If you fail enough, are encounters auto-resolved?

Hey duders,

Been playing through the game and I'm almost at the end but something's been bothering me a little bit.

I'm playing the game on Hard because I found Medium not-so-fun. Though Hard is a little too hard for me, it's generally more enjoyable.

HOWEVER.

In (at least) two cases, I found that I had been able to "skip" enemy encounters after I had died upwards of 15+ times. Was this a bug? Or is the game designed like this? Have you had this happen to you?

Case 1 was against a group of enemies, one of which was a Handyman. On death #don'tremember I spawned to find the Handyman was just gone! I assumed it was just a bug until...

Case 2, which was against a "boss type" enemy. See spoiler block below.

After failing over and over again I revived to find the boss was dead, and the game was ready for me to continue on my way. I was pretty done with the fight but it was really strange having the decision made for me.

What do y'all think?

Perhaps you did a damage over time to it, and it died like that?

I dunno.. Theoretically that's not impossible, but thinking about BSI and my playthrough I'm not sure what I would have used that causes Damage Over Time. Especially since enemies get health back too when you die. And with these two specific enemies... they had big life bars! Your comment makes me think that maybe the Handyman just jumped off Columbia, lol, but that couldn't happen in Case 2.

handymen fight regular enemies on top of fighting you so it's possible the enemies took care of him while you were respawning. I know that on 1999 mode that boss you refer to respawns with full health when you die but I didn't die enough to find out if it skips the battle.

It would cheapen the difficulty if it did that :(

Why would you die 15 times? I did not even die once on hard and half way though 1999 I have died twice maybe and never in the same encounter.

And maybe its a bug

@geraltitude:

I was finding on hard that I could just take out two or three guys, die, and then repeat the process until everyone was dead. But, for your 'case 2', I found that I couldn't use that tactic anymore. So I died like 10 times, said 'fuck it', and put the difficulty down to normal.

Ahhhh. Ok. Well that might explain Case 1 then! Interesting. I didn't realize they were in-fighting.

@the_laughing_man: Seriously? lol. Thanks for the input duder. I died because I would try to kill an enemy and instead they killed me. Some people just die in games? I died so much in fact I almost never had a dollar to spend on upgrading my powers, which in turn probably led to more death.

Yeah right before I auto-skipped the fight I seriously considered dropping the difficulty down, so I guess I got what I wanted in the end?

Im just baffled that you died so much.

Did you use a trap? or something like an upgraded Murder by Crows, that creates traps from dead enemies?

@geraltitude: I think I encountered the same thing in Case 2.

So I don't really know whether those were bugs in those instances or I just got lucky and did something right without noticing.

@the_laughing_man:lol, aight. Like I said: medium - too easy. Hard - too hard. My aim is pretty awful, that seems to be main issue. Also sometimes I find myself trying to run cover to cover and getting killed in the open, so my basic strategies probably need work too.

@dagbiker: Nah. I just wrote this to the duder above (who can't believe I'm dying so much) but: never had the money to upgrade my powers. That would have been a great power for this fight though.

@ahgunsillyo:Hmmm. I'm not sure how to analyze that.. In my fights with the Boss I was definitely always being hounded by the many, many cronies that were spawning. The "last time" I revived they and their Boss were all gone. Maybe someone can tell us what the normal path for this fight is? Did you say that at one point the Boss disappeared? That was just temporary I guess?

What weapons and vigors are you rocking and upgrading? Are you looting enough? Staying in cover and not charging in?

I got destroyed by Case 2. I was fond of Bronco and the reversal one (forget what it's called). But upgrading those seems to have been the "wrong" choice because that boss battle definitely made me use the Electricity vigor. I eventually beat it, but I lost all my money by then. Half was because I was being stubborn ("Bullshit, any vigor should be viable here") and half was because I kind of "gave up" toward the end ("I'm just gonna rush in and see what happens this time"). After that battle, I just stopped using the Electricity vigor. Because fuck you, I like making people float.

@the_laughing_man: This is off the top of my head as I'm not at home, but basically I've upgraded the Hand Cannon, Pistol, Shotgun, Machine Gun and Carbine. HC and Shotty cause I love em and the others because they seem to always be around. Upgraded the Rocket launcher for damage too.

Now this is going to seem like an obvious error but it's too late in the game for me to fix.. I haven't upgraded any vigors. I just didn't have the money since I was dying so much and weapon upgrades are so much cheaper. I literally have never had more than $700 bucks on me. Usually hover in the 150-450 range. I try to rotate my vigors a lot but I really like Murder of Crows, the Water Puller Arm, Electricity and Throw/Levitate. Possession for machines obviously.

I play the game at a snails pace and loot everything I see (low ammo is rarely a problem). I'll say that I didn't upgrade my shield very much and instead put a lot of points into Health and Vigor. Thinking about it now I'll probably go heavy into shield next playthrough. I think my major issue is I am too slow. By the time I aim and shoot at a guy I've already been shot, my small shield bar is spent, and my health is blasted. I found the AI to have pretty excellent aim on Hard so I only poke out a second at a time. The flamethrower guys, grenade gun guys and handymen kill me a lot.

What are your tips for Weapon/Vigor upgrades and how about Health/Shield/Vigor balance?

FIrst off you spread your money WAY to thin.

I dumped all boosts into Shield at first then Salts then health. Kept the machine gun and carbine and RPG as my main upgrades. Dumped Points into Possion and Devils kiss. Possion letting me toss it out when I needed to run since the baddies will attack who ever you cast it on first. And devils kiss is great when spammed. You dont need to upgrade Crows but tossing them out will buy you time to run off and hide. And dont worry about rotating vigors. If you find something that works for you use it. I never NEVER used levitate. No reason to waste salt and ammo if I can just throw out devils kiss and save on bullets.

fuck case 2 I'm stuck there right now on hard. more on that when I get home

Find the area where the med kits spawn. You can hang around there and the zombie dudes wont bum rush you as much.

@the_laughing_man: Yeaaah. Sounds about right. I knew I should've gone deep on shield but once I started down the health path I couldn't stop. Running away is a good tip too. Too often I stick around and die when I could probably pull off some kind of escape, just doesn't come to mind usually. Cool tips duder, thanks. As much as hard destroyed me I actually really want to try 1999 mode :P.

Im half way 1999 mode without using dollar bill machines. Died only twice. Each death takes 100 silver eagles from me but i stay around 1k all the time

I ended up using all the rift spots resources up. I think what happened to me was that I kept dying to the point where I eventually ran out of ammo and everything else so there was no possible way to win. I should have stopped after 5 deaths and just restarted or something but I kept letting it respawn me. I just couldn't drain the life of her.

I am tempted to record myself doing the Ghost fight on 1999. Course all I have is my iphone.

For what it's worth, the same thing happened to me. I think it might be a bug, i don't know or maybe it's killing a certain number of zombies and she just goes away but for the life of me, I couldn't beat her and she just vanished after I respawned at one point.

@the_laughing_man: Man that's nuts. I doubt that will be my experience. Why can't record? Playing on console I guess?

@gws_anubis:Finally! Someone who knows what I went through :P So far it does seem like a bug instead of a "you've tried hard enough, move on" pass from the game. But I dunno, part of me isn't convinced. The way the game just continued and how the dialogue started up again.. you'd think if it was a bug you might get stuck. Like she'd disappear but you couldn't keep moving. Instead when she disappears you still hit the next event in the script.

@jams: Did you make it through Duder? I was stuck there for so long..

I got totally wrecked by hard and turned my difficulty down. In one particular fight (I doubt you'd remember it, but it's right after you go through your first tear and the founders are fleeing the city by airship) there's this encounter with maybe a dozen Vox, at least 3 of whom have hail fires. I refused to let the game respawn me - I restarted from checkpoint at least a dozen times, and no matter how slick i tried to get, eventually a couple stray shots from the hail fires would get me and I'd be dead.

So, congrats on being great at the game, I guess, but hard was ridiculous.

No, I haven't played since. I couldn't bring myself to lower the difficulty either. Even the game felt bad for me like the crowd in the torture scene in Brave Heart. First the game cheered at my suffering then they just felt bad for me and wanted to ease my suffering but I wouldn't give in.

@geraltitude: I had the same thought. I didn't see the footprints but eventually found my way out and saw the Luteces who kind of just took it from there and I wasn't about to question it haha. So yeah, It was quite the strange issue.

Ya. And I just got the last two achievements for the game.

You have enough money to die 15 times and respawn? Thought it just basically says you suck and makes you go all the way back to a checkpoint once you run out of money to respawn.

The only thing that makes sense is that you delt damage over time to the enemy with every time you respawned.... but sounds like you dismissed that so maybe it is a bug. I beat it on hard and died MANY times on one particular boss. I would of welcomed being able to skip it.

I wondered about this. I failed the final fight like five times and on the sixth or so the whole battle ended after two waves of enemies dropped.

@handlas: Yeah death was a huge reason I couldn't afford many upgrades in the game - but yes, you can die forever. I was afraid I'd go into the negative after I reached 0 but the game mercifully leaves you there. Funny enough I too was ready to skip it but once it actually happened it felt.. dirty?

@gunstarred: See just when I think "must a bug" I read something like this. I bet the game has *some* way it balances fights based on #s of death, right? Or is that too complicated I wonder.. I will say though in your case are you sure it wasn't just that at after your sixth death you only had two waves left to kill? Sorry, I'm not at the end yet and don't know the structure of the fight exactly. Do you restart it each time you die? If it's like the other encounters in the game the enemies don't respawn, so, yeah, maybe there was only 2 waves left?

@veektarius: Actually I *do* remember that fight! The super annoying thing about hailfires in Hard mode is that those enemies only need to see like 1/2 a pixel of your character before firing a perfectly aimed shot, and since they can bounce the hailfire over and around cover it's super hard not to just get fucked, and since they do so much damage it's real easy to end up in a death loop.

I just stuck through that sequence and I remember very clearly it took 3 lives just to kill the last hailfire because I could never even find him before he shot me.

@geraltitude: You have to restart it each time you fail because it involves protecting something. I failed to protect the thing five or so times.

Thought I'd chime in since it seems others are having the same difficulty as I had the first time with the SPOILER fight in Emporia.

I like to state again I have gotton all achievements in the game and would be happy to give tips. My final build was

Vigors

Devil kiss maxed.

Possion maxed.

Return to sender max

Carbine maxed

RPG maxed

Machine gun maxed

Dumped all infusions into Shield first then Salts and what ever was left over went into health.
In 1999 mode I stomped the ghost battle and died twice in the final battle because I put my self between the baddies and the ship core to insure it staying alive.

@the_laughing_man: Spoiler alert dude! Pretty minor but maybe cover it up. I'm just about to finish the game then gonna start on my 1999 run using some of your tips.