TOPIC: Epic versus NM

Loved my VTD 3a run today in the Deadwill Mine. The puzzles have been great! Super kudos to all the staff and volunteers who are keeping TD alive and so awesome during the pandemic.

I think Jeff has done a great job trying to keep combats interesting (multiple monsters, group effects, etc.), but combat has gotten super easy lately. The only damage I usually take is from my MEC. Today we killed two monsters before they could take an action.

I know one option is to not use all of our relics/ultra-rates, etc. I like doing themed runs, like sealed deck or a rainbow run.

Another option is to try epic difficulty. I haven’t tried epic before. How much of a jump in difficulty is it? Are there rewards other than bragging rights?

The only reward other than bragging rights is the increased challenge.

It's hard to quantify exactly how much harder Epic is, but it's another bump up in monster ACs, HP, to-hit, damage, etc at a minimum, so if monsters aren't surviving long enough to attack, there's a good indication.

One simple thing to add challenge is to not boost your party's Initiative. 10 CoAS and/or Awareness as a scroll usually means the party goes first, which makes a big difference, especially for monsters that have an "opening salvo" AoE ability.

Alternately, if you are playing Nightmare with a group of players that agree and an amenable DM, and you win the first fight in a single round, you could ask the DM to give it Epic HP, or epic AC, without increasing the damage output (if you don't have high ACs/tons of HP/tons of consumable healing).

Or you can play "out of position" i.e. a melee-combat wizard, etc. or do themed runs that are sub-optimal.

If you have the tokens to cake-walk Nightmare, for instance, you could try a Drow run, where everyone wears Drow Armor and uses Drow weapons, but still use all your other boosting tokens.

On the other hand, it's generally not intended for the 1st monster to kill players, or for the 2nd monster to TPK, so you should expect to survive them (with healing), though if you are 1-turning more than one monster, your party is probably too powerful/optimized for the level you're at.

In your case, just play Epic or Epic Weird. We had a player play for the first time ever on an Epic Weird run.

I'm of the view that if no difficulty causes any consumables to be used, then no difficulty is difficult enough. We just did the no spellcaster run, and it was quite enjoyable to use up arrows that otherwise sit around forever never becoming Enchanter's Munitions because EMs aren't that useful.

Our Epic run of 3A with eight players which was supposed to be nine saw zero consumables used to my knowledge and room 7 would have been doable if we had played faster. This is with someone playing for the second time ever and the party not having seen the dungeon yet.

Now, if you are doing a Double Down with 14 tokens or less and not allowed to equip weapons, maybe Epic Weird isn't that interesting.

Or, less facetiously, it depends upon what you enjoy. If you enjoy crushing dungeons or just knowing you are going to win any R7 combat, then can scale back difficulty. I like R6-7 combats to press at least half the party.

I hadn't heard of drow runs or epic weird runs - Is that just a themed epic-level run?

bpsymington wrote: I hadn't heard of drow runs or epic weird runs - Is that just a themed epic-level run?

Epic weird is more telling the DM to take the published epic stats and go nuts and crank the dials to 11.

Fiddy wrote:

bpsymington wrote: I hadn't heard of drow runs or epic weird runs - Is that just a themed epic-level run?

Epic weird is more telling the DM to take the published epic stats and go nuts and crank the dials to 11.

Like someone setting the forest on fire and watching the monster roll over half the party.

Well, we did our run today at epic level, my first time, and it was definitely more challenging. I liked the tension! Someone even died (before the paladin used sacrifice).

Epic Weird ? What's that?

Fiddy wrote:

bpsymington wrote: I hadn't heard of drow runs or epic weird runs - Is that just a themed epic-level run?

Epic weird is more telling the DM to take the published epic stats and go nuts and crank the dials to 11.

you are correct. epic stats but also giving the DM the okay to really go outside the box. on the flip side of the coin, the DMs tend to reward unconventional play.

i guess i'm saying it is an opportunity for both sides to really have fun.

ponyboy wrote: Epic Weird ? What's that?

Lots of fun XD

bpsymington wrote: Well, we did our run today at epic level, my first time, and it was definitely more challenging. I liked the tension! Someone even died (before the paladin used sacrifice).

Dang, you must be incredibly geared that you only lost one on epic. We barely made it through on nightmare(6 dead) with some serious UR+ level builds at this point.

I really loved that the final room is so difficult. It made surviving actually seem like an achievement. I think it's ok if you want to back off at normal level and maybe hardcore to avoid bad experiences for newbies. But at nightmare and epic it should be a challenge to survive. I really appreciated that.

I did notice that as the weekend went along that players who ran multiple times were better prepared and the survival rate went up. On our final Sunday run we weren't sure about epic, so ran nightmare. People were better prepared and we won so fast that we replayed room 7 at epic and still won. Hopefully, a few tweaks prior to V3b will maintain that feeling of possibly coming face to face with our doom.