I know there are folks out there playing on Nightmare and Insane. I glean little bits of info from them here and there in chat.
I would like to see some recommendations, best practice son how to survive in Nightmare and/or Insane.
So please indicate what difficulty and what area of the game you are offering advice for and as much advice as you feel you would like to share.
IE
Nightmare/Adventurer - Early game advice:
1. Search all the towns looking for:
a. Any uniques - drown them and take their stuff
b. Any ranged damage Charms (wands from Anglowen, totems from Thalore Town)
c. An undead belt (use in Nur and Sandworm) this is better than water breathing
d. Any cheap +HP gear
2. Clear levels 1/2 of all the T1 dungeons before killing the bosses
3. Enter old forest at about level 12
4. Enter lake Nur at level 15 and immediately leave, come back at level 17
5. Enter the fortress at level 18 and immediately leave, come back at level 20
6. Ensure you have some type of track via charm or talent
(Track is actually the best is scales dramatically)
7. Take full advantage of toggling your points class/generic, it does not take a round to redistribute your points.
Nightmare/Adventurer - Mid game advice:
1. Skip the dark vault in the east, it will kill you horribly
Well, I won on nightmare with a (yeek) doomed and my current (ghoul) berserker managed to get to the east and back on nightmare and is still alive, so I guess I could give some advice... Side note, I do not follow any of the tips you mentioned except for the tip not to visit the dark vault.
So, tips:
1) Pick a good class that you've won on normal with before and are very comfortable with.
2) Use your items, infusions and "become better for a short time" talents (luck of the little folk, grace of the eternals, blinding speed, etc) as often as possible.
3) Get your 5 infusion slots as soon as possible.
4) You can not outheal the damage enemies deal with infusions alone anymore. Unless you have fungus or some other trees that synergize with it, 1 regeneration/healing infusion is actually usually optimal (depending on your class), this is because (again, unless you have specific talents) healing is best done outside combat (or using solely talents) and as such infusions/runes that let you get to a safe spot (movement/controlled phasedoor/wild) or fight longer without having to heal (heroism/shielding/wild) are better. If you do get 2 sources of healing from infusions, 1 regeneration + 1 healing is better than 2 regeneration.
5) Teleportation is awesome but don't rely on it to get to a safe location when you have little health. It's best use it to postpone all difficult fights (by teleporting away instantly while still at full health) until everything else in the map is dead, after which point you can use the tactic "deal damage -> teleport away -> heal -> repeat" without fear. Difficult fights are things like notoriously difficult bosses, groups of horros, (elite) worms that walk, (elite) dread(masters) and general out of depth (elite) enemies.
6) Elites are way more dangerous on nightmare. Usually on nightmare the normal/white enemies are no problem either (except for the first 5 levels or so) and you can easily prepare for the bosses, but the random elites are extremely dangerous and should be handled with caution.
7) Heroism chaining is invaluable in the east. Keep very close track of your health.
I've won on Nightmare/Roguelike with a race that no one had cleared(well, no one on the vaults anyways) Nightmare/any lives setting, before. (Albiet, someone cleared one right after I did.)
So that's probably good enough to give some tips for Nightmare/Roguelike.
My general thought is "If you need generalized tips for Nightmare, you should keep playing Normal.".
Having said that, there are some things I definitely noticed for specifics, that aren't just general "Play safer/better". (Disclaimer, 1.05's scaling changes should make some parts of this a little less accurate, but it still should be good advice.)
A: Toss your standard dungeon order for Normal out a window.
Scintillating Caves is generally one of the most dangerous dungeons...On Normal. On Nightmare, Heart of the Gloom is incredibly dangerous-Withering Thing is very, very capable of killing you. Kor'pul's Shade can freeze you into one-shots and is very dangerous as such. And Rhaloren Camp can produce L5 Earthen Missiles casters that are essentially randomly placed Shades, for how dangerous they are-albiet, somewhat less reliable to kill you, since Earthen Missiles has travel time, but too dangerous nonetheless.
Trollmire and Norgos still make good first dungeons, though, but go Scint third and decide which one of those poisons you can tolerate the most.
Tier 2s are similar; Old Forest is arguably easier than some of the Tier 1s, Sandworm Queen is now much more dangerous to highly prolonged Blind that does even more damage(some one-shot risk is present there now), and Daikara... Doesn't change as much as some of the others. (Nur's still incredibly lethal, and Weirdling disproportionately boosts due to his general game of constantly statusing you-all his durations go up. Maze isn't too different, higher challenge aside.)
B: Scout more.
I don't care how much you scouted on Normal, scout more than that. Paranoid scouting gets you through Nightmare/Roguelike, more than anything else. It's not so much that you can round the corner and get one-shotted, it's knowing that and how to stop it. You can prevent horrible deaths so often if you know what's coming.
C: Have one-shot mitigation of some kind.
Heroism's the most popular. Personally, I ran a Ghoul, so that was out. Fortunately, I ran an Archmage, so I had Aegis-Shielding+good Runes is enough for this, on Nightmare(and probably on Insane). Regardless, even normal Shielding should be able to get by on Nightmare, with extreme care(the values on Heroism only cap out a few hundred more than Shielding; Heroism's better, but assuming you're playing an undead, Shielding should get by.).
You will get into situations where enemies can burst four digit damage by the end. Don't rely on concrete durability, at all.
D: Point shuffling is spectacularly important, short-term.
On Normal, there's not really much of a point to this. You don't need to, say, make sure you have valid status options for every boss, or such.
On Nightmare, though, it's incredibly hard to make a build that reliably survives certain bosses without having certain status... that you may not want to keep throughout, or may not want to have build up early in the game.
You don't have to constantly shuffle points every attack-I didn't, that's mind-numbingly tedious for me, and the payoff is miserably low as compared to shuffling a few times per dungeon, maybe more than that on very hard boss fights. But keeping points to shuffle among your specifically less used options, like unusual statuses or rarely used but strong support abilities(Metaflow!) is extremely useful.
Oddly, I didn't really do it much late in the game. I did for the final fight, but that's special. And that's with Archmage, which gets the most out of point shuffling anyways, likely.
Lesser tips:
-Any flat rate defense is less valuable. This is probably obvious, but it's good to keep in mind that your Armor isn't doing nearly as much.
-Resistances are worse than usual too. Blame L8 Skirmisher. (I think this might actually not have as much effect, now, which is nice.) HP is the best defensive stat on Nightmare, probably.
-Rely on status less. I'm not sure how obvious this is; Saves are obviously higher because enemy stats are. But unless you can achieve 90+ powers, status just isn't landing every time, on most things that matter in High Peak, and it can be very hard to get status to stick reliably in general, all throughout the game. It still works and is worth using, but plan for it not hitting.
-Buy tons of items for short term. +life is good for many builds; I personally was running a Ghoul Archmage and needed Essence of Speed nearly instantly, so I went for +mana items. It helps insanely to have a build plan for your storeboughts.
SageAcrin,
Normal, at least for me is pretty easy now. However, I cannot seem to bridge the gap into Nightmare. I am not meticulous enough to play a single life game for 50 hours without making a mistake so I play adventurer.
I have made it to the east once on Nighmare but it has Ben awhile since I have been back
So, looking for what I am missing in my play style/approach. I am sure there are others finding the transition difficult
Thanks for the feedback, all very valuable and yes, unless I am playing a Necro, I leave gloom until after some of the T2 dungeons.
T1 Zone order: Trollmire/Norgos, then the other of those 2, Heart of Gloom (only if it's alt...if it's normal, I don't do it...at all, ever, unless I'm playing an archmage or summoner), Korpul (only do this if you have a physical infusion and a source of healing to remove freeze and heal back up), Scintillating caves, Rhaloren (make sure to physical infusion the bleed from earthen missiles, it adds up quickly).
If you don't have an escape option before going to T2 dungeons (preferrably a movement infusion), look in every shop and buy one ASAP.
T2 Zone order: Old forest, Maze (if it's alt maze and you're a caster, the horned horror can be scary, so delaying this is valid too), Sandworm lair (make sure to open ALL the chests, hope to get lucky with an early RNG god-drop), Merchant quest, Hidden compound, Ruined Dungeon, Daikara, Golem Graveyard, Halfling ruins, Temporal rift, Dreadfell. Fit tempest peak in whenever you have good lightning/stun resists (I usually aim for 50-60% lightning resist on gear swap, although a magical infusion for hurricane/stun immunity makes it easier) SKIP: Elven ruins, spellblaze, melinda's crypt, Celia
You aren't compelled to do everything everywhere...if you find a fight you have trouble with (even if others don't), skip it. Minimizing risks keeps you alive.
General tips:
Escape options win games. Infusions/Runes have great escape options. Therefore, infusions win games. Get infusion slots at 10 and 20 unless you have an AMAZING talent tree (examples: wildfire, bone, bloodthirst, etc.). I usually run Physical wild, Mental wild, Shield, Regen/heal, Movement infusion. A teleport rune would also be good, or a 2nd movement infusion.
Escape early. Only take on difficult fights if you have a clear escape route. If you're starting to run low on options, don't try to finish the enemy off unless it will only take 1 turn, just run and rest up. If you think you have even a 1% chance of dying (difficult rares, elites, etc.), DON'T FIGHT. You'll have probably 50-100 of these scenarios in a run, odds are one of them you get RNG screwed and die. Escape before the fight starts (movement infusion, teleport, etc). Try and clear the rest of the zone first.
Items with escape/control options are invaluable. Items can not fail due to confusion and can not be put on cd from stun, so make excellent delay/escape options. Got stunned/confused/disabled? Wrap of stone lets you wait it out. Torque of psychoportation gives you a slightly less reliable teleport (no minimum range). Wanderer's rest gives you a controlled jump. Obviously, there are more. Sidenote, anything that's instant cast can't fail from confusion either.
Some people scout constantly on nightmare, while I don't think it's necessary (definitely for insane though). I do recommend track for difficult zones (dreadfell, ruined dungeon, and pretty much the entire east).
If you really want to be cheesy...dig. Dig zig-zag tunnels that force one square of vision at a time, to filter enemies in. Dig escape routes from those zig-zag tunnels. Dig as much as you feel comfortable doing (or until you get bored), dig is the single most broken skill in the game (and possibly the most boring).
If I think of more later, I'll come back and repost.
Keep very close track of your health.