I don’t know if it’s good advice, but I’ve tended to avoid those trinkets. I think speed determines the turn order of your characters, and being able to act first can be huge.
I’ve been paralyzed often with whether I should stun or hit for damage. Same for buffing my own characters as opposed to going for damage against the enemy. How do you know if something will hit more than one enemy? On iPad my finger is always over the text which is a bit inconvenient, so I’ve only memorized like one thing that does AoE damage - chain shot.
That’s the way I’d been thinking too. That removes like 80% of my trinkets at this early stage though.
I haven’t played on the iPad so I can’t speak to the interface there, but the tool tip for each skill should show which ranks it affects, and which ranks it can be used from.
My tactic is to stun when I’m able to, and then the option isn’t available, focus my damage on a single character. And I generally prioritize bleed/blight over straight damage–assuming the enemy isn’t immune.
Another tip I found useful when starting out was to limit myself to a relative few character classes and get a good feel for them before messing around with others.
I got a ton of mileage out of just sticking with Crusader / Highwayman / Plague Doctor / Vestal, in the 1/2/3/4 spaces respectively.
What do you do when you don’t have anyone that’s clear of stress? Just take the lowest ones no matter what they’re makeup, or just go with whoever and se how far they can go before you have to pull out? I’m going to try and get that combo too. I don’t have any highwayman to choose from at the moment though.
I expanded the roster cap to 22, so between reducing stress through the tavern and the abbey, and the gradual stress reduction from staying in town, I’m generally able to put together a stress-free team.
If you go on medium expeditions, you also have the opportunity to heal stress when camping.
There’s a lot of trinkets and some are good all the time (on the right classes), some are also more useful in specific situations either based on a specific build or a specific dungeon or targeted boss. Early on don’t be surprised to see a bunch of trinkets that seem useless, they just might not be useful now.
Early on, I also sold a lot of my trinkets to fund upgrades and stress reduction.
So you’re spending like $1,000 for some of your lower level characters to distress or get rid of bad traits? How do you know if they should go to the bar or abbey? I hadn’t been doing that.
Can you buy deeds for gold?
I’m not sure how it shows the tool-tip on console/or touch screens, but when you select an AOE ability instead of showing which enemy you’re targeting it highlight several of them with a red + sign between them.
Stun abilities are extremely useful, but remember when an enemy recovers from stun they get a one turn buff to stun resistance. You won’t be able to stun-lock.
Either one is good unless they have a quirk that blocks a stress relief activity or improves another. Like the “known cheat” quirk blocks the gambling activity in the tavern.
Can’t buy heirlooms with gold but you can exchange heirlooms with the little arrow icon next to the number. You won’t get a fair trade but if you only need a few extra and got plenty of another type it’s worth it.
It has shown that before, thanks! Thanks for the other tips as well. Super helpful.
Some tips:
Dont spend money on low level characters. Particularly your first ones, they’re fodder. Dont get attached to them, don’t remove afflictions. They are disposable. When they’ve taken too much damage, throw them away. At some point, you will find ones you can keep/promote, and when you do, you should start investing in these. Until that time though, your main focus is upgrades to the town/earning money/equipment/artifacts. Before that time dont be afraid to put a team of guys together that you’re sending to their death (enter with high stress/afflictions etc) - the goal of these teams are to grab as much loot and get out.
Always recruit every round. Since your first groups are disposable, you’ll need replacements. i recommend focusing your first upgrades on the stage coach. Improve the network, improve the barracks. This will allow you to hire more heroes, and give you more choices on who you hire. This will really help your other teams, because you’ll be able to choose good characters to start with.
On town upgrades, after the stagecoach, i’d focus on the guild and the blacksmith. And on both of these, i’d recommend unlocking the efficiency bonuses first. This isn’t particularly sexy, 10% off etc, but the earlier you nab them, the cheaper itll be for your other characters later on (the ones you want to keep/invest in).
As you start building teams, you generally want to focus on heals - and by that, you want probably 3 good healers. This allows you to run one each week, allowing one to destress and giving you an alt for when you lose a healer. A tank or two is fine, but not the most essential(crusader, abomination, hellion), and then everything else is middle-rank dps. A lot of different characters work, but not all work together. Keep an eye on characters with stress relief(like the jester), these can be essential in later missions.
I very rarely bought anything in the shop. I’d avoid it - you can fill out your items from quest rewards and your gold is better spent on things like stress relief and upgrading your heroes (those ones you want to keep)
theres a lot of nuances to the screens that might not be evident (and i have no idea how it works on the ipad, but i assume you can mouse over icons).
You might be aware of all this, but in case not:
On the right hand side, under combat skills note the preferred position and preferred target. The brighter the ball, the more abilities are available there(position) and the more enemies that can be targeted (target).
Mousing over an ability here(judgement), tells me it can only be used when the character is in the 3/4 position(yellow dots), but in those positions can target any of the enemy positions (4 red dots). Note, that if it’s an AOE, any red dots it can hit will be linked with a line.
Pay attention to quirks. This doesn’t really apply to those first fodder units you send out, but as you build better teams that you want to keep, you’ll want to check these out, because they can really make a difference(and even determine if you want to keep someone - for instance someone with 3 really bad quirks probably isn’t worth investing in). In this case, weald explorer gives a scouting bonus to the weald dungeon, and critically, fear of mankind is +15% and -10ACC against humans.
Here’s another guy that’s looking like a keeper:
those two negative quirks are pretty immaterial and one is cancelled out by the other. (can only drink to relieve stress and isn’t allowed to gamble) and his 3 perks are all good (stun resist, spd and healing bonus). In terms of artifacts that reduce spd - ya, you have to pick and choose them. If you already have guys that are fast, lowering their speed by 1 or 2 doesn’t matter much (in this case, even with -2 spd, he’s still at a respectable 5). Also keep in mind, you can’t go below 0 - so if you already have a guy with 0, slowing him down doesn’t impact you.
But that said, spd is pretty important. If you hit first, you kill first, and you don’t take stress damage.
Everybody says this, but they are all, as are you, extremely vague on the details of what this means. I’m not trying to be abrasive, but I also have zero idea what the difference between fodder and “ones you can keep/promote” is supposed to be. Don’t they all start pretty much the same? I think you can upgrade the stagecoach to bring you higher level heroes (ones with a resolve level above zero?), is that what you mean?
It’s a subjective thing. At some point you’ll notice some of your heroes managed to survive a few dungeons runs and end up with useful quirks and manageable stress levels. Others will take thousands of gold and several weeks in the sanitarium to fix. Look at the character sheet and ask yourself how sorry you will be if this guy goes away forever, and how hard they will be to replace.
Wonderful. That is really helpful. My wife dropped a stylus off at the hospital today so I hope that makes some of my clicks a little easier. Touchscreen controls for gaming really aren’t very good.
So if you look at the two that i linked, the second one, is a really good candidate for keeping. His negative quirks are easy to manage, and he’s got 3 positive benefits that are really good. His starting abilities are also really good - his pistol shot can be used in spots 2/3/4(hitting 2/3/4), his grapeshot blast in spots 2/3 (hitting 1-3) and open vein is a melee attack he can use in 1/2/3. In camping he’s got wound care (heal + blight/bleed cure) and clean guns(ranged buff) and bandit sense(prevents ambush, + scouting).
Compare that with the vestal(first one). While you generally want to promote healers, she’s got one really bad quirk(fear of mankind) and a ok bad one(Weak grip, which impact melee attacks, but vestals likely shouldnt be doing that too much anyways). If I decide to keep her, i’ll need to spend money to get rid of fear of mankind, because there’s humans in every dungeon(i believe). In her abilities, she’s lacking a good aoe heal(divine comfort) and a really good stun (dazzling light), but she’s does have some really good camping skills (all stress relief). So, i’ll need to invest a bit in her to make her optimal in her role. This is a character I would watch, but wouldn’t actively promote. If she survived to level 3/4 and didn’t pick up any further negative quirks, i’d probably invest in her, but if she did pick up some negative ones, i’d happily just run her out until i had a better replacement available.
Some negative quirks to look out for though is anything that promotes stress - also, dont forget that stress is contagious, so if you have one character getting stressed, its more likely they’ll pass it on to the whole party. At the start, you may have no choice but to pick up a character thats a stress producer, but you probably shouldn’t invest money in one when you can just pick up someone later that you dont need to fix off that bat.
And yes as you upgrade your stage coach, you’ll start to see characters with higher levels and already upgraded abilities/equipment. You’ll also have more choices available, so you’ll have the luxury of bypassing the bad candidates.
Here’s a good example of a guy that i’m going to run into the earth. I think in this game, it’s only week 10, but he’s one of my two level 2 guys, but a bad one. Why? Quirks:
Tippler: in town will only drink. This one is actually fine (and in general, any of the ‘in town will/will not’ quirks are very manageable)
Clumsy: -5 dodge. He’ll be getting hit more often, and since he has no prot he relies on his dodge to mitigate much of his incoming damage)
Flawed release: -5% Ranged CRT. He’s mostly a ranged guy (he only has one melee)
Known cheat: in town, not allowed to gamble. Again, this is fine because it’s cancelled by tippler
Ruins phobe: +20% stress in ruins. I could avoid running him in ruins though, so this isn’t a dealbreaker.
But to keep him, i’d want to treat the flawed release and in particular clumsy. Thats 3000 and 2 weeks for a dps that’s pretty replaceable. I’d probably just spend the 1000 and send him to the bar and send another party out this week. He might die in a quest or two, but i wouldn’t worry about it. And that 3000 i don’t spend on him, i’ll spend leveling up someone else’s armor/weapons or abilities.
Sorry I have one more question, in the abbey, what’s the difference between the transept and cloister?