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890 hours in Battle Brothers. I estimate about 30-40 hours of those I have spent just fighting the first battle, then re-rolled for another map.

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Yeah that’s the post I was referring to.
My mistake – it is purely based on percentage. I must have calculated the 15 HP damage from a base of 60 HP

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I just remember a post from Rap on the steam forums. I couldn’t find it anymore though.

There has to be a minimum of 15 HP damage to inflict a wound. This will get reduced by crippling strikes. Then it is also depending on the maximum HP of the brother if I am not mistaken.
The type of wound inflicted depends on how much damage (% of max HP) a brother takes – a heavy hit will inflict a more devastating wound than f.e. a hit from a light crossbow.
Lastly, different weapons inflict different kinds of wounds. Warhammers/maces will inflict crushing injuries – crushed finger etc.
Piercing weapons (Xbows, Pikes, Spears, Bows, Daggers) will inflict piercing wounds like Pierced Side, Pierced Leg Muscles etc.
I believe Axes, Billhooks, Cleavers have wounds like Split Shoulder, Split Hand.
I’m not sure what kind of wounds swords inflict, but I believe they are in the same category as Axes and Cleavers.

I’m also not sure if chance even plays a role in this or if its just based off HP values. Orc Warriors and Hedge Knights have huge HP pools so I think 15 damage won’t be enough damage to cause a wound in general.

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Hey Taito!

Glad to hear you’re doing better. Three-way battles are a bit of a gamble. Sometimes it pays off, but in my experience it usually ends up being bad for the player.

In the first playthrough I think hruza is right when he says don’t hire as many guys. I would probably aim for padded leather (80d) on my frontline before going up on the number of recruits. Try to find leather tanners or the big trading cities, they often have half repaired padded leathers for 100-150 crowns or so.

As for your second Playthrough it sounds a lot better. Ancient Bladed Pike is pretty much the best early game weapon you could hope for. Hit bonus and huge effectiveness vs armor. I agree that roaming parties are kinda OP at the beginning. They spawn groups of orc berserkers, many brigand raiders etc on day 1. I hope this will be addressed in update 1.1 so we have more roaming thugs in the first 15 days or so.

As for your question: Direwolves are allied with Nachzehrers but thats about it. I believe Nachzehrers and Undead in general are allied as well. Maybe Brigands will be allied with Undead if they have a Necromancer but I am not sure about that. Brigands, Orcs, Goblins aren’t allied with anyone unless you have the greenskin invasion.

I think what will help you the most is to learn how to effectively dagger Raiders for their armor. This will boost your early game considerably.

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Hey Taito,

I was thinking you had a lack of crowns because auxiliaries usually don’t really pose a threat when you wear mail shirts or better.
At day 20 your company should wear at least worn mail shirts, maybe a few mail hauberks if you did well or have cheap armorers.

And yeah, misjudging enemies happens a lot. Especially if you’re new to the game, but you will learn that with time.
Battle Brothers has a very steep learning curve but I also find it rewarding. As for losing not being fun, I totally understand that.
I usually try to do perfect runs and not lose any brothers but sometimes it’s just inevitable. Especially in the early game when your defenses are still lacking. I find that I lose most of my brothers in the first 15 days, then not anymore.

Basically, once you get heavy armor (200+) and battle forged perk + underdog your brothers will be almost invincible. Orc weapons, 2-handers and such will still be dangerous but you can practically farm raiders without any risk.

Honestly, 20 tries will be more than enough for you to get competent on Veteran difficulty. Usually having a good map is the most important thing IMO.
I am currently playing on 9840c3 map seed. You start out with really decent companions, the only downside is that there is just one hunting cabin, so getting good ranged brothers can be a bit of a pain.
Still, the map has lots of plains and good trade routes in the south for an easy early game. I hope you don’t get discouraged as it is definitely possible to “not lose” :).

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Hey. It looks like your problems are mostly of economical nature, also contracts scale heavily with the amount of days passed so having only 9 guys at day 20 or so will be very difficult unless they are very talented and decently equipped.
Do you repair weapons before you sell them? Do you trade with goods/food? Especially early when your daily upkeep is not that much, trading will make you rich.

Retrieving artifacts are always very difficult in the early game – it’s usually best to avoid them or “cheese” them if you are not certain that you can take the fight. By cheese I mean just doing an orderly retreat after you get the artifact. You don’t have to fight the enemies to fullfill the contract.

Against auxiliaries you should use flails, but not to go for their head. Auxiliaries have almost no body armor but sometimes wear those 95dur helmets.
Also, without flail mastery the 2nd skill does not ignore the shield bonus and it builds up way too much fatigue to use consistently.
Splitting shields is extremely dangerous as they will then attack you twice with double grip. Only split the shield if you know that you can kill the enemy before he gets a turn to attack and kill one of your guys.
Especially against skeletons you want greater numbers to get more surround bonuses.

Anyways, I would recommend you stick to veteran and just try again. The game has a steep learning curve and beginner will not teach you much. Sure it is nice if you want to have a casual experience but if you want to improve you should just play on veteran :).

Also, maybe you should play veteran without ironman mode for now. Ironman will help you learn to optimize your early game and resource management but playing without it will probably improve your combat strategies. If you get beaten or take losses you can try again and figure out a strategy to win.

Maybe check out some streamers on twitch and let them advise you or check out their strategies. Everyone has a different approach to the game so it is nice to see how people tackle it from different angles and maybe you will find someome with a playstyle that suits you.

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1. I hire 12 people as soon as possible, cheap ones. My talented guys I put in the backline and give them a pitchfork or better, if I find a decent polearm early. Check the military settlements with Blast Furnaces / Ore Smelters for cheap armor/weapons from the regular market. Sometimes you will find a 40% repaired billhook for 700 crowns. A good polearm like that will carry you throught he early game.

Fight roaming troops for loot and XP. It is much easier to fight 7 thugs + 2-3 raiders than just raiders. Avoid brigand marksmen/fight them only during the night.
Put your new recruits in the backline with a polearm until they get enough melee defense to go in the frontlines. Also give them heavy armor, if you can. Fallen Hero armor is pretty great for the start, even if it drops them down to 40 fatigue or so, with a polearm he will hardly ever get tired and because of the heavy armor he will also survive marksmen.

2. I stop doing delivery quests at around day 30 because mercs will show up to take my stuff. Early I think the best contracts are tracking down thieves, clear a cemetary. Obtain some relic from plains – forests, snow etc can be hard because you can’t always retreat against skeletons since they have pathfinder and you might not. Usually skeleton contracts are not that hard until necrosavants or legionaires show up.
You can ofc also take on brigand encampments but they are usually more difficult than roaming parties, early spawned camps and thieves contracts.
Try to explore the world a bit and take easy encampments for extra loot and gear. Dagger armored wiedergangers for their armor.

3. This is a tricky one. There are many ways to go about this, but most important is probably to have 12 men. Take marksmen at night.
I would take 6-7 frontliners with shields and 5-6 backliners with ranged weapons or polearms or both.
Prioritize targets. Focus raiders without shield first, especially hard hitting weapons like 2-handers and double gripped military pick, axe, flail.
Usually you want to shoot them before they come close, otherwise engage and stun them, burst them with polearms etc. If you are in a 1v2 or more engagement, use shieldwall!
Try and use the morale mechanics and surround bonuses to your advantage – raiders become much easier if there are thugs with them you can kill fast and trigger morale checks on the raiders.

4. Rus Baer answered that. I think it is mostly affected by the days passed and less by your roster. You should definitely try to get 12 guys as soon as possible and keep buying cheap recruits until you get talented brothers.

5. Take Marksmen at night. If it’s a cemetary contract and you don’t know the exact composition, take the fight at night (if you fight brigands).
Get a falcon (hawk?) for one of your companions to scout out the enemy composition. If you see necrosavants/geists/necromancers you can react or retreat.
Orcs and Goblins are dangerous and should be avoided until you know you can beat them. Never take a fresh recruit against goblins as they will very likely kill him with arrows.

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Nite wrote:

1. There is missing ability to repair items in towns – sometimes it realy needed fast, and you have no backup armor in stash etc. Maybe blacksmith can do it for you.

You can actually do this at an armorer/weaponsmith for armors and weapons respectively.
For this you need to unequip said item, open the blacksmith interface and then Alt + Right Click the item.

There should be an Icon for this in the interface though. Right now, the player has to read the tooltip when hovering over the item.
Alt + Right Click is also not a great key combination as Right Click is the button to sell stuff.

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RusBear wrote:

I think Jan almost answered this question in one of his interview. The game is designed/balanced for 140-160 days. Victory of the crisis and deserved rest or loss.

Very interesting. I usually find the first 100 days a real chore until my guys hit lv11. If the game is designed for ~150 days playthroughs I really think they should increase the levelling speed.

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Namespace wrote:

Nimble is a nice perk for early grunts

I meant Dodge ofc.

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I agree with hruza. Nimble is a nice perk for early grunts who aren’t talented and probably won’t see the mid- to lategame.
I throw it on early Archers without talent in ranged defense who will end up with 80-90 ranged skill. If I get talented Hunters though I usually just take Anticipation because it will end up giving a better ranged defense bonus than dodge.
Dodge has more of an impact on Overwhelm builds. Even on Duelists I usually go for Battleforged rather than Nimble/Dodge combo because it is more reliable.

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It’s working as intended (only happens with Fallen Heroes).

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Yeah, it is a negative trait imo.
The same works the other way too. If you have a strong brother, he can equip 10 fatigue worth of armor and not decrease the nimble bonus.

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Well, I took resolve mostly to counter the morale checks when getting surrounded and not to counter this catstrophic snowball effect.
I just don’t like the idea of changig the fleeing-mechanic the way you proposed. It is true that in many cases Resolve is still not a good or necessary stat.

In my opinion, more positive morale checks would be better. Let a brother who is surrounded and gets support from an ally that moves right next to him (counter-surround) trigger a positive morale check, it would open up much more possibility for tactical play as well.
Or restore Rally’s function to buff to confident, but lower the chance and take the base Resolve of the buffed brother more into account.
Another option would be to lower the effects of “mood” and give a brother a base chance to start with confident morale based on his resolve.
I don’t think more morale checks would be bad just don’t like changing the fleeing mechanic.

I think Resolve should primarily have a positive function and not be a failsafe against catastrophic events.

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Hey. I know a few people streaming/recording with OBS.
Did you try running the game in windowed mode? I can’t make screenshots with the “print-screen” button when in full-screen or borderless, maybe this is related.

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