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@icemelon so you have money problems… do you always repair raider weapons before you sell them? This is vital in getting the most out of your loot. It’s only viable on t2 weapons or so, no point in repairing a hatchet or shortbow but you will make good profit on flails, arming swords etc.
I recommend to get colossus on your first few recruits so they don’t receive as many wounds/die as easily. It works very well on backgrounds with a lot of HP like farmhands, daytalers and brawlers.
If I get a guy and he recieves a wound in his first fight I usually instantly dismiss him unless he has some decent talents because hiring a new grunt is usually cheaper than healing his wounds.

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Just happened to me that one of my guys got shot by an arbalester with 6 tile range, Height level -3.

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icemelon wrote:

Do you think it’s better a lot of ’em not so well equipped, or less man but better gear?

Sorry for long comment and I forgot to answer directly to this.
I think it’s best to get to 12 as soon as possible provided you have at least some sort of armor and weapons/shields for them. Even if they just stand in the back for the first rounds you can use them to surround breaking enemies or use them to run down archers once the rest is engaged.

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Well you need to balance it out.

Getting 12 guys is very important. 15 are probably better so you can change out some guys that get wounded.

As for how to invest: I am playing on expert so my funds are always lacking. I buy maybe 2-3 Leather armors (red ones). They sometimes come somewhat damaged so they are cheaper and help with the early game. I also try to get hoggarts armor at the start with dagger or reinforced wooden flail.
Then try to get to 8-10 guys and buy some pitchforks, knives. The reason for this is so you can surround raiders that are fleeing and dagger their armor.

Basically I engage a single raider with a guy with shield and tank him until I killed the rest, then surround him which in almost all cases sends him fleeing as long as they don’t have a leader. Edit: Pitchforks help with the rest of the enemies here. You can also use your archers to block his movement if you don’t have enough guys.
Flails also are amazing to get fully repaired raider armors.
This is how I get worn mail shirts for all my guys.

If I get to ~2k crowns I usually rush the ambition for battle standard since it’s very strong early and morale boost is still great.
After that I either buy 1-2 Hunters to make more passable archers and then invest almost exclusively into armor. I try to get at most 2-3 normal mail hauberks, then start buying reinforced ones (210dur) until I have 2-4 and then invest into some (cheap) scale armor. Take caravan escorts to settlements with armorer to get better prices on armor. “Well Supplied” status also increases chance for named gear I believe. Almost always have one of those when I do escort quest – but that is for later game when all my guys have decent-ish armor.

Once my frontline wears at least Hauberks I start buying Warbows for my archers. They are 100% worth the investment. If you ever see a good named bow at a bowyer’s shop you should buy it if you have enough funds.

After that I start to increase my safety buffer 5k crowns to at least 20k crowns, the more the better. Some named armors cost 40-50k crowns so you need a lot in reserve. Also since you now don’t suffer deaths from retreat anymore having that amount of cash will ensure you can treat your wounds in ~2 days if you visit a temple. During this time I buy cheap recruits with military background like raiders, adventurous nobles and sellswords. I don’t ever buy bastards, disowned nobles, retired soldiers or swordmasters because of their trash fatigue or resolve.
Once I get a literal ton of crowns to spare I start buying hedge knights because of their enormous potential if they get some talents.

This works for me quite well. I have to say I pretty much only take brawlers and farmhands at the start because of their high base HP and fatigue so they can wear the bought armor and hardly ever die.

You didn’t ask for this but I want to show off my new baby :) It wrecks everything

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Rap wrote:

Difficulty of contracts, non-contract locations and roaming parties scales differently. Contract difficulty scales with time, the strength of your roster, the difficulty rating (skulls), the type of contract, and some factors specific to the type of contract – for example, escort contracts are generally more difficult the longer you travel, as it increases the chance to run into enemies. Contract reward also scales with the difficulty rating (skulls) of contracts, which is why it offers some indication as to the contract difficulty.

Artificially stunting your renown growth will only have you earn less money for contracts, but it won’t make them any easier.

Thanks man, I really appreciate you answering here.
I would like to know what affects the “strength” of our roster though. Do the guys in reserve count? Does equipment count?
I am really curious, because on the worldmap I encounter bands of 20+ raiders with leader + hedge knight and master archer or swordsman and even the 3-skull contracts only send me against 1-2 leaders max. Very rarely a hedge knight.

Also there are a lot of people complaining that they get killed by roaming troops like necrosavants very early in the game. So maybe this is the actual balancing “problem”.

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What are you talking about they resist arrows?
They just have tons of HP but I don’t think they have any resistance against arrows. Their armor is pretty tough though and I estimate their HP pool to be somewhere around 200+. Warbows usually make short work of them though.

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Hey. I agree there is some weird difficulty issue in the first few days. I had some runs end because I got ambushed by some raiders after the hoggart fight too. Missions are fine but world map enemies are sometimes too hard. Luckily I hardly ever see roaming Necros.

Sekata wrote:

It’s not just encounters like this. During caravan runs and other fights, NPC allies barely make a token attempt at helping the player in combat, but somehow during the undead invasion sieges they just can’t help but throw themselves at the enemy so they can come back as wiedergangers, and I can get a UI blurb telling me that I failed to protect them. What accounts for the passive behavior of the AI in the one occasion and the near giddy suicidal fervor in the other, other than generating more enemies under the guise of “defense”?

This is entirely because of how the new AI handles ranged combat. If the enemy thinks they have the ranged advantage, they will just stand there an shoot at you while your own, much better archers take out anything they want. Likewise caravan guards stand behind our own guys to avoid enemy arrows. Then, when all their archers are dead and you want to dagger the last fleeing raider they suddenly become brave and go in for the kill-steal.

Also I agree the event where mercenaries come to take your cargo is truly frustrating. Happened to me twice in a row, first time I gave it up. Second time I killed them where I almost lost some guys. And that for a 300 crowns contract?! I understand it happens when we find an enemy leader for double crown reward but not on delivery contracts.
Those events can be kinda fun late game but in the early game where probably just 2-3 of the mercs could take on your whole crew it really feels unfair.

As for your initial question what you could do – the only thing that comes to mind is to be extra careful and avoid necrosavants at all cost. I also get 2 guys with mace mastery to stun Necrosavants and big Nachzehrers.

Caravan quests can be deadly, especially if you get ambushed. I also noticed it spawning enemy parties directly in front of the city. Exit and instantly in a fight against raiders. On other occasions I don’t get attacked at all. Yesterday I got attacked by 5 different groups in one escort. Three of them on the exact same spot. My caravan didn’t even move an inch.
Maybe reduce the time a caravan stands still after getting attacked?

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Ioci wrote:

but also since you mention this, i think the settlement with harbor could import some of these from foreign country, may the globe economic alive, hoho

That is a damn good idea! There are some maps that spawn without certain trade goods. It would be a nice addition if we could find those products at harbor cities/villages (rarely) and still sell them for a bit of profit to a big city/castle in the center of the map.

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There is no fix atm afaik. The workaround is to save and then reload. It happens to me quite frequently and on random occasions.

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Hey. I remembered about this thread after just rolling a new map.
I do have a village on an island too with no connection to the main land.
This is not intended right?

Anyways, here are screenshot and save.

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Sekata wrote:

@namespace I’m willing to bet it was an option of the cleaver or the quest item. It’s the same design principle behind caravan quests that are carrying gems or offers of more gold for retrieved items from mysterious cloaked figures. Do you take the selfish short term boon, or fulfill the contract to maintain a good settlement relationship. I think you got out better with the cleaver. My thoughts would be different if allied relationships seemed to be worth a damn.

I had this event before. You can either go get the quest item and get out without a fight. You can go get the Cleaver too and not fight. And you can take the Cleaver and get a fight. If you win the fight, you get the quest item and the cleaver. If you retreat you only get the cleaver.

Supposedly, if this event doesn’t happen and you get attacked you can retreat and still have obtained the quest item. My question was if that is still happens or if they fixed this.

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Good thinking on creating a new thread on this topic!
Maybe now we will get an answer from the devs?

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ImzFrozen wrote:

I only recruit Cultists to get the legendary armor set.

Do you know the prerequisistes for that to happen? Does the cultist need a minimum level? Specific day in the campaign?

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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?

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@Sekata I know what you mean. That isn’t the issue here though. During EA we knew that difficulty scaled with renown. Now we have no clue how it scales. It is important to decide how to approach the game on higher difficulties.
How are we supposed to build a valid strategy on how to grow our company if we don’t know what to prioritize. In combat I know the rules. If I knew more about game mechanics I wouldn’t feel so chated because I would know what actually happened.
They can send me against OP enemies but at least I would like to know that this is because it was the intention of my contractor. Say I pissed them off because I cancelled a caravan escort quest when we got ambushed. Now they send me against Ancient Legionaires because they want to troll.

I agree, it is quite frustrating not to get an answer here.

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