Most low level enemies drop weapons that only deal between 3 - 11 damage, which are basically useless against anything higher than level 5. I found some higher level weapons in a shop that dealt 30 - 40 damage and found they made combat much more fun.

As I progressed however, I noticed that enemy levels in a location were distributed:

• 4-5 low level
• 10-15 med level
• 1-5 high level

So there is still a problem with bullet sponges. I keep an overpowered shotgun (med damage, high rate of fire, explosions on crit) with me and just bum rush the high level enemies with that. Otherwise you’d be shooting them all day with your 40 damage rifle.

As you go on, those high level enemies drop weapons that do more damage, so there is progression…. But you also just encounter higher level enemies with more health so the problem continues.

I see that there are already combat rebalance mods on nexus, the kind I’ve used on Fallout games in the past, and I’ll probably install one of those when I decide to start a new play through. (Which, I definitely will. I’m enjoying the game a lot overall despite there being some tedious aspects)