FF13 - Difficulty curve at Pulse?

Question

I spent my weekend playing through Final Fantasy 13 and managed to get up to pulse late afternoon Sunday.

I haven't been avoiding any encounters the entire way through, I've used good strategies to get good weapon upgrades (pouring 36 Sturdy Bones and then anywhere between 20 and 50 Turbojets once the weapon has reached x3 EXP BONUS). My characters up until now have shredded anything they come up against including an easy Barthandelus battle.

I made my way through the Ark with ease and defeated Bahamut and afterwards made my way to Pulse.

OK so now I'm here on Pulse and have defeated Hope's Eidolon. I've reached the huge open area where you have access to Cie'th stone quests and suddenly I feel like I've missed something major or should have done a tonne of farming beforehand.

There are a scarce few enemies here I can actually defeat. The King Behemoth gets me once it stands up and starts using Thundaga to kill my party in two strikes. The huge turtle things - I don't even understand how these could possibly be beaten at all. The wolves in groups larger than 3 are too tricky to bother. The bird type enemies use an attack called "Feeding Stoop" or similar that kills a party member instantly. Etc etc.

Is this a point in the game where I need to venture around these enemy types and slowly (very slowly) work my characters up through fighting the smaller enemies like Goblins and other smaller creatures? Or have I accidentally bypassed a huge portion of the game somewhere and am ridiculously underpowered?

Answer

You are hugely underpowered for the majority of the enemies on Pulse, since Pulse is the end game location - your characters have access to that area and all the missions after the main story of the game is completed.

At this point, you should just finish the missions you need to move the story forward and don't worry about any of the enemies that are too difficult to defeat. Once you are done the story, you will be able to defeat most of the enemies in Pulse and you can spend time grinding in order to defeat them all (and finish all the missions).

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Making Dark Souls just a little bit easier?

Question

Ok so I got round to starting Dark Souls the other evening and like most people (I imagine) im finding it rather difficult. Is there a particular character class that will make the game easier to learn ? I can only assume my selection of a 'Pyromancer' was a terrible idea for someone new to the game :S

Answer

I'll start off by pointing out that the Graveyard you find near the start of the game is intended for a higher level player, so you should avoid it for now.

Both the Cleric and the Warrior are excellent beginner classes. The Cleric has healing, which is very helpful, but has very weak armor. The Warrior lacks healing, but has more well rounded stats for combat, and starts with better equipment.

When it comes to developing your character, there is one thing you should keep in mind: You should only boost one offensive stat. This includes: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Faith. The reason for this is that most weapons have stat scaling. So if you have a weapon which scales with strength, and you decided to split your points between dexterity and strength, all of the points invested in dexterity are essentially useless. That isn't to say you shouldn't put any points into the other offensive stats, just that you should only be putting enough to meet stat requirements for equipment.

My personal suggestion would be to focus on a Dexterity build. This will allow you to use bows effectively, which can make your game a lot easier. Bows allow you to both kill and weaken enemies from afar, lure single enemies away from a group, and take care of archers as soon as you encounter them.

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Can you not spend any talent points in hard mode?

Question

My brother and I recently beat our copies of The Witcher 2, and, being the masochists we are, both decided to up the difficulty and play the other story branch.

He finished before me, and experienced an irritating bug where he was not able to spend talent points after leveling up, and when I started over on hard a day later, I had experienced the same "bug".

Given that it's unlikely for such an egregious bug to happen in exactly the same way on two separate computers, etc., we were wondering if this was because of our choice in difficulty; can you not spend talents on Hard mode? I mean, I know it's supposed to be harder, but no talents at all?.

Answer

It turns out that in order to increase the difficulty, the Hard and Insane difficulties prevent you from spending talent points outside of meditation, in order to prevent you from upgrading your character mid-battle to survive.

To upgrade your abilities on Hard and Insane, meditate, then select the Character option. Here, you can assign talent points.

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In Civilization IV what are the differences between the Difficulty Levels?

Question

Can anyone explain what are the differences (like attacking style, culture development, etc) of the enemies in Civilization IV between the various difficulty levels?

Answer

It's a matter of bonus and handicap. Some are for you and some for the AI.

Ref:

Chieften, Settler, Warlord... they all give bonuses to the human, or handicap the AI in one manner or another... these lower levels are easiest for the human and hard on the AI.

At Noble, both sides are at their closest parity in regards to breaks to either side... Prince through Diety all favor the AI with increasing bonuses and gameplay ease, making it harder on the human.

There is a file that detail all those.

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How can I make Dwarf Fortress easier?

Question

What configuration options can I change to make Dwarf Fortress easier to play?

Answer

I found one of the easiest ways to simplify the game without hacking or removing many sources of Fun is to lower the population cap. I found that once my fortress grew to 100 dwarves or beyond, I couldn't figure out how to manage all of them and keep them working productive jobs. So instead they all just sat around throwing parties and pestering my productive dwarves. Until you get enough experience to handle a fortress that size, try lowering the cap to 40 or 50 dwarves.

To do this in v0.31.08, edit data/init/d_init.txt and change the value of this line:

[POPULATION_CAP:200]

Note: your actual population may still go above the cap you set, you just stop getting new immigrant waves after you reach or surpass that cap. And apparently births don't respect caps. Also I think (but I haven't tested) that you can change this mid-game if you save and quit first.

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