Difficulty balancing?

[BathtubPirate]

Recently I complained a bit about a mission in the Hornblower quest which seemed almost impossible for my then-standards and got a lot of advice which I may not have followed properly (although I think I'm much better up to date this time), so this might have a taste of "told ya" or I might just still not get what I'm supposed to do in the mod to be well prepared for fight situations, anyway I'm completely stuck again.

After retrieving the magical Idol I shall fight a dutch ship off Curacao. I'm about Level 17, Melee 5 or 6 and have the Sword of Bartolomeu and some standard armour. And after 30+ tries it just seems impossible to survive a boarding. Just for fun and without continuing afterwards I used cheatmode to level up to level 40 (!) and then it was just a good challenge to fight my way through the whole ship, but still not a walk in the park at all. Sinking the ship is no option, I barely leave a scratch on it with my ship, the one heavily featured in the story. Well I guess constantly polishing up my officers is just not my style of gameplay, since I always preferred to have those dudes constantly run around me only when necessary, but what am I supposed to do? Returning to an earlier save (I always keep one safe per story act) and spend hours leveling up myself and a whole bunch of officers? Going back and invest in the greatest best super ship ever, which I just didn't expect after it was such a big story deal to retrieve this specific ship? Buying the whole Turks library for perks?

Sorry for being frustrated, I just think after primarily playing the story to this point without rushing it, doing a little side quest or general quest from time to time and (what I think) take reasonably care of my fight equipment this kind of challenge is pretty overwhelming and unexpected, unless I play the mod completely wrong.

 

[Grey Roger]

Having well-equipped, combat-skilled officers really does help with boarding. You could also try putting decent weapons and armour into your weapons locker, which you'll find in your cabin. Crew automatically use armour and weapons from the weapons locker and if they're well equipped, they'll live longer.

You're going to have to learn how to capture a larger ship than your own because several storylines require it...

 

[BathtubPirate]

Thanks again for your quick and kind peply.

Who knows, perhaps I have just different expectations from PotC gameplay, but it does throw me a bit off when I'm merrily following the story and suddenly I am confronted with a huge challenge which I can either beat somehow, or go back and put a huge session of build-up and preparation in between. I'm doing the latter and just boarded ships for several hours - often dying like a pig and trying again - to gain experience and money, perhaps to even buy a new, larger ship (although I think that would contradict the storyline). My locker is - so I think - rather well equipped with several decent swords, guns and armour. A thing I wouldn't like is to be pushed into relying much more on officers and fellow ships, I have always been rather uncomfortable relying on the games AI, which shows in the mods style of boarding (two large groups charging at each other instead of the stock games spawning in duel pairs) - my dudes are either stumbling around behind me while I get butchered by seven enemies or they're blocking my way to participate in the battle and help them.

But I don't even know why I am complaining, since I mostly know how the game works (and by now, how the mod works too) and a lot of this stuff comes down to personal preferences, all in all I just think the rather high difficulty in an aspect I foolishly didn't expect at this point throws me off. I mean the storyline clearly expects you to heavily improve your sea battle resources on your own and outside the plot before you even go search for the Idol. But then again, this may be my mistake just to go with the flow of the narrative, perhaps I have the wrong expectations and other players would have gotten themselves a strong ship/boarding resources already.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

One thing I can say that might at least explain something:
@Bartolomeu o Portugues, who wrote the story, is a big fan of encouraging free play on the side of his main quests.
At some point he even added a bit where you're required to go free play for a while.
So based on that, I would indeed expect any linear play-through to be very difficult; if not impossible.
Especially if you skip on using officers boardings.
So I hope that at least answers some questions.

 

[Grey Roger]

In general, you're encouraged to make good use of officers in the mod. Apart from being helpful in boardings - and, for that matter, in encounters with random thugs in the jungle - they're useful for efficient running of the ship. They specialise in their various roles so they gain job-related skills more quickly than you do - for example, a gunner will go up more quickly in "Cannons" and "Accuracy" than you will.

Secondary ships are far less significant. Indeed, I prefer to only have one ship because you can only have four in total, and if I only have my own single ship then I can capture three prize ships and sell them. More ships in my fleet means less ships captured for plunder.

In general, you should indeed do some freeplay along with the main story and you'll usually need something bigger than the ships given free by the storylines. You certainly won't complete "Tales of a Sea Hawk" using just the lugger with which you start the story!

 

[BathtubPirate]

I finally got passed it after playing around 10 hours to build up my level and achieve the musket volley perk among others. Still a pretty rough challenge.

In general, you should indeed do some freeplay along with the main story and you'll usually need something bigger than the ships given free by the storylines. You certainly won't complete "Tales of a Sea Hawk" using just the lugger with which you start the story!

Haha no, but I still think it's a different cuppa tea, because Bartolomeus 'Santiago' may not be the greatest ship ever but it's still a different calibre than the scruffy tiny lugger. Also the entire first act of the Bartolomeu storyline is about losing and regaining the 'Santiago' - I think even twice if I recall correctly. Changing it for a big battleship immediately after that would make no sense as long as you're even remotely concerned about some form of 'role playing'. I think Tales of the Sea Hawk is pretty accomodating in that regard, since the first huge sea challenge - the battle of Greenford - is clearly pointed out and the time to prepare properly is given even story-wise. But while this one is easy, Bartolomeu leans to the other side of the extreme with obstacles like this one that say 'he he hope, you better have a save before you enter this island, try it again in a few months in-game time'. Sure you could constantly maximize your resources in advance - probably my mistake.

Now I'm actually rather stuck at the fort where I hunt for Johan Elting. Not really sure how to progress. The hunts say to kill all soldiers before taking care of the commander (I guess that's the one running around in shiny armour) but 'killing all soldiers' is actually very hard, the poisoned throwing knives don't do too much except for alerting everybody something that happens sooner or later everytime. Is there a certain trick I haven't figured out yet or do I need to do same thing I did at the ship challenge - going back and jungle folks for hours until I have melee 10? Also there seems to be a bug, when I die the game neither quits nor jumps to a tavernroom, it's just me lying dead on the Ground, unable to go to the main menu. Alt f4 is the only option.

 

[Grey Roger]

Yes, I think I remember that part being tough as well - and I didn't have much trouble capturing the ship near the end of the idol quest. Poisoned throwing knives can help. You need to be at a distance from the target to have any chance of hitting him without alerting him, and if he's been hit without being alerted, he'll take a long time to die - be patient or make good use of the keys to speed up and slow down time. But eventually someone is going to be alerted, at which point you need to find somewhere where only one or two soldiers can attack you at a time. If I remember correctly, I think I was on a staircase last time I got past this part.

It may be that this area doesn't know where to spawn you. I do remember getting killed several times while trying to do this, but I don't recall getting stuck like that. I play in full screen mode, not windowed, so alt-F4 probably wouldn't work for me. But I always have the option set to disable respawning entirely so that if I die, I don't end up in a tavern room, I have to reload a savegame.

 

[BathtubPirate]

Alright it's doable. You have to use your ten poison knives perfectly, means use all without being detected (and the effect takes very long, even with time x20) then put up the fight of your life. I'll try it at the top of the tower then use the staircase as a Bottleneck. But those soldiers are strong.

I play in full screen too, but I'll switch off the respawning and look if it works.

 

[BathtubPirate]

Yes, it is doable. But it takes a lot of tries and even more nerves. And when I was finished, the commander was lying under a pile of 30 other corpses, inaccessible to loot.

 

[Grey Roger]

He shouldn't be inaccessible. It just means you have to loot all the other soldiers as well. This, for me at least, is not a problem.