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

[Shadowfang]

Also, comparing the difficulty of fighting 4 alps to 8 is fucking hilarious, unless you won that encounter with only 6 dudes.

I was talking about the first time i fought them. I can't recall exactly how many were but they weren't many. Don't know how many guys I had at the time. Maybe 9 mercs.
From that encounter onwards I never fears alps. Geists on the other hand can be a pita. Thank God my bannerman has 100 of resolve with the rally the troops feat.

When I get home I am going to see if I can be so lucky to get that encounter. From what I recall nightmares were very easy to kill.

I know that Alps feed on your nightmares to become stronger but if they also feed on your butthurt than you are fucked.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Bigger groups of Alps are really troublesome, if you aren't specifically prepared for them.
Take off armor and helmets, single hand weapons without shields, as many dogs as possible and bros with Footwork perk to bypass nightmares (It is Alps you want to kill).

If all else fails, just sound retreat. Alps seem to stop attacking (both your men and dogs) after that.

 

[Reinhardt]

I liked old alps more. At least high resolve characters resisted sleep.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Dogs are great and Alps are bullshit, I agree. On the issue of squad loadout, I'm just going to recommend once more that you go with a reserve of 3-5 bros, so you have something to sustain your losses and to give you more choice in what to field for different battles (although good archers are a usually a bitch to find). It really helps alleviate the hit of losing a good bro, and lets you keep injured ones in reserve. Just make sure you rotate as often as possible.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If all else fails, just sound retreat. Alps seem to stop attacking (both your men and dogs) after that.

Seriously? I'd assumed it would be a sure fire wipe given the way they work. Good to know.

Keeping a reserve makes sense, but I honestly had trouble just breaking even in the midgame with all the new enemies and random shit fucking me over. Lost half my team to a necromancer with a fallen hero, mostly due to trying to save one guy that didn't quite get up on the hill in time and it snowballing from there. Next battle won a miraculously lucrative fight against some mercs with awesome gear and was basically back where I was before the losses, equipment wise. Then I lost a bunch of it right afterwards to some other new bullshit. Rinse repeat. Managed to save up enough money for a wagon only to discover it's not even close to worth it, doesn't even give extra tool capacity.

If I play again, knowing that exploring and building relations with most towns is a waste of time, that most beasts are free xp and marksmen are dangerous enough to just cancel jobs over fighting more than a few, I'm sure I could build up enough for a reserve and some better equipment. But I still can't imagine getting into a fight against 6 dudes with bows/crossbows/pilums (or whatever those bullshit shield breaking darts are called) without losing at least one guy. So that rules out a shitton of fights. More importantly, I can't imagine giving a fuck about anything I do. The biggest fights I got into rewarded me with basically nothing. Some shitty monster trophies, a necromancer's useless hat. What was the fucking point? I may as well just not have a merc force at all and just trade furs for 30 days or something equally inane. I think the job I took that had the 8 alps ambush me offered something stupid like 700 gold. The lindwurms were like 1100. They killed two of my best dudes and cost me like 800 in repairs plus 4 days of healing injuries on the guys still alive. I could have just taken a mission to kill spiders, taken like no damage at all and gotten easy 700 gold + more xp than the lindwurms gave. I don't want to play a game where my choices are between easy, boring money and challenging, interesting wastes of resources.

 

[tindrli]

one of the option is simply dont fight damn alps

 

[Damned Registrations]

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, I got ambushed. On my way to the city with the kennel in it, ironically.

 

[Covenant]

Dunno if it's still the case, but the last I heard you always got the first move against Alps - specifically so you could hit the Retreat button - and they wouldn't attack you after using it.

Pretty unfortunate that the devs had a relatively shit monster (old Alps, which were slow and tedious, but manageable), redesigned it to make it worse, and now seem to have given up on further improvements to them.

 

[k0syak]

You don't get the first move, rather they stop spawning nightmares after you hit retreat, so it's just 1 round of getting hit.

 

[Sarissofoi]

At first it look like another brainlt case but now I can see that you have some legitimate concerns and typical newbie issues. Nothing serious that some experience,external knowledge or mods can't fix.
Some advice.
-more renown more cash from contracts
-learn about your enemies wiki is good place
-grab some mods whit quality of life improvments. Try out talent are my favorite. Check nexus for it.

 

[hivemind]

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, I got ambushed. On my way to the city with the kennel in it, ironically.

just reload bro

 

[Damned Registrations]

So after several attempts, I get a decent team going again, 12 dudes all in raider gear more or less, level 5 or so. Take a 2 skull contract to transport goods. Find 6 raiders. Kill them for loot. Less than 2 hours afterwards get story ambushed by mercs. Whatever, I've got like 1 guy seriously injured, it's 11 on 6, incoming gear upgrades. Nope. Fucking weeaboo hedgeknight survives being surrounded and focused on by 8 fucking dudes long enough to kill 4 of them and criple 4 more. What the fuck is this game. I guess I was supposed to know ahead of time he was fucking invincible and just abandon my contract and go sell some shit to make ends meet while I find a 1 skull contract because apparently 2 skulls is too fucking badass for 10k+ worth of geared dudes.

just reload bro

Yeah if I'm going to ignore the results of the game engine anyways it's quicker to just not play in the first place.

 

[Tigranes]

Alps should just be removed - it was an idea that never worked out.

 

[Damned Registrations]

heh, it's nothing personnel, kid; besides, the joy is in the struggle anyway

That's the problem though, there wasn't really any struggle. There was mostly easy fights and then suddenly TPK. I honestly had more fun on the first runthrough losing a couple guys here and there and then building back up. This time I basically never lost anyone until the fucking hEdgeknight cut down my entire squad with his katana +5.

Whatever, got my money's worth I guess. Feels bad playing a game with that much potential sputter out basically due to lazy design.

 

[Covenant]

So after several attempts, I get a decent team going again, 12 dudes all in raider gear more or less, level 5 or so. Take a 2 skull contract to transport goods. Find 6 raiders. Kill them for loot. Less than 2 hours afterwards get story ambushed by mercs. Whatever, I've got like 1 guy seriously injured, it's 11 on 6, incoming gear upgrades. Nope. Fucking weeaboo hedgeknight survives being surrounded and focused on by 8 fucking dudes long enough to kill 4 of them and criple 4 more. What the fuck is this game. I guess I was supposed to know ahead of time he was fucking invincible and just abandon my contract and go sell some shit to make ends meet while I find a 1 skull contract because apparently 2 skulls is too fucking badass for 10k+ worth of geared dudes.

Did you net him? Sounds like it would have made all the difference (even if his armour stops your damage entirely, he's still taking fatigue from getting hit), and they're only 50gp a pop.

Alps should just be removed - it was an idea that never worked out.

I still think the concept of Alps is worth including and they could be done well. Just in a completely different way to how they've attempted it.

Say each Alp begins the fight accompanied by one Nightmare. The Nightmare shifts form at the end of each of its turns, becoming another mob (something worthy of actually giving your brothers nightmares, like an Orc Berserker, Hedge Knight or Necrosavant, and not a Bandit Thug), but it retains its HP through each form shift. The Alp uses some weak CC to stop you getting to it (reducing your AP, making movement cost more, etc), and tries to stay out of your range while remaining in a certain distance of the Nightmare. If you kill the Alp or knock it out of that 'certain distance', the Nightmare goes poof. If you kill the Nightmare, the Alp gets stunned for a couple of turns before summoning another one.

I'm not saying that's the idea they should go with (though it would be nice to see an enemy where you can knockback your way to victory), simply trying to show that there's more you can try with the theme of 'Scary nightmare monsters' before you just give up on it. They're a better enemy concept than 'Giant spiders', at the very least.

 

[Reinhardt]

Hedge knight = free armor and helmet upgrade. Learn to bring knives for every brother.

 

[Shadowfang]

Hedge knight = free armor and helmet upgrade. Learn to bring knives for every brother.

I am doing this with my frontliners and it is pretty cool. The extra fatigue from the dagger isn't much so i bring one along in my belt along with some bandages. Are extra slots useful?

About the Alps, the Beserk perk seems the way to go to deal with them.

 

[Barbarian]

So after several attempts, I get a decent team going again, 12 dudes all in raider gear more or less, level 5 or so. Take a 2 skull contract to transport goods. Find 6 raiders. Kill them for loot. Less than 2 hours afterwards get story ambushed by mercs. Whatever, I've got like 1 guy seriously injured, it's 11 on 6, incoming gear upgrades. Nope. Fucking weeaboo hedgeknight survives being surrounded and focused on by 8 fucking dudes long enough to kill 4 of them and criple 4 more. What the fuck is this game. I guess I was supposed to know ahead of time he was fucking invincible and just abandon my contract and go sell some shit to make ends meet while I find a 1 skull contract because apparently 2 skulls is too fucking badass for 10k+ worth of geared dudes.

just reload bro

Yeah if I'm going to ignore the results of the game engine anyways it's quicker to just not play in the first place.

Nets. Daggers. Maces(stun).

You are using the wrong strategy dude. Also, if the knight is using a two-handed weapon with aoe attacks, try using the net or engaging with mace+shield bro to disable him BEFORE surrounding.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Apr
05

Dev Blog #121: Champions
As we’ve talked about a while ago, we’re overhauling how named items work and how they can be acquired. One way to get named items is by fighting champions – and that’s what we’re talking about today. Let’s delve in!

Champions
Hitherto, named items could primarily be found by looting locations – whether you followed tavern rumors or ventured out on your own. Occasionally, but rarely, they could also be looted from particularly strong enemies. And that’s where champions come in.

Champions are particularly skilled and experienced individuals of any non-beast faction. They’re guaranteed to carry at least one named item and have significantly increased stats over their brethren. You’ll be able to easily recognize them by their special base and unique name. They are, in a way, minibosses. They challenge you to fight hard to claim what is theirs, and they shake things up, but prevailing against them will always reward you with the named item they carry – be it weapon, shield, armor or helmet.



So where do you meet champions? The most reliable way is to complete contracts with a difficulty rating of three skulls. Those have always been a high risk proposition for any mercenary company, but they now come with more of a reward for taking that chance: the possibility of getting named gear by facing enemy champions. Another way is to simply play into the late game. The further along your campaign, the more likely that you’ll find champions roaming the world outside of contracts or defending a location.

While champions may prove challenging to defeat, they are significantly easier to beat than some of the battles around legendary locations. This way, they can also fill the gap in challenge between defeating your first late game crisis and starting to take on legendary locations, like the Black Monolith, with your company.

 

[Jimmious]

Really cool addition and I like the fact that it's connected with 3 star contracts

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, bringing a bunch of nets is great and all, but it's not like I fucking chose to be in the fight. And since my guys that normally had 80% chance to hit had about 50%, daggers would have had about 10% hit chance. No way in hell that would have worked. Never mind trying to wear him down with one guy at a time when he's two shotting people and using a weapon he can swing twice in one turn. Realistically what I needed was about half a dozen stacks of overwhelm. Or in other words, like another 30 fucking days of levelling up, at which point I can only assume the game would throw at me 6 hedge knights and some necromancers instead.

 

[Brancaleone]

They should check their RNG seeds, at least for the recruits' backgrounds. I can spend 70-80 days without finding a single monk (cycling all the settlements in order to find one), and then all of the sudden it's monks popping up everywhere. Or no historians whatsoever, and then three appear in the same city, plus a couple more in each of the seaside villages. And so on. It's pretty noticeable with the less common backgrounds.

 

[Humanophage]

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.

Spoiler

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.

It is a general problem with many of those "tough" games that they reward an overly conservative approach and attention to routine detail, so you know what to do but it takes too long to do boring repetitive things. It is a big issue with BB for me that contrary to its claims, losing there is not fun. This aspect is even less fun than in Darkest Dungeon. What does BB do that makes losing more interesting than any comparable game? The game actually rewards perfectionism more than most games, so it ends up like King's Bounty, where losing any troops at all ends up hurting you disproportionately (because of the huge bonus for no loss fights). Except King's Bounty is less grindy and more diverse.

There are many games where losing is fun. For example, Civilization 4, Dominions 4, or Eador. Many roguelikes like ADOM have fun losing. The reason is that their early game is diverse enough and recovery is entertaining. Meanwhile, in BB, you have to do the same bandits with roughly the same brothers ad nauseam. And the middle stage of BB is also roughly similar, not really contingent on how you were developing so long as you keep your most experienced troops alive, so you are simply restarting roughly the same company to achieve roughly the same results. There isn't much space for experiment. The upshot is an acute feeling that you are wasting your time on grinding.

They taunt you with Ironman, but in reality it just ends up artificially prolonging the game without letting you explore more of it.

The tactics part is generally good, otherwise I wouldn't bother playing.

 

[hivemind]

It is a general problem with many of those "tough" games that they reward an overly conservative approach and attention to routine detail, so you know what to do but it takes too long to do boring repetitive things

this

. It is a big issue with BB for me that contrary to its claims, losing there is not fun. This aspect is even less fun than in Darkest Dungeon.

this

Except King's Bounty is actually less grindy and more diverse.

not this(never played it so not sure if I can fully agree with your assessment)

There are many games where losing is fun.

this

For example, Civilization 4,

not this

Dominions 4, or Eador. Many roguelikes like ADOM have fun losing.

this

he reason is that their early game is diverse enough and recovery is entertaining. Meanwhile, in BB, you have to do the same bandits with roughly the same brothers ad nauseam. And the middle stage of BB is also roughly similar, not really contingent on how you were developing so long as you keep your most experienced troops alive, so you are simply restarting roughly the same company to achieve roughly the same results. There isn't much space for experiment. The upshot is an acute feeling that you are wasting your time on grinding.

this

The tactics part is generally good, otherwise I wouldn't bother playing.

not this

 

[Sarissofoi]

What does BB do that makes losing more interesting than any comparable game? The game actually rewards perfectionism more than most games, so it ends up like King's Bounty, where losing any troops at all ends up hurting you disproportionately (because of the huge bonus for no loss fights). Except King's Bounty is less grindy and more diverse.

There are many games where losing is fun. ... The reason is that their early game is diverse enough and recovery is entertaining. Meanwhile, in BB, you have to do the same bandits with roughly the same brothers ad nauseam. And the middle stage of BB is also roughly similar, not really contingent on how you were developing so long as you keep your most experienced troops alive, so you are simply restarting roughly the same company to achieve roughly the same results. There isn't much space for experiment. The upshot is an acute feeling that you are wasting your time on grinding.

They taunt you with Ironman, but in reality it just ends up artificially prolonging the game without letting you explore more of it.

Well, all true. But what can be done to fix it? Any thoughts?