Whoa, that’s a nice score. 14 and a 0 so far for me.
There is definitely advantages to be had to micro-managing some of the world map movement. Or perhaps better said as “disadvantages to be missed”. I’ve already had a few moments where I feel like I’ve been running away from Game Over.
Does the battle difficulty scale over time? The longest campaign I lasted so far was 25 days. I can’t tell whether the progress difficulty scale with time because sometimes I encountered orc marauders or brigand thugs led by a necromancer as early as the third mission. It’s borderline bullshit but I learned to swallow my pride and will choose to flee if my bros are not up to the task.
Is fast adaptation the BEST skill to choose first? I don’t feel optimistic with other skills after several failed campaigns. It’s matter of life or death to make the killing blow and Fast Adaptation makes it so much easier.
It does scale, but within any time frame before scaling (not sure exactly how it scales or at what intervals) there is variability as to the difficulty of various groups. I avoided all camps when I first started back playing, as a result, until I had a better handle on the game. Now when I do camps and it doesn’t have scout information, I still go in, but if it is a guaranteed wipe, I quit out of the battel and load the autosave as it puts you back right before entering the camp.
I actually started a new run on the PC with the base game. Got a camp with a bunch of zombies and a necromancer, made it out with just one death and a legendary helmet. Seems like there were 12 or 15 of those weidergangers, but I got an achievement for killing over 24 enemies, so there were a buch of resurrections. It was actually right around day 25. I think I got lucky as the guy he possessed (that allows a zombie three attacks) missed just enough.
Skills are an ever changing thing for me. The base game requires focus on various builds and skills that then change with some of the expansion content so I am never sure what precisely to recommend and added to that I’m still stumbling around. But those changes to builds really only heavily come into play with certain enemies and during the high level end game fights. I usually retire after one or two of the "campaign objectives " (noble war, greenskin attack, whatever) are satisfied because I want to try something new.
Filthy Robot’s perk guides from 2017 are still pretty good for at least walking you through his interpretation of the value of various skills. Those ideas and recommendations have changed as he continued to play over the years and as DLC has been released, but I found that when starting out with the base game as I did on the Switch in March, these guides were still helpful. He has a separate video for each row of skills.
Here’s his build spreadsheet from the over a dozen seasons he’s streamed over the years with different builds he monkeyed with in each season.
I only continue to recommend him because I was lost when I played initially, was determined to learn the game at the time of the Switch release and found many of his early game guides and build videos very helpful in at least understanding the mechanics better and what the skills actually do. He even does a “very early” game guide for new players.
Filthy does a lot of analytics (A LOT) and in a later video he came to the conclusion that Fast adaptation doesn’t work quite like the description says and may not be as helpful, but I haven’t really tested it out and he still recommends it, but not for every brother.
I usually get colossus with guys that start with lower HP. I believe big hits that cause greater damage result in more frequent wounds as whether they get a wound is based on the percentage of total health a hit causes. Because you need to ramp up those stats, I start with Student (for levelling faster) often and follow up with gifted. For archers it may vary a bit. I like quick hands and rotate on most of my frontline guys. Quick hands allows you to switch to a dagger in your bag for free to kill guys with good gear without damaging it. Rotate allows you to get a frontline guy out that you want to save. But, honestly, I still don’t really follow to the letter his guides. I’m still fiddling around with things and for better or worse fall into the same patterns.
All of this is based on a significant amount of play, but also know I could have some details wrong because I have attempted to digest a ton of information in a short time. :) Others who played in the many years since its release earlier in the thread probably know better. They can certainly quote numbers and calculation far better than I can. I like to dig just deep enough into the mechanics to play, but not exhaustive examination by using build calculators and such to make sure I am min/maxing properly.
Are you guys playing IronMan and avoiding all save scumming? My process is basically roll with the losses unless I lose a significant portion or look like I’ll wipe. In my early attempts, if I lost one of those three starting guys I would just about autoreload. Those three are just more powerful and I wanted to advance in the game and not keep wiping.
Now, I can go a good while without losing many Brothers although I am sticking with beginner/beginner. My finishing scores were 147, 169 and then 237. That last one I completed two of the main objectives. Obviously, my runs benefited from some amount of save scumming, but I decided after the wiping bred so much frustration, that if I was going to learn the game past those early days AND actually enjoy it, that’s what I was going to do. As I became more comfortable, I was able to both lose fewer guys and reload fewer times. It has certainly caused me to have much more fun and gradually improve while slowly stepping away from the reload crutch.
I say all that because scores are only representative of skill based on how much you want to skirt debilitating losses. :) I probably am actually only marginally better than I was 6 weeks ago. I am still loving the game as I started playing back on my PC with the base game and it calls to me every night even when playing something else or while at work.
I am not playing Iron Man because I generally don’t but also because I get the occasional crash entering a battle on the Switch so I don’t think I will ever use it. I am not reloading saves right now just because I am trying to get a feel for the flow of the game. Finding all the dumb ways to die seems like part of the charm. I also have avoided looking up guides on perks and things and am trying to piece out good starting plans to get people leveled up.
Once it starts to not feel fun to roll up new squads I will definitely start reloading saved games and read about good builds and stuff.
That’s how I usually am with every game as well. I NEVER watch guide videos. In fact, though I have watched a bunch now, I am not actually adhering to any specific builds only using them as a vague guide. But I really wanted to learn the game after bouncing off it due to difficulty in PC Early Access. Also, I didn’t have a functioning PC and the available games in this subgenre on consoles, and especially the Switch, are few and far between so I wanted to make this one work for me.
I did play a bunch with several early game wipes and restarts and I did get to the point where a reload after a wipe or near wipe was going to allow me to go farther and enjoy the game more.
AS for the Switch crashes, I think that is fairly common. Always right before loading a camp battle, but without fail, the pre-battle autosave has loaded back, put me exactly where I was and then the battle loaded fine on the second attempt. Ukiyo Publishing has patched the game several time in the almost two months since release, so while communication from them is difficult to fins anywhere, they are paying attention and fixing things and I believe they are working on the crashing issue.
I still cannot fathom how of all the tactical strategy games on the PC that THIS is the game that got ported. I am deliriously happy it did, but I want to know how the deal came about. I think I’ll look and ask around.
I’ve only played two games, both on Iron Man, just to see how it plays out. I’m not into punishing myself, and I can see how sometimes this game just tosses near impossible situations at you. I think as I play more I’ll shift into some non-Iron Man games, as I can imagine it’d be super frustrating to play Iron Man exclusively.
I’ve been looking up how to do stuff as I go, but I’m not into finding guides how to play. I like the challenge of trying to figure things out.
Same here normally, like I said above. This one just seemed so impenetrable with no real tutorial or info on how anything works and something in me was determined to figure it out as on the surface it seemed exactly like my type of game aside from the brutal and immediate difficulty. I was not going to noodle my way through it, I don’t think, and/or the time required to do so would have made me quit again before learning it…
EDIT: For me, I can only imagine, it is more like a board game. Rather than the rules being hidden behind video game mechanics, I wanted the majority of the rules laid out before me and then I would see how best to utilize what I have before me and analyze what paths could best me from A to B. Who knows. I’m a weirdo. Why this game is different and why I wanted to approach it differently as opposed to the scores I have tried over the years is beyond me possibly. :)
I do still avoid all the spreadsheet info about the strengths of various background hires and what stats you need to hit at each level up when working toward a build and all of the weapon efficiencies against various enemies. I mostly watch the guides to understand WTF is going on because I am not smart enough to figure it all out on my own in the old man amount of time I have (or want) to devote to it.
That said, you do need to realize that a couple sets of weapons and possibly Brothers will need to be eventually incorporated as no two enemies should be fought the same way. Tactics and weapons could/should vary dramatically based on what you are fighting. Like those bastards that eat corpses, reset their health and get stronger.
It is not a game where you level up all your guys, getting them stronger, equip them with one thing and then eventually steamroll enemies as you overpower them.
Each weapon and armor tier upgrade feels like a small victory to me. Finding an armor shop that has close to prices at cost and breaking down and buying some mid level armor for that one guy you want to remain as the foundation of your party is great. Knowing you rely on your archers a lot in some fights makes the decision to invest in bow upgrades an interesting choice.
Getting a legendary item from a camp is like the birth of a child. Of note, and I do not think it spoilery, I believe that once you are given a mission to raid a camp, the chance of a legendary dropping is reduced to zero. So while I avoided camps initially that were not required to be raided from a town mission, eventually I realized gear upgrades and legendaries were hidden in there and I was going to have to bite the bullet.
I think I have had a total of four legendaries across all my runs.
I seem to be rambling.
Finding a really damaged big weapon or armor upgrade at a marketplace that you can actually afford is like Christmas. In my best game so far, I found a military cleaver at like 20% and some mail armor at like 30% really early on and that carried me through a couple early tough fights basically by itself.
I know right? It can only because the difficulty in play and earning money and the fluctuation in prices and the scarcity of good drops all feed into the joy of some small find. I imagine this is what my stepmother feels when she finds some cool junk at yard sales after looking forever that she is going to rehabilitate when it just looks like someone else’s trash to me. :)
I really enjoy games that provide meaningful and balanced improvements in your team/characters/gear. That’s one of the joys of this genre. It’s a hard thing to get right.
That’s an example of something that I looked up. I was curious if it were cheaper to buy new or repair with tools, and it seems clear that repairing is cost-effective.
Also, even if there is an armory or weapon shop or Bowyer with decent prices, the regular market can have slightly better pricing on the same item.
I never even looked the repair cost/benefit. I just got the sense it was better to buy damaged and repair. However, sometimes tools get hard to come by and you just can’t swing it.
I also wonder about some of the high value stuff you find in the mid to late games from drops that is damaged from enemy use and whether I should repair it before selling it. Seems like something I should have looked up by now in all of my video watching.
I did notice that the general market seemed to have better deals than the dedicated armories and bowyers, yes. In certain situations, it’s a huge difference. :)
That was kind of my thinking with the repair question too. I tried to repair pretty much everything before selling it, although toward the end I stopped trying to repair low-quality items. It’d think there is a break even point, right? Because it doesn’t make sense to use a tool that costs, say 20 coins, to upgrade a wooden club that will go from a damaged value of 6 to 12 if fully repaired. So I’d think it makes sense to repair expensive items, but maybe not cheaper stuff.
I’m still not sure how many tools it takes to repair something, or how that works. Like, is it one tool to repair one item, no matter how damaged it is?
No idea. :)
One thing I learned from the guides that is a quick help in determining whether you want to sell in a town or keep your stuff for the next one for a better profit, is to have one of those basic shields with a 100gp cost fully repaired in your inventory. When you go in a town, the various events and how much they like you affect how much they will pay to buy your stuff. With the base cost of that shield being 100gp, you can easily get a sense of the percentage of base cost at which they will buy all the gear you are dumping. So, say you have a fully repaired shield they are offering to buy for 12gp. That’s terrible. 16 or so is pretty good and I have seen close to 20. Makes the math easier and as cash management is key throughout, the differences in the percentage offered can add up.
Obviously, this helpful tip is only useful if you have decent gear to get rid of. If you have a bunch of clubs and butcher aprons…not so critical.
This does not, of course, work the same for trade goods at is more based on supply and demand for the individual good in the specific town.
New switch patch today fixing the ghost items in the stash in the marketplace and the mission banner on the right side which were the two things annoying me the most.
Nice to see a switch port getting active bug fixes and updates.
Yeah, I assumed it would get pushed onto the eShop and then left alone. I asked Ukiyo on Facebook under the release notes for this patch if there was an ETA on fixing the crashes when entering battles. No response yet. I don’t think they monitor the social media much. :)
Nah. The writer for the game had a long history of posting on RpgCodex, IIRC. Obsidian had contracted him to write for PoE2, but dropped him like a hot potato when that came out. So the attitudes that shine through in the events of this game are … not accidental.
Given that the dev team seem to be quite happy with the writing in their game, I tend to assume that their decision to not have Battle Sisters in the game is because they share similar attitudes to the writer (albeit being smarter than he was about what they post).
Well, that blows.
It kind of does, yes.
I also noticed that the worst snippets of text aren’t even central to the event they sit in. It’s “Ho ho, whores!” and then then event text starts. It’s like the writer went out of his way to stick ugly text in where it really doesn’t fit. You can remove it and wouldn’t notice it was missing.
I poked about enough to understand the file structure and how the event text works. I was toying with the idea of trying to create a mod that cleans up those sections. Not sure I’m motivated enough to do so, but it’s a thought. There aren’t many events in the game.