Things picked up a bit in the second act once I could start recruit Erinyes. Their AOE attack generally made short work of grouped enemies, making most battles less of a chore. Once again you get to chose between multiple areas to visit, and once again the order doesn’t matter. You’ll run into some level 75 groups in most of the areas, but you won’t be able to do anything about them until Act III.
You’ll also get a bunch of ‘Hard’ difficulty quests, which you’ll want to hold off doing until you’ve at the very least unlocked your final class and ideally at the very end of the chapter. The enemies in the related areas will range from 1-5 levels above yours (if you’re level 60 or less) and seem to be intended to be done in Act III since they each reward you with a Rank IV unit. Take special note of the Ritual quest, as after doing said ritual you’ll be locked in a dungeon until you can defeat everything (the saving grace here is you get a full resurrection/heal after every battle).
Act III turned out to be the best act, as the inclusion of Rank IV units (Blood Ents in my case) means even more area attacks to devastate the opposing armies before they get a turn. Even better, the ‘Auto-Resolve Battle’ button was available for pretty much every non-quest battle. Here is the point you’ll want to likely go cleaning up those various high-level enemy groups, but note that only most of them guard anything useful:
- Lows – Equilibrium spell (level 65 group in area past the act boss)
- Atellean – Ice Spear spell (northern level 75 group)
- Path of Flesh and Flames – Suffocating Heat spell (southwestern level 75 group)
- Queen’s Nest – Fear of the Dark & Shadow Tentacles spells (the two level 75 groups)
Shockingly, there’s an Act IV after that. And it is terrible. Just a total slog where once again you have to fight far, far too many pointless battles including multiple boss fights. Most enemies in this last part of the game max out at level 65, so that’s the level to aim for/surpass. Note that of the optional fights, the level 75 group in the Demon camp guards the Lost Helm of Haarhus legendary item (which you probably won’t need at this point).
After the last boss finally falls, some surprisingly decent ending slides pop up and the game will unlock Liberation Mode. Rather than being a NG+ though (nothing carries over), it’s just a normal new game with the option to take special dialog choices that will apparently let you max out all faction reputations, open the unopenable chest at your base, have no limitations on fielding companions, and fight an extra final boss. Going to try to play through it on Story difficulty as a mage (hopefully I can just spam army-deleting spells) to see what changes.
Some notes:
- With the +XP crystal equipped all game and having completed all found quests and killed all roaming enemies I ended up at level 73.
- You can apparently farm the level 80 encounter in Queen’s Nest, which is only 3 enemies, indefinitely.
- At best, you can only max out 3 factions on your first playthrough.
- I never found the Wall of Thorns, Corpse Explosion, or Chaotic Shift spells.
- Assuming you’re not playing a mage, you’ll want to rush the 30-point Nephilim Power passive before branching out into the Combat tree.
- I have no idea why Leadership increases 5 points every 5 levels, when all Leadership requirements are in multiples of 10.
- It’s incredibly annoying that only units directly opposite each other get the flanking damage bonus.
