During beta, it felt like there were times the game was way too easy, but now it feels like a complete 180 happened and the game can get unreasonably hard?

Example: I really wanted the Ruinous Robes for one of my wolves and it cost 30,000 pebbles, which sent me back down to around 5000. It felt a bit defeating because I haven't bought much of anything with pebbles, because I am having a really hard time getting my paws on them.

However, I am not sure if that is just me, because when beta was happening I was off from school and had a lot more time to play. So I am not sure if I am struggling this much because the difficulty was actually ramped up or if it is because I can not dedicate as much time to it as I did back then.

I kinda just want to know how the rest of y'all are doing. Has the game gotten harder for you too, and do you think this is the right level of difficulty?

I'm pretty content with the difficulty after they added in the Companions to be useable at level 1, instead of all the way out at 3. It's really helpful to have a four character team (2 Wolves, 2 Companions) with just the starting wolves and a couple low cost companions off the mole market.

As for pebbles being difficult to grind for, have you been selling items from your inventory? I often forget to do this, haha. If you're working at the campaign, you get a lot of extra items from drops that don't have much use, especially in the trinkets section. If you sell swathes of those off, it might help out with your pebble income!

I do agree it can take a lot of grinding for that to add up, especially if you don't have time to hammer the system or grind up wolves to level 10 for reliable encounter clearing. Keep in mind that in campaign, once a battle starts, you can refresh and it skips the animations. Win/loss is rolled at the beginning of an encounter, so a win will still count so long as you're strong enough to have beaten the encounter.

They lowered the pebbles you can get from items and then made the drop rate lower for higher value ones. Honestly i prefer it to pebbles being basically worthless but it is annoying when you want a specific item from the mole market.

Also beta was more hard in other ways, especially when starting out if you didnt twig you could restart campaigns for moonwater it was almost impossible to keep stamina up.

I admit I didn't get into the beta, but I'm actually quite impressed at how good the game economy and difficulty seems to be balanced outside the gate here now that companions are usable immediately

You have to work at things a bit, but between the activities bar with the rewards for things one would probably do anyway and vendor selling of drops (and ash from cooking: it won't make you much, but it's there!) I'm finding Lorwolf much more friendly in the currency department than any other sim I've been on in the last five years or so.

It's somewhat grindy? But feels far less grindy than FR and the site is playable without premium currency, unlike my experiences with Wolvden and Lioden.

I also wasn't here before EA, but I'm feeling very similar to Cardixa myself, yeah. It feels very engaging but still a good spread of expensive things to work towards. I've been a big fan of FR and CS for years, but it doesn't really feel like you do anything on those sites besides just buy and hatch creatures and wait. FR's fairgrounds isn't really useful except for one game that isn't interesting after awhile (plus the limits per day of currency earned that way), so comparatively I'm really enjoy all that I can do on this site, and that it all feeds into itself and every other activity nicely. I am just excited for more apparel, recipes, genes, and overall more content to come online :D (and of course more forum features but that's unrelated to the thread) I definitely think there's something to be said though for having played a version that was easier, and whether or not that is better. Like is it good to have a faster-paced petsim, and what are the downsides?

@lord @sim @Cardixa @Dracowolfie

After reading your points I understand where you are coming from. Sim mentioned that they lowed the amount of times high value items drop, so I think I am adjusting to that change. Also Lord and Cardixa mentioned the difficulty being pretty good once the Companions were useable at level 1, which I can completely agree with. After reflecting a bit and thinking back to issues with the beta economy, I agree with y'all now. Personally I think beta version got boring and the abundance of pebbles was a big reason why.

I think I was just grouchy last night that the robe item costed almost all of my pebbles lol

Anyway thank you for your responses

Ay and that's completely valid :D and I think it's still great to share all these feelings; you care and want the game to be its best and discussion around that is great! I wish I was around for earlier testing so that I could be more informed in what I say.