So many user reviews of Shadow of the Erdtree are really pissed at the idea of gaining power by collecting a specific kind of item hidden throughout the world and I genuinely do not understand why that is such an issue. It seems like such a basic video game thing to me. Why would this be somehow unacceptable in souls? Would you really rather have to GRIND? The thing everyone says is boring about RPGs???
I've seen people argue that the devs buffed the blessing soon after release in a patch so clearly they admit that the DLC was too hard. However if you look at what they actually did, I would argue it's more revealing of the player base and gamer psychology than proof that the DLC was unbalanced. Let's look at the actual numbers, shall we?
I'm only gonna talk about the player attack multiplier because the math is simpler to parse with that one. Numbers are taken from this reddit post.1
On release, the multiplier for the damage you deal is increased by .05 consistently every time you level up the Scadutree Blessing from level 1 to level 20. It caps out at 2.00.
After patch, the multiplier for the damage you deal is increased by:
- .10 for level 1 and 2.
- .05 for level 3, 4 and 5
- .075 for level 6 and 7
- .05 for level 8 and 10
- .10 for level 11 and 12
- .025 from level 13 to 20
It caps out at 2.05.
DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID? Now the damage increases are bigger in the first half and smaller in the 2nd half. They didn't really buff it so much as they shifted some of the overall amount you get down to the first levels. You can interpret this as an admission that the DLC starts out too difficult but I think they did this because the whiny motherfuckers weren't exploring as much as the devs were hoping and bashing their heads against bosses instead. Yes, technically they buffed it overall by .05 at level cap. It seems like a rather insignificant increase to me. I honestly believe they did this so players would see the patch notes say "the blessing was buffed" and conclude "number go up."
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I know, it's reddit, so grain of salt and all but I don't have the PC version. I don't have the ability to check the regulation.bin files myself and other places I checked seem to more or less agree with these numbers so I can only hope they're accurate. Fextralife has a similar table but they seem to round up to the second decimal for whatever reason.
