Any souls-like, true to their salt, will make the player’s lives a living nightmare with its challenging design. Lords of the Fallen fits the mold in every way. The difficulty is brutal, and even the lowliest of enemies will make quick work of you if you are unprepared.
Some players report a huge difficulty spike when facing earlier enemies. They are worried about whether Lords of the Fallen have implemented the RPG mechanic of enemy scaling with your level. We are here to put these worries to rest and get a definite answer.
In a nutshell, enemies DO NOT scale with your character’s or your weapon’s level in Lords of the Fallen. Lets find out more in this detailed guide.
Enemy Difficulty Scaling in Lords of the Fallen
Some open-world RPGs try to keep things interesting by employing a level-scaling mechanic for their enemies. This means that as you level up your character or your weapon, the enemies will also scale off your levels thus increasing their HP and damage output to maintain an artificial challenge.
Souls-like do not, in general, use this method of difficulty, and it’s the same case in Lords of the Fallen. Enemies only get harder as you move to the later stages of the game.
If you revisit previous levels with an upgraded character, you will easily kill (even one-shot) those enemies. Enemies have a fixed level/stat depending on the zone they are in.
As with any souls-like, you are expected to be at a certain level when you reach subsequent stages/zones. If you are not, then you will face more challenges when dealing with enemies cause your damage output won’t be high enough to tackle their boosted stats.
Level Scaling Myth
The level-scaling concern in the community stems from two reasons.
- The same enemy in the earlier stage is harder to kill in the later stage.
Players feel that with their upgraded levels they could easily put them down but since these enemies are faced in the latter stages they do get a difficulty bump. The scaling is only zone-based and not level-based.
- The other reason is this statement from the recent patch note:
“Adjusted the region scalers of the enemies behind the frozen door to better match the player’s level.”
Lords of the Fallen Patch Note v1.1.214
Players see enemies are getting boosted “scalers” and equate it to level-scaling. In fact, this patch suggests scaling in line with the expected level you should be at in that particular zone, not overall level scaling.
The enemies, in this instance, were too squishy compared to the rest of the enemies at this point hence the developers are just ironing out the difficulty.
Another worry I see floating in the community is the sharp increase in difficulty in later zones. This kind of a deal is always there in a souls-like, you just have to either visit other areas that are on par with your level or upgrade your character to even the odds.
Additionally, NG+ will boost enemy stats by a huge number, but that’s part of the experience. NG+ is designed to be more challenging, but even then, it’s not level-scaling.
I have tried to address all the concerns and myths around level scaling in Lords of the Fallen. Just keep in mind that if you can’t defeat an enemy or having trouble in a zone, upgrade your character and equipment to meet the desired level. Good Luck!