Poll [4.1] Standard Storyline: Escape From Prison Excessively Difficult

[Redbeard]

Haha I like that!

Not to come across as rude, but has anybody played this campaign recently?

I recently got to the prison section....and uh... this isn't possible by normal human beings. Maybe if I had ignored the campaign leveled up to about 50, gotten the best armor and sword in the game, and perhaps ALL of the skills, I MIGHT be able to beat two of the guards. Not 4. Not in an enclosed space.

As it stands, I'm level 11 or 12 with around 120 Hit points, and this is... nonsense.

Quest 5 Escape from Jail

Now you will be in the jail. You weapons will be taken. You will be talking with
the warder. If you can convinced him that you will let him join your ship as an
officer, he will let you go and give you weapons back. On your way out, you have
fight two English soldiers and before you get out, the Governor will come in. He
will tell you this is the terrible mistake and say sorry. But he will execute
the warder for breaking law and letting you go. You can convince the Governor
that you will take care of the warder as your crew on your ship. The Governor
will agree. And guess what, while you are in the jail, English has already
liberated Oxbay and you don't have to involve in the battle.

No. Just... no.

Is there a way to turn off the weapon rebalance? I'm wearing a leather vest, have melee skills in defense, and am using some kind of high end rapier doing 19/22. I have a musket with a baynoet and a million bandages.... and these guys are impossible. The final two guards have around 150 HP apiece, my musket can take one down, but the other 3(!) guards make this impossible. I kill the weaker guards first and I get picked off with those damn muskets, or the final guards move in with their super swords and violate me.

Also. The musket skin is buggy. On a reload it shows just the glowey silvery model.

I don't see how this is doable. I'm on arcade with the landlubber difficulty, but c'mon. Maybe a little warning or something? Jeebus. I'm going to scrounge around town and see if I can get some armor or something... but man. This difficulty spike came out of nowhere.

 

[Redbeard]

Ok. Problem solved. I have to say, that mission? A freaking nightmare.

Here's what I did in case anybody else has problems with this mission. First. Prepare, prepare, prepare. You should have a musket or two from the previous missions. DO NOT USE IT. I don't quite understand why, but if you equip a musket, even with a bayonet, you wont use your sword, but the musket as a melee weapon. This is.... not optimal for melee combat with fierce opponents. Before going to the tavern and getting arrested, I visited the shop and found....

...some of the best equipment I'd ever seen. Luckily, I had around 60,000 sitting in my account. I spent around 15,000 on personal equipment alone. The best metal cuirass I'd ever seen, mixed with a sword that does 22/40, and a triple set of flintlock pistols. The cuirass is important. Not a cheap one either, that sucker cost me around 8 grand, keep an eye out for one. I would not be suprised if Port Royale has one.

Then the fight itself. It seems that when I first entered the prison 2 guards spawn next to the jailer and he talks to you with them right there. When they discover your escape, I had 2 guards from the front... AND 2 from the back. It made bottlenecking them impossible.

Upon reloading my save, buying equipment, and re-doing the quest, THIS TIME, the guards where all in front of me down the hall. Two of the guards are quite weak, and a few hits with my super sword put them in the ground.. the other two required a fair amount of reloading, it was dependent on a musket missing, so I was at full health, and ALOT OF BANDAGES. I easily sucked down like twenty per guard. Each has around 200+ HP. Making this a difficult fight. I stopped them at the gate and made them engage me one at a time. They simply swing too fast, and too hard for you to take both on.

Sheesh. What an adventure, and one hell of a fight, by far the hardest I'd ever encountered, and this is coming from a dude who fought two people who couldn't take damage, and an entire jungle of angry natives and monkeys.

On the bright side, I feel like I'm equipped for anything with my new gear.

I apologize for my frustration earlier. I keep forgetting how brutal these games are.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Are you running Beta 4.0 or did you join on the Beta 4.1 WIP?
If I recall, for the WIP we reconsidered the soldier strengths again which should make it a bit more doable again.

 

[Redbeard]

Build 14 28 July, Beta 4.1 WIP

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Build 14 28 July, Beta 4.1 WIP

Latest then, so then that doesn't explain it.

I've moved this to the Bug Tracker now to make it more visible.
Hopefully some other people can provide some feedback too.

 

[Levis]

I think we have to do the same trick here as we did with the guards outside the colony.
Normally guards are really tough so these should be toned down a bit. let's see if I can find their generation point

 

[Levis]

@Redbeard could you place this file in:
..\PROGRAM\Storyline\standard\quests

and try it again for me please?
This should make the guards a bit weaker (unless you are playing on seadog difficulty).
It should lower theire HP by 50 and give them some damage to theire skills. It will still be a challenging fight but I think it will be more dooable now. Please let me know if you think so too. Else I will try to make them a bit weaker again.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I wonder if @Grey Roger or @Talisman have any feedback to share on the last time they played through that bit.

@Redbeard could you place this file in:
..\PROGRAM\Storyline\standard\quests

and try it again for me please?

Is that another "drunk soldiers" trick?

 

[Levis]

I wonder if @Grey Roger or @Talisman have any feedback to share on the last time they played through that bit.


Is that another "drunk soldiers" trick?

yup

 

[Grey Roger]

Bear in mind that I haven't got round to installing the 28th July update so my playthrough of "Tales of a Sea Hawk" was under the 20th July version. I don't recall having much of a problem with the Port Royale prison guards, though I tend to play a rather violent game anyway and so had plenty of practice before that incident. For what it's worth, I play at "Seadog" difficulty level.

You should have a musket or two from the previous missions. DO NOT USE IT. I don't quite understand why, but if you equip a musket, even with a bayonet, you wont use your sword, but the musket as a melee weapon.

This is because if you're carrying a musket, it's a two-handed weapon so you wouldn't be able to carry a sword as well. With the bayonet, it's effectively a sort of spear. And I agree, if you have a decent sword then ditch the musket and use a pistol instead, then can also use the sword.

It seems that when I first entered the prison 2 guards spawn next to the jailer and he talks to you with them right there. When they discover your escape, I had 2 guards from the front... AND 2 from the back. It made bottlenecking them impossible.

I don't remember that at all. But...

Upon reloading my save, buying equipment, and re-doing the quest, THIS TIME, the guards where all in front of me down the hall.

... either they walk around or they spawn randomly. If the former, wait until they go away before talking to the jailer to start your escape. If the latter, save game and try again, until they aren't next to your cell.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Bear in mind that I haven't got round to installing the 28th July update so my playthrough of "Tales of a Sea Hawk" was under the 20th July version. I don't recall having much of a problem with the Port Royale prison guards, though I tend to play a rather violent game anyway and so had plenty of practice before that incident.

I don't think the versions should make much of a difference there.
If anything, it might be a bit easier now. Shouldn't be harder though.

 

[Redbeard]

When I get home I'll go back to a previous save and test. Really the difficulty here lies in the fact that they have a lot of up and muskets. The muskets rip you apart. Especially in an enclosed space where you don't have a lot of time for bandages to work. I'll test here in a few hours.

 

[Grey Roger]

Hide near the corner. They can't use muskets if they can't see you. Get them when they walk round the corner.

Funny, though - I don't seem to remember muskets. Either they never got to use them because I caught the guards in a bottleneck, the one facing me was trying to hit me with a blade and the one behind couldn't shoot past his mate; or they didn't have muskets in that version.

I'll have to install the new version, then. Because my "Ardent" storyline also involves a couple of prison escapes. The first also gives you someone to hide behind who for this battle is immortal, though he is not always so; but there's another prison break at Guadeloupe, and I'm sure I haven't seen muskets on the built-in guards there. (The same strategy applies, though - hide behind the corner and let them come to you one at a time.) If built-in prison guards are now getting muskets and tougher HP then I may need to do something there...

 

[Redbeard]

Well I tried it with the small fix, I believe this works, as they have less HP. 240 or so seems the max. It wasn't really any easier. You can't expect to tell newcomers 'hug the corner'

Do they need muskets? Or do the muskets get equipped on ALL guards. As it stands they attack really fast, and they have a one shot that can drain all of your health but 1 hp.

I guess this goes farther back, but what are the guards like in the original game? Too weak? Or have you guys who have been playing for years gotten too good? A new player is going to get stomped here. The two basic guards have like 50 hp, and the two other guards have superior swords and around 200+ hp. I understand guards should be dangerous, but those muskets are downright lethal.

I may do a playthrough of just basic POTC, and see what changes you guys have made to the base systems, and see how the original game worked, if it was easier or what not. Your weapons rebalancing may be affecting things, or maybe the original game was just that vicious. I'm not sure here.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Do they need muskets? Or do the muskets get equipped on ALL guards.

Soldiers get auto-equipped with them.

I guess this goes farther back, but what are the guards like in the original game? Too weak?

Completely and utterly too weak. It's like... you point a knife at them and they drop down.

I may do a playthrough of just basic POTC, and see what changes you guys have made to the base systems, and see how the original game worked, if it was easier or what not. Your weapons rebalancing may be affecting things, or maybe the original game was just that vicious. I'm not sure here.

That'd certainly be interesting for you! You'd get to see just how massively the game is changed with the mod!

 

[Redbeard]

Oh, and for anyone curious to try this part out WITHOUT you know... doing the campaign again, here is a save. It SHOULD start you in front of the tavern before you get arrested. You SHOULD have a fairly nice metal cuirass a handful of bandages, and some decent swords.

If it doesn't someone let me know, as I have like a million saves. I think it only keeps 50 per profile, and Ive hit that pretty much every play session, prompting a mass delete.

Yes I'm a packrat.

 

[Levis]

if you want I can bring theire HP down even more. To say 100 or so.
I could also lower theire accuracy skill more so they will less likely hit you with those muskets.

 

[Grey Roger]

It's not their HP which is the problem. If I read @Redbeard's report correctly, the problem is the muskets - one hit from one of those drops you to 1HP, after which one hit from a toothpick will finish you off.

Lowering their accuracy may help, though even with a short pistol and accuracy 1 I can usually hit someone at the sort of ranges typical of combat in a prison. Having said that...

There's a prison escape scenario in "Ardent" and three guards have muskets. What saves you is that you have a companion who, for the duration of this fight, is immortal, so if he gets ahead of you, he's the one who gets hit and ignores it. Outside you may face another squad of musket-armed soldiers and this time the companion isn't immortal, but there's a bottleneck in the form of the raised walkway in that part of Havana, or a bridge if they get that far. Muskets aren't unbeatable if you make proper use of your surroundings.

Does the dialog with Edgar Attwood allow you the option not to offer to hire him? I'm not sure now. Certainly he has the option not to accept your offer if you're not worthy (inadequate Leadership), in which case you stay in the cell until Silehard releases you. Perhaps add that option even if you do have high enough Leadership and make it default, so you only get him to help you escape if you think you can handle the guards. And then allow the player to return to the prison and hire Edgar Attwood the same way you'd hire him if you're not playing "Tales of a Sea Hawk".

 

[Levis]

It's not their HP which is the problem. If I read @Redbeard's report correctly, the problem is the muskets - one hit from one of those drops you to 1HP, after which one hit from a toothpick will finish you off.

Lowering their accuracy may help, though even with a short pistol and accuracy 1 I can usually hit someone at the sort of ranges typical of combat in a prison. Having said that...

There's a prison escape scenario in "Ardent" and three guards have muskets. What saves you is that you have a companion who, for the duration of this fight, is immortal, so if he gets ahead of you, he's the one who gets hit and ignores it. Outside you may face another squad of musket-armed soldiers and this time the companion isn't immortal, but there's a bottleneck in the form of the raised walkway in that part of Havana, or a bridge if they get that far. Muskets aren't unbeatable if you make proper use of your surroundings.

Does the dialog with Edgar Attwood allow you the option not to offer to hire him? I'm not sure now. Certainly he has the option not to accept your offer if you're not worthy (inadequate Leadership), in which case you stay in the cell until Silehard releases you. Perhaps add that option even if you do have high enough Leadership and make it default, so you only get him to help you escape if you think you can handle the guards. And then allow the player to return to the prison and hire Edgar Attwood the same way you'd hire him if you're not playing "Tales of a Sea Hawk".

That sounds like a better solution indeed.
I think lowering the accuracy etc a little bit here couldn't hurt so people have a better chance of fighting them. but indeed there should be another way out of it.
@Grey Roger could you maybe take a look at it and see if you could add the option?
The questcase which spawns the guards is "blaze_from_prison_to_residence_complete" the cases above and below it are what trigger Edgat attwood. With that information you should probably be able to fix this quickly right?
If you take the quest_reactions I posted you could tweak the modifiers for those guards a bit more if you want (or see how to apply them incase you want to use it yourself sometime).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Are the guards spawned BY the questcase?
In that case, we could probably just "steal" their muskets and give them something else instead.