Insane difficulty= melee classes worthless?

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I started a party on insane(not hof, just insane) difficulty and got my butt absolutely handed to me in melee by anything that could hit me.

It didn't matter whether it was my cleric or fighter, both who had respectable acs for low level characters, just about any monster out there would hit me more than half the time. And when the monsters hits landed, they hit HARD. Insane must be double damage as well as increased chance for the monsters to hit, because orcs on the way to shaengarne were hitting me for as much as 30 damage non crit per hit. This would be ok if they hit as rarely as they do on normal, but when they are also hitting more frequently its almost impossible for my tanks to hold the front lines.


So I ask you, is there any solution to this? I can only imagine it will get worse if I gutted it out with the frequent reloads, because the monsters will only get tougher and my ac can only get so high without cheesing it up with a deep gnome monk or something.

I guess i'll just have to make a deep gnome monk and cheese it up by resting everytime his mirror image isn't up *sigh*.

 

The easiest way is just turning the difficulty down.

Enemy monsters get +9 to hit on insane, so you'll have to use your brains some more. Barkskin and ghost armor add +5 to defense each, so it should be doable.

 

Well yeah, but I've beat this game on normal before and found it rather easy for the most part.

I know I could easily do this as well with a bunch of casters, but well I kind of want to make a roleplayish party and would like a fighter or two. Maybe even try a barbarian, who knows.

I guess i'll just have to be very careful and tactical in order to be victorious with fighters in my warband on insane.

Anyways i'm kind of rambling now. I think i'll give this another go with a freshly created party and see how it goes.

 

I played through the game on insane (not in HoF though), and while it's hard (especially at the beginning) it really forces you to use tactics and spells to win, rather than hacking through anything that moves. I admit I also had to turn down the difficulty back to normal for a few fights, as unlike the first game hard difficulty levels do not scale the experience gained by your party.

 

Generally the best results are achieved by spellsword characters, who end up with the best stats when buffed. You can browse the Screenshot of the Week archive (here) to find some examples. The kind of pwnage I wrought with a paladin/wizard was sheer delight.