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

[Soulstones]

The patch fixed the drought of shit tier hireling early on. I think. I now see a lot of cheap hands, what you used to see in the basegame.
5 more HP
9 more Resolve
(Is that 'naked' fatigue? That wouldn't be great.)
13 (!) more M Att
9 (!) more M Def

5 HP are irrelevant, resolve is kinda sorta, both naked, 13 m att for 7k, 9 m def will equalize out in 10 levels due to the star

If I am in a point in the game where getting that trash soldier for 7k is chump change, I am not playing anymore anyway.

 

[Soulstones]

Naked barb
high mel def - extra
perks:
nimble - naked but with shield
colossus - more 'armor'
dodge - 15% of initiative as def
lone wolf - 15% extra def and off
shield expert - lose 15*0.15 def due to initiative drop, gain 25 mel def, heater
steel brow - no head crits
underdog - no surrounded malus
swords - for riposte, active hitting is too tiring

Eg
40 base mel def (start at 10, +30 at level 10, 3 per level)
25 heater and shield expert
20 0.15*initiative (130+ initiative)
12 0.15*all defense, lone wolf
=
97 m def


I am not sure how accuracy works. But
If accuracy is a simple subtraction than you are getting hit at a 5% clip, right?
1H orc axe, dmg 50 avr per strike, 50*0.25 = 12.5 avr with Nimble, 25 avr per turn to HP.
6 orcs doing 25 dmg per turn. 6*25=150. At 5% CTH, 150*0.05 = 8 HP damage per turn average.
Question is how well will Riposte save you. Otherwise, dead in 10 turns.

 

[Soulstones]

killing frenzy or head hunter and indomitable to get some offense and safety

 

[hivemind]

spooky shit

Spoiler

 

[Barbarian]

The patch fixed the drought of shit tier hireling early on. I think. I now see a lot of cheap hands, what you used to see in the basegame.

Well, yeah they'll be worse in level, but their stats can easily far surpass any of the lower tier backgrounds.
Sellswords and Hedgeknights have great bonuses.

Thats obvious that they have higher base stats. Thats not the point.

Six thousand seven hundred blood soaked coins

70

Whats the difference at level 10?
All I got is mail that an ork obliterates in a single axe hit and kewl helmet (its shit, I have more of them), oh and 3 levels! What a bargain! Could have bought 2 actual endgame frontline armors.

Hiring expensive soldiers in this game is broken. The perk preview is a sad joke.
If I hire a 2k merc and he is shit, I reload.

-edit-
Oh and 47 coins upkeep.........................................................................................

I might try hiring a swordmaster later, but I say tier 3 recruits are only worth it if you are extremely wealthy or savescumming. The new tryout feature is nice but without seeing the talents hiring expensive recruits is still a gamble. And with the new salary raise mechanics they have to be real good otherwise the break your bank.

I'm past day 120, most of my bros are level 5 -8 and aside from 7 midtier recruits(bastard, retired soldier, raider, hunter and 3 starting bros) the rest of the 16 are all cheapos. Even then I have to watch for the upkeep costs, which are already above 300 daily coins... and most of that cost goes for those 6 I mentioned(the raider is level 5 and 43 coins daily, the most expensive in my roster, ouch). The bastard had merely decent stats too(but good traits). I'm reaching the point where some 1-2 skull contracts don't pay off at all if they take long to finish.

With cheapos you can play recruiting roulette at will without breaking the bank. Eventually you can find decent bros from most backgrounds, although the cheaper ones are kind of hard to because of penalties(beggars, cripples and vagabonds usually just work as cannon fodder).

 

[Barbarian]

Anybody faced the kraken yet? Also any word on what the two other bosses are?

 

[Sarissofoi]

I will agree with Reinhardt.
Its not even because high tier recruits are much more costly and with crazy upkeep or that contracts pay is shit and the same price for loot items(both are expected to bring most income). In the end player need to really on fixing and selling weapons in trade route disrupted towns to make any profit.
Also recruit mechanic is just bad.
Its pure RNG, gacha shit, mobile tier solution.
Either you hire hundreds of cheep background in the hope of getting some decent or spend thousands of gold on one guy who cost 5X a upkeep for negligible gain.
YOu can not also increase tier of your lowest soldier essentially bringing them to power level of the higher tier backgrounds.
>from zero to hero apprentice become squire and then hedge knight
Hiring high cost recruits should be a way to bring high level replacements to the company exchanging money for time saved(in grind) and power. When hiring cheap troops should be a way to save money at a cost of fighting power.
Now all we have is a gambling roulette.
I can take all combat RNG that I can mitigate or prevent in some way by preparations or positioning but recruiting system is BAD. I dare too somebody to change my mind. What are advantage of current recruiting system? Why do you like it?

Spoiler

If you play roulette Las Vegas is this way>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

[Kalarion]

High tier recruiting sucks!

See my post a couple pages back. Those high base stats are pretty fuckin huge imo. I can't say I like the gamble, but I can say that my tier 3 recruits were consistently miles better than anyone else at what I kept them for, even my uber-vet starting bros. Starting with that much higher base stats is just that powerful.

Base stats don't mean shit!

You're wrong. 13 extra base MAtt for example (at level 1!) is fucking enormous. Even with no talent in it, that bro is almost guaranteed to cap out higher at level 11 then, say, a Daytaler with three stars. 13 MAtt is something like 4-5 level ups at three stars of talent (assuming an average of 3.5 skill per level with three stars). And that recruit got it free! In a stat that's absolutely required for game success!

Same with Resolve. I think you seriously underestimate how important Resolve is to having a smooth fighting process. It's checked a lot, especially with the expansion. And 9 resolve, along with the star, means you can get that recruit to a safe level (say, 55+) within ~5 levels... instead of either taking 10 levels (!!), or never getting it to a comfortable level because you're having to focus too much on other stuff that you need even more (MAtt/MDef etc). That's huge for:
- walking dead (who have a distressing tendency to rez underneath your bros, causing an instant Resolve check)
- geists (obvious)
- hexen (resolve is the ONLY THING that matters against them, since they have no way to fight you outside of Hex/Charm, both of which check against resolve)
- alps (sleep is checked against resolve)
- hp dmg morale checks
- checks to gain morale from good events (kills etc)

I don't think people realize just how awful it is when a bro is wavering/breaking. Wavering is -10% to all skills. Breaking is -20%. That's like having a split hand, but for every checkable stat rather than just M/RAtt. Failing morale checks is in my opinion the single most speedy way to lose a battle. A Sherman Main Battle Tank of a shield bro will suddenly become absolutely worthless and take wounds left and right once he starts wavering.

I am really disappointed with the tryout system. I don't know why but I thought it was going to let you see what a bro was talented in, not see their traits. To be honest if I'm inclined to use tryouts (IE because I'm about to spend a shitload of money), I'm not going to give two shits about traits. I can work around them. What can't be worked around is the effective 15-20 malus to a targeted stat because the recruit hasn't got talent in it. rapsdjff I hope you guys will consider that.

The Kodexia map seed continues to be fantastic. Day 130 or so, making money hand over fist. I'm getting ready to have full heavy armor frontline and say fuck it to questing for awhile in favor of exploration/unique hunting. 152 inventory space!

Also I haven't seen many people talk about crafting. Some of the potions and consumables crafted from monster parts are awesome. Night Owl pots, reinforced nets (love these especially), ultra wardog armor, bone plating, wolf mantles, Second Wind pots... this stuff is great. Has anyone found a use for poisoned apples? I've never seen a recipe that uses them. It makes hunting monsters a lot more exciting as well. I can't wait to fight my first Lindwurm! And kill a Schrat for the first time.

Oh, does anyone have any idea if Radiant Dust or w/e it's called (the death drop from Necrosavants) has any use outside of cheap selling? I've never gotten an event or anything from it, and I haven't seen it pop up in a crafting recipe either.

God I love this game.

 

[Whisper]

Oh I see, thanks Agesilaus -- I am playing on Ironman. I'll keep that in mind, but knowing it's a save function happening actually makes me okay with the delay -- previously I thought it was lag for no reason, but knowing it's doing something is fine with me.

Why?

I saw so many crazy rolls, like enemy rolling 98 and then 95 to hit in 2 attacks with 5% chance only (in process killing tank since it was berserker chain).

Or 3 attack with 90% chance to hit all missing.

If you're familiar with the game, ironman is the best mode. Bullshit rolls can hurt or help you, but their impact is limited outside of the very early game. It is more important that you have a good understanding of your limits, which tactics to employ against which enemies, and a willingness to retreat when things look dicey.

Limited? This makes only heavy armor battleforged viable. Because you cant rely on archery (i saw like 10 50%+ shots out of which only 2 actually hit), you cant rely on duelists, because you get unlucky and die in 2 shots.

But heavy armor yes, you can always see there is chance of death since armor allows you to mitigate several hits safely.

 

[Whisper]

Oh and to make dueliest you need to have quite specific RNG roll for brother. Even harder to find than brother with ranged skill (50 for starting ranged is harder to get than 60-65+ for starting melee). And you need like 8 (?) levels to make it viable since you want to get nimble and duelist perks which are at END of perk tree. Instead of beggining where they should have been.

In 10 hours of play when save-scumming all recruits you may find maybe 2-3 worthy candidates, which will die maybe in next battle if you are unlucky with RNG. (Yes, enemy can hit 2 times in row with 5% chance to land a hit, saw it).

Also leveling takes LONG, too long to replace 8+ lvl brothers (remember duelist and nimble are for high lvl only). While Battle-forged is nice addition, but you can really do without them. Just grab any brother, get heaviest armor and give sword with +10% hit from skill, you are Ok.

 

[Sarissofoi]

So I was taking my time and fooling around and Undead crisis happen. Now I have some decent people trained but have terrible luck with drops. My best is arming swords and some fallen heroes armor. Not a single greatsword, not even a warbrand dropped for me.
Trying to fight Undead Legionaries even without geists around is a pain. Especially with no 2 handers around.
I think I will drop it as I don't see sense in continuing.
Seriously traveling and fighting bandits, orcs and even some monsters is fun but crisis suck ass and lack of customization options(both for world generation and a special settings for a game) kill fun for me.

Also leveling takes LONG, too long to replace 8+ lvl brothers (remember duelist and nimble are for high lvl only). While Battle-forged is nice addition, but you can really do without them. Just grab any brother, get heaviest armor and give sword with +10% hit from skill, you are Ok.

To be honest some of the perks could be discarded and nobody would notice and some just merged. I will agree at moving some of the perks lower.
If we could mod it we could see if it works well but as far as I know now we can only save edit.

 

[Barbarian]

Always set up war as the first crisis. Always.

 

[PanteraNera]

Anybody faced the kraken yet? Also any word on what the two other bosses are?

Yes killed the kraken just yesterday. Was a really long battle.
Than there is the Conqueror he is at the Black Monolith and wears the emperor's body plate armor. Not sure if he is supposed to be one of the bosses.

 

[Tigranes]

Alright, had my first alp battle. A contract had 6 alps ambush in nighttime on ~level 5 bros.

Honestly, more annoying than anything else. Without other enemy types in the mix, it just means the painstaking work of having everyone walk in staggered formation waking each other up. Couple of times I was dumb enough to get them slept & nightmared, but easily corrected. Perhaps the ambush worked against them, because they would rarely gang up on a bro and sleep + nightmare in the same turn?

 

[tindrli]

Alright, had my first alp battle. A contract had 6 alps ambush in nighttime on ~level 5 bros.

Honestly, more annoying than anything else. Without other enemy types in the mix, it just means the painstaking work of having everyone walk in staggered formation waking each other up. Couple of times I was dumb enough to get them slept & nightmared, but easily corrected. Perhaps the ambush worked against them, because they would rarely gang up on a bro and sleep + nightmare in the same turn?

hexes are worst if you dont have dogs.. now i have 6. even with dogs you need to be carefull coz motherfuckers link themselfs with bros hitpoints.. it goes down, bro goes down

 

[Reinhardt]

i saw like 10 50%+ shots out of which only 2 actually hit

Yes, it can be that. Or it can be desperate 3 level archer shooting two arrows and two geists down.

 

[Reinhardt]

I'm still sick, thinking hurt so next game game i will play with mod i found on nexus. You can up all 8 stats every level. And select any perk from the start. I will limit myslef to 2 perks each level. Because i can. Laugh it up, i don't care.
Oh, and sisters mod too.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Always set up war as the first crisis. Always.

The problem with that could be that you're not ready to complete the long and tough contracts so early on.

Unless you have perma destruction on and don't want to lose settlements, I'd take greenskin and don't bother with it.

 

[Soulstones]

You're wrong

You cant read. To a fanboys, someone is always wrong for some reason.
But realistically, if one can read and math - 6630 for 13 m att and 9 resolve is retarded at any point in the game. I can buy 66 trash hands and am guaranteed to find a handful of better ones.
Not to mention that he aint competing with trash hands but a level 5 or higher trash hand and would be losing for long long fucking time (rl and game).
I am not gonna larp in this game until my mercs are level 20. Nobody aint got time for this.

Tier 3 hiring is broken. Its not usable in a normal game.

In other news, armor attachments are linear in armor/fatigue, eg 40 armor for 4 fatigue. But heavier armor isnt.
Mail shirt 130/14
light scale 170/21
Mail shirt with +40 attachment 170/18

 

[Elhoim]

Average stat difference by background:

 

[Whisper]

You can use Rally now without Banner in your hands?

 

[vazha]

Did anybody find out what the necrosavvie dust does? keep hoarding it and no recipe shows up still

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

You can use Rally now without Banner in your hands?

That's been possible long before release of DLC.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Average stat difference by background:

Wouldn't happen to have a bigger version of that image, would you?

 

[saeci]

Here you go