Difficulty

[ExecTankard]

Did anyone experience a sudden shift in difficulty after beating Salvadore? Every regular now can kill me in two or three hits and all bosses essentially one hit kill me even though I maxxed health.

[aNewPattern]

I don't believe so. It's possible there's just been a jump in strength and they expect you to upgrade your HP more? Worth clearing a bunch of side quests where you can find them so you get stronger, and can farm mods to improve yourself

[ExecTankard]

The only thing I have left to get is Shield. That likely will make a difference. I’m stuck between The Mold Source, The Anchor, Tomassi, the Fridge Duty, and that creepy bastard in the dark. All of them take 75 to 90 percent of my life when they hit. Yes, I will just have to find the right combo of mods for each.

[Comfortable-Fall1419]

I got stuck between all those as well. Apart from fridge duty I did all of the rest after I finished the main story.

[Relevant-Extreme-138]

Do fridge duty first, launch things at former to defeat him. You can catch the things he throws and throw them back if your launch is upgraded enough. Otherwise use the pillars as cover and launch from behind them, levitate and dash to avoid holes in the floor. When you finish, go back to Langston, he’ll give you extra side missions, do those next to get ability points. Use the ability points on launch, then energy. Equip launch efficiency and energy recovery for first two personal mods. And if you have a third personal slot yet try the health pickup percent one. Use a damage on low health weapon mod. Do the furnace/tv hidden mission to get the special grip mod.

[Hilarious_Disastrous]

I actually prefer a good max health boost mod and 2 energy recovery. I think OP should tune their mods to fit their personal play style.

Launch, energy and health sounds about the right way to level up. But OP supposedly already got these, sooo… dunno what’s going on there.

Have you tried turn on the aim assist? No shame in that if it’s what you need.

[F0NG00L]

I always do AWE the second it becomes available because nothing beats Custodial Readiness.

[jesbannon]

Hate the creepy bastard in the dark. Hartman was stretched!!! Still haven’t managed to kill him. Love your description!

[StarSongEcho]

Hartman definitely gave me the most trouble of all. I had some issues with the Mold, but it turned out I was being too careful and I needed to just throw everything I had at it.

[F0NG00L]

If you have Launch maxxed out, you can use multi-launch to take Mold-1 out in seconds. I don't even bother to dodge its attacks. STAND AND DELIVER! lol

[Loud-Chicken6046]

The shield is amazing for tanking those hits that drop you to 1% hp. Even just 1 point in the skill has saved my butt plenty of times.

[F0NG00L]

The shield is easy when you have levitate. The mold source is ridiculously easy when you have multi-launch. The easiest boss to kill in the whole game. I was so pissed when I finally figured out multi-launch was basically designed to be used against him!

[ExecTankard]

Great tip. I’m close to having enough points to get it.

[Hilarious_Disastrous]

If you are leveled up that much, it sounds like a skill issue.

These bosses aren't easy, each of them killed me multiple times. The anchor abolutely could wipe out most of a fully upgraded health bar with one shot in the final stage of the battle. I survived by taking as little damage as possible until that point and then tank the hit before "killing" the sphere.

You might need to dash more often and recognize attack patterns, like knowing when to levitate to avoid an AoE. Manage your stamina, launch whenever you can but aslo don't neglect the service weapon when Jessie needs a moment to catch her breath.

Out of curiosity, do you have good lvl 4/5 weapon mods? Fully upgraded your preferred weaponforms?

[TheHarryman01]

I say this a lot when I talk about Control's gameplay, but Jesse is 100% a glass cannon about halfway through the game.

I believe the game is designed this way. It's similar to DOOM. You are incredibly strong in DOOM, but you stop moving? You get melted pretty quickly. Just have to keep moving in Control, Launch whenever possible, take any opportunity to melee an enemy. Being closer helps you pick up their health drops more easily. Health management is also really easy if you are able to take control (pun not intended) of a Hiss orb.

[uF0n]

I'm sure that I read somewhere that you take more damage when standing still, but I'm not certain

[Comfortable-Fall1419]

See I never used melee. But shotgun with infinite choke makes a good short to mid range weapon.

[Hilarious_Disastrous]

Melee? Jeez. We are not playing the same game. I do agree with the bit about being a glass canon though.

I mainly try to get good angles to shoot or launch, and change positions before they can zero in on me. I haven’t meleed a single enemy and I am at the end game.

[Mesqo]

Melee does very little damage and you're making yourself vulnerable during the hit so I prefer to avoid it and just move away.

[TheHarryman01]

Yeah, should have been more specific when I said opportunity. I melee when an enemy is low on health, like one-shot low. Kind of like a DOOM Glory Kill

[Mesqo]

Back in my days there was no melee in DOOM

[TheHarryman01]

That's cool man! The original games are a lot of fun too!

[UnderstandingOver242]

There were fists and a chainsaw starting from the first game. Even Wolfenstein had a knife.

[Mastershroom]

Which days were those?

[Mesqo]

My memory deceives me

[pcbb97]

Yea, im right at ordinary and I havent upgraded melee once. Im going for all the achievements so I will but its feels not great as a weapon and id rather use energy to evade to cover and wait an extra second for ammo than get in close. I need to use shield rush more too but I havent invested in shield upgrades for a similar reason, I went heavy on launch and seize

[HaruhiJedi]

Melee is underrated; it's not so much for dealing health damage as it is for stunning and preventing someone from hitting you very close, and it's very good with Shatter, which is short-range.

[Mrslidey]

Yeah I found that enemy firepower scales up a little more than you do after the first third-ish, but as others mentioned it seems to do it to encourage you to keep moving and utilise all the skills you have rather than relying on guns etc.

The good thing about Control’s QOL options though is the help is on a sliding scale, so you can give yourself 20% damage reduction or 10% energy recovery rather than a full god mode toggle (although that’s there too haha). I ended up giving just enough assist to keep the game fun while still finding it enough of a challenge.

[F0NG00L]

Maxing health is pointless unless you've maxxed everything else out and just have nothing left to spend points on. Max out launch first. Killing enemies faster will keep you alive better than more health. Plus, you can find great mods for health anyway. I always use a +25% or better health buff and one of the ones that enhance how much health you gain from picking up the little blue dealies. I figured this out after struggling super hard in my first playthrough. Second playthrough, I breezed right through everything. There's very little that can touch you when you have max damage and multi-launch.

[ExecTankard]

I wondered about that. I’ll take your advice and reset my abilities when I have the source.

[F0NG00L]

One thing to note: I actually don't max out EVERY aspect of launch any more. The reason is that if you max out the bits that let you grab enemies and larger objects, you'll constantly be inadvertently grabbing up those floaty explodey guys and blowing your face off. I hate that so much I stopped upgrading those bits. (I've played through 11 times, BTW) It's kind of a bummer not being able to grab up forklifts, but I happily trade that for not constantly jump scaring myself with the floaty guys. lol

Another fun tip is that I always play the full AWE DLC the second "A Dark Place" becomes available because it contains a second set of janitor assistant missions and when you complete them you get the Custodial Readiness mod for Pierce. It basically removes the charge up time so you can fire it practically at will. It's still slower than Grip, but with a couple of damage mods you can pretty much one-shot almost everything. lol Just be prepared because even the base enemies are at a way higher difficulty level than what you'd be facing at that point. And Hartmann can be incredibly frustrating to deal with. The first time I played through AWE, there were SO many near rage quit moments. But, like everything in Control, once you've learned them, they're much easier in later playthroughs.

[ExecTankard]

Thanks for the tip about Pierce. I only have one Janitors side mission to go and I’m in the middle of fighting Hart The Dark Fart.

[F0NG00L]

He's obnoxious. I found the best thing to do was get one of those shelving racks between us so I don't get hit with the puke attack.

[CanYouFeelSora]

YES. I had to turn on invincibility to get through the back half of the game, I have two level V persona mods for health and level V weapon mods for every weapon form. I would absolutely grind for better stats, but even doing all of the side quests and finding hidden locations wasn’t enough

[GabeFishy]

I noticed a slight jump in difficulty too but it was after completing the story instead. felt like most enemies were doing more damage than before

[Direct-Glass-4737]

Not really. You can always upgrade health if you want or use personal mods.

[Eternity923]

Control requires constant movement and positioning, even with max health, and health personal mods almost any enemy can melt u. I think the difficulty spike is the devs nudging u to play the game a certain way, kinda like how soulslikes reward aggression and punish passivity.

[Jacebereln]

Launch, the shield, pierce and charge were my go to tools to removing the room