BG1, and both Ice wind dale can kill you easily in the first area, even with 3 in the party.
As I haven't played in normal, I'm not sure if its possible to kill the wolves and bears in solo, however the game truly don't say you: "YOU MUST KILL THEM NOW". After some tries, you should figure it.
About flee, is not a option in small areas (as you can't move form area to area meanwhile in battle). Yet, in majority of the fights is an option (however, I know about 2 or 3 were the battle will not stop until you kill everyone or get killed)

Pillars of Eternity is actually soloable, and you can kill the bear on lvl1, at least with some character builds - just as well as you can return to that encounter later on, once you level up. Still, the bear cave is basically a big "Sometimes, this game will screw you over. Save often." sign. And it doesn't do it often, but it does happen.

Actually, these early encounters remind me most of Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil, both of which were actually far worse. The very first encounter in Arcanum had me reloading many times with my first character, to the point that I was seriously beginning to question my character build. (Build turned out fine as soon as I got some equipment.)


*Minor spoiler alert*



The bear cave got me once too, but as it turns out, you really should go to town first before coming back to the bear cave, because you need some things to happen to you first in town. The bear is involved in a quest that you may not be able to complete if you kill the bear first. So in this case, the bear is way too strong because they don't want you to lose the chance of the full experience. It will make sense later. You might ask why Obsidian put the bear in that location, then, or at least why they made it so you could stumble upon it without a key or something; but they had a finite number of in-game areas, and backtracking is part of the style of these games. I've been back to that same wilderness area at least three times, now.

I'm also an RPGers since early 80s (!) ans played all of the cRPG classics.
I also was initially quite disappointed by how unfriendly were the early game stages, but as soon as you gather a party it gets much better... A good option is to create a lvl 1 NPC at the tavern - a thief if you aren't one, as there's no rogue NPC chars.

I think it's a general problem of RPGs that they start out too hard and then actually get easier over time. Only very few actually managed to start out easy and then gradually getting harder as you progress.

In any case, what you experience with Pillars of Eternity is nothing new for me. All of those old CRPGs were like this, because they were mostly about guessing where to go first, go to a wrong place, dead. Not that I like that design. But at least you feel some great accomplishment if you come back later and win the battles that initially slaughtered you.

On what difficulty setting are you playing? 'cause if I don't recall bad on normal there must be just 1 Wisp.

As others have already mentioned the bear is a "warning" of how the game might (and in some cases will) behave further on, you can go everywhere, but some places are simply too difficult for certain levels/parties.

Someone complains that this removes the complete freedom and forces the player on a "corridor", I disagree, being allowed to go everywhere and encounter no issues at all will make the world/setting less immersive imo.

From a RP point of view the main character should try and get straight to the next village, your caravan has been slaughtered, you recently found friends too, you are tired and suffering from "hallucinations", but then again you are free to go wherever you want, there might be consequences. ;)

p.s. also in BG (which was probably easier) you could easily get killed for going in the "wrong" direction, leaving the Friendly Arm Inn and going north might lead you to happy Ankhegs, going south of Candlekeep might lead you to the Sirens...

Thanks guys. @Demonbox, I was/am playing on hard.

Maybe the issue I ran into may have been related to the relative lack of info on the difficulty of the monsters, and the relative impossibility of fleeing from them compared to many other games. I tend to prefer role playing games where you don't die all the way and have to reload a lot, because it tends to break immersion.

It is probably just that wolves and bears or the first room of a dungeon in the first town, don't usually 1-shot characters to death in most games. If the monster had some indication of being harder, that might be better.

Like, remember Dragon Age origins, you go into the forest to become a grey warden, and there are some wolves. If those wolves slaughtered you instantly in 1-2 hits, where it wasn't even a close fight, that would be odd. Granted, it is somewhat apples-oranges since that is a fixed path and you have companions, but still the overall feeling from dying to the first wolves I saw right next to the first area after the tutorial, was totally jarring. Or the bear killing in 1-2 shots while you do no damage to it.

I generally don't like forced death in rpgs, where there was no realistic way an alert player could have avoided it the first time. So when I ran into it 3 times in a row, it left a bad taste. Plus then it happened again with the Skodar (sp?) King. I managed to defeat the spider swarms and such, and even the wisps, after a few reloads at least it was possible, but then the King and his 4 minions are 100% impossible solo on hard with a ranger, at least as far as I can tell. Somehow, with most other games, you can see the difficulty spike coming in some way, and then escape or something. No so with this game so far.

Does anybody know, people who solo Pillars, are they doing it on normal or on hard or something even harder?

I know people are playing solo on almost all difficulties (Path fo the damned included), but usually not at their first playthrough.

For what I can tell the game was meant to be played with a party (custom or not), which doesn't mean it can't be soloed, the creatures you're having issues with (the extra lil bear, the 2 extra wisps, the shades and the Skodar kings) are there only on hard and Path of the damned.
Is up to you how to play the game, but if you don't like dying a lot, I'd suggest to try either hard with a party or if you want to go in solo, try it first at normal.

p.s. btw i really think that bear is some sort of another homage to Baldur's Gate, right after leaving Kandlekeep you could fight a bear, if you had Imoen with you it was doable, alone... well doable but a lot harder and required more than 1 try.

Yeah, good point. Pretty clearly I need to either play on normal or with a party on first playthrough.

Funny thing is, I didn't really mean to go solo; running into those wolves was sort of unintentional.

Pretty much without just that one encounter, the rest would probably not have stood out so much. There was something about seeing a "young wolf" right next to the little path to the town right in the beginning, that in 99% of other games wouldn't have led to a basically unavoidable slaughter.

I know that it is hard setting, but hard was mostly described (accurately for much of the game, I presume) that it was appropriate for veterans of games like this. Not as "watch out for young wolves, attack one and it is insta-death for you when a lvl 5 wolf is paired with it, will outrun you, and kill you pretty decisively."

Mostly this whole thread was my way of trying to get back into feeling motivated to playing the game after feeling unmotivated to bother, and it pretty much worked. The replies have been helpful in that regard.

Git Gud. ;) You can't run away once combat has started, but you see them before they see you, and if you're a 1st level solo char you can apply some common sense and not attack a group of huge bears without reason...

Go to the "Auto-Pause" settings and activate "Auto pause when an enemy is sighted" - it will pause at a point where they wont attack you yet.

Then you can get stealth to get even closer, assuming your characters have put points in the Stealth skill.

As for tough early enemies, that's actually a staple of these kinds of games.

Remember Icewind Dale 1? The ogre(s) in the first cave (1 on Normal, 2 on Hard, 4 on Insane) can easily kill a healthy party member with a single critical hit at this point in the game - on Hard and Insane even with a single normal hit. Yes, Hard is the most fun difficulty level in Pillars.

"Normal" makes most fights too easy.

"Path of The Damned" changes the stats of enemies in a way that pretty much forces you to use custom characters which are painstakingly build around the concept of overcoming damage reduction - thus removing character build diversity and not giving you a chance to use the scripted companions.

"Hard" is the perfect balance - it adds more enemies to battles compared to "Normal", but doesn't give them any extra damage reduction so all kinds of character builds (incl. the scripted companions) work fine.

Retreat needs to be enabled somehow. But at least "save early, save often" covers the same ground.

The bear encounter on the post-tutorial map is deadly, and the bandit camp in the East or Southeast area is unusually hard as well.

The game isn't too rough on Normal from there on, as long as you don't explore too far ahead and try to do quests in lumps that are roughly the same as the order received.

You may or may not choose to hire one ally, but more than that is highly unnecessary due to the game's providing you with one of almost every class fairly early on, though some are later than others.

IIRC...
Never joins you: Barbarian
Joins in The White March: Monk
Joins very late: Rogue
Joins sort of late: Druid, Cipher, Paladin
Joins mid-game: Chanter, Ranger
Joins early: Priest
Joins super-early: Wizard, Fighter

It's nice to have a Barbarian, too - but you may as well make it your main character rather than a hireling. Monk is take-or-leave, and might be too fragile for the hardest setting. Ranged Rogue is a strong choice for low-micromanagement party. Ranger is sort of meh, a second-tier DPS with a third-tier tank companion... Just doesn't seem worth it in a big party.

I generally like to have one per-rest character (Wizard, Priest, Druid) and the rest alternate resource or per-encounter. I go with Wizard because of early availability and because it gives me something to do with all of those tomes. Also, you get to choose whether to burn everything or try something more subtle. A single per-rest character lets you keep one stack of aces up the sleeve without suffering too much for using AI heavily otherwise.

If you like doubling up on classes, then of course you can hire more of whatever.

Thanks Archy and Motherwentbad.

We don't disagree, and I appreciated some of the game hints regarding difficulty in there (indications about how difficulty levels play out aren't spoilers, imho, but quite helpful).

But to nitpick a little bit, I can do with the one bear issue (although even then, death in two hits is a bit uncalled for, I'd say) but the things that had added up where stuff like (on hard) the wolf with the two young wolves, and the 3 wisps, and there is another place, which is the skoka king on the first floor with the 4 other skoda, plus the bandit camp that MotherwentBad mentioned.

It is very very very rare, and bad game design imho, that early in a game when you are lvl 2, you see a young wolf right near the only path in a small beginning area, and you get slaughtered. Scouting just shows a bunch of ??'s, I believe.

And the Skoda King with 4 other Skoda? I guess maybe you can win most fights by cheesing a bit as the enemies mysteriously retreat, you shoot them, step back, they stop fighting, etc. That isn't even kiting, which at least is "realistic" in the sense that the monster is at least chasing you as best it can (like the ogre in DA: Origins that pretty much either gets kited or slaughters you).

I'm enjoying the game, and I'm used to Obsidian making odd (i.e. bad) design choices, and paradox makes great games but they are typically strategy games, and rpg games aren't strategy in the sense that repeat dying in order to learn strategy is optimal. It is hard, at least for many including myself, to feel very immersed in a character that should be dead 100 times over.

I have played enough of the game at this point to see and agree that, once you have a big enough party, the encounters are mostly beatable, especially on normal. I'll probably playthrough on normal, with the given NPC's, then hard with a party that I make myself, then go from there. I understand that it can apparently be soloed on all difficulties, but no way I have any idea how to do that yet. I'd die a LOT soloing even on normal right now, as far as I can tell. Chanter seems kind of cool for soloing, after 15 seconds of running you get a phantom that is crushing and can be resummoned endlessly if it isn't killed, although I got to Redric around lvl 5 and the fight against him and his minions was not even anywhere near possible. Maybe at a much higher level, but it was so out of balance that I gave up and made a new game on normal to play with a party.

Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with all of the design choices, and I can't speak much for Hard or higher. I was just putting in two cents about what I remember being the tough spots early on, and I figured it was a good time to mention that some classes join earlier than others.

Normal tends to alternate between breezy and "whoops, I screwed that up, reload". Maybe one or two close calls or reloads per map for me. I'm sloppy.

Just died again, due to the special death magic of near-the-entrance fights. This time to special skaurips that have paralysis bows. But I'm realizing that it really isn't about the difficulty of the enemies. Other rpgs have difficult enemies sometimes.

It isn't that the game is hard or not, it is that in an rpg, the idea that you have to play as a master strategist who also knows the game already quite well, in order to not role play dying every other map, is fairly bizarre.

The difference in Baldur's Gate and many othe games is as simple as you could at least walk out the door to escape a battle. In Pillars, what is totally silly is that, if you get in a battle near the beginning of a map, or in a small map, then the battle is magically infinitely harder and more deadly. It makes no sense in the game. If you run a little bit away from where a monster stands, it stops fighting and slowly walks back to where it lives in stasis its whole life. But if you get in a fight near the entrance to a map, it is a death-cage match.

I'll keep playing, but there is something off about the mechanics of this game that really detracts from it.