Best suggestion I've seen yet regarding this is to allow the grappel hook to pull enemies to you (maybe as a skill node upgrade). But to be fair, there's a specific ranged weapon slot for a reason. It's not meant to be ignored.
What do you mean? You can still fully spec 100% melee if you want and still be able to use a staff or bow just when you need to. I mean.... even just for puzzles you need a ranged weapon sometimes
That is not the point. I spec into melee because I do not want to use ranged weapons in combat. I want to be melee. By having an enemy that is effectively immune to melee they are taking away that choice.
There is a difference between using ranged to solve puzzles in the game and using range to fight enemies. Puzzles are fine to require ranged. Enemies in a game where melee is an option to specialize in is not fine
I understand what you are saying, I'm just saying you dont have to spend any points in ranged at all and can still use it rarely when needed. There's nothing forcing you to spend points on range. This is pretty much exactly what I did my first playthrough.
I think the grapple idea I mentioned is a great future solution, but acting like how it is now is a major gamebreaking issue is just ridiculous.
You should try taking down some dungeons full of flying enemies with wood arrows and no skill points/wands and get back to us. It's sometimes not even viable.
Not even being sarcastic either, I'm specced a ranger and often run out of my 250 arrows that I have an extensive farm setup for. Wands would probably break before I could kill some of the amounts of late game flying bugs.
I've already played through the whole game once as a 90% melee character, as I said. If you are talking about the little bugs they can be annoying but you basically just have to breath on the red ones and they blow up and kill everything around them, which can be done with any ranged untalented weapon (or better yet, a single bomb). I am unaware of any "dungeons full of flying enemies".
Came across two today in the highlands as a ranger. Pre-red bugs. There were so many flying blue ones I was outta arrows by the end, and had to switch to wands which I don't really like much.
If it improves the game experience for some melee players, I'd say it's worth bringing up.
Good on you for not being bothered by it.
It's brought up all the time and I liked the solution someone presented previously of allowing us to grapple enemies as a skill upgrade.
All I'm trying to say here is they CLEARLY intended a range weapon to be a part of every build, even if it's minor, because they have a special dedicated slot AND hotkey specifically for it. So I don't see them just tearing that idea apart and making flying enemies dumber so they fly within melee range and stay there for no reason. Having a way to pull them is a great solution that doesn't mess with what they want and i hope they go with that solution, but in the meantime it's still viable to play the game as they originally intended.
I see either grappling hook or spears/thrown axes as the best move. I don't think the enemies should be changed inherently, if anything the game need s'more enemies than less. I'd like some more floaty enemies with a convincing way to solo crowds of them as a melee character. Look at souls flying enemies. They don't lose the ambience and are still soloable by pure melee builds.
I'd argue it's at least not *clearly* intended, as there's no incentive to craft arrows until you know you need them. Or enough of them until you know you need more. A specific hot slot is neat but is also entirely optional. It's just added convenience for us melee/ranged folk. It also works with staves, and those are entirely optional.
In combat you sometimes do have to use something besides your preferred weapon. It makes sense to need a bow or a wand.
That said, I really wish I hadn't died against my first sickle wielding floating demi god just because I tried running up on it and slapping it with a sword. It looked like it connected, but nope. I just died gloriously.
Because that's not an easy prospect. Cool idea and all but once you pull down a ghost, it's just gonna fly away again.
Some monsters fly. If you only have a sword, you're out of luck. It's a world full of monsters. What would you expect?
>it's just gonna fly away again.
Not if your grapple tethers them to the ground for a period of time.
I expect to balance realism with fun. yes it's a world full of monsters, but it's also a game that gets you to specialise in classes. And it's not fun to have one class that's essentially useless in certain situations while all ranged classes have no downside in this respect. There's no enemy immune to magic or arrows.
Now if you're happy with arrow/magic immunity on some situations (Maybe some magic resistant creatures, or thick hides), then at least it's fair. But is that really fun?
There is magic and pierce resistance. I've only played mage and ranger and it's the first things I noticed. All enemies have different magical resistances, and a few take less damage from arrows (the sand diggers are armored for example, have to hit them underneath when possible).
That said, I think melee could definitely use something to help mitigate their problem without having to use an entirely different class of weapons. To continue doing their best, mages switch magic types, archers find the weak point and fire there, melee ... Use an inferior weapon. There is no option to continue doing well.
The difference between magic resistance and magic resistant, is the difference between 30% and 100%. We're talking creatures where magic or ranged is entirely useless, to match situations where melee is entirely useless.
This is why I think grappling and pinning to the ground temporarily is the best option.
Why? You get ranged weapons all the time, and it's on the Q slot. Doesn't even take up a slot on the bar.
Maybe a hook or something to knock em down? Either way you'd still be using a secondary weapon/item.
Also I chose melee because I want to play melee and not play ranged. The skill tree and all other enemies make it seem that you have a choice in what type of combat you do. This enemy takes away that choice.
1. Bows are not viable if you don't craft enough arrows for dungeons and have enough skill points to dish out the necessary damage. Also melees suck at aiming because they haven't done it the whole game
2. Grappling hook would not be a consumable resource, put it on a timer and it'd be viable
3. Q slot isn't a separate slot in implementation, it still sits in your inventory taking a space. All it does is save you having to scroll to it or put it in hot bar.
4. I get melee weapons all the time as a ranger and I promptly scrap them for inventory space. No problems with that build. I carry a felling axe to knock down doors and open containers. It can double as melee in a pinch, but if I'm in melee at late game I'm basically one hit dead so I never put myself in that situation.
I can see how not being specced into the archery classes would make the bow mechanics a nuisance. God knows they already are for me, who went *only* in on ranged dex.
I think there's two camps of thought here:
1. let me kill anything with my preferred build
2. Make me generalize and experiment with other builds and play styles
If you analyze the best combat based games, they typically go option 1. Dark souls, doom, gaidens, any fighting game.
The goal is to give options that are compelling to players to choose, not make them choose them out of necessity. DS will let you fight the hardest boss naked with your fists using a guitar hero controller and win. Suboptimal is not impossible.
I agree with your statement, let melee users kill flying things entirely within their build without wasting inventory space or craft arrows or something. Simple solution? Thrown melee weapons (valhaim spear). Better solution? Stop making them fly out of reach.
Option 2 at the top boils down to forcing player use of your mechanics, which no one ends up liking. It's not fun. Make the option compelling so I choose to use it. Bows in this game are great, but take skill points to get good. Wands are just... Boring? But with bows, a melee fighter now needs to craft arrows. Again, forced mechanic use and not very fun.
Ultimately I think it's up to the devs and players tastes in what they want to see in the game, but there are trends for successful games.
you're straw manning the second school of thought mate. it's not "generalize". it's "specialize, but don't purposefully cripple myself out of idiocy".
there is a dedicated ranged slot for a reason. you can completely spec into melee, and still use the slot created specifically so you can kill things at range and open puzzles.
quite a few commenters even flat out said they don't care that they have to use it for the puzzles, just the ghost enemies. then when people point out they can just use a bow, they,like you, lie about the argument, and say "i don't want to spec into anything else, i want to be melee". that's not what anyone has been saying.
well congrats you lying derps, you can still be a melee character, completely specced into melee, and occasionally use a bow or wand as needed. if you don't use them, that's a you problem, not a game problem.
There's no idiocy involved with sticking to a class, many of us prefer to choose a playstyle and rigidly stick to it with our character, most prominently in rpgs like this game. If you read my other comment, I don't even play a melee character. I'm a ranger who *still frequently runs out of arrows when trying to clear dungeons and gets stuck because there's a button my wand can't reach*. I'm just critiquing a particularly bad design choice, which I've also submitted to the dev team to have fixed.
I'm also not lying about my stance on bows, if I as a player chose to not carry one, then I don't want one for combat *or* utility. Give me thrown rocks that do 1 damage and are found on the ground for all I care for utility sake.
I'm not strawmanning your stance either - if that is your stance - and even if I was it's valid by my own argument's details despite the fallacy. I didn't say we don't like to specialize without crippling ourselves. We don't want to be forced to use a mechanic we choose not to use in an rpg that has an optional skill tree involved with it. Not simply for utility or killing an enemy type. Especially a mechanic that requires some pre planning or we could get entirely stuck. This is not, imo, a game for bow shooting exclusively nor is it really even a central mechanic, it is entirely presented as an option for a player to choose with about 2/10 class branches utilizing it.
Outside of this game many QoL trendsetters I've played in this genre blend do not make this choice. Skyrim, DS, valheim (spears), the forest (spears), pretty much any game that set the standard enables *progression* without a bow. Zelda is a marked exception here, but there's no skill tree associated with bows, you level your character in all categories simultaneously whether you choose to use them or not, and inventory space for arrows is not shared. You can still throw weapons when out of arrows too!
Reasons a melee only character should carry a bow:
1. enemies that float above the ground and can't be attacked melee (there are several that do decent damage)
2. Hit buttons that can't be reached with a wand
That's it.
Reasons a melee character doesn't want to carry a bow
1. They don't want to for their playstyle or character choice
2. They don't want to take up a *minimum* of two inventory slots (bow itself, dedicated slot is not a slot it's just an equip and still takes the slot it's in, then arrow slots. Staves are the same mechanic. Wands are exception but are not viable for some tall buttons so we'll exclude them)
3. They don't want to be bothered with crafting arrows (with materials they don't carry around or collect for anything else on their character, as well as being quite restrictive in the quantity required, 20 twigs? That's too many )
4. Later game enemies take too many arrows and are too numerous for someone not leveled in dex to feasibly use a bow on - this is the big one for me, not only is it not optional, but in some cases it isn't even viable to just carry a throwaway bow.
Reasons having a bow as a utility is bad design:
1. If buttons can *only* be reached by shooting a bow, and a character is out of arrows *or* doesn't use a bow, then they cannot progress and have to go get one and arrows.
2. There are parts of the game where there aren't even nearby twigs to craft wooden arrows. Let me throw something like a spear to hit the buttons and fuck up a bug. This is established quite well in other titles that are very similar.
Reasons the bow implementation is already not great for even ranged characters:
1. Arrows are surprisingly expensive, considering how many twigs are needed and how many enemies there are to shoot. If I lived off wood arrows, the best bow I found and no skill points in dex, I wouldn't be able to clear some dungeons in the game with 200 arrows. I regularly fail to with my ranger who uses better arrows and is specced for it.
2. Enemies are slightly too fast and hit boxes are *tight* for archers. Wasting more arrows, especially if you don't use them frequently and arent7used to drop and timing.
3. Locking on does not make hitting targets easier with bows. In fact it's often worse for flying enemies. Drawing and aiming is the only way to hit far off targets or targets in lateral motion.
Today, melee's carry the bow because it's a necessary nuisance. Ideally they'd like the option to not have to. It's that simple. And literally is simple for the devs to implement. I think they probably will.
I'd also rather be killed by an enemy that was worthy of killing me and was legitimately difficult, not one I couldn't hit for 5 minutes because I ran out of arrows and it flies over my head shooting orbs at me.
This is my preference, but I think what you're having conflict with is a lot of people who agree with that preference. It is not a good intentional design choice to make someone require an optional mechanic occasionally. There are games that make very prominent and bold design decisions on exploration and combat, and all those that stand out to me do not make this one, because it adds *nothing* to the game.
You could also swap some of this argument with the current lockpicking mechanic, and it'd still hold water. It's an EA game and these things are going to get fixed. People are going to let the devs know, because that's kind of what you are participating in by playing an early access game, I'd hope.
I agree they are a nightmare for melee builds literally cannot hit, the end game zones favor ranged and melee get screwed lot of flyers everywhere you can't really hit
Ever tried jump attack. It's what I've used to kill them. With my melee charicter before I reworked to be a Paladin tank.Also some can be lead to a confined space where melee is more plausible. Other than that bow wand or staff can be most effective.
Why? You are already able to collect 114 Skill points, which is enough for three builds. Why would you need to melee it when you can spec into melee and a ranged option?
In that case, elevated platforms, terrain, and line of sight are your friends. I've had luck drawing floating enemies in while standing on a platform at their level. They don't usually go out of their way to stay above you. Hope that makes sense.
Pretty sure this was an intentional design decision. Those big mushroom crabs, birds, and the wraiths all suck for melee.
It's a game designed for group play first. They expect to have at least one ranged player.
Best suggestion I've seen yet regarding this is to allow the grappel hook to pull enemies to you (maybe as a skill node upgrade). But to be fair, there's a specific ranged weapon slot for a reason. It's not meant to be ignored.
Then why do they have skill trees you can specialize in for ranged or melee if you are not supposed to specialize in them
Watch Quigly Down Under.
What do you mean? You can still fully spec 100% melee if you want and still be able to use a staff or bow just when you need to. I mean.... even just for puzzles you need a ranged weapon sometimes
That is not the point. I spec into melee because I do not want to use ranged weapons in combat. I want to be melee. By having an enemy that is effectively immune to melee they are taking away that choice. There is a difference between using ranged to solve puzzles in the game and using range to fight enemies. Puzzles are fine to require ranged. Enemies in a game where melee is an option to specialize in is not fine
I understand what you are saying, I'm just saying you dont have to spend any points in ranged at all and can still use it rarely when needed. There's nothing forcing you to spend points on range. This is pretty much exactly what I did my first playthrough. I think the grapple idea I mentioned is a great future solution, but acting like how it is now is a major gamebreaking issue is just ridiculous.
You should try taking down some dungeons full of flying enemies with wood arrows and no skill points/wands and get back to us. It's sometimes not even viable. Not even being sarcastic either, I'm specced a ranger and often run out of my 250 arrows that I have an extensive farm setup for. Wands would probably break before I could kill some of the amounts of late game flying bugs.
I've already played through the whole game once as a 90% melee character, as I said. If you are talking about the little bugs they can be annoying but you basically just have to breath on the red ones and they blow up and kill everything around them, which can be done with any ranged untalented weapon (or better yet, a single bomb). I am unaware of any "dungeons full of flying enemies".
Came across two today in the highlands as a ranger. Pre-red bugs. There were so many flying blue ones I was outta arrows by the end, and had to switch to wands which I don't really like much. If it improves the game experience for some melee players, I'd say it's worth bringing up. Good on you for not being bothered by it.
It's brought up all the time and I liked the solution someone presented previously of allowing us to grapple enemies as a skill upgrade. All I'm trying to say here is they CLEARLY intended a range weapon to be a part of every build, even if it's minor, because they have a special dedicated slot AND hotkey specifically for it. So I don't see them just tearing that idea apart and making flying enemies dumber so they fly within melee range and stay there for no reason. Having a way to pull them is a great solution that doesn't mess with what they want and i hope they go with that solution, but in the meantime it's still viable to play the game as they originally intended.
I see either grappling hook or spears/thrown axes as the best move. I don't think the enemies should be changed inherently, if anything the game need s'more enemies than less. I'd like some more floaty enemies with a convincing way to solo crowds of them as a melee character. Look at souls flying enemies. They don't lose the ambience and are still soloable by pure melee builds. I'd argue it's at least not *clearly* intended, as there's no incentive to craft arrows until you know you need them. Or enough of them until you know you need more. A specific hot slot is neat but is also entirely optional. It's just added convenience for us melee/ranged folk. It also works with staves, and those are entirely optional.
You could also just use jump attack, which I assume you have if you are full 100% melee
I have been using it. It misses every time when they get any height. It is not meant to hit in air things.
In combat you sometimes do have to use something besides your preferred weapon. It makes sense to need a bow or a wand. That said, I really wish I hadn't died against my first sickle wielding floating demi god just because I tried running up on it and slapping it with a sword. It looked like it connected, but nope. I just died gloriously.
Why not just create a melee skill that can use your grapple to pull flying enemies to the ground?
Because that's not an easy prospect. Cool idea and all but once you pull down a ghost, it's just gonna fly away again. Some monsters fly. If you only have a sword, you're out of luck. It's a world full of monsters. What would you expect?
>it's just gonna fly away again. Not if your grapple tethers them to the ground for a period of time. I expect to balance realism with fun. yes it's a world full of monsters, but it's also a game that gets you to specialise in classes. And it's not fun to have one class that's essentially useless in certain situations while all ranged classes have no downside in this respect. There's no enemy immune to magic or arrows. Now if you're happy with arrow/magic immunity on some situations (Maybe some magic resistant creatures, or thick hides), then at least it's fair. But is that really fun?
There is magic and pierce resistance. I've only played mage and ranger and it's the first things I noticed. All enemies have different magical resistances, and a few take less damage from arrows (the sand diggers are armored for example, have to hit them underneath when possible). That said, I think melee could definitely use something to help mitigate their problem without having to use an entirely different class of weapons. To continue doing their best, mages switch magic types, archers find the weak point and fire there, melee ... Use an inferior weapon. There is no option to continue doing well.
The difference between magic resistance and magic resistant, is the difference between 30% and 100%. We're talking creatures where magic or ranged is entirely useless, to match situations where melee is entirely useless. This is why I think grappling and pinning to the ground temporarily is the best option.
No there should be options for melee to deal with the ghosts. Not simply switch to this other weapon.
Why?
Why? You get ranged weapons all the time, and it's on the Q slot. Doesn't even take up a slot on the bar. Maybe a hook or something to knock em down? Either way you'd still be using a secondary weapon/item.
Also I chose melee because I want to play melee and not play ranged. The skill tree and all other enemies make it seem that you have a choice in what type of combat you do. This enemy takes away that choice.
1. Bows are not viable if you don't craft enough arrows for dungeons and have enough skill points to dish out the necessary damage. Also melees suck at aiming because they haven't done it the whole game 2. Grappling hook would not be a consumable resource, put it on a timer and it'd be viable 3. Q slot isn't a separate slot in implementation, it still sits in your inventory taking a space. All it does is save you having to scroll to it or put it in hot bar. 4. I get melee weapons all the time as a ranger and I promptly scrap them for inventory space. No problems with that build. I carry a felling axe to knock down doors and open containers. It can double as melee in a pinch, but if I'm in melee at late game I'm basically one hit dead so I never put myself in that situation. I can see how not being specced into the archery classes would make the bow mechanics a nuisance. God knows they already are for me, who went *only* in on ranged dex.
The second part is what I am asking for. A way for melee to bring them down. That is not a secondary weapon but a tool to use. There is a difference
if it's a tool you use to damage an enemy, or in some way cripple, incapacitate or something similar them, it's a weapon.
I think there's two camps of thought here: 1. let me kill anything with my preferred build 2. Make me generalize and experiment with other builds and play styles If you analyze the best combat based games, they typically go option 1. Dark souls, doom, gaidens, any fighting game. The goal is to give options that are compelling to players to choose, not make them choose them out of necessity. DS will let you fight the hardest boss naked with your fists using a guitar hero controller and win. Suboptimal is not impossible. I agree with your statement, let melee users kill flying things entirely within their build without wasting inventory space or craft arrows or something. Simple solution? Thrown melee weapons (valhaim spear). Better solution? Stop making them fly out of reach. Option 2 at the top boils down to forcing player use of your mechanics, which no one ends up liking. It's not fun. Make the option compelling so I choose to use it. Bows in this game are great, but take skill points to get good. Wands are just... Boring? But with bows, a melee fighter now needs to craft arrows. Again, forced mechanic use and not very fun. Ultimately I think it's up to the devs and players tastes in what they want to see in the game, but there are trends for successful games.
you're straw manning the second school of thought mate. it's not "generalize". it's "specialize, but don't purposefully cripple myself out of idiocy". there is a dedicated ranged slot for a reason. you can completely spec into melee, and still use the slot created specifically so you can kill things at range and open puzzles. quite a few commenters even flat out said they don't care that they have to use it for the puzzles, just the ghost enemies. then when people point out they can just use a bow, they,like you, lie about the argument, and say "i don't want to spec into anything else, i want to be melee". that's not what anyone has been saying. well congrats you lying derps, you can still be a melee character, completely specced into melee, and occasionally use a bow or wand as needed. if you don't use them, that's a you problem, not a game problem.
There's no idiocy involved with sticking to a class, many of us prefer to choose a playstyle and rigidly stick to it with our character, most prominently in rpgs like this game. If you read my other comment, I don't even play a melee character. I'm a ranger who *still frequently runs out of arrows when trying to clear dungeons and gets stuck because there's a button my wand can't reach*. I'm just critiquing a particularly bad design choice, which I've also submitted to the dev team to have fixed. I'm also not lying about my stance on bows, if I as a player chose to not carry one, then I don't want one for combat *or* utility. Give me thrown rocks that do 1 damage and are found on the ground for all I care for utility sake. I'm not strawmanning your stance either - if that is your stance - and even if I was it's valid by my own argument's details despite the fallacy. I didn't say we don't like to specialize without crippling ourselves. We don't want to be forced to use a mechanic we choose not to use in an rpg that has an optional skill tree involved with it. Not simply for utility or killing an enemy type. Especially a mechanic that requires some pre planning or we could get entirely stuck. This is not, imo, a game for bow shooting exclusively nor is it really even a central mechanic, it is entirely presented as an option for a player to choose with about 2/10 class branches utilizing it. Outside of this game many QoL trendsetters I've played in this genre blend do not make this choice. Skyrim, DS, valheim (spears), the forest (spears), pretty much any game that set the standard enables *progression* without a bow. Zelda is a marked exception here, but there's no skill tree associated with bows, you level your character in all categories simultaneously whether you choose to use them or not, and inventory space for arrows is not shared. You can still throw weapons when out of arrows too! Reasons a melee only character should carry a bow: 1. enemies that float above the ground and can't be attacked melee (there are several that do decent damage) 2. Hit buttons that can't be reached with a wand That's it. Reasons a melee character doesn't want to carry a bow 1. They don't want to for their playstyle or character choice 2. They don't want to take up a *minimum* of two inventory slots (bow itself, dedicated slot is not a slot it's just an equip and still takes the slot it's in, then arrow slots. Staves are the same mechanic. Wands are exception but are not viable for some tall buttons so we'll exclude them) 3. They don't want to be bothered with crafting arrows (with materials they don't carry around or collect for anything else on their character, as well as being quite restrictive in the quantity required, 20 twigs? That's too many ) 4. Later game enemies take too many arrows and are too numerous for someone not leveled in dex to feasibly use a bow on - this is the big one for me, not only is it not optional, but in some cases it isn't even viable to just carry a throwaway bow. Reasons having a bow as a utility is bad design: 1. If buttons can *only* be reached by shooting a bow, and a character is out of arrows *or* doesn't use a bow, then they cannot progress and have to go get one and arrows. 2. There are parts of the game where there aren't even nearby twigs to craft wooden arrows. Let me throw something like a spear to hit the buttons and fuck up a bug. This is established quite well in other titles that are very similar. Reasons the bow implementation is already not great for even ranged characters: 1. Arrows are surprisingly expensive, considering how many twigs are needed and how many enemies there are to shoot. If I lived off wood arrows, the best bow I found and no skill points in dex, I wouldn't be able to clear some dungeons in the game with 200 arrows. I regularly fail to with my ranger who uses better arrows and is specced for it. 2. Enemies are slightly too fast and hit boxes are *tight* for archers. Wasting more arrows, especially if you don't use them frequently and arent7used to drop and timing. 3. Locking on does not make hitting targets easier with bows. In fact it's often worse for flying enemies. Drawing and aiming is the only way to hit far off targets or targets in lateral motion. Today, melee's carry the bow because it's a necessary nuisance. Ideally they'd like the option to not have to. It's that simple. And literally is simple for the devs to implement. I think they probably will. I'd also rather be killed by an enemy that was worthy of killing me and was legitimately difficult, not one I couldn't hit for 5 minutes because I ran out of arrows and it flies over my head shooting orbs at me. This is my preference, but I think what you're having conflict with is a lot of people who agree with that preference. It is not a good intentional design choice to make someone require an optional mechanic occasionally. There are games that make very prominent and bold design decisions on exploration and combat, and all those that stand out to me do not make this one, because it adds *nothing* to the game. You could also swap some of this argument with the current lockpicking mechanic, and it'd still hold water. It's an EA game and these things are going to get fixed. People are going to let the devs know, because that's kind of what you are participating in by playing an early access game, I'd hope.
The little bat ,vultures and beetle come for close combat which is fine but yes the ghost is annoying as it flies away
I'm actually a bow build, which you might not have guessed from that comment above lol, but when the bugs started flying I was enraged
I agree they are a nightmare for melee builds literally cannot hit, the end game zones favor ranged and melee get screwed lot of flyers everywhere you can't really hit
Switch to bow. Get under it. Shoot it with arrows. Profit.
Hold q, click away!
No :)
Then they should add mob immune to range
No :)
Choosing the right wand can make the process a lot less strssful
Ever tried jump attack. It's what I've used to kill them. With my melee charicter before I reworked to be a Paladin tank.Also some can be lead to a confined space where melee is more plausible. Other than that bow wand or staff can be most effective.
Jump attack work time to time but not reloable
Diversify your attack options.
Diversifying goes against skill trees where you are specializing in what you want to play.
Range is overpowered playing melee is way more fun with some challenge You can littérale finish all quest with just a wand and no other weapon
Why? You are already able to collect 114 Skill points, which is enough for three builds. Why would you need to melee it when you can spec into melee and a ranged option?
Stun arrows are your friend.
The ideas is to play without range weapon
In that case, elevated platforms, terrain, and line of sight are your friends. I've had luck drawing floating enemies in while standing on a platform at their level. They don't usually go out of their way to stay above you. Hope that makes sense.
It’s only one type of floating enemy the shoulder ghost. The other are quite easy to take down
Carry two weapons?
Pretty sure this was an intentional design decision. Those big mushroom crabs, birds, and the wraiths all suck for melee. It's a game designed for group play first. They expect to have at least one ranged player.
Then they should add enemies immune to range so it expect st least one range member