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

[Orma]

Dev Blog #119: Tunes from the North
22 MAR @ 3:52PM - RAPSDJFF

Before venturing further into the northlands, let’s set the mood this week by taking a closer look at fresh music accompanying the new faction of northern barbarians coming with the “Warriors of the North” DLC. Yup, Breakdown Epiphanies[soundcloud.com] are on board again to add to the game’s music. Let’s see what they have to say in this week’s dev blog!

Tunes from the North
As those of you who have been following Battle Brothers since they days of Early Access know, as composers we ourselves took an RPG approach when it comes to orchestrating soundtracks for the various factions in the game. The undead are accompanied by an orchestra solely comprised of dark string instruments and percussion that is supposed to resemble the rattling of bones, the orc music is dominated by dark and menacing brass as well as sounds of metal, for the brigands our theme was „instruments you can carry around with you“, and so on. The signature sound of each faction in the game grew from imposing limitations upon ourselves, which in turn lead to a very distinguishable tonal landscape that could even give away what the player is fighting the first time they do so.

You may be happy to hear that for the upcoming “Warriors of the North” DLC we got on board again to expand the soundtrack with new music accompanying the player’s battles against their new adversary, the northern barbarians.

Adding new factions to the soundtrack gets more tricky as time goes on: While from a gameplay standpoint, fighting the barbarians will play out differently than fighting orcs, there are certain aesthetic similarities (brute force, heavily armored higher tier units, show up in clans) that would also favour a similar approach to the music (which in case of the orcs translated to throwing all the brass instruments and war drums that we could find into the mix). Luckily, though, the barbarians also lend themselves well to going a different route, which is mostly inspired by their nordic and rus themed lore and background.



Avoiding brass (and the resulting overlap with the orc faction) completely, we decided to use vocals as the tonal backbone of this faction of northmen. Aside from more common singing styles, we incorporated mouth percussion, overtone and throat singing, which is a vocal style found in Norwegian folklore, Mongolian music and shamanist rituals leading back to the stone ages. As, from a gameplay perspective, the barbarians are a variant of the brigands, we also fell back on the brigands’ „instruments you can carry around with you“ philosophy. Only a single violin, a Swedish nyckelharpa (a medieval string instrument), a couple of drums and a choir of hardened nordmen come together to add new signature battle tracks to the Battle Brothers soundtrack. While production is still ongoing, we are happy to give you this sneak peek today.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Threshold, sser.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Looks like ancient dead thread.

Spoiler

Time to grave rob it.

 

[Reinhardt]

Not enough inventory screens?

 

[Sarissofoi]

Dev Blog #120: The Barbarians, Part III
In part two we introduced three basic unit types of the new barbarian faction that is to claim the north in the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC. This week, we take a closer look at their more specialized unit types. As always, keep in mind that things are still in development and may change. With that said, let’s go!

Drummers
As has been tradition for generations, larger parties of northern barbarians that go to war are often accompanied by drummers. In a sea of rhythmic tribal beats and chants, the barbarian mind will enter a trance-like state where there is only battle, and the barbarian spirit will press the body to its limit and beyond.



As mentioned previously, barbarians have a very physical and fatiguing style of combat, and they don’t pace themselves well. They’re especially dangerous in the first few rounds, but if you can weather this opening onslaught, barbarians will then often find themselves exhausted.

The rhythmic beats of the drummers will have barbarians press on to glory despite this, reflected in the game by reducing the fatigue of any barbarian on the field by a small amount each round. A barbarian can have their fatigue reduced only a single time per round, no matter how many drummers on the field, but it may be enough to give them the strength to use an additional skill, which makes them all the more dangerous. It’s worth considering, therefore, to make drummers a priority target – even if they themselves are unlikely to inflict any damage on your men with their wooden drumsticks.

Beastmasters
Beastmasters are revered for their druid-like abilities to control the biggest natural predator of the north – the unhold – and lead them into battle as living and breathing war machines. They wear ceremonial helmets with long horns and decorate their armor with animal bones, but their most useful tool is a thorned whip with which to exert dominion over their beasts.



In battle, the beastmaster will always appear with one or more unholds. These mighty beasts can wear anything from a simple metal harness and chain, to be controlled more easily, to having metal plates nailed right onto their hide – something possible only due to the unhold’s uncanny ability to quickly heal any wound, even during battle. A beast armored like this can be impossible to bring down if you’re not equipped both for handling massive amounts of armor and health at the same time.



Every turn, a beastmaster cracks the whip to direct their beastly warmachines to do his bidding. However, a beastmaster can not do so if anyone is in their zone of control. And they very much can’t do so, if they’re dead. If an armored unhold doesn’t get directions from any beastmaster, they become confused, and every round there is a chance that they become feral, change to the beast faction, and attack player and barbarians alike in a mad rage of befuddlement.

Prepare for world of pain.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Armored unholds in midst of these barbarians. Ohohohoho

 

[Salvo]

The Unhold part is pure kino. I can already imagine sniping Beastmasters with ranged bros to make an Unhold go ferals in the midst of a barbarian horde. Great update.

 

[k0syak]

the horned helmet looks like a ~150 armor to me, at least no oneshots to the head

 

[Tigranes]

Naked Nimble Dagger-Bro Strike Team might have to be the answer when the party's in real trouble. Heroic bros with their shivs out, knowing none of them might make it back so the Company shall live on.

 

[Reinhardt]

Naked Nimble Dagger-Bro Strike Team

Don't forget oil.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I presume that drums are not lootable item.

 

[jungl]

all they need to add in now is mongols and then I can totally see a barbarian invasion crisis. Mongol could play like human version of goblins.

https://youtu.be/jM8dCGIm6yc

 

[hivemind]

they should add sabres

 

[Damned Registrations]

So I picked this up a while ago, and now my first campaign has ended after a little over 100 days from being attacked by Alps for the first time. Literally ignore all fucking stats and equipment, and the only viable strategy is have 12 dudes with dogs and weapons they can swing twice per turn. Cool. Fucking awesome. Such tactics. I could have won this fight with 12 naked level 1 beggars with dogs and no weapons. But I lost my entire company instead because half of them had polearms and I only had a handful of dogs.

I could definitely build up my strength waaay faster if I started over but I'm not sure I even want to. I never found a single special item except in shops selling for like 12k. All the taxidermy stuff was crap except the direwolf cloak I never even made. 70% of the weapons seem like worthless jank that are only in the game so some suicide bandit can run at you and swing with a 10% chance for some insanely good damage before dying because he has no shield and no allies flanking him. The only stat that really matters is melee attack, so good luck recruiting 30 milliers until you get some good ones and hope they don't eat a 2% crossbow bolt to the face and die anyways.

This game gives you a feeling of progress occasionally only for it to melt away in some random fight for no reason at all. I think my party was actually strongest around the 50 day mark until I lost a ton of guys and my best armour to some fucking goblins landing headshots at night from max range. Fuck, you don't even get to keep your relationship with towns, even that gets pissed away over time and can just lose all value because it gets some monster raid you can't stop.

I can only assume people talking about having a band of guys in special gear at level 12 were playing on easy or just grinding out nothing contracts for 200 hours and buying it all. Anything remotely interesting to fight in this game is also a total gamble that isn't worth it in the long run. It's like I need to spend time grinding to have a fun fight that costs me some of my progress.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Shame IncendiaryDevice self-ejected, or he and the above poster could've jerked each other off for a while here.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So I picked this up a while ago, and now my first campaign has ended after a little over 100 days from being attacked by Alps for the first time. Literally ignore all fucking stats and equipment, and the only viable strategy is have 12 dudes with dogs and weapons they can swing twice per turn. Cool. Fucking awesome. Such tactics. I could have won this fight with 12 naked level 1 beggars with dogs and no weapons. But I lost my entire company instead because half of them had polearms and I only had a handful of dogs.

You don't need dogs to beat Alps, just spread your guys (and switch the polearms to one-handed weapons).

I can only assume people talking about having a band of guys in special gear at level 12 were playing on easy or just grinding out nothing contracts for 200 hours and buying it all. Anything remotely interesting to fight in this game is also a total gamble that isn't worth it in the long run. It's like I need to spend time grinding to have a fun fight that costs me some of my progress.

It really isn't (a gamble). You just need to know what to expect and how to handle it. Quite often a new enemy catches you by surprise and by the time you realize how to handle them, it's too late. The walking trees are a nightmare unless you have axes, etc. For me the giant snakes were the worst enemy because I was completely unprepared and didn't even know what hit me.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The battle had 8 alps. That means, just to tread water, I need to land 16 attacks every turn. No way in hell is that happening, let alone getting even more accuracy/attacks so I can actually spare some AP to move towards the enemies, and then also handling things after my fatigue has built up and I can't make 2 attacks per round anyways. Dogs are absolutely necessary, unless you've got a bunch of dudes with triple flails or some dagger experts for some unfathomable reason. How would spreading out even help at all? That just means one guy gets surrounded by 6 shadows and we have no surround bonuses.

I'm ok with losing some guys to new enemies, that had been happening all game long. I'm not ok with losing my best character to a random bandit marksman firing his crossbow from max range (or maybe beyond max range) into my back ranks or some shitty thug running up with a 2 handed pick and getting a headshot on a guy in the middle of a shield wall, that shit is beyond retarded. Or just being utterly fucked over by terrain. That's always fun. Any 2 enemies that can 2 shot a character and any enemies with enough ranged damage to kill someone in 1 turn if they all land shots is automatically a gamble. Which is basically anything interesting in the game. There's no way to 'handle' half a dozen marksmen. You roll well or you lose characters and their armour.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The battle had 8 alps. That means, just to tread water, I need to land 16 attacks every turn.

It really doesn't because you don't have to attack all alps at once. What you need is to spread your men to make sure that those who are turned don't do much damage. Alps are usually spread around the map, so target the closest 2-3 first, then go after the rest, 2-3 or even 1-2 at a time. Patience is a virtue in this game, rushing in gets you killed.

I'm ok with losing some guys to new enemies, that had been happening all game long. I'm not ok with losing my best character to a random bandit marksman firing his crossbow from max range...

Wear good armor and helmet with neck and nose guards or use shields. Just because you favor polearms doesn't mean you shouldn't use other weapons when the situation calls for it. I've never lost a guy to a random crossbowman after the first 10-15 days (when you get decent armor and shields).

... some shitty thug running up with a 2 handed pick and getting a headshot on a guy in the middle of a shield wall, that shit is beyond retarded.

It is if you let it happen. Surely you have a couple of crossbowmen of your own, ready to kill or weaken enemy's two-handers? You shouldn't move all the way in to allow the enemy to close the distance and attack.

There's no way to 'handle' half a dozen marksmen. You roll well or you lose characters and their armour.

Easy-breezy.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Do you even know what the alps do? They each conjure a pair of shadows that ignore armour and automatically hit if they aren't killed immediately. There's no 'turning'. Spreading out is suicidal.

You must be playing on easy mode if you've never eaten a random crossbow bolt for 40 damage. Dude had over 110 armor (in the back row, behind a fucking shieldwall), got shot once, took 39 hp and 80 armour damage. Finished off as he was running away. Shields aren't even remotely reliable with those stupid shield breaking consumables. Never mind your fantasy of reliably shooting down every enemy that approaches, as though ranged attacks never miss or something.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ah, right, my mistake, mixed them up with the witches. I didn't play the game after the update that changed alps, before they'd cast a sleeping spell and only then the nightmares would attack. So back then the trick was to travel in groups and wake up your men before the nightmares strike.

As for the crossbow thing, I read it as your character was insta-killed not killed in 2 turns (shot once, tried to run away during his turn, shot again). Two-turn kills did happen a few times, but in most cases I was able to move the gravely wounded ranged characters back to safety. Do you always charge forward or what? Yes, ranged characters can easily miss (same as melee) but as your skills grow you can reliably hit 3 out of 4 shots. I wouldn't have kept two ranged guys otherwise. No, I didn't play on easy.

 

[Tigranes]

Alps are dumb, but there are plenty of people playing on veteran and building up successful bands.

 

[Reinhardt]

Gimme some geld and i can teach you.

 

[Shadowfang]

Do you even know what the alps do? They each conjure a pair of shadows that ignore armour and automatically hit if they aren't killed immediately. There's no 'turning'. Spreading out is suicidal.

Alps are easy. Beated 4 or 5 of them on my first encounter. What to do? Spread your men in groups of 3 and each will target an Alp.

If you stay put and only kill the nightmares you are not going to be damaged but you are not going to get anywhere either. You can usually kill a nightmare the turn they show up and they are only going to attack you in the following turn.

Since they die easily and you have to have enough ap to keep moving towards the alps you should use a secondary weapon like a sword if you have too many Brothers with pole arms that aren't hitting what they should.

Do what Vince told you. Be patient and move slowly. Your prioritiy should be killing all nightmares and then move on even if it means that your man aren't moving in one turn. If you rush the alps and disregard the nightmares you are going to get swarmed and then you can be toast.

Are you playing in Ironman mode?
You should not be. Have at least a save before you take a contract.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't charge forward unless it's necessary, but that tends to be the case against groups that are 50% ranged like goblins or bandit hunting parties. I decided against running more than 1 or 2 archers after realizing how common night fights were going to be and how useless archers are during them. They're also pretty garbage in forests, vs ancient dead, alps, and a bunch of other situations. Crossbowmen with reduced AP literally can't even reload their fucking weapon. When they're good they're great but when they're bad they're utterly worthless. A bro with a pike is always useful. Well, except against alps apparently.

Also, comparing the difficulty of fighting 4 alps to 8 is fucking hilarious, unless you won that encounter with only 6 dudes. Again, you can't kill all the shadows with 12 guys unless you're getting better than 66% accuracy, which you fucking won't. My base accuracy was about 40%. I could get maybe 75% on my best characters against shadows that were surrounded. Realistically the triple flails are the way to go since they get so many chances to hit. But I only had one of those. For that matter, I had 4 dudes with polearms so I only had 16 attacks per round to begin with. Less really, since several bros ran out of fatigue after their first couple attacks. Dogs were the only reason I managed to kill 4 of the fuckers before they finished me off. Dogs are OP as fuck, honestly, if you can buy them cheaply enough. If I had been carrying 11 of them the battle would have been a cakewalk.

 

[jungl]

arent they fixing they way unique loot works so its less rng bullshit. Cause you totally can play a 120 day campaign where you hit orc warlord and all their camps and only have a shield to show for it. Have over 20k gold constantly visit 3 weaponsmiths and never have a unique show up