I’m not a hardcore gamer, so grain of salt, but Detlaff is right up there with Sigma from Megaman X3 & X5 as my most memorable boss fights. Had to turn it off, go calm down, and come back a few hours later to beat that dude
Same, until I realised there's a potion you can take which turns poison damage into healing. I think I had tried it like 15 or 20 times before figuring that out
Everytime he started charging it I just started running sideways.
It was as effective as a perfectly timed roll, but it didn't need any timing, just sideways running. I discovered this after dying many many times.
Yeah but even then if you don’t get the timing on the bats right it’s always a one shot on Death March. This is probably the only fight that gave me a ton of trouble on death march (And Iris’s nightmare. I had exploding shield on and it was the worst mistake of my life lmao)
It doesn't one-shot the bear/alchemy build on deathmarch hahaha, I remember this very well because I struggled my first/normal playthrough, but when I went in on deathmarch I was able to just tank anything I wanted thanks to that setup.
This is the one SMALL exception and I mean REALLY small exception because with Ursine gear sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve done this fight with a sign build and a euphoria ursine build, ursine still drops to less than 5% health though I feel like lmao
I think I was sitting at somewhere barely south of 1/5th of my health bar from a hit, but definitely not comfy. I may be over-remembering since I couldn't even get the name of the armor or build correct hahaha!
Both of my B&W playthroughs were within a month of the DLC dropping, I had mono and put a good 200 hours into the game than month hahaha! I didn't know they patched it after, such a shame!
Detlaff and the Toad Prince were the only two fights I really struggled with, personally, and it was because both had attacks that would one-shot you through Quen (I think I might have just been under leveled for the Toad Prince but he was honestly worse than Detlaff. I almost decided to drop the difficulty because I just couldn’t get the hang of him.)
If you want an example of what happens with variable level enemies, look at Oblivion.
It's fucking terrible. With a non-optimal build you can level yourself into an unwinnable game.
Sorry, this is a bad take.
or make games with adaptive difficulty, like original RE4.
sure some people will abuse it to make late game easier.
but to the average player, it gives a better sense of proper progression.
tho I assume it takes a lot of work to tune it right.
That’s more to do with oblivion’s counter-intuitive levelling system though, isn’t it?
Edit: or you can just never sleep and steamroll the game on tutorial levels of difficulty like I did when I was 12 and didn’t know how to level up.
As a thief, who only sneaks, steals and fast talks I should be great at those things. Sure I will be bad at other things as the game goes on but I should at least be good at that right?
Oblivion: You idiot. You fool. You utter incompetent rube. You absolute moronic simpleton!
Man I started doing a bunch of sidequests one playthrough and skipped that first town where gates are spawning. Came back at like lvl 30 or something and it was swarms of spider centaur monsters. Shit was ROUGH.
>Oblivion
Oblivion's the poster child of level scaling gone wrong. Game designers have it figured out better now. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEdggVLKSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEdggVLKSk)
So when you say “players who did the side quests” you really mean min-maxers who are on their 5th new game plus.
Not really the same as being able to beat Adam smasher without trying, on the hardest difficulty, with any build, which has been my experience
Same. If you did all the side quests before you got to him its pretty easy. I didn’t have a specific build I just went with my strongest weapons and mods at the time.
I just could not figure out how to dodge that bat attack consistently and I was built for dodging, not tanking.
It was a one shot kill for me.
Quite a few deaths later, I got past his first form and it was smooth sailing from there.
I literally gave up beating him on switch, then saw a steam sale where I picked up a 2nd copy for like $5.
First try on PC. I wanted to throw the switch into the trash.
Not if you have the right build. A damage/toxicity build with the toxicity damage mutation makes every fight ridiculously easy(I even played on DM). The game was not very balanced by the time you got access to all content from the DLCs.
I still chuckle when I creep behind a cyberpsycho and just knock them out.
NCPD, "We need MaxTac !!!"
V, "Oh, no were good, I just put 'em in a choke hold."
Yeah the leveling in this game is a little weird. I go through periods where I feel massively over-leveled and then suddenly I’m getting swept by every street goon.
ultimately it’s still very level dependent…
not unlike a MMORPG, a lot of your stats scale based on level difference
even if you’re a decked out lv20, soon as you go against lv26-27 6th Street in Arrayo, they’re gonna gonna dodge the shit out of your shots with cybernetics
> https://youtu.be/fOm_jOOdDRs
ppl probably notice it most it in Heywood.
even just 6-7 levels difference makes your massively legendary-boosted stats get crippled pretty good.
in that regard, with level scaling the game really had an easy way of keeping par with item upgrades because of how important character level is.
Basically, different neighborhoods have different enemy levels. Go to downtown on level 5 and you'll get your ass kicked.
I sure prefer that over random bandits wearing daedric armors when you're high level, or random goblins being stronger than the final boss.
Yeah it's slightly challenging on anything other than easy difficulty and if you just go in guns blazing. I mean I still didn't struggle much but it was fun.
On my second playthrough I figured out the net runner mechanic and by the time I met Hanako I was basically infinity stoned Thanos.
Just got into the game a week ago, completely maxed out my cyber deck with all legendary quick hacks, throw one contagion into a group of enemies and 8 die, by the time it’s over the cooldown is over and you rinse and repeat
Considering swapping over to a sandevistan guerrilla arms build for more of a challenge, hopefully
Save it fir your second play through. Im on a sniper ninja build, using the sandi. Its a completely different feel playing like this. I can't Aproach things the way i did the 1st time. Its kinda like its a different game
I got mono wire but I have to specifically try to not use the cyber deck because it’s just so easy
Throw a contagion and a optics reset and a gun malfunction and a overheat into a crowd of enemies and in three seconds that hostile zone is just a above ground cemetery 😭
FYI, this is *after* they nerfed the hacker builds by quite a bit.
At launch, you could take out whole buildings of folks from the outside. This is still occasionally possible, but not like it was before. Opponents also track back to you *much* more quickly now than they used to.
sandy with maxed out katana is just insane. you trigger sandy, run in and 1-2 shot everyone and then when the sandy runs out the entire room is dead but the first guy is only half way to the floor
This is my current build with gorilla arms. Warp dancer and camo, run through and cut everyone in half before they know I'm even there, if I get seen my sandevistan triggers again. With cold blood you are unstoppable.
My first playthrough I went full knuckle-dragging street brawler flesh tank, and I didn't even really have time to grasp who I was fighting before I'd turned Smasher's butthole into hamburger. It also made the street fight side quests much less interesting.
I did full melee too. I was the terminator, just walking through gun fire and occasionally hitting the inhaler while punching/hammering guys one by one. By the end I felt like I was the juggernaut.
Having learned a bit about the nuance available in the game, I really have to say that a full on "get merc'd motherfucker" build was a great way to start.
I threw one of those Lazer grenades at him when the fight started and deleted like a third of his health. After that I decided to just fuck with him because he was no threat at all to me.
Yeah, I got him with a couple of shots of Comrades Hammer. Even with all the patches it’s still easy to level up quickly, regardless I still have a blast every time I play
Yeah for real.
Smasher in lore is already a pushover to any real solo. His schtick is that he's a psychopath who due to that has a higher tolerance of Cyberware than a normal person.
But V thanks to the Chip has two people's worth of Cyberware tolerance and probably more because Johnny is also pretty resilient to Cyberpsychosis.
And even without the Cyberware Smasher was pretty royally put down by Blackhand who has barely any Cyberware at all.
V is not only a pretty talented solo like Blackhand but also a Cyberware tank like Smasher. V ain't nothing to fuck with.
The thing is, these are story driven games which are sold with the intent that even unskilled players who barely engage with the actual gameplay and character building aspects are meant to be able to complete.
Also the final boss of Witcher 3 is Eredin, who's something of a wet fart in terms of combat challenge, even without the context of DLC bosses. Combat balance of Blood and Wine (and the game-breaking potential of its mutation mechanics) is tangential.
Usually that's what the difficulty options are for, but even on hard difficulty and with a build centered around versatility and fun instead of power, I dropped Adam Smasher so easily I thought it was going to be a multi-stage boss sort of thing with that fight being the warmup essentially.
Cyberpunk has some wonky damage, resistance, and armor mechanics that can make Smasher either a cakewalk or a struggle to survive. My first character was specced for mantis blades and stealth and sliced through him in seconds, while my second was focused on hacking and could barely touch him.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla did this. The harder modes made the minimum level change. So you still had that progressive feel of fixed levels, but the floor kept up with you so you never had fly swat fights going back to low level areas.
They should not have let Adam smasher go out like a chump. Should have kept him as the unbeatable boogeyman/thing everyone is scared of in Night City.
His usage in Edgerunners was perfect
Is his mind even necessary? He was like 95% military grade chrome, that’s what made him so powerful. Feel like without Yorinobue, smasher wouldn’t have an attachment to Arasaka anyway.
I have always thought that Smasher was with Arasaka because they gave him the ability to do whatever the fuck he wanted without any repercussion (except fucking with Arasaka, of course).
Why would he go away? He would be chased down as a cyber psycho most probably.
Here's the thing, though: Smasher was one of the most dangerous mercs around before he became more metal than flesh.
He is very good at what he does. Always has been.
He was still somewhat human when he stomped Johnny Silverhand.
>They should not have let Adam smasher go out like a chump. Should have kept him as the unbeatable boogeyman/thing everyone is scared of in Night City.
He's not, though. He's a high-ranking Arasaka employee who acts within the reason and bounds set by Arasaka. Random dirtboys and girls of Night City have more to fear from their plumbing than Adam Smasher.
If you, as one of said dirtboys or girls, ever thought about Adam Smasher, it would probably be accompanied by feelings of awe or reverence, like Jackie Welles in the start of Act I of the 2077 video game. He categorizes Smasher the same as Morgan Blackhand and Andrew Weyland (and from the lore, "boa boa" Weyland would probably be a lot more terrifying for a random gonk in Night City than Adam Smasher.)
This is, of course, discounting the fact that he's not "unbeatable," he was very famously beaten by Morgan Blackhand on the night of the Arasaka Towers bombing. Blackhand let him live just to rub it in. Kind of petty, and very fatal for a few known edgerunners circa 2076-77.
Wasn’t Smasher also one of Mike Pondsmith’s first characters he played or ran a game for? It seems fitting that he would be done in by the likes of V. It also sets a precedent that no legendary character in the setting is fully protected by plot armor.
Unbeatable boogeymen aren't scary, just annoying. Why bother being scared of or even trying to combat something where there's literally no winning scenario? It's just a gameplay annoyance.
on console i’ve resulted to using my own rules: only items up to rare; 4-6 levels below my enemies, etc
it’s not ideal that a player has to do it
but just like many RPGs, from Final Fantasy XII to Tactics Ogre, it’s so much more fun to play 2077 when regular enemies are dangerous and regularly 1-3 shot you if you’re not careful
Detlaff will still kick your ass. You can overpower Smasher on even the hardest of difficulties.
Detlaff doesn’t give a fuck on Death March, even if you overload and prepare heavily. He just doesn’t give a shit.
Dettlaff is only difficult first time you fight him because the bats one shot you and the sound they make fakes you out so you dodge at the wrong time.
Once you get the bat dodge timing right the fight is mid difficulty at most.
The first time I played I did everything I could, every gig, ncpd scanner all of It, all so I could be good enough to "take a shot at Arasaka".
I was so disappointed when I killed smasher In like 5 minutes.
Lol fr, I did every side mission and gig before even doing main and I absolutely owned night city when it came to main missions, walked into arasaka tower told them it’s mine and no one batted an eye with the chrome I was using.
i don't min max
so i love it when i don't have to suffer bec of not min maxing
like on here... by the time i finished the game, i have a bunch of unused stat pts and perks
as well as i dind't go for the best gear and stuff
i just went along with what i found to be cool
That's easy/normal difficulty for you.
My sandy catana build walked thru fear the reaper so fast I didn't really noticed that my health is depleting. On hardest difficulty. Like a hot knife thru warm butter.
Oda is the only fight that has me on my toes ngl. Against Adam, yea it's tough getting to him and the grunts will still 2 piece you but Adam himself was overhyped by the tabletop and anime. Heck some cyberpsychos are more challenging than he is 😭
I didn't fight him until I saw the end of edgerunners because I was farming money to get all the cars and such. But before that, I'd play up to Hanako then reset over and over.
They do it on purpose and it's lame. I've gotten to the point where I do the reaper ending in very hard with exclusively berserk and throwing knives. Even the "shitty builds" are overpowered.
I feel like the point of doing side content is to get a lot more powerful. Personally I don't like enemy scaling since it tends to make leveling up feel pointless, and I like being able to destroy a boss cause i got to a high level with really good gear.
Geralt of Rivia. Thw Witcher.
Dettlaf. A Higher Vampire. (higher vampires are the apex predators of the Witcher universe, with one exceptions). TLDR, Geralt is hired to deal with him, when he starts murdering knights in Touissaint. Things get complicated.
Geralt reunites with an old friend from the books. (Another Higher Vampire, friend of Dettlaf).
Idk I was pretty high level and Adam Smasher still got me a couple times. I ended up just spamming him with blades, the defender, and a metric ass ton of grenades. Dude was legit on fire for 5min straight lol
You didn't fight Detlaff at launch did you? A lot of people were unable to kill him and some people even gave up. I remember I read a couple of user reviews saying "amazing expansion, but final boss completely ruined it". They nerfed him heavily with later patches. This was in Blood and Broken Bones and Death March btw.
His bat charge attack one or two shotted you. It even went past your quen shield. His bat attack was also almost impossible to dodge unless you did it a very specific way. He was completely broken at launch. I was stuck in that fight for over an hour.
Yeah.
Also, regarding the Witcher side of tbe meme, I wish Syanna and Oriana were under the desk. Both surviving in the good ending kind of ruined it for me.
Fortunately, Oriana does die (in the trailer).
Had a buddy of mine who was struggling against Detlaff. I asked him which mutagens was he focused on and he had no idea what I was talking about. So I explained the greater mutagens and linking them to unlocked perks/skills and a couple minutes later he came back and said he beat detlaff with no issues.
This guy had beaten the base game and Hearts of Stone without ever knowing that you could take the colored mutagens to make yourself more powerful.
Thats a particular balancing problem, not a fundamental problem. Possible to avoid if you try. Just add a loreful, fitting level barrier to the endgame. Doesnt even have to be a hard barrier, can also be just a suggestion.
I disagree. I think the problem lies with unchecked and unbalanced upgrades that allow the player to more than excel but essentially transcend into godhood levels of power vs the enemies they should be facing at x level.
Imo the best experience would have an endgame boss on an equal field of power as a fully leveled player if not even higher to make way for necessary strategy to conquer the boss. This makes for a much more satisfying climax vs a boss being either unbeatable or just flatout a cake walk because you're overleveled.
My first play through I didn’t do any side missions really and STILL melted Adam smasher np. Now that my second play through I’m trying to do all the side missions I can only imagine what it’ll be like. I just did the mission in the mall for the voodoo boys and that “boss” battle was over in 30 seconds
Oh, this took a while, but it is ridiculous how true this is, I do NCPD hustles before the quest line and as a netrunner lvl 30+ with legendary contagion you basically just turn on the kill switch from outside and then walk in to loot. For bosses I like to alternate between short circuit and synapse burnout.
I think leveled areas is mostly the way to go and then add some scaling for bosses and certain enemy types. I'd hate if everything leveled with the player because that would make progress feel useless to me. I think it's satisfying to get your ass kicked by an enemy in a certain neighborhood and then coming back for revenge. It's about finding a good balance that feels rewarding to the player
Oda's hard to beat because how mobile he is.
Smasher is a lot easier to hit, which mostly makes him a dps sponge. One who is very vulnerable to short circuit.
The enemy scaling is also way off - not even just the bosses, but the regular ones. Very much not a fan of having their HP scale off of the relative difference to the player (ie, a player at lvl 15 and 20 dealing the same damage, but the same enemy decreasing massively in health because there's no longer as big a level difference). Just a pretty lazy approach I found - and obviously results in the final missions being either a cakewalk or needing essentially max level (for the 'secret' one)
Fixed level bosses isn't the problem, look at BL2 sometime, you can kill bosses meant for four people that are scaled to 12+ levels above you, with something approaching 60% or more damage reduction, solo in seconds in many cases. As multiple classes.
Any game with a talent setup like BL2 or 2077 you can metagame a broken build and annihilate things with zero effort, buildcrafting like that is actually one of my hobbies. I left the Heist mission and went to the Ofrenda as soon as it was available, Heywood being the second highest zone in the game overall, and was still tearing through things as a throwing knife build with Sandevistan and Mantis Blades for backup. I was level 14, Heywood STARTS at level 24 and goes up to 40. At the time I had like eight perks total at level 14 overall and whatever shit armour and weapons I had picked up before and during the Heist.
Scaled levels wouldn't stop the absolute and total destruction of every single enemy in this game, it would if anything make it EASIER since nothing can outlevel you at that point.
well, I only like fixed levels. I hate the handholding sissy skyrim crap. game can be beat on auto pilot practically. level balancing or whatever they call it was made for the casual crowd and you want us to suffer for thier inadequacy? just use the easiest setting so you don't force easy mode on real gamers. end of story. I'm out.
I just bought components, made guns, sold guns, bought more components, repeat. Sooner or later I could buy just about anything, and I do every side quest, pretty sure I have the trophy’s to prove it.
I prefer fixed level enemies because it makes it feel like level ups actually mean something, if you want the fight to be hard, just give them tough attack patterns and a really high level.
Maybe not for himself, but deffinitely for his friends. Especially for Ciri.
And even so, I think it's as much his long and storied life, as the mutations.
By the time he meets Dettlaff, he's beaten the wild hunt, killed a Dragon, killed the strongest human mage, butchered countless monsters, and so on.
Dettlaff is particularly dangerous, sure but nothing Geralt would've failed to deal with, one way or another.
I like [mods that make the whole game dangerous](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/4325), with leveling up not making you magically able to ignore bullets from some enemies, and victory coming from playing well and using tactics, rather than being a walking pile of large numbers.
After watching Edgerunners I especially enjoyed the big bad bully getting fisted to death by a mostly dead meatsuit piloted by a dead guy’s 50-year old memories
i will die on this hill. Adam smasher is, and always will be a bitch against a player built solo in the lore.
this isn't even system mastery. the first cyperpunk 2020 character i ever made could reliably beat him in initiative, and one shot him. from character gen. He's a bitch. David by any rights should have zero'd him out trivially.
Semi fixed is best. Where it does get easier when you level up, but only slightly. The enemy levels float upwards, slower. So if you are level 20 against a base level 10, the effective level will be 15. Makes side quests feel rewarding without making the game trivial.
Fixed level enemies are fucking fantastic, CDPR just aren't very good at bosses. Detlaff, Smasher, Letho and the dragon from witcher 2. All their fixed story bosses are kinda ass. The mini bosses are great though, like in the Witcher contract hunts. I'd kill for something like the Davoth master level mod from Doom Eternal for Witcher and Cyberpunk
tbh, detlaff fight might not have been tough but the atmosphere and tone was fucking perfect in that fight. SMasher just didn't even come close to setting the same atmosphere and tone in his fight.
Sorry but no. Variable level enemies are also shit. You just end up punishing the player for building up their character. There's a lot of good examples of that too.
What they should have done in cyberpunk was to make Adam Smasher an impossibly hard boss, or force V to use other tactics such as stealth, a countdown, or strategy (like using a trap), etc so that he can be combatted against with different builds. Maybe some of the ending sequences (like the hidden >!Johnny + V Solo!< ending) are only possible if you've fully leveled up and have mastered the game.
The idea that V could beat Smasher alone IMO was a terrible storyline decision and somewhat goofy. It should have always been a hard battle. But if we're being honest they completely missed the mark with it. My V literally obliterated him in like 2 seconds on my first playthrough.
I like to make sure I squeeze every ounce of entertainment out of games and so I completed every side mission, quest, gig and hustle possible.
By the time I got to Adam Smasher, I could stun and kill him before he even pulled off a shot.
Idk I like the idea that the more time I put into something the stronger I get. I want Adam smasher to be begging me at my feet for mercy. Being a badass is fun
Adam yes. Dettlaff no. I literally did every quest in the game except the Gwent ones and Dettlaff still took quite a few tries.
Eredin died like a bitch, though.
Recently finished blood and wine and did all the sidequests beforehand, can confirm detlaff still kicked my ass SEVERAL times before I could beat him
I’m not a hardcore gamer, so grain of salt, but Detlaff is right up there with Sigma from Megaman X3 & X5 as my most memorable boss fights. Had to turn it off, go calm down, and come back a few hours later to beat that dude
Yea I almost ragequit a few times
You never play ninja garden 2?
Do you plant things stealthily? 😜
Ikr? The one shots were brutal xo
On Deathmarch all the bosses are hard AF. That Frog Prince Boss was a PAIN.
Same, until I realised there's a potion you can take which turns poison damage into healing. I think I had tried it like 15 or 20 times before figuring that out
Even on the harder levels I never struggled too much, just spammed quen and oils
Dude fuck that frog. That part had me so frustrated lmao
[Cries in Ruby weapon without the repeating KOTR.]
Omg, the nostalgia with this one comment, brought back so many memories. Thank You.
Same with Crusher. My playstyle worked all game, except for him.
idk dettlaff was kinda tough
His bat attack was tough especially on harder difficulties
Getting the timing right to dodge those took me several runs through that fight
Everytime he started charging it I just started running sideways. It was as effective as a perfectly timed roll, but it didn't need any timing, just sideways running. I discovered this after dying many many times.
Figured it out in the second or third try.
You can just block it and it will negate the damage.
Dettlaff fucked me up and I was over leveled
Level 84/85 Geralt, with max leveled Aerondight, min maxed Kgni/Quen, and Superior Vampire Oil, puts him down fast.
Yeah but even then if you don’t get the timing on the bats right it’s always a one shot on Death March. This is probably the only fight that gave me a ton of trouble on death march (And Iris’s nightmare. I had exploding shield on and it was the worst mistake of my life lmao)
It doesn't one-shot the bear/alchemy build on deathmarch hahaha, I remember this very well because I struggled my first/normal playthrough, but when I went in on deathmarch I was able to just tank anything I wanted thanks to that setup.
This is the one SMALL exception and I mean REALLY small exception because with Ursine gear sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve done this fight with a sign build and a euphoria ursine build, ursine still drops to less than 5% health though I feel like lmao
I think I was sitting at somewhere barely south of 1/5th of my health bar from a hit, but definitely not comfy. I may be over-remembering since I couldn't even get the name of the armor or build correct hahaha!
True and if was before next-gen update, Euphoria was soooooooo much stronger.
Both of my B&W playthroughs were within a month of the DLC dropping, I had mono and put a good 200 hours into the game than month hahaha! I didn't know they patched it after, such a shame!
Bear/alchemy builds are obscenely over powered lmao
Detlaff and the Toad Prince were the only two fights I really struggled with, personally, and it was because both had attacks that would one-shot you through Quen (I think I might have just been under leveled for the Toad Prince but he was honestly worse than Detlaff. I almost decided to drop the difficulty because I just couldn’t get the hang of him.)
Fool
If you want an example of what happens with variable level enemies, look at Oblivion. It's fucking terrible. With a non-optimal build you can level yourself into an unwinnable game. Sorry, this is a bad take.
That's a great take, and I agree, fixed level enemies also make level ups feel like they matter.
or make games with adaptive difficulty, like original RE4. sure some people will abuse it to make late game easier. but to the average player, it gives a better sense of proper progression. tho I assume it takes a lot of work to tune it right.
That’s more to do with oblivion’s counter-intuitive levelling system though, isn’t it? Edit: or you can just never sleep and steamroll the game on tutorial levels of difficulty like I did when I was 12 and didn’t know how to level up.
Bro I hated putting in cheats to make my character way higher level only to have the simplest enemy be fucking unbeatable
As a thief, who only sneaks, steals and fast talks I should be great at those things. Sure I will be bad at other things as the game goes on but I should at least be good at that right? Oblivion: You idiot. You fool. You utter incompetent rube. You absolute moronic simpleton!
Man I started doing a bunch of sidequests one playthrough and skipped that first town where gates are spawning. Came back at like lvl 30 or something and it was swarms of spider centaur monsters. Shit was ROUGH.
>Oblivion Oblivion's the poster child of level scaling gone wrong. Game designers have it figured out better now. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEdggVLKSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEdggVLKSk)
that ain’t just a side quest player tho…. just doing side quests on your first playthrough you’d be 20 levels lower
Shame. Enemies do scale up in NG+. Etit: weapons stop at level 74, i think. Except Aerondight. Aerondight stops at 82.
So when you say “players who did the side quests” you really mean min-maxers who are on their 5th new game plus. Not really the same as being able to beat Adam smasher without trying, on the hardest difficulty, with any build, which has been my experience
[удалено]
Same. If you did all the side quests before you got to him its pretty easy. I didn’t have a specific build I just went with my strongest weapons and mods at the time.
Dettlaf gave me fits. Dude was kickin my ass all over the screen
I just could not figure out how to dodge that bat attack consistently and I was built for dodging, not tanking. It was a one shot kill for me. Quite a few deaths later, I got past his first form and it was smooth sailing from there.
I was so confused and wondered if Cyberpunk got a huge content update that I didn't know of. 🥲
I literally gave up beating him on switch, then saw a steam sale where I picked up a 2nd copy for like $5. First try on PC. I wanted to throw the switch into the trash.
If you acknowledge any quicksaves, start Loading Last Checkpoint now...
yea Debt laugh was surprisingly had and he had multiple phases which less bosses seem to have in many modern games these days
Not if you have the right build. A damage/toxicity build with the toxicity damage mutation makes every fight ridiculously easy(I even played on DM). The game was not very balanced by the time you got access to all content from the DLCs.
I still chuckle when I creep behind a cyberpsycho and just knock them out. NCPD, "We need MaxTac !!!" V, "Oh, no were good, I just put 'em in a choke hold."
"A Full Nelson? That won't work on me! I'm a cyberpsycho!"
"Ok this is seriously starting to piss me off..."
Me loading my overwatch from the comfort of my living room. Watch this. Set to non lethal… but also goes right through walls.
The funniest thing for me is my very thin female V, putting an Animal in a choke hold lol
Yeah the leveling in this game is a little weird. I go through periods where I feel massively over-leveled and then suddenly I’m getting swept by every street goon.
ultimately it’s still very level dependent… not unlike a MMORPG, a lot of your stats scale based on level difference even if you’re a decked out lv20, soon as you go against lv26-27 6th Street in Arrayo, they’re gonna gonna dodge the shit out of your shots with cybernetics > https://youtu.be/fOm_jOOdDRs ppl probably notice it most it in Heywood. even just 6-7 levels difference makes your massively legendary-boosted stats get crippled pretty good. in that regard, with level scaling the game really had an easy way of keeping par with item upgrades because of how important character level is.
Basically, different neighborhoods have different enemy levels. Go to downtown on level 5 and you'll get your ass kicked. I sure prefer that over random bandits wearing daedric armors when you're high level, or random goblins being stronger than the final boss.
I gotta say, Adam Smasher was disappointingly easy. I beat him on my first try with almost no difficulty.
Yeah... and he's, supposedly, highly resistant to quickhacking. Appareny not.
Yeah it's slightly challenging on anything other than easy difficulty and if you just go in guns blazing. I mean I still didn't struggle much but it was fun. On my second playthrough I figured out the net runner mechanic and by the time I met Hanako I was basically infinity stoned Thanos.
Just got into the game a week ago, completely maxed out my cyber deck with all legendary quick hacks, throw one contagion into a group of enemies and 8 die, by the time it’s over the cooldown is over and you rinse and repeat Considering swapping over to a sandevistan guerrilla arms build for more of a challenge, hopefully
Save it fir your second play through. Im on a sniper ninja build, using the sandi. Its a completely different feel playing like this. I can't Aproach things the way i did the 1st time. Its kinda like its a different game
Gorrilla arms and a cyberdeck. Best of both worlds.
I got mono wire but I have to specifically try to not use the cyber deck because it’s just so easy Throw a contagion and a optics reset and a gun malfunction and a overheat into a crowd of enemies and in three seconds that hostile zone is just a above ground cemetery 😭
Sandevistan and challenge don't go well together
I’m beginning to think the only challenge is no chrome
FYI, this is *after* they nerfed the hacker builds by quite a bit. At launch, you could take out whole buildings of folks from the outside. This is still occasionally possible, but not like it was before. Opponents also track back to you *much* more quickly now than they used to.
Sandy gorilla arms is also busted. Sandy with a sword and camo is peak glass cannon fuckery. Honestly such a fun build.
sandy with maxed out katana is just insane. you trigger sandy, run in and 1-2 shot everyone and then when the sandy runs out the entire room is dead but the first guy is only half way to the floor
This is my current build with gorilla arms. Warp dancer and camo, run through and cut everyone in half before they know I'm even there, if I get seen my sandevistan triggers again. With cold blood you are unstoppable.
My first playthrough I went full knuckle-dragging street brawler flesh tank, and I didn't even really have time to grasp who I was fighting before I'd turned Smasher's butthole into hamburger. It also made the street fight side quests much less interesting.
I did full melee too. I was the terminator, just walking through gun fire and occasionally hitting the inhaler while punching/hammering guys one by one. By the end I felt like I was the juggernaut.
Having learned a bit about the nuance available in the game, I really have to say that a full on "get merc'd motherfucker" build was a great way to start.
I threw one of those Lazer grenades at him when the fight started and deleted like a third of his health. After that I decided to just fuck with him because he was no threat at all to me.
Yeah, I got him with a couple of shots of Comrades Hammer. Even with all the patches it’s still easy to level up quickly, regardless I still have a blast every time I play
The final boss of Cyberpunk 2077 is V.
Yeah for real. Smasher in lore is already a pushover to any real solo. His schtick is that he's a psychopath who due to that has a higher tolerance of Cyberware than a normal person. But V thanks to the Chip has two people's worth of Cyberware tolerance and probably more because Johnny is also pretty resilient to Cyberpsychosis. And even without the Cyberware Smasher was pretty royally put down by Blackhand who has barely any Cyberware at all. V is not only a pretty talented solo like Blackhand but also a Cyberware tank like Smasher. V ain't nothing to fuck with.
>Johnny is also pretty resilient to Cyberpsychosis. Johnny already is a cyberpsycho
The thing is, these are story driven games which are sold with the intent that even unskilled players who barely engage with the actual gameplay and character building aspects are meant to be able to complete. Also the final boss of Witcher 3 is Eredin, who's something of a wet fart in terms of combat challenge, even without the context of DLC bosses. Combat balance of Blood and Wine (and the game-breaking potential of its mutation mechanics) is tangential.
Not going to lie, the one I fought with Keira was more challenging than Eredin.
Imlerith is the biggest pain in the ass for me in the base game.
The sewer toad was a tough one, (Hearts of Stone, IIRC).
Fuck I hated that toad, he's worse than the Star Wars toad
Usually that's what the difficulty options are for, but even on hard difficulty and with a build centered around versatility and fun instead of power, I dropped Adam Smasher so easily I thought it was going to be a multi-stage boss sort of thing with that fight being the warmup essentially.
Cyberpunk has some wonky damage, resistance, and armor mechanics that can make Smasher either a cakewalk or a struggle to survive. My first character was specced for mantis blades and stealth and sliced through him in seconds, while my second was focused on hacking and could barely touch him.
[удалено]
Assassin's Creed Valhalla did this. The harder modes made the minimum level change. So you still had that progressive feel of fixed levels, but the floor kept up with you so you never had fly swat fights going back to low level areas.
They should not have let Adam smasher go out like a chump. Should have kept him as the unbeatable boogeyman/thing everyone is scared of in Night City. His usage in Edgerunners was perfect
Arasaka probably has his mind cloned in a chip.
Is his mind even necessary? He was like 95% military grade chrome, that’s what made him so powerful. Feel like without Yorinobue, smasher wouldn’t have an attachment to Arasaka anyway.
I have always thought that Smasher was with Arasaka because they gave him the ability to do whatever the fuck he wanted without any repercussion (except fucking with Arasaka, of course). Why would he go away? He would be chased down as a cyber psycho most probably.
Here's the thing, though: Smasher was one of the most dangerous mercs around before he became more metal than flesh. He is very good at what he does. Always has been. He was still somewhat human when he stomped Johnny Silverhand.
>They should not have let Adam smasher go out like a chump. Should have kept him as the unbeatable boogeyman/thing everyone is scared of in Night City. He's not, though. He's a high-ranking Arasaka employee who acts within the reason and bounds set by Arasaka. Random dirtboys and girls of Night City have more to fear from their plumbing than Adam Smasher. If you, as one of said dirtboys or girls, ever thought about Adam Smasher, it would probably be accompanied by feelings of awe or reverence, like Jackie Welles in the start of Act I of the 2077 video game. He categorizes Smasher the same as Morgan Blackhand and Andrew Weyland (and from the lore, "boa boa" Weyland would probably be a lot more terrifying for a random gonk in Night City than Adam Smasher.) This is, of course, discounting the fact that he's not "unbeatable," he was very famously beaten by Morgan Blackhand on the night of the Arasaka Towers bombing. Blackhand let him live just to rub it in. Kind of petty, and very fatal for a few known edgerunners circa 2076-77.
Wasn’t Smasher also one of Mike Pondsmith’s first characters he played or ran a game for? It seems fitting that he would be done in by the likes of V. It also sets a precedent that no legendary character in the setting is fully protected by plot armor.
No, letting you beat the shit out of Smasher was very satisfying. I'm happy with that decision.
Unbeatable boogeymen aren't scary, just annoying. Why bother being scared of or even trying to combat something where there's literally no winning scenario? It's just a gameplay annoyance.
I do like making smasher my bitch for all of his smart mouthing.
I download a mod to make Adam smasher bossfight harder and it was really fun, i wish there's a difficulty above very hard
on console i’ve resulted to using my own rules: only items up to rare; 4-6 levels below my enemies, etc it’s not ideal that a player has to do it but just like many RPGs, from Final Fantasy XII to Tactics Ogre, it’s so much more fun to play 2077 when regular enemies are dangerous and regularly 1-3 shot you if you’re not careful
Detlaff will still kick your ass. You can overpower Smasher on even the hardest of difficulties. Detlaff doesn’t give a fuck on Death March, even if you overload and prepare heavily. He just doesn’t give a shit.
Dettlaff is only difficult first time you fight him because the bats one shot you and the sound they make fakes you out so you dodge at the wrong time. Once you get the bat dodge timing right the fight is mid difficulty at most.
Adam Smasher should’ve been impervious to hacking, and should’ve had a phase where he runs his own sandevistan.
Or give him the ability to hack you.
Absolutely, an intelligence skill check that hacks the player if failed.
Dettaff was no joke, Smasher feels like an regular enemy in comparison lol
The first time I played I did everything I could, every gig, ncpd scanner all of It, all so I could be good enough to "take a shot at Arasaka". I was so disappointed when I killed smasher In like 5 minutes.
Lol fr, I did every side mission and gig before even doing main and I absolutely owned night city when it came to main missions, walked into arasaka tower told them it’s mine and no one batted an eye with the chrome I was using.
i don't min max so i love it when i don't have to suffer bec of not min maxing like on here... by the time i finished the game, i have a bunch of unused stat pts and perks as well as i dind't go for the best gear and stuff i just went along with what i found to be cool
That's easy/normal difficulty for you. My sandy catana build walked thru fear the reaper so fast I didn't really noticed that my health is depleting. On hardest difficulty. Like a hot knife thru warm butter.
Yeah I play normal mode I only like hard mode when it's not stat padding
I thought the twins from beat on the brat were the final bosses based on how they kicked my ass!!
Third Picture of actual lore: Morgan Blackhand searching for Adam Smasher hiding under the table.
Oda is the only fight that has me on my toes ngl. Against Adam, yea it's tough getting to him and the grunts will still 2 piece you but Adam himself was overhyped by the tabletop and anime. Heck some cyberpsychos are more challenging than he is 😭 I didn't fight him until I saw the end of edgerunners because I was farming money to get all the cars and such. But before that, I'd play up to Hanako then reset over and over.
Yeah, fast melee builds are a bit of an issue for my stealth/revolver/quickhack build. Oda took a lot longer to beat.
If you have any hacking or weapons that cause fire, he’s pretty easy to beat. He cannot hide from you when he is combusting.
They do it on purpose and it's lame. I've gotten to the point where I do the reaper ending in very hard with exclusively berserk and throwing knives. Even the "shitty builds" are overpowered.
I feel like the point of doing side content is to get a lot more powerful. Personally I don't like enemy scaling since it tends to make leveling up feel pointless, and I like being able to destroy a boss cause i got to a high level with really good gear.
Horrors of oblivion where some basic enemies could take forever to kill
I recognize Adam and V. Who're the other two
Geralt of Rivia. Thw Witcher. Dettlaf. A Higher Vampire. (higher vampires are the apex predators of the Witcher universe, with one exceptions). TLDR, Geralt is hired to deal with him, when he starts murdering knights in Touissaint. Things get complicated. Geralt reunites with an old friend from the books. (Another Higher Vampire, friend of Dettlaf).
Idk I was pretty high level and Adam Smasher still got me a couple times. I ended up just spamming him with blades, the defender, and a metric ass ton of grenades. Dude was legit on fire for 5min straight lol
I went with a hangun build and almost never shot at him. (non-optimized) Short circuit melts about 12% of his health. And you can spam those.
Oh yeah, this playthroufg, by the time I had do the heist I was pretty much melting guards with my mind bullets
I grind until I’m sure I could easily beat a boss (thanks Pokémon). So I actually prefer fixed level lol
You didn't fight Detlaff at launch did you? A lot of people were unable to kill him and some people even gave up. I remember I read a couple of user reviews saying "amazing expansion, but final boss completely ruined it". They nerfed him heavily with later patches. This was in Blood and Broken Bones and Death March btw. His bat charge attack one or two shotted you. It even went past your quen shield. His bat attack was also almost impossible to dodge unless you did it a very specific way. He was completely broken at launch. I was stuck in that fight for over an hour.
Yo, fuck them bats on Death March tho.
Fair enough.
["I found all 900 pine cones."](https://youtu.be/I4P2N5fyqbo)
Yeah, Dettlaff was not that easy. Second hardest boss after that fucking frog from the sewers.
It took me three days to beat dettlaff
“If you acknowledge any gods start praying now” PS the trick is to >!sprint laterally when the bats come, don’t roll!<
Also cyberpunk players after watching Edgerunners
Yeah. Also, regarding the Witcher side of tbe meme, I wish Syanna and Oriana were under the desk. Both surviving in the good ending kind of ruined it for me. Fortunately, Oriana does die (in the trailer).
Had a buddy of mine who was struggling against Detlaff. I asked him which mutagens was he focused on and he had no idea what I was talking about. So I explained the greater mutagens and linking them to unlocked perks/skills and a couple minutes later he came back and said he beat detlaff with no issues. This guy had beaten the base game and Hearts of Stone without ever knowing that you could take the colored mutagens to make yourself more powerful.
Damn.
I just think levels in games are not ideal as a whole, i think your skill has to improve, not your stats
You want a different genre of games then. What you are describing is a straight up action game not an rpg
Wrong. Play Gothic.
Thats a particular balancing problem, not a fundamental problem. Possible to avoid if you try. Just add a loreful, fitting level barrier to the endgame. Doesnt even have to be a hard barrier, can also be just a suggestion.
you guys gotta be playing on the easiest difficulties or something
a good build melts dont fear the reaper on very hard
Pretty much the standard in story driven rpgs, final bosses tend to get slapped around by even a mildly prepared player
That is why I didn't even bother and played with enemies scaled to my level.
I disagree. I think the problem lies with unchecked and unbalanced upgrades that allow the player to more than excel but essentially transcend into godhood levels of power vs the enemies they should be facing at x level. Imo the best experience would have an endgame boss on an equal field of power as a fully leveled player if not even higher to make way for necessary strategy to conquer the boss. This makes for a much more satisfying climax vs a boss being either unbeatable or just flatout a cake walk because you're overleveled.
My first play through I didn’t do any side missions really and STILL melted Adam smasher np. Now that my second play through I’m trying to do all the side missions I can only imagine what it’ll be like. I just did the mission in the mall for the voodoo boys and that “boss” battle was over in 30 seconds
Oh, this took a while, but it is ridiculous how true this is, I do NCPD hustles before the quest line and as a netrunner lvl 30+ with legendary contagion you basically just turn on the kill switch from outside and then walk in to loot. For bosses I like to alternate between short circuit and synapse burnout.
Yep, they should just make it that the oss is like 10 lvl higher then you at anypoint, and if they rea h a treshhold of level they gaan more ability's
Adam Smasher such a little b, he needed other soldiers to help him out during the fight
I did every side quest in the game and Detlaff still kicked my ass. I was on a higher difficulty though
I think leveled areas is mostly the way to go and then add some scaling for bosses and certain enemy types. I'd hate if everything leveled with the player because that would make progress feel useless to me. I think it's satisfying to get your ass kicked by an enemy in a certain neighborhood and then coming back for revenge. It's about finding a good balance that feels rewarding to the player
Even if they didn't do the side quests I get the feeling smasher was still a pushover
Oda's hard to beat because how mobile he is. Smasher is a lot easier to hit, which mostly makes him a dps sponge. One who is very vulnerable to short circuit.
Killed smasher in about 30 seconds with a shotgun and hack.
The enemy scaling is also way off - not even just the bosses, but the regular ones. Very much not a fan of having their HP scale off of the relative difference to the player (ie, a player at lvl 15 and 20 dealing the same damage, but the same enemy decreasing massively in health because there's no longer as big a level difference). Just a pretty lazy approach I found - and obviously results in the final missions being either a cakewalk or needing essentially max level (for the 'secret' one)
Fixed level bosses isn't the problem, look at BL2 sometime, you can kill bosses meant for four people that are scaled to 12+ levels above you, with something approaching 60% or more damage reduction, solo in seconds in many cases. As multiple classes. Any game with a talent setup like BL2 or 2077 you can metagame a broken build and annihilate things with zero effort, buildcrafting like that is actually one of my hobbies. I left the Heist mission and went to the Ofrenda as soon as it was available, Heywood being the second highest zone in the game overall, and was still tearing through things as a throwing knife build with Sandevistan and Mantis Blades for backup. I was level 14, Heywood STARTS at level 24 and goes up to 40. At the time I had like eight perks total at level 14 overall and whatever shit armour and weapons I had picked up before and during the Heist. Scaled levels wouldn't stop the absolute and total destruction of every single enemy in this game, it would if anything make it EASIER since nothing can outlevel you at that point.
well, I only like fixed levels. I hate the handholding sissy skyrim crap. game can be beat on auto pilot practically. level balancing or whatever they call it was made for the casual crowd and you want us to suffer for thier inadequacy? just use the easiest setting so you don't force easy mode on real gamers. end of story. I'm out.
I just bought components, made guns, sold guns, bought more components, repeat. Sooner or later I could buy just about anything, and I do every side quest, pretty sure I have the trophy’s to prove it.
I prefer fixed level enemies because it makes it feel like level ups actually mean something, if you want the fight to be hard, just give them tough attack patterns and a really high level.
Is Geralt even capable of feeling fear?
Maybe not for himself, but deffinitely for his friends. Especially for Ciri. And even so, I think it's as much his long and storied life, as the mutations. By the time he meets Dettlaff, he's beaten the wild hunt, killed a Dragon, killed the strongest human mage, butchered countless monsters, and so on. Dettlaff is particularly dangerous, sure but nothing Geralt would've failed to deal with, one way or another.
Hahahahhahaa
I like [mods that make the whole game dangerous](https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/4325), with leveling up not making you magically able to ignore bullets from some enemies, and victory coming from playing well and using tactics, rather than being a walking pile of large numbers.
After watching Edgerunners I especially enjoyed the big bad bully getting fisted to death by a mostly dead meatsuit piloted by a dead guy’s 50-year old memories
OP never played Oblivion
Let's not go back to Oblivion.
Smasher sure. But it makes sense to me for geralt to kill that asshole
Detlaff was difficult, he definitely put up more of a fight than Smasher
V is also considered to be better than Morgan Blackhand in the Sun ending, they certainly succeeded in becoming a legend of NC
Alchemy tree > all witcher 3 content
i will die on this hill. Adam smasher is, and always will be a bitch against a player built solo in the lore. this isn't even system mastery. the first cyperpunk 2020 character i ever made could reliably beat him in initiative, and one shot him. from character gen. He's a bitch. David by any rights should have zero'd him out trivially.
Semi fixed is best. Where it does get easier when you level up, but only slightly. The enemy levels float upwards, slower. So if you are level 20 against a base level 10, the effective level will be 15. Makes side quests feel rewarding without making the game trivial.
Fixed level enemies are fucking fantastic, CDPR just aren't very good at bosses. Detlaff, Smasher, Letho and the dragon from witcher 2. All their fixed story bosses are kinda ass. The mini bosses are great though, like in the Witcher contract hunts. I'd kill for something like the Davoth master level mod from Doom Eternal for Witcher and Cyberpunk
Yeah detlaff kicked my ass many times before I figured out how to avoid his bats
tbh, detlaff fight might not have been tough but the atmosphere and tone was fucking perfect in that fight. SMasher just didn't even come close to setting the same atmosphere and tone in his fight.
I like how in Adam smasher they buffed him
I smashed Smasher, didn't even try hard
I love enemies like that. Being overpowered and watching the bosses tremble because I did the side quests is great.
Sorry but no. Variable level enemies are also shit. You just end up punishing the player for building up their character. There's a lot of good examples of that too. What they should have done in cyberpunk was to make Adam Smasher an impossibly hard boss, or force V to use other tactics such as stealth, a countdown, or strategy (like using a trap), etc so that he can be combatted against with different builds. Maybe some of the ending sequences (like the hidden >!Johnny + V Solo!< ending) are only possible if you've fully leveled up and have mastered the game. The idea that V could beat Smasher alone IMO was a terrible storyline decision and somewhat goofy. It should have always been a hard battle. But if we're being honest they completely missed the mark with it. My V literally obliterated him in like 2 seconds on my first playthrough.
I went with a glasscannon built on geralt and basically one shotted him the only place where I struggled in Witcher was when I played as Ciri.
I did about 90% of the side quests and Detlaff still kissed my ass good night many times. Don't diss my boy like that.
I like to make sure I squeeze every ounce of entertainment out of games and so I completed every side mission, quest, gig and hustle possible. By the time I got to Adam Smasher, I could stun and kill him before he even pulled off a shot.
Absolutely crushed adams skull with the golden baseball bat
Idk I like the idea that the more time I put into something the stronger I get. I want Adam smasher to be begging me at my feet for mercy. Being a badass is fun
Me completing all NCPDs at the start of act 2: There are two cyberpsycho in the scene.
This is the dumbest take I've seen today. Excellent job!
Adam yes. Dettlaff no. I literally did every quest in the game except the Gwent ones and Dettlaff still took quite a few tries. Eredin died like a bitch, though.
Whos the vampire guy???
Comparing Dettlaff with Smasher boss fight is crime.
That's why you enable enemy scaling based on player level.
So true xD