The highest difficulty setting in Remnant 2 is appropriately dubbed Apocalypse, and as thoroughly bruised players take to the game's online communities to criticize how punishing is, the folks at developer Gunfire Games have shared some choice words that will sound familiar to long-time Souls-like fans. In so many words: get good.
First, a quick primer for the folks who aren't familiar with max difficulty settings in Remnant games. As a general rule, you are lucky to survive two hits on Apocalypse – maybe three against weaker enemies, but bosses will often one-tap anything but the tankiest builds. Heavy tankiness may earn you the luxury of a two- or three-tap against bosses if you're lucky. You basically play Apocalypse to die, which is why it's optional and frankly not recommended. Some Remnant 2 players aren't thrilled with this unforgiving difficulty curve, but Gunfire is sticking to its guns.
This discussion began in earnest a few days ago after Remnant 2 fixed some unintended interactions that were causing player damage reduction to skyrocket. After the fix, Apocalypse players were back to getting swatted like flies the way god (that is, Gunfire) intended. In response to initial feedback, Gunfire team member Tragic speculated that "people that were used to the full 'invuln' build, or were speccing deep into Fortify, were getting way more DR than they should have and are now taking the damage they should have been taking."
Prompted by a Discord user arguing that the "bug feels much better than the bug fix," Tragic explained that "that's because you probably play on Apoc and used Fortify to tank hits you shouldn't have. Apoc isn't meant to be a free pass to ignore damage."
Heading off damage reduction devotees, they added: "It's called Apocalypse. It's not called 'I get 3 orange slices and a medal for participation.' We will adjust some values if they need to be adjusted." Thus far, these values have seemingly not been deemed in need of adjustments, though Gunfire is working on a bug that's apparently causing damage reduction to display the wrong values in menus, making players think they're tankier than they are.
A now-deleted Reddit post first alerted me to this little zinger, and there is some important context here beyond the bugged display values for damage reduction. Firstly, the exclusive rewards for clearing Apocalypse were previously bugged and missing for some players. In other words, they couldn't even get their orange slices, twisting the knife for the few who endured the brutal mode. And as Remnant 2 finalizes its damage reduction tinkering, there are fair points on both sides regarding build diversity and the usefulness of tanks over glass cannons in a mode where enemies almost always delete you.
In an update posted today, August 7, Tragic affirmed that "players are seeing they are above 80% DR due to the additive display (which should be multiplicative), and thus they feel they have enough total DR. However, behind the scenes, they have less than it shows.
"We've fixed this in our build. We will also be reviewing the DR values across the board to see if some need an increase, but mathematically speaking, DR is working as intended, but the visualization on advanced stats is completely misrepresenting the Damage Reduction you actually have.
"This does NOT mean we won't be making some adjustments so players can get to the damage cap a bit easier," they continue. "Basically, as we review the values, we may find it worth buffing different DR values to allow players to get to the cap in a variety of ways instead of just stacking the A B C D of items."
"All of these adjustments will be in the next patch," it seems, so perhaps the Apocalypse meta will finally simmer down. Maybe tanks will be upgraded from tissue paper to construction paper.
Remnant 2's latest patch is full of good news: unlimited respec, more scrap, a higher trait cap, and more.
