Tried a few times on early bosses with my ranger at level 73-74, but they were way too difficult. Will need to level up a bit more.

So I've tried Vox and Phinny now, I'm level 88 and I can say there is no chance I will be able to kill them at this level or even in the next few levels (unless I get some ridiculous gear upgrades). I can barely get them past half health not even getting to the heals. I'm not even sure if gear or stats is the main problem. I think that my overall power level increases at a rate that is insufficient to beat the nightmare bosses. With about 220 resist lightning and 4 absorb phinnies energy bolt still does 280ish damage which is just less than 10% health and he casts a lot. My heal does between 290 and 320 with a cooldown. Lay on hands heals less than half of my life, so while I can survive for a little while its not long enough for me to kill him with my current dps. I have one stun that I can use but if I want to able to use it to interrupt his cast (he cast pretty quick) then I can't use any other abilities because the global cooldown will prevent me from stunning in time. So while I may interrupt a few spells its not enough to give me a chance at killing him. I will say that blind is very useful for melee and I use it everytime its up. I've done every other quest in nightmare, except the planes, and I think the rest of nightmare is tuned well. I think the paladin class is also tuned well ability wise save for ardent judgement, which isnt very useful, but thats alright. But, this is pre-traits! So I will play some alts and try again post traits to see how it plays out with them. Any requests for the next class you'd like someone to really check out?

Thanks a lot, Dwolin. It sounds like the bosses need to be looked at. Do you think they just hit too hard or just too much HP? It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to kill them. The bosses should be doable in the 70s, so there's no way you should have to level that much.

Regarding class choice, I'll leave that up to you. Choose whatever seems most interesting to you.

I just pushed an update that, I think, makes the fight much more doable. Feel free to check it out. If you don't completely clobber Nagafen and friends at 88, then something is wrong. Granted the talent system isn't in which will make level 88 much more meaningful.

Well I beat vox! Was still really, really close. I interrupted her heal 3 times and would have died otherwise, I had about 5% life left after the fight and used lay on hands. I notice she doesnt have the dd anymore which is a plus. Still hits like a truck though (80-280), and with 1800 armor I have 13.3% reduction vs her. Oh and she dropped 4 normal rares, no uniques BOOO

ouch! Well, congrats! You are the first.

So, heres my take on Nightmare difficulty:

If you do the quests in order of difficulty, no player should have any issues with normal or rare mobs until you get into the boss quest zones. That being said, the champion mobs are tough and provide a good challenge for a properly geared and leveled character. However, depending on your class you might want to just run from certain champions. For instance, if you are a melee in a dungeon and you face a phase + tough champion, might as well run because you'll never get that 5 minutes of your life back ; p.

As far as stats go, light radius becomes more useful as getting an add can really screw you if you aren't prepared or unable to cc. It's hard for me to really see an increase in power from anything but crit % and crit dmg. I know how str and dex affect atk but I dont really see an increase to dps from adding str. I'm guessing casters will have an issue seeing an increase in power from int/wis as well. I think attributes having a more noticeable effect on performance will help players decide how they want to gear their character. For now I just look for the armor, resists, and crit chance/dmg.

I really do think there should be a treasure floor. While I did get a number of exceptional items, some of which I wear, I got way too many crappy uniques from bosses. I dont think that every rare in nightmare should have a cap but perhaps just the ones at the end of the bigger quest chains, lower guk 3, solusek eye 3 for the first time you kill that mob. Or, have the reward for those quests be a random unique with a treasure floor. You can only complete the quest once so its not farmable and other than the stat rewards, the quest reward items are just money drops. And the big bossess should really drop better loot, not one of them dropped an upgrade for me!

So speaking of bosses at lvl 91 with 1825ac I have a 14%ish armor reduction vs innoruuk. He hit me for 300+ on some occasions. That being said he is pretty easy to stun/interrupt and I think the fight was well tuned for a 91 paladin. Definately the most intense boss fight because of how vicious he is ;p. Cazic was a push over and I had no problem killing him at all, by far the easiest of the end bosses. Dracholiche was harder than he was. Also, the champion mobs in PoF are harder than fright, terror, and dread. I think that you should add the dd back to the dragons but just make it smaller or make the cast time longer. I'm tempted to try the bosses again with no gear on to see how much they hit/cast for before reductions but I dont want to lose any more of my gold horde!

The dragon DD wasn't removed. The animation for it was changed. I'll check to be sure they're still casting it. Thanks for posting this.

I just finished Nightmare on my level 83 ranger. Dwolin's comments were pretty dead on. The challenge level for the bosses felt about right for the most part. And yes, Cazic did feel like it was the easiest of the named mobs. Although, from seeing how he fights, he may be more of a challenge to other classes.

As for loot, my suggestion would be to adjust the percentages on the drops, much like it was in Diablo 3. Basically, the boss mobs had a guarantee of one unique drop and a higher percentage chance of all of their loot being high quality. I would not consider it being a loot floor, but a reward for completing a hard quest chain. As it stands now, I am better off pulling mobs of a lower level and just killing in mass. As Dwolin stated above, I have yet to get an item from a boss that my main character now uses. In my opinion, the boss fights should be the ones where everyone anxiously holds their breath as they see the loot items pop on their screen.

The last thought would be on the boss casting times. I would also agree that the casting time should be around 1.0 seconds, or just make it smaller and insta.

I also have attempted some of these fights with my level 82 necro, but it seems he is much too low in power to defeat any of the bosses. I will try to run him again shortly, but the last few times were pretty brutal.

Not bad ideas. I might reconsider making the minimum cast time 1 second. I am hesitant to tinker with bosses too much because they might actually be perfect once traits are implemented.

I've just finished Nightmare, and echo what Feragh said. He is dead on.

I've perhaps broken the cycle on stingy boss loot though, as I use an exceptional unique bow that I got from Nightmare Phinny (which was painful at lvl 62). After that fight I loaded Normal Lower Guk to finish that quest chain off and was getting better drops from these level 30-40 green mobs than from a boss I could barely kill in Nightmare, which was a bit of a let down.

It feels like either the drop rate is not high enough for decent unique Nightmare level loot or maybe the low level unique drop rate is just too high in Nightmare and inflating my expectations. I've got enough level 1-30 loot banked to twink two of each class now. Maybe a minimum item level filter for items to go along with the colour/rarity filter?

Other than small issues, loving the game. Ty. Heading in to Hell now.

Thanks for the feedback, and welcome to the board. There's definitely some tinkering left there to do with the loot.

I had Phinny and Vox Dead in nightmare, but comp crashed AGAIN! So RIP Tumbler III. Have to start over again and see how far i can get before another crash. Think it's time for a new HD.

Soon, soon... server accounts. Tumbler IV will have quite a legacy to live up to!

You can access the cookie files from the browser you use and back them up, they are combined a few hundred kb. No more character vanish. I also have a crashputer so I back them up regularly -_-

Have you really done that? If you have a how-to for that, I'd like to read it. I've never seen how to do it anywhere.

It varies for each browser, I tried it on Firefox and Chrome, but use Chrome mainly. I should mention you need to have access to hidden folders enabled.

For Chrome (Windows), find this folder:

C:/ --> Users --> YourNameHere --> AppData --> Local --> Google --> Chrome --> User Data --> Default --> Local Storage

In here will be two files, called:

http_www.nevergrind.com_0.localstorage
http_www.nevergrind.com_0.localstorage-journal

These are where I assume all character data is stored. I switch between laptop and PC periodically and bring my ranger with me =)

Amazing! I found those files. I couldn't figure out which file it was for any other browser though. Good to know, though.

Closest I got is this for Firefox:

In Windows XP or Windows 7: C:\ Documents and Settings\ (Your Username)\ Application Data\ Mozilla\ Firefox\ Profiles\

You could probably just copy that whole folder over. I can't find the website-specific file though.

I opened that folder and created/deleted some characters while watching, and there are about 6-7 files that are modified that need to be copied. So pretty much just copying the profile folder is the best option.

They are stored differently for each browser type. Firefox throws all local data into a single database file instead of separate files like IE does. For Firefox, the file is in "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\n04odkbw.default". The "\User\" will be the user you are logged in as and the "n04odkbw.default" will be a unique folder name on each computer, but it should be the only one in the "Profiles" folder. The database file you are looking for is "webappsstore.sqlite". You can copy this file to other computers in order to move or backup your character. You can also open this file and edit the data in order to change various stats on your character. Of course, editing this file can cause corruption in the data and make the character unloadable. It can also take the fun out of the game if abused

I can also supply the info for IE if you need it as well.

I don't have a documents and settings folder, and my firefox is in my program files folder. Nothing in there about profiles, appdata or anything... The folders I do have in my mozilla firefox are: browser, Defaults, Dictionaries, uninstall, webapprt.

Inside the webapprt is the following line:


[App]
ID=webapprt@mozilla.org
Vendor=Mozilla
; Note: the Windows stub executable sets nsXREAppData::name to the webapp
; origin, overriding the value below, to make the app runner treat webapps
; as distinct products, per bug 747409.
Name=Webapp Runtime
Version=28.0
BuildID=20140314220517
UAName=Firefox

[Gecko]
MinVersion=28.0
MaxVersion=28.0

[Crash Reporter]
Enabled=1
ServerURL=https://crash-reports.mozilla.com/submit?id=webapprt@mozilla.org&version=28.0&buildid=20140314220517

Is that what I'm looking for?

I agree with what has been said regarding Nightmare. I'm a level 72 Ranger and I haven't seen an upgrade in around 35 levels. All of my loot was from Normal and a few Vox farms. I don't feel like I'm getting stronger anymore, in fact I feel like I'm getting weaker (with no skill cap increases anymore with each level and no new gear). I too have enough gear to twink 2 of each class at this point, but I haven't seen a single decent item in 35 levels. Nightmare champions are too hard imo, they mess with the fun of chain killing and killing en-masse Diablo style, but maybe that's just my opinion. I just feel like I was having a lot more fun until I started having nothing to look forward to because no skill cap increases, no AA's, and no item upgrades in 35 levels. Nightmare should be defeated around level 75 imo, to balance the leveling experience, but I don't see it being possible for me right now, despite having farmed sooooo much.

Some items are just horribly bad as well, I have a few level 36-38 exceptional uniques that are worse than level 20 normal uniques. I just want to see some decent NIghtmare loot, as nobody is going to have the incentive to go from Normal to hell if there is no fun in between. Right now I am just trying to get to be killing level 76 mobs for elite items, but it's a shame I can't get anything in between all that mass.

Been having a ton of fun though, guess I'll take a break a bit until it's more itemized for this level range. Thanks for the hard work.

Morrow: relax! This game is in beta and it's still not even close to done! A single talent is not in the game yet. Whew.