So I've been into it up through the 2nd area and even defeated the end
boss as a summon (not on my character.)

I'm not finding the bosses at least any harder than the base game. I
defeated one of the remembrance bosses (those are supposed to be the
hardest.) None of them took me more than 3 tries. Of course I'm using
all the tools at my disposal, summons, the DLC leveling items - though I haven't gone out of my way to get those, just used the ones I came across.

I started doing something with spoilers that someone on one of the
boards recommended, which is to leave them until after you've already
explored an area, and just check that you got everything you want there.
That seems to be working well. It's taking me less time as I'm not
switching back and forth all the time, and feels much better.

I actually have avoided spoilers on the bosses, which is surprising to
me I've managed to do that, and yet still beat them all in under 4
tries. I've allowed myself to look them up if I spend more than 20
tries on them, but that hasn't happened yet. I spent about 20 times on
Milania from the base game, and that was with spoilers from the
beginning, summoning and all the tricks, so I'd say none of the bosses
are as hard as the base game.

Unfortunately that ended in me locking out the majority of NPC quests
rewards though, as you apparently can't complete them once you go in the
end boss' arena. Which for some reason they put in the 2nd map area
(there's at least 2 more) So I'd look up NPC quests, because as always, Fromsoft's quests are cryptic and confusing and easy to get locked out
of rewards. There aren't a lot of those though.

The mobs between bosses are another matter, they're large numbers
compared to the base game, and are much more aggressive and hit very
hard. Really they're probably not much if at all worse than the end
game areas of Farum/Haligtree though. Be careful, and prepared. Also a
shield with a buff or greatshield and lots of endurance (35-40) helps a
whole lot, as once you separate mobs you can just bounce all or most of
one's attacks and poke or guard counter them. I'm still suffering along
with about 25 endurance, and I manage, and I'm working on increasing it,
but I'm sure I'd be doing better if I had a lot more.

So you ask, where did all this difficulty complaints come from?

Apparently there's a good number of people who have been using a single character and are playing on NG+++ or higher, which increases the
difficulty by somewhere between 1.2 to 1.5 times for each. A lot of
people are also as usual refusing to use the tools given them, no
summons, and not using the DLC leveling items sometimes in addition to
playing on NG+++ or higher.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
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