Augmentations Guide: Difficulty Modifiers Explained | The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era
This is an early-access video for Patreon members as a way of saying thank you, so you can watch it here first. This video will be made public on YouTube at a later date.
In this video, I go over Arvan’s Adventurous Achievements, the official list of difficulty modifiers released by Chip Theory Games for The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. I break down each augmentation, explain how it works, share some reasoning behind the design where relevant, and give my overall thoughts on how these modifiers might change the feel and challenge of the game. Whether you’re looking for a tougher experience or just curious how these official variants work, I hope this guide helps.
Comments (2)
This is a really cool list! #3 mob rule, I agree adding more enemies is simple but pretty harsh, especially at low level. #4 Tactical foes with +1 range is something I'd considered, but decided that making normal range 1 enemies into all range 2 would be too overpowered. This is talking about movement, and knowing when to keep your distance is important to me! #5 sentinels augmentation is similar to your desire for advanced enemies, and they are marking them with unused quest enemies! The double whammy of rally plus no status dice is pretty powerful I would think. #10 difficult terrain was one of my early questions, do you have to resolve a landmark or can you move past it? I agree that #11 has some issues. Instead of combat dice I'd suggest range (either stamina or magicka for adventurers, their choice). Then typically all adventurers would go first, except for some ranged enemies, which seems more thematic to me. Gaining 4 overfatigue just to go before the crocodile seems really harsh, maybe light fatigue would be more reasonable. #12 does force more variety, that is good, but what about quests that require you to have town encounter after town encounter? I guess #14 would make you question whenever you increase stamina or cooldown because it raises the base where everything gets more expensive, but since we start with 13... to me 15 seems a little harsh. +1 Stamina +1 Health and that is all it takes? I wonder what your builds get up to for the total, and what the goal is for each session. Maybe an easier way is to trigger the +1 XP cost by party XP, and target sessions 2 and 3 for more expensive upgrade costs. I think they already have average XP target levels figured out. So if we are building up to XP 40 for a character, and we are shooting for average of 15 XP by the end of session 1, 30 XP by the end of session 2, then maybe make it +1XP for upgrades based on a party XP level of 15+ XP, and +2XP (or +1 XP +2 Tenacity) for 30+ party XP. I've seen at the end of session 3 when I've got XP to burn and my character sheet is basically full so this would not be too bad. Thanks a lot for sharing this, it really does give a lot of options to increase the difficulty and makes the game even more replayable!
#11 One of my issues with any initiative system that relies on stats (either Combat or Stamina/Magicka) is that, again, it's too hard in the beginning and then too easy once you train enough of those stats. I'd like a reverse of that. Or, frankly, after playtesting loads of variations, I don't think TES needs any initiative system at all #12 Yeah, since that modifier cares about _landmark_ types and not the encounter types, you'd get an XP penalty for doing a quest town encounter after a normal town encounter the day before. So you really need to play your journey! #14 Well, technically, you can slightly increase that headroom to 15 by untraining some stats you don't really need, e.g. some Combat for spellcasters or Magicka for physical builds. But either way, yeah, that's quite brutal. I think levelling up is one of the best parts of the game, so personally, I don't feel the need to increase advancement costs that way. Looking forward to Daedric Princes and seeing what fun challenges that system will bring!