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Count Uvula
Dec 20, 2011

---
Make a fencer anyway you coward

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
It’s easy to fit rally the troops into a gunner; who already benefits from resolve; since they invariably have fearsome.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

Count Uvula posted:

Make a fencer anyway you coward

Seriously, this thread gets way to hung up on maximum efficiency. They designed the game mostly for people to get past a single crisis and restart. Plenty of room to experiment. You wanna go to three crisis's and beat every world end location you need to acknowledge that you're the very 1% of players and that people learning the game don't need to min max as hard as you do.

dogstile fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jan 15, 2021

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

dogstile posted:

Seriously, this thread gets way to hung up on maximum efficiency. They designed the game mostly for people to get past a single crisis and restart. Plenty of room to experiment. You wanna go to three crisis's and beat every world end location you need to acknowledge that you're the very 1% of players and that people learning the game don't need to min max as hard as you do.

Yeah, and as long as you're not playing Lone Wolf or Gladiators, you have plenty of room for suboptimal bros in your company. Somebody who's good enough but not quite min-maxed to 100% optimal performance, and so occasionally gets smashed up and takes a while to heal isn't a big deal when you can just swap them out for an equivalent reserve bro. There is room for error.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I don’t think a fencer is niche - at least in the sense that you only want them in very specific fights. If you find the bro to be a top tier fencer they will hands down wreck poo poo in basically every fight; especially if you manage to pair them with a named fencing sword.

Noble war? That’s fine; let’s one shot 3 billmen a turn. Phalanx of ancient dead getting you down? Ditto. Barbarian chosen - you probably won’t one shot them unless you have killing frenzy up but you’ll get drat close.

The only thing that makes them niche is that you need a very specific bro with a very specific combo of stars to achieve that; and if you can’t find one; then you probably just want a mace duelist instead.

Broken Box
Jan 29, 2009

Fencers definitely need the stars to align just right (usually literally) but their main advantage is that they don't need that much fatigue and they can get by with less melee Def than the usual frontliner because of Dodge (more is better of course, and with high Def they can evade most hits) but they can really clean up in more types of fights than you would expect.

I've had some good fencers come out of cheap classes (tailor/farmer/brawler) and if you get a really good thief they're absolutely incredibly murderous dodge tanks.

Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013

The Lord Bude posted:

I don’t think a fencer is niche - at least in the sense that you only want them in very specific fights. If you find the bro to be a top tier fencer they will hands down wreck poo poo in basically every fight; especially if you manage to pair them with a named fencing sword.

Noble war? That’s fine; let’s one shot 3 billmen a turn. Phalanx of ancient dead getting you down? Ditto. Barbarian chosen - you probably won’t one shot them unless you have killing frenzy up but you’ll get drat close.

The only thing that makes them niche is that you need a very specific bro with a very specific combo of stars to achieve that; and if you can’t find one; then you probably just want a mace duelist instead.


Broken Box posted:

Fencers definitely need the stars to align just right (usually literally) but their main advantage is that they don't need that much fatigue and they can get by with less melee Def than the usual frontliner because of Dodge (more is better of course, and with high Def they can evade most hits) but they can really clean up in more types of fights than you would expect.

I've had some good fencers come out of cheap classes (tailor/farmer/brawler) and if you get a really good thief they're absolutely incredibly murderous dodge tanks.

So I thought that the main stat needed was great initiative right? I used a swordmaster as a fencer once, but the damage wasn't as good as I'd hoped (although the tactical positioning etc was a really fun breath of fresh air). Probably because while he had stars in initiative, starting score was too low.

It seems like only a few backgrounds - assassins, ratcatchers etc have that great initiative (in the same way Farmhands and Wildmen can have that sweet ~120 Fatigue). Are these the only viable Fencers? Maybe someone with good-ish initiative and the +10 trait of course. But ratcatchers, tailors etc will never really be great fighters in terms of MAttk or MDef.

Counterintuitive that Swordmasters aren't the best fencers. Tbh I don't rate them as a background. Unless they roll some perfect stat/stars and/or iron lungs/tough their health and fatigue is just too low for a frontliner, when you're paying that much. Perhaps as a nimble duelist with the right unique that has reduced Fatigue. They'd be good polearm users but you can hit 90+ MAttk with any number of backgrounds for a fraction the cost.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
There are certain stats where starting value is significantly more important than stars.

If you got three stars in initiative and took it as a chosen stat every level, you would gain on average 55 points in initiative by level 11. In practice, even with three stars in it you probably won't take that every level because other stats are so important as well--even on a fencer, you need MDef, MAtk, Health, Fatigue, and so on, just like any other melee bro.

A Swordmaster will start with, on average, 95 initiative. A ratcatcher will start with, on average, 121 initiative, and a thief, on average, 116. Your average ratcatcher already has a head start over your average swordmaster worth about half of the maximum possible initiative gain from leveling up. For a fencer, you're going to have a lot more luck looking for a ratcatcher with good stars in other important stats than a swordmaster with good stars in initiative.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
On choosing the right bro to be a Fencer:

The bonus damage cap for lunge is reached at 175 initiative. This is of course calculated after gear, since gear applies a penalty to initiative equal to the stamina cost. The stamina cost of a fencer's equipment is 19 - 4 for the fencing sword and 15 for combined head and body armour. This means that to do the maximum possible damage, you would need to reach 194 initiative.

However, we have some extra help: First is the Hyena pelt armour attachment. This gives us an extra 15 initiative. Second is Gifted, which in my opinion is a must take perk for a fencer. This gives us an extra 5 initiative. So that's 20 points of initiative from gear and perks. Once you do that you have a bit of extra leeway. For eg, someone with a starting value of 110 and 3 stars will get to 185 with the hyena pelt and gifted, which is pretty close to perfect. You can also find someone with the Quick trait to get an extra 10 initiative.

Far and away the most important trait to look for though in a fencer is the Strong trait. Aside from ensuring we likely won't need to waste level ups on stamina (more on this later) Strong has a hidden benefit - it also reduces the initiative penalty from equipped gear by 10. That means on a Strong bro you only need to get to 184 initiative. The magical god hire would be someone with Strong and Quick.

Counter intuitively, despite the critical importance of initiative; when hiring for a fencer you really need to pay attention to the other stats just as much if not more. You want a background with high starting values for health, stamina and to a degree resolve so that you ideally aren't spending any points here or at most one or two max rolls (including gifted).

This is where I'm going to disagree with Vyelkin. A ratcatcher might have a very high range for starting initiative, but they have very poor starting health, poor stamina and resolve, and low starting defence scores. They can also never spawn with strong. The Thief is better - trading a slightly lower starting initiative on average for slightly higher starting health and resolve, and really good starting defence scores - max starting mdef for a thief is 13 which takes a bit of the pressure off. But a Thief still can't spawn with strong, so you have to let the high initiative do all the work, and you'll still be cutting several levels of mdef to boost health.

While it's certainly possible to find an excellent thief to use as a fencer, your most likely best bets are those bros with slightly lower starting initiative, but which have higher stats in other areas. For example, Wildmen start with between 62 and 70 health, so depending on taste you can leave health at starting values, or maybe just put 1 or 2 max rolls into it. Their minimum possible starting stamina is 108 - more than enough for a fencer; and they have a decent starting resolve bracket of 42-50, so with a +5 arena and a necklace you can get that more than high enough without adding any points to it. They also have a very, very long list of traits they can't spawn with, which helps improve the chances of finding one with strong and or quick.

Other good choices are brawlers, beast slayers, farmers (you'll need to do extra work on resolve, but honestly fencers dominate in arena so you can even take them to +10 with relative ease), lumberjacks and manhunters. Some expensive backgrounds like gladiators have a lower starting health and stamina but really high starting matk and mdef so it would be easier to spare some points to boost the other stats (Similar to thieves). Gladiators can also spawn with strong unlike thieves.

Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013
Great advice, thanks. I find that so much of my playthroughs are just roaming between towns looking for the perfect recruits. To the extent that I'd probably be more successful if I just went out and fought more. Time spent travelling to a fortress to find out there's no one you want or can afford is a real waste of days.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!
Ok, I'm starting to get my feet under me. I have multiple brothers reaching level 5-6, and I can win some fights without even a scratch. Some questions:

1. I've seen people mention repairing weapons before selling them. Does this mean paying a weaponsmith to repair them or just equip them on your brothers while walking so they autorepair using your hammer supply? Using a weaponsmith to repair seems VERY pricey to the point that I don't really see how that can work out in your favor.

2. I'm about 30 days in with 8 brothers. Is there a normal flow to when you should be picking up more bros? I know there are some things called crisis events. When do those normally happen? How many bros do I want by then?

3. When I look at a brother's stats before hiring it always gives me two numbers separate by a slash, x/x. Is that their possible stat roll? If so, why do the maximum's change at times? Is that dependent on class?

4. I remember reading whips are in the game, but I've never seen one, and there's no whip mastery. I have all expansions except blazing deserts. What's the deal?

5. Is there a certain type of camp/ruin I should be targeting? Despite feeling comfortable with 2 star contracts, anytime I have ventured out and tried a camp I get destroyed. Have the enemies not come to you makes things a lot harder.


As an aside, why does the game not let you modify inventory right before starting a battle. It is SO annoying when I forget to switch out my armor-hunting knives for primary weapons and I start the battle at a huge AP disadvantage.

TheAnomaly
Feb 20, 2003

Megasabin posted:

Ok, I'm starting to get my feet under me. I have multiple brothers reaching level 5-6, and I can win some fights without even a scratch. Some questions:

1. I've seen people mention repairing weapons before selling them. Does this mean paying a weaponsmith to repair them or just equip them on your brothers while walking so they autorepair using your hammer supply? Using a weaponsmith to repair seems VERY pricey to the point that I don't really see how that can work out in your favor.

2. I'm about 30 days in with 8 brothers. Is there a normal flow to when you should be picking up more bros? I know there are some things called crisis events. When do those normally happen? How many bros do I want by then?

3. When I look at a brother's stats before hiring it always gives me two numbers separate by a slash, x/x. Is that their possible stat roll? If so, why do the maximum's change at times? Is that dependent on class?

4. I remember reading whips are in the game, but I've never seen one, and there's no whip mastery. I have all expansions except blazing deserts. What's the deal?

5. Is there a certain type of camp/ruin I should be targeting? Despite feeling comfortable with 2 star contracts, anytime I have ventured out and tried a camp I get destroyed. Have the enemies not come to you makes things a lot harder.


As an aside, why does the game not let you modify inventory right before starting a battle. It is SO annoying when I forget to switch out my armor-hunting knives for primary weapons and I start the battle at a huge AP disadvantage.

Whips are cleavers, with a range of two tiles and a special that disarms. They are fairly rare, although if you have Blazing Desserts they are more likely to be found in southern cities and are pretty common weapons for manhunters to use.

For repairing, you can repair items in your inventory (using hammers) by alt right clicking IIRC. It says what button to press in the inventory screen, it puts a little yellow hammer over the item to show that it is being repaired. It's a net gain on t3+ weapons, and some t2 weapons. I'm not sure what the armor breakdown for net gain is.

Ruins are just a different type of fight. Make sure have ranged, usually the enemy will come to you if you have more ranged attackers than they do so you can't pick a bunch of them off and charge in. It can also help to make camp outside of a ruin and wait for an enemy group to spawn - it's entirely possible to loop away from the camp while being followed, then go around the group following you and get back to the camp - the numbers in the camp will change.

Each type of ruin has particular types of enemies in them, so in general aim for enemy types you are capable of fighting. It's best to stay away from undead until you have a sergeant because Geists will absolutely destroy your morale. Goblins can be a pain, and are made much easier if you get dogs and just release the hounds at the beginning of combat to soak up all the arrows. Bandits are, well, bandits - worth noting that you will most likely fight raiders and archers, the second tier of bandits, in camps. Named Bandits can be really tough, but they always carry good equipment so if you can save them for last, then surround them and hit them with the special attack on daggers (called a dagger party) you can often get high tier armor and/or a unique off their cold dead corpse.

Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013

Megasabin posted:

Ok, I'm starting to get my feet under me. I have multiple brothers reaching level 5-6, and I can win some fights without even a scratch. Some questions:

1. I've seen people mention repairing weapons before selling them. Does this mean paying a weaponsmith to repair them or just equip them on your brothers while walking so they autorepair using your hammer supply? Using a weaponsmith to repair seems VERY pricey to the point that I don't really see how that can work out in your favor.

2. I'm about 30 days in with 8 brothers. Is there a normal flow to when you should be picking up more bros? I know there are some things called crisis events. When do those normally happen? How many bros do I want by then?

3. When I look at a brother's stats before hiring it always gives me two numbers separate by a slash, x/x. Is that their possible stat roll? If so, why do the maximum's change at times? Is that dependent on class?

4. I remember reading whips are in the game, but I've never seen one, and there's no whip mastery. I have all expansions except blazing deserts. What's the deal?

5. Is there a certain type of camp/ruin I should be targeting? Despite feeling comfortable with 2 star contracts, anytime I have ventured out and tried a camp I get destroyed. Have the enemies not come to you makes things a lot harder.


As an aside, why does the game not let you modify inventory right before starting a battle. It is SO annoying when I forget to switch out my armor-hunting knives for primary weapons and I start the battle at a huge AP disadvantage.

I'm on my phone, so can't really give you all the detail, but some answers. There are posters in this thread who know far more about this (search Lord Budes posts) and steam guides can be very helpful. Make sure any guide is recent as DLCs have often made significant balance tweaks to perks, weapons, backgrounds etc as well as adding new stuff that changed the game strategies a lot since the initial release.

2. The first crisis is usually day 80-100. I believe that's modified by your overall power based on numbers and levels of guys in the company. But whether it's time limited or depends purely on those factors, it is reliably around that 80-100 day mark. By that point you want at least 12 men who should be mostly high level and/or good quality recruits. See below for what that means. Even more important is their gear, you need at least all mail shirts and most if not all your front line should be in heavier armour and with top weapons.

I have often heard people advise sticking at around 8 men until you find and can afford more recruits who have high potential. You need to recruit up to around 8 as fast as you can find acceptable, usable guys (ie anyone with 55+ MAttk, positive MDef and stars, decent Fatigue and Heath) and give them some sort of weapon, shield and clothing. If you have fewer than 6-7 blokes you will just get surrounded and torn apart by a lot of random enemy groups.

Having that number lets you do fights to gain xp, money and gear. Then you're looking for better guys to recruit, and can let the disposable 'temps' go as they get killed, crippled etc. The reason many people don't go up toward 12+ men is the enemies scale with your numbers. So facing harder opponents just to gain xp on inferior recruits you don't want to keep, who may keep getting killed and wasting money because they're inferior, is inefficient.

Long term you want at least 14+ guys, provided they are quality recruits. This is to rotate people out. They will often get injured in ways that make them a real liability, and you want to keep them safe in reserve and still have a full force of 12. Even apart from injuries, when you are familiar with building guys for specialised roles, you will see that some excel against certain enemies but don't contribute much against others. E.G. dedicated archers, which I love, whip rear end against bandits and many light armoured foes, but suck rear end against skeletons. It helps to be able to throw them into reserve for a more useful guy, instead of just handing them a different weapon they can't use well or anything like that.

3. Background, eg. You can see every recruit is a Brawler, Farmer, Hedge Knight etc, is the major determinant of whether a guy will be a good potential mercenary. I can't say exactly what you see on your screen, but most 'commoners' have I think 47-57 melee attack to start? Whereas many of the elite soldiers have 57-67. Backgrounds vary a lot thematically as well, so Farmers have great Fatigue, Hunters are by far the best ranged attack stat. There's a spreadsheet out there breaking it down which I can share later.

Cheap, common guys like Brawlers, Farmhands, going up into slightly more expensive Wildmen, Manhunters etc are your early game bread and butter. They won't make great top level mercenaries unless they have the perfect rolls, traits and stars. But they can make good ones with only OK luck. Having better base stats, a Hedge Knight or similar can obviously be at least as good without relying so much on a lucky combo of stat rolls, traits and stars - but they are exponentially more expensive (partly because they include better gear).

Theres too much to go into about which stats are important and what backgrounds are essentially locked out of certain roles/builds because even with the perfect rolls/traits/stars they won't be good at it. But what I would advise is a mod like "smarter recruitment". That shows you everyone's stats out of the maximum, and traits/stars, before you hire. If you're like me, it saves hiring everyone, savsecumming and keeping the good ones. I find the blind gambling on recruits, most of whom won't be that good, frustrating and unfun, I want to get the best recruits. Sounds like you might be using it already, I don't think the vanilla game shows the x/y stat rolls?

Aside. If you aren't doing Ironman, you can Esc - quit out of battle to the main menu, and load the autosave. Goes back to the pause screen before you get the engagement pop up, so you can open the inventory and make such changes. I do it all the time. If you are playing Ironman, infamously, you can just Alt+F4, the game still autosaves at that point. But why are you playing Ironman then? Note that if you're attacking them, not vice versa, you need to click the target again to prompt the engagement. If you have an event proc which leads to a battle, and you quit to load the autosave, I have had the event not proc. I'm not sure if that's inevitable or a one-off.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
The level scaling is based on a formula that includes days elapsed, total levels of your bros and the number of bros, with a very heavy weight on the number of your bros, so every time you hire someone the level scaling gets a significant bump.

That doesn’t mean you avoid hiring people to keep the scaling down; but you should make sure that each person you hire is worth it. If you hire junk bros they won’t be able to pull their weight relative to the added difficulty, and you’ll be wasting xp on them instead of the bros you actually want to have around long term.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

The Lord Bude posted:

The level scaling is based on a formula that includes days elapsed, total levels of your bros and the number of bros, with a very heavy weight on the number of your bros, so every time you hire someone the level scaling gets a significant bump.

That doesn’t mean you avoid hiring people to keep the scaling down; but you should make sure that each person you hire is worth it. If you hire junk bros they won’t be able to pull their weight relative to the added difficulty, and you’ll be wasting xp on them instead of the bros you actually want to have around long term.

Something I've been wondering about that is : is the number of bros variable like an upper ceiling, or does the difficulty get bumped every time you hire a bro period ? Like, if the most bros I ever had was 7, and I lose 3 because I'm good at video games, can I hire 3 new meats... valued members of the team without thinking twice ; or will the difficulty get bumped 3 times more ?

Eltoasto
Aug 26, 2002

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.



Hmm, perhaps doing the peasant start and stacking up 14 dudes right away wasn't the best idea. It's worked out ok thus far though.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Kobal2 posted:

Something I've been wondering about that is : is the number of bros variable like an upper ceiling, or does the difficulty get bumped every time you hire a bro period ? Like, if the most bros I ever had was 7, and I lose 3 because I'm good at video games, can I hire 3 new meats... valued members of the team without thinking twice ; or will the difficulty get bumped 3 times more ?

If you had 7 bros and 3 died, the difficulty scaling of new contracts would adjust to compensate, then scale back up as you hired new bros - gradually; the game would check your company strength when spawning the contract; not when you accept the contract. Bear in mind that this scaling refers mainly to the difficulty of contracts.

Enemy parties spawned specifically for a contract (eg recover my stolen talisman) are determined by a numerical value that represents the strength of your company (The formula for calculating that value is 10 + 2(Level - 1) for each of the 12 highest level bros) and also number of skulls and days elapsed. When you get a contract to destroy a location - eg go to this bandit camp and kill everything, go search this ancient ruin for an artifact, etc - if the contract is one skull or two skulls, whatever enemies were originally at that location get wiped (along with any named items that might have spawned there at the beginning of the game) and new enemies appropriate to the current difficulty scaling and number of skulls get created. If it is a 3 skull contract, it keeps whatever enemies were already there, which is why the difficulty of 3 skull contracts that involve a location can be so highly varied.

The difficulty of locations on the map (other than as described above when a contract resets the enemies at the location) are not influenced by difficulty scaling at all. They are determined by time elapsed and distance from the nearest friendly city - broadly speaking the further away they are the harder they'll be; and the later it is in the game the harder they'll be.

The size and strength of the roaming bands of enemies on the map (excluding ones spawned specifically for contracts) are influenced slightly by your strength, but these are primarily influenced by time elapsed and distance from civilization, that's why you can have bad luck and run into a big group of bandit raiders or a party of goblins early on.

Eltoasto posted:

Hmm, perhaps doing the peasant start and stacking up 14 dudes right away wasn't the best idea. It's worked out ok thus far though.

A lot of people complain that peasant starts are really difficult and that the skull ratings for the different starts are wrong. This is because they don't understand how the difficulty scaling works (and since you wouldn't expect a new player to know that, I kind of agree that it's misleading the way the game suggests that peasant and manhunter starts are easier and therefore more suitable to newer players).

The first thing you always do in a peasant start is fire anyone who isn't actually good enough to be in your party long term. On the very best seeds, you might be left with 6 or 7 men. Mostly it'll be 2-4. Then you start going around to towns as per normal and hiring anyone that's good.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
I'd also recommend just doing a delivery run for you first mission as peasants precisely because of that numerical limit. If you have to fire half your company of lovely bro's to get started, its still going to take a while in game for it to adjust.

Bude probably has the timings down, but a few days seems to get me by it.

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019

The Lord Bude posted:

<precise and detailed answer>

Huh. Neat, thanks for the explanation, friendo.
I'm now of course going to proceed to forget all of that before my next game, but it is genuinely appreciated.

Toozler
Jan 12, 2012

Megasabin posted:

As an aside, why does the game not let you modify inventory right before starting a battle. It is SO annoying when I forget to switch out my armor-hunting knives for primary weapons and I start the battle at a huge AP disadvantage.

There is a setting for this somewhere, at work but it looks like this

https://twitter.com/OverhypeStudios/status/857209449307668481/photo/1

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

dogstile posted:

I'd also recommend just doing a delivery run for you first mission as peasants precisely because of that numerical limit. If you have to fire half your company of lovely bro's to get started, its still going to take a while in game for it to adjust.

Bude probably has the timings down, but a few days seems to get me by it.

I haven't had an issue with the first couple of contracts being too difficult in a peasant run, but then again I often won't even fight my first battle till day 3 or 4 or so - My priority number 1 is visiting the several nearest settlements, checking for recruits and snapping up good deals on used studded leather and the like. I try not to get into a fight until I have at least 5 but preferably 7 men with spears and shields and at least 55/30 armour (the back line can wear rags for the first couple of fights if need be) but preferably studded leather if I can get cheap heavily damaged armour.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Megasabin posted:

Ok, I'm starting to get my feet under me. I have multiple brothers reaching level 5-6, and I can win some fights without even a scratch. Some questions:

1. I've seen people mention repairing weapons before selling them. Does this mean paying a weaponsmith to repair them or just equip them on your brothers while walking so they autorepair using your hammer supply? Using a weaponsmith to repair seems VERY pricey to the point that I don't really see how that can work out in your favor.

2. I'm about 30 days in with 8 brothers. Is there a normal flow to when you should be picking up more bros? I know there are some things called crisis events. When do those normally happen? How many bros do I want by then?

3. When I look at a brother's stats before hiring it always gives me two numbers separate by a slash, x/x. Is that their possible stat roll? If so, why do the maximum's change at times? Is that dependent on class?

4. I remember reading whips are in the game, but I've never seen one, and there's no whip mastery. I have all expansions except blazing deserts. What's the deal?

5. Is there a certain type of camp/ruin I should be targeting? Despite feeling comfortable with 2 star contracts, anytime I have ventured out and tried a camp I get destroyed. Have the enemies not come to you makes things a lot harder.


As an aside, why does the game not let you modify inventory right before starting a battle. It is SO annoying when I forget to switch out my armor-hunting knives for primary weapons and I start the battle at a huge AP disadvantage.

Some people have already answered this before me, but extra answers might help.

1. Usually people are referring to repairing weapons using your own tools, because a repaired weapon will sell for enough additional money that it can be worth spending the cash to buy the extra tools. Personally I usually don't do this because money is easy to come by in this game but the same isn't always true for tools.

Repairing at a weaponsmith or armourer is really only good for two occasions. One is when you're doing a contract with multiple fights in a row very close to a town (for example, defend town from raiders/greenskins) and some of your gear gets worn down in a fight but you need that gear for your next fight without time to repair it, and without backup gear or backup bros to swap in. The other occasion is to do it five times to unlock the blacksmith retinue member, but you should do that on the cheapest possible repairs so you only spend like 50 gold to unlock him.

2. 8 bros at day 30 is fine as long as they're good bros you want to keep around forever. Your current goal at that point should be to get those 8 to a level where they can handle most fights the game is throwing at you, then start adding one new bro at a time. Limit yourself to hiring good recruits that you'll want to keep forever, and keep them safe so they can get a few levels quickly and safely. For me, almost all promising new recruits get good armour and a polearm and go in the backline until about level 5 or 6 when their stats and perks make them a lot more likely to survive one or two unlucky hits. Generally speaking you want to get up to a full roster by the crisis, which will hit around 100 days in (sooner if you're making quick progress, later if you aren't) and generally offer you more challenging fights and contracts that you'll want a full roster to deal with. That means 12 bros in a normal company or as many as 16 in peasants or manhunters.

3. No idea, this sounds like you're using a mod. In the base game, "trying out" a bro before hiring them only reveals their traits, like "strong" or "lucky", not anything about their stats or stars.

4. Before blazing deserts whips were very rare and hard to come by. You can find them in weapon shops, and barbarian beastmasters will use them as a weapon, but you likely aren't fighting them at day 30 and even if you are they often escape fights because they don't enter melee. If you buy blazing deserts then whips are a common spawn on nomads in the south and you can get them as battle loot regularly. Whips count as cleavers for mastery purposes, so a cleaver master is also a whip master and vice versa.

5. Camps come in a bunch of different varieties, and the map icon and description will tell you what kind you've got. Generally ones with more intimidating pictures and descriptions will have more and tougher enemies in them. A "sea of orc tents" is going to be a much harder fight than a "hut with a collapsed roof". This is something you'll pick up as you play the game more. Generally speaking, the smaller the icon the easier the fight, and the closer to civilization the easier the fight. But even some small locations can still be too much for an early-game company. If you get any location with geists before you have a sergeant, for example, that isn't a fight you should be taking. But even in the early game you can probably take on huts or small fortifications unless you get really unlucky with the enemy spawns.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!

vyelkin posted:

Some people have already answered this before me, but extra answers might help.

1. Usually people are referring to repairing weapons using your own tools, because a repaired weapon will sell for enough additional money that it can be worth spending the cash to buy the extra tools. Personally I usually don't do this because money is easy to come by in this game but the same isn't always true for tools.

Repairing at a weaponsmith or armourer is really only good for two occasions. One is when you're doing a contract with multiple fights in a row very close to a town (for example, defend town from raiders/greenskins) and some of your gear gets worn down in a fight but you need that gear for your next fight without time to repair it, and without backup gear or backup bros to swap in. The other occasion is to do it five times to unlock the blacksmith retinue member, but you should do that on the cheapest possible repairs so you only spend like 50 gold to unlock him.

2. 8 bros at day 30 is fine as long as they're good bros you want to keep around forever. Your current goal at that point should be to get those 8 to a level where they can handle most fights the game is throwing at you, then start adding one new bro at a time. Limit yourself to hiring good recruits that you'll want to keep forever, and keep them safe so they can get a few levels quickly and safely. For me, almost all promising new recruits get good armour and a polearm and go in the backline until about level 5 or 6 when their stats and perks make them a lot more likely to survive one or two unlucky hits. Generally speaking you want to get up to a full roster by the crisis, which will hit around 100 days in (sooner if you're making quick progress, later if you aren't) and generally offer you more challenging fights and contracts that you'll want a full roster to deal with. That means 12 bros in a normal company or as many as 16 in peasants or manhunters.

3. No idea, this sounds like you're using a mod. In the base game, "trying out" a bro before hiring them only reveals their traits, like "strong" or "lucky", not anything about their stats or stars.

4. Before blazing deserts whips were very rare and hard to come by. You can find them in weapon shops, and barbarian beastmasters will use them as a weapon, but you likely aren't fighting them at day 30 and even if you are they often escape fights because they don't enter melee. If you buy blazing deserts then whips are a common spawn on nomads in the south and you can get them as battle loot regularly. Whips count as cleavers for mastery purposes, so a cleaver master is also a whip master and vice versa.

5. Camps come in a bunch of different varieties, and the map icon and description will tell you what kind you've got. Generally ones with more intimidating pictures and descriptions will have more and tougher enemies in them. A "sea of orc tents" is going to be a much harder fight than a "hut with a collapsed roof". This is something you'll pick up as you play the game more. Generally speaking, the smaller the icon the easier the fight, and the closer to civilization the easier the fight. But even some small locations can still be too much for an early-game company. If you get any location with geists before you have a sergeant, for example, that isn't a fight you should be taking. But even in the early game you can probably take on huts or small fortifications unless you get really unlucky with the enemy spawns.

How does leveling up work? As long as they are in the battle they get exp? Do they get more for hits/kills?

I am using that popular recruit mod. Are you telling me in the base game people don't get to see the stats before they hire a unit? How do they know if a unit is going to be good? I have the mod, but being a beginner, I still can't even process the information to really tell if I'm looking at someone good/great.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Megasabin posted:

How does leveling up work? As long as they are in the battle they get exp? Do they get more for hits/kills?

I am using that popular recruit mod. Are you telling me in the base game people don't get to see the stats before they hire a unit? How do they know if a unit is going to be good? I have the mod, but being a beginner, I still can't even process the information to really tell if I'm looking at someone good/great.

That’s correct, in the unmodifed game you have no idea if someone will be good until you fork over the cash. Some people consider this ‘fun’, however I suspect the majority either use the improved tryout mod or savescum it - you can save, hire everyone in the town to check stats; then reload to only hire the ones you want.

I’ve gone into detail on what to look for in a recruit in earlier posts of mine quite recently.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Megasabin posted:

How does leveling up work? As long as they are in the battle they get exp? Do they get more for hits/kills?

Whoever gets the kill on an enemy unit will get 20% of the XP for killing that enemy (more difficult enemies give more XP). The remaining 80% is split evenly across everyone in the battle, including the bro who got the kill (so for example if you only had two bros in a fight and got one kill, it wouldn't be 20% to the killer and 80% to the other guy, it would be 60% to the killer and 40% to the other guy). You only get XP for enemies that you land the killing blow on. So if you have allies in a fight, like caravan hands or a noble company, even if you take an enemy down to 1 HP, if your ally lands the killing blow you get nothing.

So bros will level up a little faster if they're reliably getting killing blows, but your whole company will level up eventually.

TheAnomaly
Feb 20, 2003

The Lord Bude posted:

That’s correct, in the unmodifed game you have no idea if someone will be good until you fork over the cash. Some people consider this ‘fun’, however I suspect the majority either use the improved tryout mod or savescum it - you can save, hire everyone in the town to check stats; then reload to only hire the ones you want.

I’ve gone into detail on what to look for in a recruit in earlier posts of mine quite recently.

The fun part is trying to make the less than ideal characters work. It's entirely possible to take a not particularly great team through multiple crisis, and somewhat challenging. Less possible to get them through the end game dungeons/fights (maybe the Kraken). That said, it should be a toggle (like Iron Man) for the people who want to do a challenge run, not the default for the game. I think it is the way it is because a lot of this games systems are inspired by original XCOM, but units and their XP are far more important than they were in the old XCOM games so it leads to savescumming - XCOM was designed from the ground up to be a meat grinder in the beginning with your science eventually outpacing the Aliens, the challenge was surviving that long. Battle Brothers isn't really designed that way - the Best Gear is too costly in fatigue to throw on a new recruit, and the talents are too important, but I think this game really wants to be more of a meat grinder than the systems allow.

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

Toozler posted:

There is a setting for this somewhere, at work but it looks like this

https://twitter.com/OverhypeStudios/status/857209449307668481/photo/1

oh hell, I wish I knew about this. So much inventory management time, wasted......

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
That setting is great, but one thing to note is that it won't re-equip destroyed shields. If a shield gets destroyed in combat it's gone and you have to re-equip a new one from your inventory. Iirc even if you have a blacksmith who saves the shield at 0% durability, it'll end up in your inventory but you'll still have to re-equip it.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

Megasabin posted:

I am using that popular recruit mod. Are you telling me in the base game people don't get to see the stats before they hire a unit? How do they know if a unit is going to be good?

We take their armour and weapons off to see their stats without any adjustments and use previous knowledge of what we roughly want+how many stars are in a stat to determine if we'll want to keep them. Sometimes i'll even try to make a bad brother work.

I once hired a lovely recruit mid undead crisis because it was the third fight in row defending a settlement and the guys I wanted to keep were injured + close to death, so i couldn't swap anyone else in.

Enter Wolfgang, lovely cripple with some of the lowest roles in everything.

Wolfgang's only job was to stand there with a spear and shove people away from the rest of the lads. What he actually did was stab so many zombies with his spear that it broke and he had to pick up a different weapon off of a dead zombie to stay in the fight. I don't remember any of the good troops names, but I certainly remember wolfgang.

Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013
So I was a constant recruit'n'reload guy, now I just use the smart recruitment mod which does the same thing and saves loads of time and clicking. I get that it is a significant change to the 'intended' game - you simply won't have the same array of top quality guys otherwise, unless you somehow generate enough money to gamble on all sorts of recruits, which I frankly don't think is possible. Even accepting that not all bros will be tip top, you take a heavy economy hit just on the fact you'll often hire a good background who has some crippling downside. I don't know how anyone ever buys the top expense backgrounds without savescumming or recruitment mods. Bar maybe hedge knights they can all come out subpar and certainly cost inefficient.

Now I like having top quality guys as part of the fun for me is building stats until they are really scary and I can go up against the top endgame stuff like goblin cities, big chosen & unhold barbarian camps, etc. And I like affording things, even on Beginner Economy and using smart recruiting, I have plenty of cash but I can't always buy uniques when they crop up, and I almost never buy mundane weapons or armour.

Ultimately its just part of the iron-man or not dynamic. If you're all in on the rng iron-man game where losing out is part of it, then random recruitment is a big part of it. I don't find it fun myself. My mindset has always been that if you're not iron-man, you'll probably reload some recruitment like buying a gladiator who turns out to be asthmatic and clumsy; inevitably you end up reloading most anything you're not happy with.

On a related note, are there non unique items anyone else buys? I sometimes do Warbows & Sallet helms for my archers, greatswords or 2h maces and hammers for my frontline, as those are all items I find uncommon as loot and are a key part of my late game non-unique load outs. When I started pre-dlc I know some advice was to buy 200+ armours to get you into that Battleforged zone. I've never found it necessary, by the time I'm all in mail shirts the game brings along a steady stream of Brigand Leaders or similar I can shank.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
I mean its a single player game, play how you want. I do think its worth prefacing your advice with "oh i just do this, but i also use mods/habitually reload" if you're talking to newer players who haven't gotten to that yet rather than just assuming they're doing that. They probably aren't :v:

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
I regularly buy a few 200+ armours early in the game. If you befriend a small town with an armourer you can reliably get reinforced mail hauberks for like 2500 gold or less, which is very doable in the early game and will seriously up the survivability of your best bros. Then as you start getting better armour you send the hauberks down the line until by the lategame they're the armour you give to new recruits. Getting good armour early on, before you even start seeing bandit leaders to shank, can be a big plus to the power snowball. In the peasant game I just started I think I bought the first one around day 15, before I even had everyone in raider mail, because I wasn't seeing very many raiders yet.

Other than that, I'll buy rare weapons and armour if I can't find good uniques to fill the same role. Sallet helms for archers if I can't find good light helmets without visibility decreases. Bardiches or two-handed hammers for two-handers that haven't found unique versions of the same. Warbows if I don't get any as loot or can't find a unique bow. I used to even buy plate mail sometimes, but now with the increased unique chance I usually find enough unique heavy armour to fill that role.

Genghis Cohen
Jun 29, 2013

dogstile posted:

I mean its a single player game, play how you want. I do think its worth prefacing your advice with "oh i just do this, but i also use mods/habitually reload" if you're talking to newer players who haven't gotten to that yet rather than just assuming they're doing that. They probably aren't :v:

That's true, approach to saving/loading in general is a major change to how this game plays.

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

I see the "hire a dude who could potentially be bunk and cart him around and deal with it/specialize them in something suited to them rather than find a guy to fill a whole you're specifically targeting" as an important part of the game, especially since the game gives you an out by being able to fire them right away. I don't care if someone else doesn't like that, of course, your game play how you want, but to me that's part of the game's intended difficulty and balance so I try to preserve it.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
If someone is truly unsalvagable they just go in front of the line with a shield + wall every turn until they die. I don't really find myself behind the curve on xp because the amount of times i'll get a brother who's truly that useless is not high.

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

Oh absolutely. I will get my money's worth out of this idiot lol

Kobal2
Apr 29, 2019
Ugh gently caress snaaaaakes so much. Had to redo an "easy" battle like 10 times because each time the fuckers chain-pulled a good bro twice in a row, landing him into a murder circle two ranks deep. Is there even a way to defend against that bullshit ?

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Kobal2 posted:

Ugh gently caress snaaaaakes so much. Had to redo an "easy" battle like 10 times because each time the fuckers chain-pulled a good bro twice in a row, landing him into a murder circle two ranks deep. Is there even a way to defend against that bullshit ?

Keep vulnerable bros out of range; and don't play defensively. If you wait for them to come to you, your bros will get snatched up. You want to move to them and get into melee range, trying to wrap yourself around them as best you can, then they're less likely to snatch you. Other than that, guns are very, very effective.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
You need to charge them so they can't yoink. They're there specifically to make people do something other than shield wall

E;fb

dogstile fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jan 22, 2021

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Southpaugh
May 26, 2007

Smokey Bacon


yup you're charging snakes with your offensive melee bros. Two handed sword shines against them due to flexibility of attack since they are happy to crowd one another, cleaver duelist works wonders. Have had good results with throwers and polemen assuming you take them potentially being snatched into account. a dead snake or two from your 2h guy and you'll have more room to maneuver them. and if they get grabbed when the snakes are already wounded you are probably ok to finish them off. They don't do too much damage, once you're all in mail, but their ability to single out a shieldman from the wall or an errant backliner, and dump them into easy range of their buddies makes them something you wish you'd never fought, the first few times anyway.

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