Lack of enemy variety is a big problem in FoA

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

Fangs of Asterkarn adds only 5.5 (see below) very-new-feeling enemies, with 8 variations on enemies seen in previous content. Compare this to Forgotten Gods, which added 12 new-feeling enemies and 7 variations on old enemies, and you can see how this becomes an issue. This is very exacerbated by FoA being so much larger than FG, and I think it’s safe to say this is a big component in why players feel fatigued by the size of the new DLC

Also consider that we are killing a lot of beasts in FoA, which might feel like a step down in epicness from killing horrors and abominations to players. I believe there were more variations of FG enemies than FoA enemies as well.

The Beavers could probably use a ranged netter who throws spears at you instead of limpy trying to melee you… maybe a hydromancer if they can use magic idk. Ice spirits? Ice golems? Ice Wyrms? I understand that for lore reasons it was difficult to create a big variety for this expansion that also felt fitting for the new areas, but it’d be nice if a lot more new enemies could be added after the fact to make the zones feel less samey.

Monster Variety Comparison:

Forgotten Gods

Brand new: 1. Sandclaws 2. Gryphons 3. Beetles 4. Maggots. 5. Mummies (these do feel distinctly different from previous undead; they just do!) 6. Eldritch Spirits (I know, wendigo spirits, but they feel distinct!) 7. Eldritch Armors (worth noting these have more variants than usual) 8. Animated Statues 9. Scorpius 10 Bonebleach Dromedary 11. Korvaak’s Ascended (big muscle dudes) 12. Korvaak’s Drudge

Slight alterations from previously existing enemies: 1a. Grobles, 2. Sandstalker Snakes 3. Eldritch Mongrels 4. Toxic Spores (like aetherial wisps but these do feel pretty distinct) 5. Korvaak’s Chosen 6. Gargoyles

Fangs of Asterkarn
Brand New - 1. Rocs (I’ll count them because of the brand new model and look but let’s face it, new birds are not super exciting) 2. Beavers 3. Wights (super cool, but not too disimilar to skeleton knights in concept) 3.5 Giants (only giving a half a point, model is different enough from Mountain Trolls but conceptually I reckon feels similar to most players) 4.5 Chthonian Heralds 5.5 Kaw’Hranaak 6.5 Hypporavens

Feels like we’ve seen similar before - 1. Bristlehorn (they’re just suped up boars) 2. Fallen Skeletons 3. Ice Grobles 4. Rimethorns 5. Diremanes (feels very similar to chillmanes) 6. Bloodbound (they’re the berserker version of the blood cultists we’ve seen before) 7. Dranghouls 8. Stoneshell Crabs

I understand my bias plays a role in what fits into the “Brand New” vs. “Seen Before” categories, but I believe a similar bias will occur to a lot of players.

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2

I don’t disagree but in FoA’s defense, Asterkarn is located right beside base game areas, while the Korvan plateau is in Empyrion knows nowhere, but surely not geographically near the rest of the game. So it makes sense that Asterkarn has less new enemies lore-wise.

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x1 has a point about the geography/lore, but adoomgod is totally right about the combat fatigue.

When an expansion map is this vast, fighting Boar 2.0 and Yeti 2.0 for hours makes the pacing drag, especially on alts. Having more mythological Kurn horrors, ancient animated runestones, or corrupted spirits would fit the frozen mountain theme perfectly without breaking the lore imho.

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4

We have beavers everywhere! Everyone must be satisfied with that :smiley:

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5

Fully agreed the beasts could use variety, wolves would work fine like packs and then we could have roaming bears that only you only see alone but they are strong, kinda like the troll Titans you see randomly.
With regulars and cthonian versions further in it would give beast heavy zones much variety and they could replace some of the kamikaze birds, yetis and rhinos.
Also ranged beavers and corrupted ones and spitting crabs for Ulo zone?
Golems is a great idea as well, and undeads could get something like a lich summoner or w/e that spawns armies of very weak creatures… undead rat swarms, maggots or regular squishy skeletons?

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I disagree pretty strongly with this. To me entering FoA truly feels like entering a whole new world zone with its own entirely separate “ecosystem” of enemies. Basically every enemy in there is new in some way other than the actual 1:1 repeats like Chthonic Servitors or Tyrants. The attack patterns, the threat levels, like, the Groble shamans may still be groble shamans but their threat level and attack type is so different from the other groble variants that I don’t perceive them as a “reskin” of the same enemy like, say Fallen and Devilkin Shamans from Diablo 2. Boars had such little presence in the base game that this beefed up version that can gore 50% of your health off in one autoattack on 5ashes ascendant feels sufficiently impactful to count for me as a separate entity. And same goes for basically everything. Rocs are wholly unique, I don’t know how you can have anything bad to say about their design (setting aside their damage), no enemy in the game behaves the way they do, with flying from the battlefield, disengaging, launching a volley of V3 rockets from their butts, all that. Even the Briarthorns attack very differently from the other variants. I’ll give you the Diremanes, they don’t do all that much different, but I absolutely wouldn’t lump Behemoths with Trolls, their attack patterns and skills are entirely different and somehow, Behemoths do the whole “regenerating asshole” thing way better than trolls ever did.

So that’s a no from me when it comes to enemy type numbers. I will concede that FoA is pretty big so you do end up seeing those enemies a lot, and also, if you’re like me and mostly leaving FoA for last when you’re doing stacked ascendant, you get to fight those enemies for a lot longer too so maybe that’s where some fatigue might stem from. That and the fact there’s currently no real reason to fight most of the undead, cause while the Wights have MIs, the Fallen skellies do not, and with no faction, those tend to be sections I mostly run through. But given that GDStash somehow has a faction selector for them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they become their own faction down the line (maybe the 2nd challenge dungeon?) and that issue addresses itself.

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7

A good beaver is always a satisfying thing

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I love everything about FOA, it’s so beautiful! I’d agree though, it does feel like the areas are full of a lot of low level fodder. They just “feel” that way, and maybe it’s familiarity or the fact they aren’t really any threat to me.

Variety is entertaining, so I’d be all in on newer monsters or monsters with new tricks. The beavers remind me of Gauntlet which my kids and I always loved, but they just sort of evaporate. In a way that makes sense, they are just little ones. Maybe a giant tainted beaver with red eyes could burst out of the den just before it collapses.

Bottom line I fracking love this game, and FOA is just chef kiss amazing, so I’m very happy with it, but some added variety/monsters would certainly be entertaining.

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More spear throwing for everyone!

10

We need a Nemesis beaver.

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11

Fangs of Asterkarn:

  • Beaver - new model and rig
  • Chthonian Herald - new model and rig
  • Hranaak - new model and rig
  • Dranghoul Warrior - remastered model and rig
  • Dranghoul Shaman - new model, recycled rig
  • Chthonic Dranghoul Warrior/Shaman - reskins
  • Skeletal Dranghoul - new model, coming soon
  • Giant - new model and rig
  • Chthonic Grobles - reskin
  • Frost Grobles - reskin
  • Kurn Bloodbound - new armor
  • Hypporaven - new model, recycled rig
  • Rhino - new model and rig
  • Manged Rhino - reskin
  • Frost Roc - new model and rig
  • Storm Roc - reskin
  • Void Roc - reskin
  • Frost Skeletons - reskin
  • Wight Warriors - new model and rig
  • Wight Hags - new model, recycled rig, separate animations
  • Spring Crabs - reskin
  • Rimethorns - new model, recycled rig
  • Dire Yeti - new model, recycled rig
  • Beronath - new model and rig
  • Ice Defiler - new model, recycled rig
  • Obsidian Swordsman - new armor
  • Sif - new model, new animations, recycled rig
  • The Dread - new model and rig
  • Questing Beast - new model and rig

Fangs of Asterkarn totals:
New models: 19
New Rigs: 12
Reskins: 10

Forgotten Gods:

  • Beetle - new model and rig
  • Maggot Beetle - new model, recycled rig
  • Maggots - new model and rig
  • Eldritch Armor - new armor
  • Eldritch Hound - new model, recycled rig
  • Eldritch Wraith - reskin
  • Sand Grobles - reskin
  • Gargoyle - new model, recycled rig
  • Gryphon - new model and rig
  • Stone Gryphon - new model, recycled rig
  • Korvaak Ascended - new model, recycled rig
  • Korvaak Servant - new model and rig
  • Korvak’s Chosen - new armor
  • Mummy - new model, recycled rig
  • Sand Lizards - new model and rig
  • Eldritch Lizards - reskin
  • Volcanic Lizards - reskin
  • Scorpions - new model and rig
  • Statues - new model and rig
  • Basalt Statues - reskin
  • Viper - reskin
  • Korvaak - new model and rig
  • Morgoneth - new armor
  • Dromedary - new model and rig

Forgotten Gods totals:
New models: 15
New Rigs: 8
Reskins: 9

Give me a break dude :rofl:

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12

Oops, I missed hypporavens; that’s my b. Zantai, I’m not trying to be a dick. This is definitely a feelings-based post. I’m also not including bosses not for convenience of my argument but because we face them one at a time per session, whereas I’m focusing on these areas we walk through and face hordes.

In terms of non-boss mobs, I am simply being genuine in that the monsters I encountered in FoA felt more familiar to me than when I first played through FG. Like, I KNOW the mummies use a recycled rig, but for whatever reason they felt pretty darn fresh.

Even if I use your exact example. Let’s pretend I agree with it 100% and am someone who feels every single monster on that list feels super distinct from everything we’ve seen before; it doesn’t change the fact that FoA is 2.5x bigger than FG, so that amount of content shows up more times.

This was meant to be constructive criticism; I wasn’t trying to play gotcha with numbers. How I interpret which enemies feel fresh and which enemies feel like previous ones is just my subjective experience. It’s the one piece of criticism I’ve seen FoA get that I strongly agree with, and I think sprinkling in more monster variety would help some of the areas feel more distinct.

I LOVE the monster density in FoA btw, but a side effect of it is that it also sort of highlights how much we fight the same monsters over these bigger new regions.

I can understand if my post is frustrating because it feels like I missed the amount of work that went into the reskins and new rigs, but the more I play through FoA, the more I actually feel this way about the enemies. Maybe give me a break, dude :sweat:

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Associates of New Riggs: 15

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I think the new enemies combine a thematically distinct style. You notice it especially when you go out of an old chunk in SR and enter one with a new area populated by mostly new enemies. There’s a lot of different about the new animations and attack patterns that sort of come together to give the new feeling of combat.

If I had to start guessing the reasons of some of the unfavorable receptions: maybe people are too accustomed by the modern mediums to the infinite power scaling in fantasy games. In FG we fight, well, gods. How do you go one up from there, and do you even need to?

Maybe for someone who is used to play “soulslike” with constant boss fights gradually increasing in size and effect vomit, a simple sidestep into the new region doesn’t tickle the worn out dopamine receptors…

15

Yes, but see my post below. Do you know how I made this list? I wasn’t reading off grim tools. I took a character through the entirety of FG again (no quests, just killing zone to zone), and I jotted down which enemies still felt very distinct to this day, as originating in FG, vs. which felt recognizably familiar. Then I did the same in FoA, region to region. And what prompted me to make this thread wasn’t me looking for something to complain about; it was me playing FoA and reaching the second river region with 1000 beavers and thinking, that’s a lot of the same enemy. Then I thought about the rimethorns and the rhinos, and I went, “Hmm, is this just in my head because I’ve played so much GD, or is it that different from previous DLC’s?” So I walked around and felt it out.

I think this is a big part of it. That’s why I mentioned it could also be that going from killing so many eldritch horrors and whatnot from the previous DLC’s to killing a lot of wildlife could be factoring in. Would be neat if some chthonic corrupted beasts were mutated more drastically.

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Big Z, your list is literally 28 in FoA vs. 24 in FG.
So even if you’re ignoring my subjective experience on which felt particularly novel vs. not, it’s 17% more enemies thrown into 2.5x the amount of area to traverse. I don’t think you need to be so dismissive here.

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How could I forget the questing beast, another +1 for FoA.

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I already acknowledged in another thread that making the zones as big as we did ultimately hurt us. Threads like this are case in point.

By the numbers, everything about FoA makes it the largest expansion, period.

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Oh yeah, let’s agree he should count as 5. :hearts:

That’s true. Sorry, I was just hoping this could lead to even more enemies added to FoA. I think it would help.

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The beautiful open mountain spaces could be put to great use with more thrown boulders and spears.

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