Belzebub difficulty adjustments

[mangasdeouf]

Hi,

I'm still in normal difficulty in Belzebub, but the monsters keep being more and more cheated. I tried to go sorcerer for easy farming, tcheh! it wasn't considering some seriously cheated monsters from level 9 onwards (seriously the caves are completely Hell, much more than the Hell levels themselves).

They keep putting me against lightning resistant monsters and the last named monster was a lava lord with fire immunity lightning enchanted (i guess immuned to it too since he doesn't take any damage from lightning), they run at me while sending magic projectiles, in open rooms where 10+ monsters fire lightning as well as fireballs from all directions.

I have put so much gold into spell tomes, I can't even respond to that. The dragon-like demons have the same stupid attack speed as the braindead undead balrogs with even more damage per hit so if one get close you will never ever escape or cast anything and waste all your potions just to get annihilated whatever you do, the golem spell is so hard to find that mine is only lv 1 on my sorcerer so he doesn't tank much (10% res all 300 hp 60 AC) while it's lv2 on my rogue who's already reached lv 12 subquests.

I ditched her because I couldn't finish the sunset island quest where the balrog spawns infinite inferno demons and balrogs while having too much damage and AS to kill him and when I go back he's 100% HP again so everything I did was just a waste of gold. So far she's level 19 or so, and she has the bow + armor + sash of the arctic set which gives more damage than any other bow I've equipped and good AC (around 80+) and 50 HP which I can't let go, and I didn't find any freeze immunity on any of my characters although I've got 2 rogues, 2 assassins, 1 gladiator, 1 sorcerer and 2 necromancers.

I can't go past level 10-12 since they send me ennemies I can't kill and they chase me to the level entrance. I'm completely stuck in these goddamn caves because of too high density of ennemies that can kill you from the other side of the map and that you can't even fight at all in close combat since you can't attack at all with their 3 attacks per second freezing you and making you loose your balance (how much hit recovery rate just to put 1 hit every 5 sec against those cheats?).

If you have good advice on how to fight this kind of stupid things they keep throwing at us from level 9 onwards (and in Horazon Sanctum, sunset island etc.), I take them because seriously I could be level 60 if I can't dent them or can't attack at all I don't see the point of playing.

Aside from this, the game is great. Just needs to slow down ennemy attack speed by A LOT in order for the player to not need to be 2 difficulties over the ennemies to be able to kill them (or maybe switching some warrior unique items/item sets for some rogue because rogues have 1 set in normal difficulty before hell levels and even this underlevelled set is superior to whatever you can find later before other sets are droppable in the last levels, and this set gives very low resistances and 0 knockback, only cold).

I'd also argue rogue skill that throws several arrows needs love because it deals very little damage even at 125 base dex, ennemies barely take damage and the number of arrows shot is ridiculously low before you get so much dex you don't know what to do with it (understand when you're playing on the highest difficulties). They don't even spread enough to actually hit a decent number of ennemies. I guess you could use more of a Diablo 2 amazon/League of Legends Ashe W kind of AOE, at least it would be closer to the point of this skill.

I know updates aren't frequent but if you could think of those really big downs for the next one it would be great (and assassins need love too since you can't really start with an assassin and hope it will be a success, literally the worse class to start with since they need so many stats to do anything except dying to the first mob of ennemies coming).

Don't hesitate to give me tips and good items to look for (my sorcerer wears the unique robe of sorcerer which gives him 17 magic alonside other things, a 15 magic belt and helm, a charged bolt staff even though I tried the axe with 71% magic resist that dropped from Horazon sanctum, but spending mana for attacking is not great when you need it to tank) (my rogue wears the arctic bow, sash, armor with a 49 HP crown and unique/rare jewels that give resists, hit recovery, HP, +2/3 in every stat and the like).

I've got the helm and axe of berserker, the hsarus buckler, the great shield of the set with mace, shield and amulet, valor armor (which seems really weak compared with even artcic 3 items bonuses) and a few rare items I kept because they looked fine but not transcendent either.

[Wendigo]

Welcome to the forums!
In Normal difficulty with a Sorcerer, I just spam Guardian and kill most enemies before they're even on the screen. The only time this doesn't work is with enemies who are totally resistant to fire, which usually ends up being only the Balrogs and a few bosses, at which point I spam Chain Lightning. Remember, you can always reset the level variance by quitting out and restarting the game, which will give you different monsters who probably won't be as resistant to your favorite spells.

[mangasdeouf]

Thank you.

Well I know that but it's like putting a band-aid on a wooden leg, it doesn't solve the problem. And half of level 9 mobs are immune/very resistant to fire so guardian doesn't help much (although I recall with my sorceror i was in "$player 5" so I could retry in normal difficulty, still the problem stays relevant with how OP these monsters are and doesn't solve the problem when you face 3+ possessed monsters like the storm dragons or balrogs, it's simply way too difficult.

Add to that the fact that spells hitboxes are buggy (flame wave misses far too often with 220% hit on spells, fireball projectile is very small and random movements from ennemies can easily screw you over, fire wall doesn't block the ennemies so they just cross it, ice spells are...are they even...? I think they aren't...).

That's the whole point. If they can abuse such antiplay mechanics, why would the player not have this possibility? your attack speed at max must be far lower than these mobs', and you can't deal high damage with physical weapon at a supersonic speed while also being able to shoot magic infinitely from one side of the screen to the other, and drain mana while doing all that...

[Wendigo]

Um, yes. I would reset the $player X to 0 and see what that does. Each $P level is supposed to exponentially increase the difficulty of the monsters you face, so at $P5 that would be 32x tougher than they need to be. That is by far my best guess as to why you're struggling, the $PX option shouldn't even be used until you've exhausted all your current grinding opportunities.

It's true that the game will insist you adapt as you go deeper into the dungeons, but the Normal difficulty is geared specifically to letting each class just do what it does best. You should be equipping specifically for MAG, and once you get the Anvil crafting specifically for more, with the possible exceptions of also increasing your resistances and maybe some STR to equip a big boy belt but honestly, even that's not really necessary; Mana Shield is what keeps you alive so maxing that should be your top priority. From there I have gotten through several deathless runs of Normal by just, as above, spamming Guardian.. even if Guardian and Golem aren't doing damage they tell you where the monsters are coming from. I usually don't even step away from the level entrance until everything's gone quiet, and then I take a single step and repeat the process. Not exactly a proactive approach but it does keep you from dying. As you say, any spell you have to actually aim like a dirty pleb sucks at this point.
Using this strategy, and only this strategy (with the addition of Teleport for additional running away action, if I'm lucky enough to find a few books) work up to and including Diablo himself. As I said above, my only guess to why you're struggling is you've set the difficulty too high, Sorc on Normal is generally considered cheater-level easy.

Edit- although "Sorc on Normal" would be a great name for a band.