Incline Battle Brothers + Beasts & Exploration, Warriors of the North and Blazing Deserts DLC Thread

[Ezeekiel]

Maybe they mistook the witch/seduction pictures for Battle Sisters (TM) and thought the game got woke or something.

 

[Eyestabber]

Someone tag me ITT when the DLC becomes available for purchase, please. Will pay with brofist.

 

[Murk]

All those screenshots are from like 5 minutes into the game.

 

[thesheeep]

All those screenshots are from like 5 minutes into the game.

I'm surprised they got that far.

 

[Salvo]

http://battlebrothersgame.com/dev-blog-102-the-webknecht/

So far we’ve talked about two new enemies that are part of the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and intended to spice up the mid to late game. We want to bring fresh enemies to all stages of the game, so this week we’ll take a look at a new beast aimed to bring variety mostly to the early game. Let’s crawl!

THE WEBKNECHT
The Webknecht is a large arachnid that lives in sizable colonies in the dark areas of forests throughout the world of Battle Brothers. It’s there that they spin their webs between trees to trap anything from bird to deer and between. Unlike most other beasts, Webknechts don’t usually roam a lot, preferring instead to sit in their territory and wait until something unfortunate gets itself caught in one of their nets. Still, they’re known to choose the vicinity of settlements for their home on occasion and threaten the lives of villagers and their livestock.



The presence of a large enough number of Webknechts is heralded by extensive webs spanning from brush to tree to rock, uniquely transforming any combat environment in a way that leaves no doubt about who lives there. Worse still, amidst the webbings are nests of eggs, and these eggs hatch during combat. You can seek them out, and destroy them with a single strike before they hatch, but otherwise, as combat goes on, there’s always the danger of more and more eight-legged terrors swaming you until you cut down enough to make it ebb.



Webknechts make use of the ‘Weave Web’ skill to weave around their opponents a sticky web, which prevents anyone trapped inside from moving and reduces their ability to attack with full force or defend themselves effectively. Characters can attempt to free themselves of the web during their turn, and each failed attempt increases the chance of subsequent attempts succeeding, but doing so can quickly become tiring, which only works in the arachnids’ favor.

Webknechts aren’t as frenzied in their attacks as, for example, Direwolves are. Instead, they choose to let their opponents tire themselves out by struggling in their webs, and they wait until an opportunity presents itself and their opponent is distracted before they attempt to bite them a single time per turn. They act as a swarm, and so the more oversized spiders surrounding a target and acting in concert, the more effective they become.



The Webknecht’s bites aren’t terribly dangerous to the armored mercenary, but Webknechts are poisonous, and receiving hitpoint damage will apply it. Unlike the poison employed by Goblins, the Webknecht poison does damage to vital organs over several turns and characters can die from it. The Antidote item already in the game works just as well against this kind of poison, however, and is more important now than ever. In fact, it can now be crafted at will if you have the necessary components – but more on that in next week’s dev blog.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Nice!

I hope we get additional inventory slots though, I don't want to carry 12 Antidotes around and exchange them with dogs / trophies etc. every time I encounter Webknechts.

 

[thesheeep]

Nice!

I hope we get additional inventory slots though, I don't want to carry 12 Antidotes around and exchange them with dogs / trophies etc. every time I encounter Webknechts.

I'm also a bit worried about that.
At the very least, setting different sets of equipment for the whole squad would be nice.

I also love how the spiders have to keep their legs together in order to fit on the piece

 

[Alienman]

Watch as mod support request increase with 500% because people want to replace them with bears

 

[Barbarian]

Next dev diary will be about crafting eh? Very curious about that.

 

[Hrymr]

Some interesting stuff right there. Looks like HUGE changes to the whole armor system are incoming:

A few points, because there seems to be some misconceptions.

• The Old trait is exclusive to Swordmasters. Retired Soldiers can not actually get it.
  
• The effects are +10 Resolve, -10 Hitpoints, -10 Max Fatigue, -10 Initiative, -1 Vision.
  
• An old swordmaster will offer you to have his pay cut, and will continue to provide training events unique to his background.

Together with a bunch of other balancing changes coming with the DLC, the Nimble perk has been overhauled to work differently now. I don't want to get into details yet, because things may still change depending on how playtesting goes, but the basic idea is to make lighter armor more viable in general and heavy armor no longer be the answer to everything in the late game. If you guys want, I may dedicate a devblog to perk changes further along the way and explain all the changes and our reasoning there in detail.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/1736589519990885355/#c1736589519994893095

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

If you guys want, I may dedicate a devblog to perk changes further along the way and explain all the changes and our reasoning there in detail.

Yes, please.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Nice!

I hope we get additional inventory slots though, I don't want to carry 12 Antidotes around and exchange them with dogs / trophies etc. every time I encounter Webknechts.

Add no stacking items and one use items and limited inventory space.
All that could be easily avoided by direct use of items from belt slots and refillable items.
Also its nothing.
I recently get hit by though that DLC is already done but they want to release it on Christmas (with sale on basic game) and they need build hype. I mean Art is probably done already and what they show until then doeasn't look like anything code heavy(unless they were true about telling that their code is total mess and coder forget to comment stuff).
Well reasonable tactics.

 

[vazha]

Spiders, eh? Cant say I m impressed. Also webknechts a silly name

 

[Parabalus]

If I loaded a save from pre-Lindwurm patch, it means I won't find them or the new items, right?

 

[Teut Busnet]

If I loaded a save from pre-Lindwurm patch, it means I won't find them or the new items, right?

You don't need to start a new campaign, but it can take a while to find Lindwurms, they're very rare.

The Uniques (Helmet, Armor and Shield) are never for sale - at least I never saw them in a shop - but can be found in locations of any kind.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Spiders, eh? Cant say I m impressed. Also webknechts a silly name

Web(er)knechte is the German name for the Opiliones.

 

[Reinhardt]

Also from art thread

 

[Teut Busnet]

Is that the new tier 2 Greatsword? It looks better than the top tier one - swap them!

 

[Sarissofoi]

Is that the new tier 2 Greatsword? It looks better than the top tier one - swap them!

No, its exactly the new look for current great sword.
The new mid tier is a longsword.
It looks like their artist have spare time to do reworks. Not that I complain.

 

[Invictus]

This looks more like an honest to goodness expansion than a DLC and so far I am liking what we got so far; new enemies which introduce new mechanics, new weapons and fixes for the gameworld
Honestly I am perfectly happy with what they are showing so far but if they could add a little more meat to the main gameplay it would deliver on the promise for the excellent gameplay

-I think that creating your own bros is not a good idea, since I enjoy the idea of not all bros beign legendary heroes or whatever but maybe one way of offsetting the chore of bringing up to speed newer recruits would be some sort of cumulative commander bonus; for example your company leader grants some starter bonuses to new recruits in the sense that veteran troops could “teach” the young recruit and thus make it easier to survive the crucial early fights

-Regarding bonuses for the commander maybe there could be a set of traits and quirks that could be chosen at the start (like Taskmaster which grants +5 valor to troopers) and some could be earned through gameplay (like Ork Killer for getting into 10 fights with orks) to customize the gameplay more to the style of the gamer

-More fleshed out random encounters ranging from escort missions, rescues, special quests etc

-And finally some more multi leveled quests like getting hired to kill and bandit king, locating and killing him and then the remaining bandits besieging the local town until they are confronted in their new hideout.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I would just make the commander the merc management guy (perhaps with his own set of perks that affect the entire company can be advanced as you gain more rep) rather than a warrior with the crew. That's the only thing that is missing to me - your bros become killing machines as the game advances, but there is nothing to do with mechanics of the company.

Add some merc management - make it solid - and this game becomes classic/ten.

 

[Eyestabber]

Did they say anything about introducing better recovery mechanics? This is one of the few gameplay related criticisms that I actually agree with Roxor's review: the longer the game goes on, the less inclined the player is to take any risks at all, to the point where you might as well quit and start over. There needs to be some form of replacing high tier bros when they die/become severely crippled. Suggestion: once you reach a certain level of renown + you have a full squad of maxed out/almost maxed out bros, every X amount of days you'll get an event about a local hero/great hero/hero of legend (depending on how far into the game u are) saying he heard about your deeds and wants to join your group because whatever. Pay a YUUUUGE hiring fee upfront and get a dude on par with your dudes (minus magical gear). Hero stats should be shown in FULL before hiring, IMO.

 

[Sarissofoi]

This looks more like an honest to goodness expansion than a DLC.

Well not be to hasty but I agree that its promising.

B) Auto-calculate the actual retreat at high speed, in other words the AI takes over and tries to manually retreat the men step-by-step, and whoever cannot reach the edge is killed. It just simply automates (rapidly) the actual retreat with AI control, and the consequences are final.

We’ve chosen to go a similar route as with your option B for overhauling the retreat mechanics. If your men are already on the edges on the map, you’ll safely retreat as before. If they aren’t, they’ll now attempt to speedily move to the edges of the map by themselves until either they succeed or die. While this is going on, they’ll get a defense bonus for moving through zones of control, the amount of which scales with the chosen difficulty level. They can still fail at getting away, get shot in the process and whatnot, but there’s a reasonable chance that they succeed, so that retreating always remains an option.

The new mechanics speed up the process of safely retreating quite a bit if the enemy isn’t able to close the distance anyway, but it also means that you can’t just teleport everyone to safety anymore if you’re already engaged. The skill and equipment of your men, your positioning, and who you’re fighting against now all have an impact on your chances to retreat unscathed, and it’s no longer just random injuries for everyone.

Well that is interesting to be honest. Its look like their really gonna do real job here. So its look like they come back to BB. Huh. It raises hopes on some thing fixed and maybe even more stuff later.
It looks like somebody beat some sense into thick Kraut skull. Not that I am complaining.

Spoiler

Maybe only on that that it wasn't me.

Did they say anything about introducing better recovery mechanics? This is one of the few gameplay related criticisms that I actually agree with Roxor's review: the longer the game goes on, the less inclined the player is to take any risks at all, to the point where you might as well quit and start over.

I generally agree with this sentiment. Problem is stat inflation and level grind as lack of replacements.
My solution for this things would be buffing initial stats(plus allowing backgrounds convert from less military to more military ones with stat buffs), reducing stat gain and slashing levels(when increasing number of perks per level or adding skills acquirable outside perks(like by backgrounds, veteran halls, events) and getting rid of prestige levels.
To be honest replacing current recruitment system also would be helpful.
>instead of playing roulette allow check stats
>instead of paying cash for recruitment pay other currency(say FAME or PRESTIGE) for better merc.
It would also be easier balance enemies around fairly more balanced (in sense of stats) tems.

 

[Sarissofoi]

I need your help CODEXers.
Blog tomorrow but now I need a good map seed.
I get tired(a little) playing x-piratez and want to see if I still can't stomach BB.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Try 2a35.

The northern part has all the good cities with all (but one) of the shops, so you can ignore the southern part, establish your trade routes, and if there's a war you know wich house to fight.

You have two forest villages, where you can pick up great hunters and lumberjacks, the starting Bros are awesome.

Larger area to explore (in the East) than most other maps.

(Make sure to tell me how much you hate the map for silly reasons!)