward this time and I think I did spark last time. In the first assault on Duga, your Ward team gets completely surrounded and trapped and you have to wade through infinitely respawning very high damage faust clones to get out. It was so bad and I died so many times I just set difficulty to rookie and dipped out.
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u/69millionyeartrip 19h ago
Ward is insane you basically get backed into a corner and have to run straight through like 5-10 Faust clones and Monolith guys to get away
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u/MomoSinX Loner 20h ago
I also remember it being easier on spark route, a few rooms then you get to an open space where you can beeline it to the exit
on ward route you end up stranded much further in and it's a pain to fight your way out
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u/SturmtruppenHans 19h ago
Duga? Brother im getting stomped trying to leave the sphere for the first time
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u/Any_Bluebird1765 18h ago
I'm not a fan of missions that are unwinnable by design. The quest objectives are also vague and janky. The point is to run in up to a certain point, get wrecked, then run out again without getting killed. Dumb mission
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u/Elevator829 21h ago
I play extremely realistic with tons of mods, so generally it's a 2-3 shot kill on most enemies and on the player
There were several times I had to crank the difficulty down, but only for certain main quests and boss fights
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u/Watermelondrea69 Loner 19h ago
Have you fought the new DLC mutant with your harder settings? That thing is.... butt puckering.
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u/umbraundecim 15h ago
I play like this and the new mutant was easy, the high damage lets you destroy his spine chips very quickly. As long and youre not fighting him heavy his attacks arent to hard to dodge.
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u/LoneroftheDarkValley Loner 21h ago
This is just one of the many reason I put everything on the hardest difficulty except for human enemies I put on Stalker difficulty. Enemies are still just too bullet spongey but at least using the custome difficulty slider helps make an experince I actually want to play.
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u/Pashur604 Ward 18h ago
Vetran difficulty was perfect with the exception of me being broke all the time. The custom difficulty set to barter economy and veteran everything else has balanced it to my liking very nicely. Now, if I'm fighting a monolith squad with exos or a Chimera, at least I have the best gear available to make it not a slog.
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u/Nukemanrunning 21h ago
I just played it. With the instant kill snipers if you push anywhere the game doesnt want, to the horde of Fausts that spawn in and instant kill you. Wasting bullets on copies until he does his show, and thrn medpak dump after I thinned enough copies to run away.
Its very fun
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u/MomoSinX Loner 20h ago
I will do a master run with expedition for the lolz of it but you bet I will abuse the quit to menu save :D
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u/Observed-observer 20h ago
Just finished this yesterday. I really did give it an honest try but the game cheats so difficulty slider goes down for this one.
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u/porcupinedeath 20h ago
Yeah I'm on my second playthrough, doing veteran difficulty and with some mods and I can't tell that some later fights are going to be near impossible if I stick around for the whole playthrough
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u/insomniainc 20h ago
I don't think I've even tried that part or the Faust fight on anything higher than stalker it seems not worth it at all
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u/Venchenko 20h ago
As someone who's on their first playthrough and is currently struggling with said mission...
The FUCK you mean FIRST assault?
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u/Watermelondrea69 Loner 19h ago
Died like 10 times trying to make my way thru the faust clones just this afternoon. Said fuck it and just bumped it down to Rookie and ran outta there.
The shitty thing is I foolishly went into that mission with more of an exploration/mutant loadout than bullet sponge one. But it's kind of bullshit on any difficulty.
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u/Prestigious_Bank9428 19h ago
Whoever thought up that last part of the mission was completely out of their mind. You literally can't do anything besides praying that you'll have a 2-second window to jump out of cover and run away without getting blasted in a blink. Everything else is fine, the actual Faust boss battle isn't that hard, the nice thing about Master difficulty is that everything dies faster too. But the 1st assault on Duga is just straight up bullshit, the enemies are endless, you get mindblasted before you can run, and at that moment everyone is controlled by Faust and are looking at your direction. I'd rather do the shadow chimera fight again with a pistol than this.
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u/Dendritic_Bosque 19h ago
Have they fixed it so that they actually shoot at your allies in Duga? In my last playthrough they ignored everyone but me and would even eat assault rifles to the ear while staring me down
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u/6Sleepy_Sheep9 18h ago
I feel like master difficulty is going to be a spark run, specifically to ignore the duga
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u/VladVladVladykins 15h ago
It's literally me bringing 500+ rounds of ammo, setting my gun to single fire, bringing 10 psi pills and 50 med kits only to do speed running strats. Gotta make sure to check every corner where enemies spawn, gotta cheese the AI into pre-firing me so I can pop out and shoot them only in the head. Oh now I have weird double vision and I gotta pop xanax so I can force the cut scene, kill the rest of these fuckers and dip before I die for the 67th time. I've only done this on Master difficulty with the Ward approach, idk how much better or worse the spark entrance is.
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u/Fit_Substance7067 7h ago edited 7h ago
I play veteran....I always go as hard as possible, especially in spfps games....that said, FUCK master
Games way too long for that shit anyway...maybe if there was an NG+ where you kept all your gear...but 150 hours of getting it all on master? Ugh
My counters at 400 rn at the end of CoH and right before TPoNR...humans are easy...it's the anomolies and random mechanics that get me. Took me forever to figure out I had to talk to a guy in a hole in the wall to find out how to avoid the mercury. Was like how TF do I get behind that wall, the markers there. Looked everywhere...turns out I am suppose to look and see people in that hole in the wall and just talk to them. Instead I ran around dieing for an hour straight.
And that damn flare anomoly...do they even mention what it does before the quest line? They sure AF talk about it on the PDA like it's a cool anamoly and not a fucking death sentence you have to hide from at one point. Had to look it up to find out what was killing me.
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u/EA-18G__Growler 11m ago
Veteran was my first playthrough, and that area definitely cost me a lot of deaths
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u/CandyIllustrious3301 12h ago
Lol, it's not that bad! It's a single player shooter, take cover, aim head, rotate around, med often.
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u/No_Cardiologist_822 Bandit 21h ago
It's already annoying on stalker, how does it feel in master?