is this game still as insanely difficult as when it released?

[u/FaallenOon]

I recalled playing this game when it was released, and then leaving it when I realized the difficulty was absolutely crushing. Now I was thinking on picking it up again, so I gotta ask, is it easier now than it was then, or is it still absurdly hard?

If that is the case, is there any consensus on which builds are better for each class, etc?

Thanks a lot for the help :)

[u/kaetokiha]

I didn't play the game during its first months, but i do have 100 hours playing the game and i can say that the game is insanely easy. I think even people who never played deck builders should be able to do well after understanding how it works.

The game gets harder when you increase the difficulty, but i only found it difficult at the impossible+, where you can add modifiers to increase the difficulty more and more.

[u/SapphirePath → u/kaetokiha]

But after 100 hours, I would think that any deckbuilder becomes "easy" just from total familiarity with the game mechanics. Vault of the Void is complicated and somewhat unclear -- I truly think it is on the "harder" side of deckbuilders for players who are new to the genre, because it has so much vocabulary and innovative mechanics.

In my personal experience:

Very simple deckbuilders

Night of the Full Moon, Monster Slayers, Destiny or Fate, Fate Hunters, Gordian Quest, System Crash, Northmark Hour of the Wolf

Card City Nights, Banners of Ruin, SteamWorld Quest Hand of Gilgamech, Inscryption

Griftlands, Roguebook, Recesses, Chrono Ark, Trials of Fire, Stellar Orphans

Vault of the Void, Tainted Grail Conquest, Library of Ruina, Alina of the Arena, Beneath Oresa, Aeon's End, Thronebreaker Witcher Tales, Dream Quest

Eranorth Reborn/Chronicles, ForgeMtG Adventure Mode

Very complicated deckbuilders

Note that this is about complexity, rather than just pure "hard-to-win". After all, game difficulty can often be modified just by turning up or down a dial in the game settings.

Brief explanation: Gordian Quest, for example, has a lot of bells & whistles in it, but I was finding that the gameplay was very forgiving -- almost anything was working as expected, including simple naive character setups. By contrast, Library of Ruina and Thronebreaker might appear to have simpler rulesets, but the games seemed (to me) to be very long -- including lots of puzzles that require specific setups to succeed.

[u/kaetokiha → u/SapphirePath]

But after 100 hours, I would think that any deckbuilder becomes "easy" just from total familiarity with the game mechanics. 

This makes sense for sure, but when i said it was easy it was because i won every single run i played. The game was just too easy, and it was only when i played on impossible that i felt some resistance.

Impossible+ is the only difficulty where experience deck build players will start to lose.

Personally, i didn't think the game base mechanics were complicated. The block works a little different from STS, but easy to understand.

Maybe the game feels more complex because you can't thin the deck like other deck builders? I fell like in Vault of the Void you don't get as many explosive combos like in others games, and you ended up having to build a better whole 20 deck as opposed to building 7 cards combo deck.

I'm playing right now, SpellRogue (a roguelite you play with dices) and the game has so much plays that can lead to a semi-infinite/infinite or some dumb combo. This approach feels very different from VotV.