Early game far too hard.

[Anonymous]

The start of the game is now far too hard, even on normal difficulty mode.
It’s soo hard it’s not fun any more.

It takes too long to find towns willing to give you quests, meaning alot of traveling for nothing, wasting time and pay and food.
AVAILABLE QUESTS WHICH YOU CAN TAKE, need to SHOW ON MAP.
It’s game over if you find no level one quests after traveling to 3 or more towns early game.

The starting level one missions are far too hard for the gear and men you have in the beginning. It’s not even funny to lose 3 guys and get a load of crippling injuries, only to be paid like 300 gold…. just nope.

Skeletons need to NOT be a thing until mid-late game because you need special weapons to fight them and you just don’t have any choice at the start what you happen to use because its mostly luck who you can hire and what you can buy.

Most recent restart, I run into a level one mission for bandits, I have 9 men with terrible gear, they have 7 men in proper armour and weapons, I can’t even hit the ones with no shields…. they shred my guys in 2 hits…. how is this even slightly tactical?

Something is badly wrong with the difficulty scaling at the start of games, there should be level one missions everywhere and the missions should be no more than 4 guys with medium/low gear … otherwise early game is a nightmare of save scumming to find towns with quests and save scumming to get only bandit quests that you can actually complete.

I am not bad at this game. I have finished it many times on the hard mode. I understand the combat fully. I understand the best way to scale up by trading and hiring ect. It’s just, since the injury patch, something has made the early game just soo un-fun and stressful. Repair kits cost too much, quests don’t even pay enough to cover losses from a good fight, let-alone an even or bad fight.

I tried different things on multiple restarts but these issues just keep coming up.

Also, the new training grounds I was looking forward to… are useless wastes of money. Either give actual skills, or exp, or stats, or go home your drunk. Who wants to spend money to get a time-limit exp bonus…

Sorry to sound angry but, well, I am not happy with the state of the early game and how it scales at the moment.

[Sekata]

I don’t think the early game is so bad. You’re a veteran, so I won’t condescend by saying that things are easy once you know the game. I think the early game has just become much more of a meat grinder. Turnover is much higher as you hire replacements and fire soldiers with permanent injuries. I think the difference is priorities of using on-hand cash. Early game I think expendable income should be used on two things.

1. Setting up the emerging core of soldiers level 3-5 with gear that will see them through to higher levels. I try to give them good chainmail/shields once I can afford to.

2. Making sure there are always 12 brothers on hand to go into battle. The reasoning here is pretty simple. Even if one of the bodies is a peddler with a club, he increases the likelihood that a veteran will survive just by attracting arrow fire and aggro. In that way even money spent hiring a new brother is an investment in a better soldier.

I think the early game can be beaten pretty reliably, just depends on what your tolerance level is.

Skeletons aren’t all that bad. Auxiliaries are pretty simple as long as you’ve got reliable damage output from melee fighters, but I decline 2 skull artifact retrieval quests that I know will put me up against legionaries. The polearm users in that army are just…. Terrifying. That’s without even considering that they all have fearsome.

I’m definitely not “good” at the game, and there are much better players here on the forums. Just my 2 cents. I think I was super flustered in the early game for the last campaign I started.

[Anonymous]

@sekata, yes I pretty much agree with everything you said. I do try to get to 12 men asap but other things like losses and gear become a real issue in the new early game.
I think you hit the nail with your comment about the meat grinder and my tolerance to it, I just hate the feeling of moving backwards in a game’s progression even when I am playing as well as could be expected given the “OVERLY” random aspects of the game.

It doesn’t feel like I am playing well, to lose 2 or 3 guys per fight even using the best tactics and spending my money as wisely as possible.
And RIP any idea of making your squad to follow a specific strategy like all ranged or all 2 handed, because the game does not give you enough freedom to try any of this because your scraping by as it is, lucky to gain even a few brothers in a few hours of play.

[RusBear]

I personally think that in the release version the enemy is weaker in composition and in quantity than it was in the first beta patch 0.9 and even 0.7. This is apparently a special step to reduce the shock for new players.
In general, on subject, yes, we should say to devs “well done” – their thesis that you have to “lose some men” and they do everything that this thesis would work )

[Ioci]

didnt have time to play the game recently, but the day the game was fully released, i started a new game, the first mission after killing Hoggort was hard, it was a 1 skull mission, to hunt down the creature terrifying a village. i met a party of 6 Ghouls in this mission, they have 1 mega ghoul in the party, it doomed my company very quickly. guess i am not that expert like i thought i was.

[thekdawg21]

I am playing my first campaign on veteran / iron man today. I don’t remotely understand the game as much as you do, but I am paying attention to all the stats and stuff. My strategies are not yet perfect, but I’m not blindly running into combat just bashing everything every chance I get. I have lots of shields and using shield wall often. Even with a horribly bad unit standing next to a good unit also shield walling, it makes that good unit very hard to get through the shield. So I get at least one good attack with little repercussions. I use high ground to my advantage, and use weaker units to screen for the strong units that are vulnerable that turn. Shields seem to make all the difference early game for me. I’m reliably keeping my cash levels at around 600 to 1k while leveling my bros up. Sadly I had a crippling injury on my best defensive unit with double stars on both Resist Melee and Resist Ranged, who was going to be my bad ass arrow blocker. I’ll let you know once I get to the next stage of the game, but I’m doing just fine as of now with quite weak level 3 units with my best gear being a falchion and 80 armor + shield.

Maybe it’s RNG? Don’t know. It’s my first campaign. I am pumping HP into the units whose stat spreads I like though, if it gets a good roll on level up.

[Mike]

Anonymous wrote:

(…)

May I draw your attention to a couple of in-game hints? Like for instance:

“Expect to lose some men”
“Not every contract is worth the risk”
“You don’t have to be a hero, you’re running a business”

Those are not meant to be random lines put there just to sound edgy. Those are meant to be hints and statements about what kind of game you are playing.

There are plenty of games where the player is meant to find satisfaction in becoming a superpowered superhuman superhero, effortlessly dispatching legions of enemies. Or those that call themselves “realistic” and allow you to be some edgy-as-f*** spec-op soldier with improbable aiming skills and magically regenrating health. Nothing wrong with that if that’s your cup of tea.
But well, guess what – BB is not that kind of game. It is meant to be more like games of yore, when you were supposed to put a lot of effort and restart many times before you succeeded. The odds are not stacked in your favor and that’s what’s making the victory meaningful and rewarding.

So no, the game is not “far too hard”, it is simply hard. And honestly that’s how I – and many others – like it.

I don’t feel like dissecting your entire post, but I’ve read it and for someone who claims to have a long experience with the game you are stating quite a lot of things that are simply untrue. Skeletons requiring “special weapons”? Like, lets see: swords, axes, maces, cleavers, flails, hammers? Basically anything that is not a spear, dagger or bow? I’d point your attention to the fact that at first you only face auxilliaries that can be killed even with a damned spearwall (after you’ve destroyed any armor they rarely have with a bow at 100% effectiveness), but someone who “finished the game many times on hard mode” (BTW, how do you “finish” an open-ended sandbox is beyond my humble understanding, but whatever) and “understands the combat fully” is probaby well aware of that. So I’ll just live it at that, though I really, REALLY could go on for quite a while.

Hope that you enjoy the game.

[icemelon]

I think the early game, is challenging, but I think it has to be that way. Your company got ambushed, you lost a lot of your better and equiped man, and now, you have to forge your name through the world. That’s not piece of cake.

It’s true, sometimes it can be frustrating, and it’s not always your fault, but the map seed and random event also have great influence in that.

And guess what? In my opinion you have to retreat more. When the battle starts, if you see they are more, and better equipped, just run for your life. It was a hard lesson for me, but I learnt.

[mrbunnyban]

Keep in mind that retreating from combat no longer incurs DEATH, only temporary injuries. Furthermore, you only get injuries for brothers who are not on the sides of the map. In fact, ancient auxilaries have such low initiative you should have no problem reaching the edge of the map with your whole team.

[Folix317]

I couldn’t agree more the 1.0 version is more difficult in early game, I restarted multi times to a proper start, avoid escort mission in early game,i once get into 4 fight to finished 500 crown mission how many man could it left me, and there is teleport mummy is super op in early game or the mid game armor raider is not suppose jump you at day 5, no solution reload 4,5 times pure rip, and 1.0 has a lot of troll mission, there’s once l got a level 2 mission with only 190 gold or the escort mission want you travel to another side of map only offer 300, my current play is Normal difficulty 24 days in, I approximately reload 10 times.

[Namespace]

Hi guys!

It seems to me that the amount of quests available is mostly depending on your map. I started a new campaign yesterday, most civillian settlements are close to the coast (in the south) – since south of that there is no land, there is less physical space to spawn camps and missions. I constantly get caravan escorts across the whole map for 600 gold. I rather decline that one and go to the next settlement to see if they have a raider contract that actually gives some gold.
Don’t get me wrong. Caravan quests are great in the (late) midgame to lategame where hardly anything can kill you anymore. However early there are many roaming groups that can simply annihilate your whole team and we don’t have the crowns to get anything from the “well supplied” status as long as the destination produce high value trade goods like salt, gems etc. maybe for cheap tools – but let’s be honest it’s still not worth going across the whole map for and possibly having to abandon the caravan anyways.

I would like to see more contracts that are actually worth doing and don’t require you to go across the whole map.

The main problem is that we don’t know how the game is scaling difficulty and the devs don’t give an answer. You getting 7 raiders at an early stage should not happen in Normal difficulty imo. I expect that on expert and don’t mind losing a guy or two in exchange for some T2-T3 weapons and worn mail shirts.

Also, I think skeleton contracts are ones of the easiest in early game and they sometimes give high-value loot like chalice or ancient coins, gemstones. Keep a few swords, flails etc to deal with them. Use shieldwall if you get surrounded and break their formation with shield bash if one of your guys gets in trouble. Even in lategame, I do not get why people are complaining so much about skeletons. The only time I get into trouble is when they come with ~10 necrosavants and priest. As soon as you have some guys with Greatswords legionaires fall like flies. Also duelists can usually kill them without even destroying their armor since their base HP is laughable. Even Honor guards are not much of a threat when your guys wear Coat of Scales and decent helmets with Battleforged.

Anyways, I do agree the early game is a bit too hard compared to late and midgame. There is almost no difference between a lv1 and a lv3 brother because they will mostly have the same gear while their stats don’t increase that much unless they get +3 melee defense rolls. On the other hand, once you get Underdog, Berserk and Bow Mastery you party gets immensly more powerful but enemies don’t.

[Anonymous]

all replies appreciated :)
I see now that my map is totally messed up, I only have 2 small villages at the top, then two at the bottom -which is like 3-4 days travel away from eachother. None of the other places will even give out missions because they are locked.

Seems to me there needs to be some crafting rules on map creation to ensure you can actually get enough level one low rep missions to actually play….

[Namespace]

Anonymous wrote:

all replies appreciated :)
I see now that my map is totally messed up, I only have 2 small villages at the top, then two at the bottom -which is like 3-4 days travel away from eachother. None of the other places will even give out missions because they are locked.

Seems to me there needs to be some crafting rules on map creation to ensure you can actually get enough level one low rep missions to actually play….

Exactly. I notice huge differences in my playthroughs depending on map constellation. Optimally you have small “circles” of civillian settlements where you can get quests and trade goods.

[GlyphGryph]

Skeletons early game are great because all of their missions can be won by running away, and you still get paid.

Embrace the proper mercenary mentality of the grab-and-dash

[Namespace]

GlyphGryph wrote:

Skeletons early game are great because all of their missions can be won by running away, and you still get paid.

Embrace the proper mercenary mentality of the grab-and-dash

Tried that yesterday. Had the event where I could either just take the required Item or take a Crypt Cleaver too. I was greedy. The next thing I know is my band of merry misfits is facing 12 ancient legionaires. Did an orderly retreat and kept the cleaver but did not finish the quest objective. Ended up aborting the mission.

Did it not work because of the cleaver event or because they fixed it in general?

[Author]

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