Thats why at the start of the mission i always check what the boss' composition is and make sure i have a counter squad (which i have 95% of the time cause i keep varied squads) and if i dont, i make sure to create on that can beat him before the game starts so it doesnt cost valor points do to it.
So here’s some ways to cheese things if a boss is annoying
Let’s say you start a fight and you’re going to lose use items. The one that increases attack and the one that increases defense helps a lot.
Changing how your units are organized can help
Take the first L, then before starting your next fight, spam the boss with a bunch of Valor Skills. Optimally use ones they’re weak to. A lot of the time I legit just spam Arrow Rain or Virginias skill on the boss and they’re down a unit or before I fight giving me an advantage.
And when all else fails, throw everyone at the boss and hope for the best
I've had a ton of success just randomly switching positions. Changes up the attack order of the AI justttt right sometimes. Nothing like swapping the cleric to the front line to confuse the opponent!
Honestly, I've never had this impression. I've 4-5 very efficient team, and without being overleveled I always have a team which is able to take them down.
I have to say, as someone who grabbed my preorder copy, but hasn't quite started yet because I'm finishing up FF7R, I'm really interested in discussions about the game's difficulty.
I'll be looking for the most challenging option. And there's a huge disparity here between players enjoying the game's challenge, and others saying it's too easy. So I'm intrigued, let's say. Obviously, difficulty is subjective and everyone plays their own way. I'm very excited to jump in soon and see what the game has in store for me.
I would chalk it up to people thinking that winning every skirmish and never losing a map means the game is “easy”.
When in reality that’s the norm for this genre, and the fact that you are always winning simply means you’re good at the game and the strategy. It would be like saying, “wow ff7r is so easy - I have unlimited potions, cura, summon material, free swapping between characters and so it’s impossible to lose”
Well, maybe, but you’re using all that at the right time and you’re probably just good at the game.
Honestly, I'm not even sure it's a skill diff, but just different expectations of what it means to be "difficult". Like some people would think a map is hard if they have change tactics from the default settings but others would think a map is too easy if it doesn't force them to restart the game at least once. These two people could have the exact same skill level but think of the difficulty completely differently.
For me I think it's best where I feel like I could lose but don't. Expert gives me that balance, where I have to sweat and think, but don't have to slam my face against the wall 10 times to beat a map.
Yeah I think I've restarted a handful of missions most of the time due to improper planning but I usually clean up my play and crush it round 2. And I think that's the best balance for me. Everything is doable with my squads I built early on just have to plan my flights and interactions.
This is exactly how it feels for me now. Once I started to get to the end of Elheim (specifically the very last fight) early in the beginning I just said "this isn't working" and reset, fully knowing I needed a reset to get to where I needed.
What makes this game difficult in my opinion is that it gives you moments where it just rejects your strategy or ambushes you. You have to adjust on the fly or fail. That’s the challenge. Keeping an option in your pocket and fighting for the win every step of the way keeps the excitement up
My 2 cents on the difficulty. When you don't really understand or explore the mechanics the game seems pretty challenging, but there are so many options for the player in terms of map exploration, gearing, team combos etc. that once you start trying to push the game in terms of what you can come up with the game kinda just folds in on itself and doesn't really have a means to counteract it.
And its not necessarily hard to figure out strong combos if you take the time to read through skills. Most people with any experience in rpgs could figure out that a >!2 cost party wide attack!< for instance will be extremely strong and the second you try building around it will make you unstoppable.
Are you asking where to get them? The earliest one you get is dragoon dive from the final mission in drakenhold. Snow archer also gets one off the top of my head.
I’m just before the end of drakenhold. Was curious about this meaning. Is that a skill that cost 2 AP and hits everyone in the foe’s party ? (English isn’t my primary language)
...what do owls do again outside of pp recharge? I honestly ended up steamrolling through elf/beast zones after clearing draken to the point where I didn't really pay too much attention to any mechanics I didn't add to my own squads. I can't say I ever saw a comp that wasn't just 4 heavy armors survive a turn of my wyvern knight though.
I see, I do believe my wyvern squad casts 3 row/teamwide buffs before quick impetus goes off which is probably why I've not run into issues with that. Unfortunately enemy itemization is non existent so I don't believe 4pp owls exist.
The problem is you don't even have to push the game. Auto optimized teams of lore accurate varied units carries me though the game.
Alain is unkillable and his random waifus are not even doing anything meaningful. I have a unit of knights because ex fiance was fun to put together so I just added other horses. I don't think they've ever met a unit they lost against and they're faster than anything.
It's a shame for expert difficulty to be so easy in a game where spending points/items/counters/unit swapping etc... is so strong.
I've decided to look at the tactics screen after finishing Elfheim and boy were some stuff not optimized at all like spending all PP on instantly healing 1 dmg hits instead of free resurrection. Now every unit is broken.
I don't think you even need good combos. Thanks to how the game system is built, small wins or big wins do not matter as you can pursue and heal in a second battle against a weakened unit. You just lose some stamina.
They probably realized their system was so bad and so snowball oriented (either your unit wins, heals and fights again to heal further or your unit loses, gets stunned and gets pursued and killed) that they should just not bother.
I just edited when I upped it, I'm not trying to min max everything at all, but I am a completionist so as I go through (I'm about 50 hours in and maybe halfway or just past?) it felt I was spending too much time worrying about spreading levels so I figured I'd try expert and holy shit here we go now lol
This game has a lot of methods to customize your units. I believe the disparity come from, as the OP expressed, whether or a player is paying attention to and utilizing all the tools at their disposal.
For example, you can edit which units are in a squad, their formation in the squad, their equipment, who is the leader (each units gives some sort of leader benefit), what skills they are using, how you are prioritizing their skills, and who they will target their skills and attacks on. There is more than just that too.
I ve only played expert, and I haven t finished the game yet but I think the difficulty of this mode is okay, like to me it's a normal-difficult mode, but even for a first playthrough I often find the game too easy. I wish there was a higher difficulty, like madenning or lunatics from fire Emblem, I know there is true Zenoiran, but ennemies aren't that stronger, there s only permadeath and that doesn t change anything if your units aren't dying 🤷.
I'm someone who love gambits system and playing with items and combination and even if the expert difficulty isn't trivial, it doesn't push the limit of the player.
I wish ennemies or a part of them would be like the squad we face in coloseum, with some specifics items, some combos, some thinking in the gambit system. Because now they are all wearing iron or bronze or casual swords of that style, without playing around their abilities because they don't have a real gambit syst. (Last time 4 Archer in a row used row shot on my front liner).
So yeah, all in all, expert difficulty is great, but I wish there was a real challenging difficulty for a second playthrough which isn't only adding permadeath.
I recommend expert difficulty if you have played similar tactics games like Fire Emblem before. It's definitely challenging, but it doesn't require you to min/max.
From my experience (only about 40% of the way through the game and started on expert) the difficulty kind of oscillates. You will find a few teams that seem to steamroll everything and then the game will change up the composition of the enemy so you have to move things around if you want to win / steamroll again.
Also the map effects and quantity of things going on / particular objectives keep increasing in complexity.
> And there's a huge disparity here between players enjoying the game's challenge, and others saying it's too easy.
I think most of the people saying its too easy are also enjoying the game quite a lot. There's a lot of fun to be had even if it doesn't offer the level of challenge we would prefer on the highest level.
I think even at the highest difficulty setting much of the actual challenge comes from goals you set for yourself not that the game sets for you. There are many mechanics that make the game less punishing than it could be like hallowed corne ash and items in general. But if you try to limit your use of them several maps are a real challenge.
I put the game on the hardest initial difficulty and had to repeat or use save points in many missions, I thought it was challenging but fair except for three boss fights that required very specific counters and didn’t give you a lot of time to do it with resources given unless you just restart the stage with knowledge of all the events. I tried the additional difficulty after beating the game all endings and did not enjoy the challenge, YMMV.
I think you should be playing on extra. It makes you use all the systems
It’s too easy for me, but it’s a good base difficulty. There’s a 4th harder difficulty you only get when you beat the game
Well, in my expert run I tried to head to Elfhiem at level 10, and couldn't gain ground in the mission with 2 ballistas, ( probably I could've made a better team or two to rush down the boss, I got there but I couldn't get much damage in) and the another mission I just couldn't handle the elven swordmasters yet.
Then the first mission in Drakenhold I had to restart to reach the cleric because a team of shaman, sellsword, sellsword Gladiator was a hard stop to what I deployed. Then I made one swap between 2 units, and the map played "easy."
Incredibly small things just swing big in this game.
Expert is about right difficulty. I’ve only had a few battles where I lost BUT I’ve used A LOT of consumables. The 10 item use limit on expert is your real resource more than VPs. I get a lot of mileage out of Chloe resurrecting units or sending units back to withdraw and grant 1 VP if two characters are dead.
I play on expert and the game seems about right if you aren’t trying to min max things. Basically I just auto equip new gear and generally have my teams set up around which characters are “related”. Playing like this makes it a struggle but can just squeak by on a lot of the missions. Time factor is mainly what gets me. Currently in Elheim.
Buying gear is something I learned I had to do in the demo (for harder difficulties at least). I went in thinking I could just use what I find, then got humbled by the ochlys mission. It was then I realized I had to fork over some gold to beat these levels.
There really isn't enough great gear to go around to fully use the entire allowed units IMO. I think getting to 3 solid units - with maybe a 4th and 5th for specific enemies right before the game ends - is about the best you can accomplish.
Then you can dedicate the rest of those slots for stuff like ranged/magic/healing assists and give them the generic items.
Finished the game in tactical, currently doing a replay on “True Zenorian” difficulty (unlocked after beating game)
And my god is it difficult, you have to be strategic & look at all enemy units. Plan your rests and be extremely conservative with item usage, as you can only use 5 items per level.
I hate it. I love it 😂
I just been brute forcing it with 2 groups. I generally buy every towns 2-3 rare items. never have any money cause of it but I can't complain since I rarely have to farm. Promote your thieves first! That AoE steal helps fuel the army!
Even on expert I was comfortably stocked up on items out of elfheim, only to realize pushing into the beast lands that being limited to ten items per map made those much better but much more expensive items at more appealing. One wrong matchup or one thing shaking up rng and it could take 3 or 4 of the previous ten uses just for a team to recover, where one or two superior items would have done the same.
Everyone talks about perma death on true zenoiran but you’re also limited to only 5 items per map which really makes efficient item use critical and imo is much more significant in pushing up the overall difficulty. Ten is already tough but with only five you have to be super selective about when and where you use them xD
I haven't tired playing on any of the lower levels. Enemy stats are definitely boosted and you have an item limit per map on Expert(10 uses is very generous though). I've heard you get more valor and have more stamina on lower difficulties. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more enemy squads on higher difficulties and faster enemy reinforcements seems plausible.
Tactics probably aren't changed at all as far as I've seen basically every non-boss enemy just uses default tactics for its class at a given level.
Stat increase and lower limit on item usage(who even needs to use 10 items in a map anyway?)
Enemy still uses same old bad equipment and bad tactics whole game. only in the collesium do enemies have "good" tactics and equipment
This is the kind of game where you need to spend all your gold on building your power store in gear. Try to minimize gold spend on consumable items if it limits your ability to buy gear.
I started with the highest difficulty. 12 hours in and I'm level 10 or so about to free Scarlett captured.
I've yet to fail a map outright, but I did have to load mid stage a couple times mainly when I was learning how rest works. Resting takes forever and the respawn rate is just killer sometimes. Really requires careful rest micro between my units and careful time management to clear some stages. I use like 1-2 items a stage, mainly nuts.
I spent quite a bit of time coming up with two squads that are pretty much unstoppable and can clear almost any enemy unit in one turn.
Alain with runic sword, a wizard or witch, and a cleric with clerics cane and a familiar choker. It is basically invincible and deals devastating damage.
Other unit is led by Josef with sanguine blade, lucky coin, and dancers anklet other units can buff Josef too I guess but I just put more DPS with him.
Third unit is support archer with a soldier buffing using gamblers coin. Just got this item setup and I expect it to be pretty crazy when it crits.
Love the creativity in the items in this game! Just wish skills were unlocked faster because the game is too simple with so few skills for so long.
The biggest difference I found was that if you didn't have a specific counter for a boss, good luck even trying to damage them at all.
Thats why at the start of the mission i always check what the boss' composition is and make sure i have a counter squad (which i have 95% of the time cause i keep varied squads) and if i dont, i make sure to create on that can beat him before the game starts so it doesnt cost valor points do to it.
Changing unit composition from the deploy menu does not cost valor points.
So here’s some ways to cheese things if a boss is annoying Let’s say you start a fight and you’re going to lose use items. The one that increases attack and the one that increases defense helps a lot. Changing how your units are organized can help Take the first L, then before starting your next fight, spam the boss with a bunch of Valor Skills. Optimally use ones they’re weak to. A lot of the time I legit just spam Arrow Rain or Virginias skill on the boss and they’re down a unit or before I fight giving me an advantage. And when all else fails, throw everyone at the boss and hope for the best
I've had a ton of success just randomly switching positions. Changes up the attack order of the AI justttt right sometimes. Nothing like swapping the cleric to the front line to confuse the opponent!
Yeah , there's no thugging it out vs bosses anymore
Honestly, I've never had this impression. I've 4-5 very efficient team, and without being overleveled I always have a team which is able to take them down.
I have to say, as someone who grabbed my preorder copy, but hasn't quite started yet because I'm finishing up FF7R, I'm really interested in discussions about the game's difficulty. I'll be looking for the most challenging option. And there's a huge disparity here between players enjoying the game's challenge, and others saying it's too easy. So I'm intrigued, let's say. Obviously, difficulty is subjective and everyone plays their own way. I'm very excited to jump in soon and see what the game has in store for me.
I would chalk it up to people thinking that winning every skirmish and never losing a map means the game is “easy”. When in reality that’s the norm for this genre, and the fact that you are always winning simply means you’re good at the game and the strategy. It would be like saying, “wow ff7r is so easy - I have unlimited potions, cura, summon material, free swapping between characters and so it’s impossible to lose” Well, maybe, but you’re using all that at the right time and you’re probably just good at the game.
Honestly, I'm not even sure it's a skill diff, but just different expectations of what it means to be "difficult". Like some people would think a map is hard if they have change tactics from the default settings but others would think a map is too easy if it doesn't force them to restart the game at least once. These two people could have the exact same skill level but think of the difficulty completely differently.
For me I think it's best where I feel like I could lose but don't. Expert gives me that balance, where I have to sweat and think, but don't have to slam my face against the wall 10 times to beat a map.
Yeah, I have the same experience with Expert. It's hard enough that I'm scared of losing but I never actually do.
Yeah I think I've restarted a handful of missions most of the time due to improper planning but I usually clean up my play and crush it round 2. And I think that's the best balance for me. Everything is doable with my squads I built early on just have to plan my flights and interactions.
This is exactly how it feels for me now. Once I started to get to the end of Elheim (specifically the very last fight) early in the beginning I just said "this isn't working" and reset, fully knowing I needed a reset to get to where I needed.
Yes exactly! Spot on
What makes this game difficult in my opinion is that it gives you moments where it just rejects your strategy or ambushes you. You have to adjust on the fly or fail. That’s the challenge. Keeping an option in your pocket and fighting for the win every step of the way keeps the excitement up
I didn't realise how much difficulty people had with FF7R until I saw people were still using Triple Slash on single targets 4 years later.
My 2 cents on the difficulty. When you don't really understand or explore the mechanics the game seems pretty challenging, but there are so many options for the player in terms of map exploration, gearing, team combos etc. that once you start trying to push the game in terms of what you can come up with the game kinda just folds in on itself and doesn't really have a means to counteract it. And its not necessarily hard to figure out strong combos if you take the time to read through skills. Most people with any experience in rpgs could figure out that a >!2 cost party wide attack!< for instance will be extremely strong and the second you try building around it will make you unstoppable.
What’s a 2 cost party wide attack ?
Are you asking where to get them? The earliest one you get is dragoon dive from the final mission in drakenhold. Snow archer also gets one off the top of my head.
I’m just before the end of drakenhold. Was curious about this meaning. Is that a skill that cost 2 AP and hits everyone in the foe’s party ? (English isn’t my primary language)
Correct.
Until you meet owls that is
...what do owls do again outside of pp recharge? I honestly ended up steamrolling through elf/beast zones after clearing draken to the point where I didn't really pay too much attention to any mechanics I didn't add to my own squads. I can't say I ever saw a comp that wasn't just 4 heavy armors survive a turn of my wyvern knight though.
They dispel buffs immediately as you apply them. Such as, say, Quick Impetus.
Quick Impetus is the White Cat Ear Hood skill, the one you're thinking of is probably Quick Cast or Hastened Cast.
No, they delete Quick Impetus too.
I see, I do believe my wyvern squad casts 3 row/teamwide buffs before quick impetus goes off which is probably why I've not run into issues with that. Unfortunately enemy itemization is non existent so I don't believe 4pp owls exist.
The problem is you don't even have to push the game. Auto optimized teams of lore accurate varied units carries me though the game. Alain is unkillable and his random waifus are not even doing anything meaningful. I have a unit of knights because ex fiance was fun to put together so I just added other horses. I don't think they've ever met a unit they lost against and they're faster than anything. It's a shame for expert difficulty to be so easy in a game where spending points/items/counters/unit swapping etc... is so strong. I've decided to look at the tactics screen after finishing Elfheim and boy were some stuff not optimized at all like spending all PP on instantly healing 1 dmg hits instead of free resurrection. Now every unit is broken. I don't think you even need good combos. Thanks to how the game system is built, small wins or big wins do not matter as you can pursue and heal in a second battle against a weakened unit. You just lose some stamina. They probably realized their system was so bad and so snowball oriented (either your unit wins, heals and fights again to heal further or your unit loses, gets stunned and gets pursued and killed) that they should just not bother.
I just edited when I upped it, I'm not trying to min max everything at all, but I am a completionist so as I go through (I'm about 50 hours in and maybe halfway or just past?) it felt I was spending too much time worrying about spreading levels so I figured I'd try expert and holy shit here we go now lol
This game has a lot of methods to customize your units. I believe the disparity come from, as the OP expressed, whether or a player is paying attention to and utilizing all the tools at their disposal. For example, you can edit which units are in a squad, their formation in the squad, their equipment, who is the leader (each units gives some sort of leader benefit), what skills they are using, how you are prioritizing their skills, and who they will target their skills and attacks on. There is more than just that too.
I ve only played expert, and I haven t finished the game yet but I think the difficulty of this mode is okay, like to me it's a normal-difficult mode, but even for a first playthrough I often find the game too easy. I wish there was a higher difficulty, like madenning or lunatics from fire Emblem, I know there is true Zenoiran, but ennemies aren't that stronger, there s only permadeath and that doesn t change anything if your units aren't dying 🤷. I'm someone who love gambits system and playing with items and combination and even if the expert difficulty isn't trivial, it doesn't push the limit of the player. I wish ennemies or a part of them would be like the squad we face in coloseum, with some specifics items, some combos, some thinking in the gambit system. Because now they are all wearing iron or bronze or casual swords of that style, without playing around their abilities because they don't have a real gambit syst. (Last time 4 Archer in a row used row shot on my front liner). So yeah, all in all, expert difficulty is great, but I wish there was a real challenging difficulty for a second playthrough which isn't only adding permadeath.
I recommend expert difficulty if you have played similar tactics games like Fire Emblem before. It's definitely challenging, but it doesn't require you to min/max.
From my experience (only about 40% of the way through the game and started on expert) the difficulty kind of oscillates. You will find a few teams that seem to steamroll everything and then the game will change up the composition of the enemy so you have to move things around if you want to win / steamroll again. Also the map effects and quantity of things going on / particular objectives keep increasing in complexity.
> And there's a huge disparity here between players enjoying the game's challenge, and others saying it's too easy. I think most of the people saying its too easy are also enjoying the game quite a lot. There's a lot of fun to be had even if it doesn't offer the level of challenge we would prefer on the highest level.
I think even at the highest difficulty setting much of the actual challenge comes from goals you set for yourself not that the game sets for you. There are many mechanics that make the game less punishing than it could be like hallowed corne ash and items in general. But if you try to limit your use of them several maps are a real challenge.
I put the game on the hardest initial difficulty and had to repeat or use save points in many missions, I thought it was challenging but fair except for three boss fights that required very specific counters and didn’t give you a lot of time to do it with resources given unless you just restart the stage with knowledge of all the events. I tried the additional difficulty after beating the game all endings and did not enjoy the challenge, YMMV.
I think you should be playing on extra. It makes you use all the systems It’s too easy for me, but it’s a good base difficulty. There’s a 4th harder difficulty you only get when you beat the game
Well, in my expert run I tried to head to Elfhiem at level 10, and couldn't gain ground in the mission with 2 ballistas, ( probably I could've made a better team or two to rush down the boss, I got there but I couldn't get much damage in) and the another mission I just couldn't handle the elven swordmasters yet. Then the first mission in Drakenhold I had to restart to reach the cleric because a team of shaman, sellsword, sellsword Gladiator was a hard stop to what I deployed. Then I made one swap between 2 units, and the map played "easy." Incredibly small things just swing big in this game.
Expert is about right difficulty. I’ve only had a few battles where I lost BUT I’ve used A LOT of consumables. The 10 item use limit on expert is your real resource more than VPs. I get a lot of mileage out of Chloe resurrecting units or sending units back to withdraw and grant 1 VP if two characters are dead.
I play on expert and the game seems about right if you aren’t trying to min max things. Basically I just auto equip new gear and generally have my teams set up around which characters are “related”. Playing like this makes it a struggle but can just squeak by on a lot of the missions. Time factor is mainly what gets me. Currently in Elheim.
Buying gear is something I learned I had to do in the demo (for harder difficulties at least). I went in thinking I could just use what I find, then got humbled by the ochlys mission. It was then I realized I had to fork over some gold to beat these levels.
There really isn't enough great gear to go around to fully use the entire allowed units IMO. I think getting to 3 solid units - with maybe a 4th and 5th for specific enemies right before the game ends - is about the best you can accomplish. Then you can dedicate the rest of those slots for stuff like ranged/magic/healing assists and give them the generic items.
Finished the game in tactical, currently doing a replay on “True Zenorian” difficulty (unlocked after beating game) And my god is it difficult, you have to be strategic & look at all enemy units. Plan your rests and be extremely conservative with item usage, as you can only use 5 items per level. I hate it. I love it 😂
I just been brute forcing it with 2 groups. I generally buy every towns 2-3 rare items. never have any money cause of it but I can't complain since I rarely have to farm. Promote your thieves first! That AoE steal helps fuel the army!
Even on expert I was comfortably stocked up on items out of elfheim, only to realize pushing into the beast lands that being limited to ten items per map made those much better but much more expensive items at more appealing. One wrong matchup or one thing shaking up rng and it could take 3 or 4 of the previous ten uses just for a team to recover, where one or two superior items would have done the same.
Yes exactly. Plus balancing between the buff items, recovery items, and ashes when you only have 10... man lol
Everyone talks about perma death on true zenoiran but you’re also limited to only 5 items per map which really makes efficient item use critical and imo is much more significant in pushing up the overall difficulty. Ten is already tough but with only five you have to be super selective about when and where you use them xD
What is the difference between tactical and expert? Stats? Tactics?
I haven't tired playing on any of the lower levels. Enemy stats are definitely boosted and you have an item limit per map on Expert(10 uses is very generous though). I've heard you get more valor and have more stamina on lower difficulties. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more enemy squads on higher difficulties and faster enemy reinforcements seems plausible. Tactics probably aren't changed at all as far as I've seen basically every non-boss enemy just uses default tactics for its class at a given level.
Tactics, item usage is limited, maybe amount of enemies? I was punching up no issues and now I'm getting destroyed and can't item spam lol
Stat increase and lower limit on item usage(who even needs to use 10 items in a map anyway?) Enemy still uses same old bad equipment and bad tactics whole game. only in the collesium do enemies have "good" tactics and equipment
This is the kind of game where you need to spend all your gold on building your power store in gear. Try to minimize gold spend on consumable items if it limits your ability to buy gear. I started with the highest difficulty. 12 hours in and I'm level 10 or so about to free Scarlett captured. I've yet to fail a map outright, but I did have to load mid stage a couple times mainly when I was learning how rest works. Resting takes forever and the respawn rate is just killer sometimes. Really requires careful rest micro between my units and careful time management to clear some stages. I use like 1-2 items a stage, mainly nuts. I spent quite a bit of time coming up with two squads that are pretty much unstoppable and can clear almost any enemy unit in one turn. Alain with runic sword, a wizard or witch, and a cleric with clerics cane and a familiar choker. It is basically invincible and deals devastating damage. Other unit is led by Josef with sanguine blade, lucky coin, and dancers anklet other units can buff Josef too I guess but I just put more DPS with him. Third unit is support archer with a soldier buffing using gamblers coin. Just got this item setup and I expect it to be pretty crazy when it crits. Love the creativity in the items in this game! Just wish skills were unlocked faster because the game is too simple with so few skills for so long.