I'm post game on nightmare at level 17.
I think it's better. A lot better, difficulty-wise.
I've been trying to understand what makes it harder. But, I'm not sure. Firstly, people with glowy weapons seem to do lots of damage.
There is some ability one-shotting my party members.
The way I play is very damage averse, so I'm enjoying the risk involved with taking damage. (While still being able to cause decent damage, too.) Haven't finished yet.
Hear, hear. As odd as it sounds, my favorite fights are the ones that make me ragequit at least once.
I'm in the same boat. I loved the difficulty in dlc. I started with lvl 24 save of my riftmage. I went few times in the battle like "laaalaaalaaa charge" and came out wiping, and realized holy shishkebab this is more difficult and was hooked ever since. Even trash mobs gave a fight in this dlc. I begun to really hope that the main game would have followed the suit. Vanilla game difficulty hardly required you to look at the screen on nightmare while playing
I ran the dlc through with Dorian (who had absolutely the best survivability- which was great considering that he was my reviver), Blackwall and Cole/Sera (mostly Cole as his survivability with those guard daggers was quite peachy.). My rift mage was crucial though- the slowing down, weakening and cc in general was very much needed in this dlc. If my elf died, all deteriorated very quickly. Damage the Hakkonites do, can be described in my playthrough as: "Even Blackwall ran out of guard all the time"
Added challenge was that, for some reason in my playthrough the piggylike creatures that ran away were circling the Hakkonites. After the fight against the humans was over, my party charged after the piggy and ran to spiders or another group if I was slow enough to hit disengage. Oooh the mess that followed from that.
I love it when things don't work out and you have to revise tactics. The joy that follows when you finally succeed is why I play games in the first place.
Slightly offtopic, but even in the base game Fire mages have a skill that I would looooove to have. It's like a reverse Frost Step, where the mage goes backwards and leaves a trail of fire in front of him.
I want it!
Also, I once found a ring that increased the damage of Fire Storm spell... except there is no Fire storm spell, lol.
Firestorm is the Rift Mages focus ability. It's awesome...Pity that mark of the rift is pretty much the better choice for the inquisitor though.
Gurd Harofsen is just killing me @ level 27. I haven't felt the need to use guard +5 on hit items up until now. But this dood is one hit killing Vivienne, which means I can't revive any other characters. Unfortunately you can't leave the temple. 
Gurd Harofsen is just killing me @ level 27. I haven't felt the need to use guard +5 on hit items up until now. But this dood is one hit killing Vivienne, which means I can't revive any other characters. Unfortunately you can't leave the temple.
You can try to prevent him from casting his frozen grip by stacking up your party around him, something like this:
It's just a sample strat, may or may not work with your party, adapt to whatever spec/pots your party has access to. Most of the reviving is done automagically for me with fully improved regen pots. (actual Gurd fight starts at 4:00)
Another possibility for Gurd is to use a confusion grenade on him when he spawns adds. This will make the add phase a breeze, if that's what kills you. Having Gurd use his frozen grip on his own minions is priceless.
Prooftested for you on my last two-men kill, as I didn't want to use bees this time. When everyone is in melee range, he doesn't use his grip, which makes his damage laughably low. So the last phase was me and Cassandra bashing him down from 100% to 0%, since we confused him on each phase throughout the fight he somehow healed back to full (not sure if that's a bug). Slow but very safe kill.
Any videos or suggestions on how people get past the ambush on the island? Still stuck on that one. I'm 21, Knight Enchanter.
Any videos or suggestions on how people get past the ambush on the island? Still stuck on that one. I'm 21, Knight Enchanter.
Are you solo, or do you have a party?
If you're playing with a party, bring a DW rogue. After grabbing the loot, switch to your rogue and have them use upgraded Flank Attack on the first Hakkonite they run into.
Then walk back to the boat. None of the Hakkonites have Perceptive, so the rogue will stay in stealth for as long as it takes to reach the boat.
Any videos or suggestions on how people get past the ambush on the island? Still stuck on that one. I'm 21, Knight Enchanter.
From my experience, a single Tier1 Mark of the Rift will kill everyone, so if you have access to an earlier save you can grind on stuff on the beach for a bit. Rushing in won't work, after the first arrow, they start hitting you for 4000 damage a piece if you don't have cold resistance, which is more than anyone can handle.
Best I can come up with is to ambush the first two dudes in a way that forces them to all come and gang up at the shack, from here:
and engage until the friends arrive:
and more friends:
until you rip them to shreds with a mark of the rift:
Spoiler
Funny, for the longest time I thought I was the only guy utilizing War HornGreat for getting Brutes off your back and makes taking down their guard alot easier
So, I played this game on Nightmare the whole way through. It was generally cake, unless I did something foolhardy. However, between the fight with the Nightmare demon and now Gerd, it feels like I'm being punished for not playing the game a "certain way". For those two boss fights, my bread and butter method of a tank and three ranged (damage mage, damage rogue, control mage) suddenly becomes my downfall. And with no way to step back from the fight and rearrange my squad to deal with the extremely sudden change of combat expectations? A change that's only happened *twice* in this game? Leaves a horrid taste in my mouth. I'm all for difficulty that makes you really think about a fight, but I want it consistent and damn it, I want to do it with the crew I've built since the start. That is all. .vent over.
solo'd it with a dwarven templar on NM
sure gurd took an hour to kill with his mobs
and i used 8/10 regen potions and 9/12 health potions
but
meh
armor and barrier eating wepons
I was able to beat it on Nightmare mode. Besides equipping fire damage weapons, and ice resistant gear, I learned to just farm Mark of Rift points by having my characters focus on using combo attacks. Then crowd the enemies together, and use a mine attack. For the island part, at first I used the house as someone suggested, but the archers would still get me. So I instead used a rock as cover near a wall. Because of the wall, there were only two paths, and it forced them to get close and personal.
I came to Jaws of Hakkon during a playthrough that had not finished the game and had been fighting in Emprise. Cory is still very much alive and the Inquisitor was Level 22 entering the Frostback Basin.
I used my Rift Mage Inquisitor, along with mages Solas & Dorian, with Blackwall as the tank for both Gurd and the dragon. Everyone had Guard on their gear and the mages had fire staffs. Solas and the Inquisitor had Pull of The Abyss. The party had confusion cold & spirit grenades along with two Jars of Bees.
For me Gurd was a much tougher fight on Nightmare, but I won on the third attempt. The Inquisitor did use Mark of the Rift at the second spawning of adds and the three mages stayed together for Barrier near the fire. There was minimal running around, but I did refill my potions during the final fight.
Before engaging the dragon I went and killed in the zone to replenish my focus. That proved to be unnecessary. I kept the same armor and added one more staff with a Master Dragon Rune. The mage staffs had masterworks that added offense.
The fight was unexpectedly easy for me. Before entering the battleground there were some potential adds close and we killed them. Then we climbed to the battleground and used normal dragon fighting techniques. I continues attacking with my staff and Energy Barrage even as he flew away. I never had adds and I never had to use any focus abilities, not did I use more than one cold resistance potion.
playing as a KE the main game was a joke even on nightmare, so i got cocky going in to the dlc got in to a fight with some of the hakkonites and got dropped out of no where, and after 2 or 3 deaths realized that run in and slash doeasn't work and i had to respec, but as i now had to think about the combat it was kind of a nice change of pace and i'm actually enjoying it.
playing as a KE the main game was a joke even on nightmare, so i got cocky going in to the dlc got in to a fight with some of the hakkonites and got dropped out of no where, and after 2 or 3 deaths realized that run in and slash doeasn't work and i had to respec, but as i now had to think about the combat it was kind of a nice change of pace and i'm actually enjoying it.
Yeah this is a challenging DLC. My builds have always focused on disabiling abilities so I have ended up OK so far but I can completely see how people will struggle with it. You might actually have to use non-DPS abilities for a change haha. It's a great change of pace and great for the series in my opinion.
It was challenging, but not overly difficult I think. Although the early fights with pockets of Hakkonites were brutal, their attacks seemed to go through barriers (or they can dispel the barriers I'm not sure)
Boss fights were easy though, at least for my Archer Rogue. We'll see what happens in my current playthrough with SnS warrior.
You should try it solo or duo! The Old Temple is a great tactical challenge, tons of fun for a team of 1 or 2.
The dlc isn't bad on nightmare. I ran into trouble with the Gurd guy. I died a few times. Fortunately I made a save before that area. What I did was change my powers. I got rid of fade step and added mark of the rift. Once the Gurd guy's health was low enough, I used mark of the rift killing him and his minions. This is one time I liked to of had access to my other powers instead of just 8
I found the fight with the 4 level 30 despair demons easy on nightmare
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