I kill most enemies in one hit but the rarer enemies seem ridiculously over-powered. I can't hit them at all, and they take away all my health in a couple of seconds. In the first catacombs dungeon, most enemies are a breeze, but the larger skeletons spell near-instant death for me, so I have to run away from them. I walked through the countryside and the orcs were challenging but didn't kill me, but when I got to the farmlands and took the quest from General Alix, a party of orcs near my destination killed me whenever I went near them. I went the long way around the fort to reach the entrance, then attempted to pull the orcs towards the guards. Not only did a single elite orc kill me as soon as he came into contact with me, he then killed the 7 guards that I lured him to, and was perfectly fine at the end of it. This seems pretty damn unbalanced.

I'm a heavy armour, sword and axe warrior. I've got bless and the heal spell, but have put almost all of my stat points into Strength and Agility. I remember having problems with this game when I played it a couple of years ago, playing as a thief/assassin-type character, and that was remedied by using a bow and kiting everything. Is that the only way to play this game? I would put it down to me or my build sucking, but the general enemies are remarkably easy and go down in one hit usually, two or three hits at most.

I remember killing these orcs using simple Meteorstrike. Poison Weapon and Death Scorpions are another simple solutions.
The game isn't unbalanced at all. If quests are difficult for you leave the area and wipe another areas first.

This... ^^

I found this area difficult with my mage character, so I came back after I'd got more experience and better gear, and it was a different story. Still not easy, but a different story.

It's an open world game. If things are too tough in one place - it's because that place is too tough for you! Go somewhere else.

ref the catacombs below town. You use the friendly zombie to soften up the boss skeletons. By the time he gets killed, you should have leveled up enough to fight them without getting one-shotted. Since you can't heal the zombie, you need to kill the minor creatures before he gets to them or they'll whittle away at his hit points and won't be able to survive the first boss or two.

Scorpion Traps
Set it and forget it. :D

Guys, thank you for your time and suggestions, but as I said - the area is not difficult. The area is incredibly easy for the most part. Almost everything there gets killed in one hit and poses no threat. There are just certain enemies in each area, the slightly rarer ones, that I can't hit at all and that kill me in literally 3 seconds of being near them. That's why I'm saying it's unbalanced; if a whole area was difficult, fair enough. If an area was easy but a boss character was hard, fair enough. It's just when the whole area is a walk in the park, but then certain uncommon - but not boss - enemies come along and kill me in the blink of an eye. They even decimate the friendly NPCs who are meant to be fighting them, as shown in the picture above.

If I went somewhere else to level up, the common enemies would be killed about 10 times over for each of my hits, and these elite orcs or heavy orcs etc would now be only just doable. That's really bad design. What's also really bad design is how despite the supposed freedom of character development, it sounds like you need to give everyone magic or traps, going off the suggestions above. I might just give in and start making a battle mage or something, but I was trying to develop a paladin-like character. I do really like this game, and I don't mean to sound grumpy about it, but as someone who's played a hell of a lot of CRPGs and JRPGs, this game stands out as a really poor example of enemy design and balance.

When I played DD last time I didn't have any difficulty spikes aside from orc drummers. I don't know if I remember correctly but when I reached Alix, all the orcs were dead. I never used any type of traps because it feels almost like cheating.

Also, did something happen to Raze_Larian? ;)

What's your agility? That affects your offensive stat and if that stat is really low, it's going to be hard to hit enemies that are higher level than you. The stock orcs are probably under your level, so you have no problem hitting them, but I'm guessing the elite orcs are higher level. Try putting points into agility or finding items that increase agility or offensive and see how you fare against them.

I don't think agility is an issue. From the Larian forum topic broken stats?, on level 8 the character stats are:

strength 20, agility 40, intelligence 11, constitution 15, and a listed 73% chance to hit a normal level 8 monster


With my warrior character on level 8 (near the bottom of the catacombs) I also had a 73% chance to hit a normal level 8 monster, but my stats were as below, with and (without) equipment bonuses.

strength 32 (30), agility 21 (19), intelligence 14 (10), constitution 24 (21)

I think I'm halfway through the game. I'm trying to be a pure warrior only. Currently the best solution is to invest 2 skill point on weapon charm. It really helps giving you the stats required to equip the super strong bastard sword.

Currently I managed to wipe all the orcs out of the map. That includes the elite orcs.

You're problem is that you're level 8. Come back later. Go north for a while. There are less orcs up north. Find some better weapons, learn the freeze spell.