Ah, didn’t realize there was a beta. OK, that’s going to make the game about 247% more enjoyable for me.
No, it’s not. It’s for veterans of this particular game, really. There’s a lot to learn in order to survive this game and retire with a good score. The main difference between normal and the higher difficulties is how fast things get tougher as you progress and how much you get paid for contracts. Normal gives you more breathing room to develop your company but the battles will be just as tough. Nothing is dumbed down in the AI and it does not have any penalties on Normal. I would also not recommend pure ironman until you have at least a few games under your belt.
Also, please bear in mind that the beta is not currently balanced by any means. This is a beta where a large amount of new stuff has just been added and the devs are looking for input from those opting into the beta to help them balance it out for release. So, if you see something that you think is unbalanced, please provide feedback to the devs , who are incredibly responsive, on the Steam forums. If this kind of thing frustrates anyone, then it would probably be best to just set it aside for now and wait until they finish it up.
My Tier 6 preference is Battle Forged.
From the wiki:
“Specialize in heavy armor! Armor damage taken is reduced by a percentage equal to 5% of the total armor value of both body and head armor. The heavier your armor and helmet, the more you benefit.(Applies to current armor value, not the max, so effectiveness reduced along with armor hitpoints.)”
This only works if you took the Brawny perk earlier so that your BB can wear heavier armor.
My exception might be Sergeant for the BB with the highest resolve.
My Tier 5 preference is Footwork. Similarly as above, I choose Rally the Troops for the BB I’m grooming to be Sergeant.
I hope that it will. But careful what you wish for, some of the changes in the beta make the early game more challenging. An example are the ambitions. One of them requires you build your team up to 12 BBs in the first 20 days (though I think in the latest beta they removed time restrictions) which is hard to do given the scarcity of contracts early in the game.
My experience aligns with others’ posts up thread.
I approach this game a bit like I do Darkest Dungeon in that I don’t get too attached to individual BBs. I use the early bunch to farm crowns and loot, and then release BBs that pick up permanent injuries and eventually the early recruits (farmhands, daytalers, etc.) so that I can buy higher level BBs, like sellswords, nobles, etc. who eventually become much more lethal BBs than the common clay.
I chose the ambition to purchase a standard for my crew. The cost is 2,000 crowns. Once I had the necessary crowns I was notified that the standard was ready and it appeared in the inventory (it is so much more than a fancy banner but I won’t spoil the fun).
My question is that once the standard was available, only 1,000 crowns were deducted. Have others seen this? Wonder if this is working as designed?
The 1,000 is pretty clearly as designed - there was another mouse-over somewhere that indicated that. I’d guess the 2,000 crown requirement is to give you a cushion in case your guys want to get paid immediately after you get the Standard?
After looking around a bit this does appear to be working as designed with the intention that your crew won’t be impoverished after completing the ambition. I may have been off on the amount of crowns needed, perhaps it is 2,500 needed and 1,500 deducted.
Thanks! It’s so hard to figure out how valuable some of these perks really are. That definition is a bunch of gobbly gook when I’m tired.
I find new contracts in almost every town , never had problems finding new missions to do, this is with the last beta btw.
I should have clarified. My experience early game is that many of the early contracts are too dangerous for my small fragile team, or the contracts are grayed out as my team does not have high enough renown for the noble house to deal with them.
But if you travel around you can find enough tier one contracts to scrape buy. I find hunting down brigand and bandit bands more lucrative for loot that they drop and combined with low level contracts I get by okay. At least on normal, iron man setting.
Along the way the brothers encounter a dog. Anton the Brave is ordered to feed the hungry mutt. The dog chomps down on the food, and Anton’s hand, and Anton looses a finger as the dog runs away. Permanent -5% to Anton’s melee and range skills.
Look at that dog. Would you feed a snarling beast like that?
Anton bandages his hand and nurses his grudge. “He would make a great mascot my arse!”
“Damn, he really would have fit in.”
Ha. These guys are like the dwarves from Dwarf Fortress. I like it.
The beta is much more balanced as well so you’re really not getting the intended experience. Not to mention what others have said about difficulty level. I’m on my first game, on Normal, about 80-90 days in, and have lost only 4 brothers. I’ve never taken any 3-skull jobs, though, and my toughest battles so far have been against Ancient Legionary. I’m still on Young Orcs and have yet to bump into a Necrosavant so, yeah, my difficulty is still slowly ramping up and it feels about right, as far as my current mercs’ skills and gear goes.
Trick with Necrosavants is you’ve got to stay together no matter what. As tight a circle as possible. You start chasing them and they’ll pick you apart.
The game is not bad at all once you get going… really. I’m no master of strategy and I’m finding things quite relaxing. Don’t be afraid to save your game before a battle as you learn how the enemies work. Play on Normal difficulty and experiment. Make sure student is the first perk you take, and for myself - always grabbing brawny for perk #3 (for everyone) has lowered a lot of frustration with fatigue.
I don’t know if it’s the beta, the difficulty or both, but in this new playthrough things are better indeed.
Yeah, otherwise you’d be screwed. You’d hit 2k, lose all of it and then likely immediately have people desert because you couldn’t pay them. You’d end up having to horde loot so you could sell it without being doomed.
You guys are making it really hard to hold out for 1.0.
I don’t think any game is setup for someone to play on the most unforgiving and punishing settings on their first few attempts. Hard to complain about balance when you crank it up and don’t know what you are doing. Not to say there might not be issues, but that approach makes your view a bit hard to follow.
Games like this and DD are challenging at the ‘normal/default’ difficulties and only encourage you to try it on harder settings once you master that challenge.