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

[Edija]

I don't know who thought Webknechts shitting out reinforcements are a good idea. 12 brothers + 1 dog, decent gear for day 40. Start a two skull contract, get 15 Webknechts. At the start of the battle there is already 19. By the end of a total wipe I had killed 25+ of them and they still had like 8 left. This is one of the few situations where actually blaming it on the game seems the right thing to do.

On a side not, if I'm already faced with 15+ webknechts, how am I supposed to stop the adds?

fight in the place with chokepoints in formations that allow spare bros to remove spider net

Sounds sensible, I was in the open. So it might actually be better to fight them in the forest.

Also, anybody knows how to reliably recruit additional Barbarians when you're playing the Northern Raiders/Warriors of the North/Whatever?

 

[Sarissofoi]

I don't know who thought Webknechts shitting out reinforcements are a good idea. 12 brothers + 1 dog, decent gear for day 40. Start a two skull contract, get 15 Webknechts. At the start of the battle there is already 19. By the end of a total wipe I had killed 25+ of them and they still had like 8 left. This is one of the few situations where actually blaming it on the game seems the right thing to do.

On a side not, if I'm already faced with 15+ webknechts, how am I supposed to stop the adds?

fight in the place with chokepoints in formations that allow spare bros to remove spider net

Sounds sensible, I was in the open. So it might actually be better to fight them in the forest.

Also, anybody knows how to reliably recruit additional Barbarians when you're playing the Northern Raiders/Warriors of the North/Whatever?

Write your own events.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Is there a time limit to the game?

Only your own endurance.

 

[Murk]

The spiders are so weak that any AOE weapon will easily deal with them, the only real threat they pose -- IMO -- is they can surround archers or other weaklings.

If you have enough people, form a circle around your archers -- if not enough, sometimes I leave my archers out and just use a handful (like 4) two-handers to deal with them. I wouldn't recommend taking them on super early tho unless they are few in number.

Also, gotten a few Webknecht fights where there were no eggs.

 

[hivemind]

- is they can surround archers

imagine being so much of a cuck that you actually field archers

lmao

 

[Reinhardt]

They will just mass kill themselves against spearwall. I don't understand how someone can have any problems with spiders.

 

[hivemind]

i dont have aoe weapons or shieldwalls and I demolish 20+ spiders on the reg

just stand your ground and two-shot them as they come

 

[toro]

I had a pretty good run ... on easy (cause I need to learn the game).

Spoiler

At the end of first week I already had a good crew: 1 greatsword, 2 shield + sword, 1 pikeman + 1 archer.

Then the game failed me: that's about 2 days to the south. Weird distance computations.

It was a good test for my crew

But then I think I took the wrong quest

And I got fucked by some brigands.

I like the game, especially the fact that different weapons have different attacks. It's so nice.

But what I don't like until now is that you can be completely screwed by the battlefield (sometimes).

 

[Maculo]

The game is fantastic. Huge props to the developers. I hope they add even more unique company backgrounds.

Lone wolf is not new-player friendly, but it is incredibly fun. The player character can solo many lowbie bandit encounters. I grinded bandits with the purchasable 35% experience buff until I reached level 10. Now I am slowly adding bros that I can adequately gear. From what I understand, if I add too many bros at once, the difficulty will spike. Right now I am sitting at 5/12.

I fully expect to get wrecked by the 100+ days mark and need to restart. Still, I feel a Lone Wolf run helped (forced?) me to learn some fundamentals fast. I would play it again.

 

[Tigranes]

I've been fooling around with a Barbarian start, but certainly tempted towards Lone Wolf. Do people try and run along solo for a while, or try to recruit a full band of tag-alongs?

 

[Maculo]

I found it advantageous to remain solo on Lone Wolf for the beginning. The avatar can easily overpower certain encounters and build up gear/money for quality followers.

 

[Prime Junta]

Tooled around a bit. First impressions:

It's still the same ol' Battle Brothers, just with a bit more variety.

Cultist start is the coolest IMO but I didn't get any cultist events yet other than one that was already in the base game. This is the one I have running now. Got a stroke of luck and found a badass unique two-handed warhammer on an artefact recovery job very early on, not even at 12 cultbros yet.

As an aside that fight was made for a starting cultbro band -- there were three Geists but with the high RES cultists get I could ignore them until they wandered into melee range, by which time I had whacked most of the Wiedergangers they teamed up with. I would have been in real trouble with a "standard" company at that stage (no banner, no Rally the Troops, few bros with decent Resolve.)

Lone Wolf start feels really right, like this should have been the default start in the base game. I'm not sure what the right strategy for this would be, maybe soloing bandit thug jobs to build some XP and a purse, then hire and kit out a small band?

Peasant Militia start is really hard with 12 mouths to feel and everybody incredibly squishy. I played far enough to get to 20 bros with everyone at level 3-4 and kitted out with basic gear, and at this point the numbers advantage starts to bite. Getting there wasn't much fun though, even a bandit thug fight risks losses whereas caravan jobs are pretty safe as bandits avoid you because of the numbers, so I was just basically grinding caravan jobs so I could afford to kit people up. I don't think the drawback is ultimately all that bad as you'll just be missing out on a star striker; the bigger numbers of doughty yeomen ought to more than make up for it.

Barbarian fights were pretty cool. They are a new type of enemy, subtly different from bandits.

All in all a solid DLC. Like the previous one -- if you got a couple hundred hours out of BB this will help wring out a bit more, but if you didn't like it before, this won't make you like it any better.

As an aside, whips should be easy to buy almost anywhere, they're standard farm equipment after all.

 

[Reinhardt]

Peasant militia is made for traders. You spend first week just trading and then start rolling. If your starting village have some goods it's a big plus.

Biggest problem is lack of ranged bros. I'm avoiding brigand marksmen like plague. Lost one bro on day 15 and now on day 40 i can't find poacher with even one star in ranged. And it's on map with lots of forest villages.

 

[Ensi]

how do I suck less? Playing Beasts & Exploration. I'm at day 80-90 on easy, I'm doing alright I guess, but I dunno what I should be focusing on. I can kill brigands pretty easily, managed to kill a hexe or two and a few unholds. I'm scared of the stronger orcs. Fuck lindwurms and those shielded tree things. I've got like 7 shield bros (several flails, couple axes, sword or two, military pick etc), 1 crossbro, 2 archerbros, 2 ranged melee bros. Decently armored up but idk how people afford the really good shit (or have enough fatigue for it, although I'm doing okay right now). I read somewhere that militia is a decent mid-tier class so I've been buying up as many militiabros as I can. Also just got a sellsword who seems decent.

Been going colossus + dodge and/or steel brow + brawny so far, for most chars except ranged ofc.

 

[hivemind]

managed to kill a hexe or two and a few unholds

for one don't fight things that are economically inefficient to fight

day 80-90

I've got like 7 shield bros

two handers > shields
especially as far in as you are
I generally aim to field like 1 or 2 shields max in the like mid to late game

Been going colossus + dodge and/or steel brow + brawny so far

This is the baseline of every one of your bros.
You may not like it, but this what peak performance looks like.

I'm willing to debate student and even gifted but literally every one of your units should have rotation.

 

[toro]

.. snip ...

Yeah. Rotation is pretty powerful.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Get you a reserve!
/broken record

 

[Prime Junta]

how do I suck less? Playing Beasts & Exploration. I'm at day 80-90 on easy, I'm doing alright I guess, but I dunno what I should be focusing on. I can kill brigands pretty easily, managed to kill a hexe or two and a few unholds. I'm scared of the stronger orcs. Fuck lindwurms and those shielded tree things. I've got like 7 shield bros (several flails, couple axes, sword or two, military pick etc), 1 crossbro, 2 archerbros, 2 ranged melee bros. Decently armored up but idk how people afford the really good shit (or have enough fatigue for it, although I'm doing okay right now). I read somewhere that militia is a decent mid-tier class so I've been buying up as many militiabros as I can. Also just got a sellsword who seems decent.

Been going colossus + dodge and/or steel brow + brawny so far, for most chars except ranged ofc.

Steel brow is a must have for all meleebros. Anticipation for rangebros. Colossus is nice to have but not mandatory. Rotation is super useful, you don't need it on all of your bros though as long as you have it on enough of them that they can pull a bro out of trouble. Pump Melee Attack and Melee Defence whenever you get +2 or more on them. Give everyone a dagger and when you see an opportunity to get some decent armour, bring them out. Use nets to neutralise bosses, reinforced nets to neutralise super bosses. Especially early on (but also useful later in the game in some fights!) put your best Melee Attack bros on the flanks with spears and use Spearwall.

Again especially early on, you need tanks in the front, damagers in the back. Polearms of all sorts are terrific. There are some you can Spearwall too, those are great at the second-line flanks. Rangebros are sort of optional -- they can make a big difference in some fights but are almost useless in others, good luck sticking arrows in skeletons or heavily armoured enemies; I like to have 2-3 good archers in the roster but don't even use them on all fights. And if you happen to have a map that doesn't give you any hunters, then just don't have rangebros, you can get by without them just fine.

Make use of terrain. A tough fight can become a cakewalk if you can position yourself on higher ground. If you have a hilly map you usually can retreat to higher ground before the combat starts (except with necrosavants or some other utter bastards).

As to recruitment, early and mid-game don't recruit anyone that costs over 300 gold... except a hunter for 1000 and change if you can find one; you will want to train up your sniper from the start, or the bro comes with a piece of gear you really want. Eventually a star striker or two (mercenary, hedge knight, swordmaster) is nice to have but not mandatory.

And contracts: early on, do all the stolen item recovery and bandit camp/graveyard clearing jobs you can get. These will get you fighting bandits which will provide you with decent gear, and the site clearing jobs will give you pretty nice loot as well.

 

[hivemind]

Rotation is super useful, you don't need it on all of your bros

i will kill u

 

[Prime Junta]

Rotation is super useful, you don't need it on all of your bros

i will kill u

I liked it more when you were telling everybody to have sex.

Spoiler

make love, not war

 

[hivemind]

i only tell losers to have sex

 

[Maculo]

I wanted to share this seed in case anyone wants it for their own Lone Wolf build. Seed RZKPYDAHTH starts the character with Drunkard and Huge. From the BB subreddit thread, you start with 62 melee attack right off the bat.

I also wanted to ask you all about interactions between Adrenaline, Indomitable, and Recover for a possible Lone Wolf character. Depending on the weapon (flail?), my assumption is that you can make an attack and/or movement, pop Adrenaline & Indomitable, and then use Recover the next round. The goal is to have Indomitable active as much as possible. The character would pump Stamina, and perhaps pair it will Nimble (flat % damage reduction?), Underdog, Lone Wolf. With respect to starting traits, I would look for a seed with Iron Lung.

My plan would be to repeat the same Lone Wolf strategy, in which I buy the 35% experience buff and solo grind easy bandits for xp, gold, and equipment until I have one strong character. Mid-game, I would use the Lone Wolf Character to tie up a blob of enemies, use a flail to target helmet durability, and follow up with Archer Bros with headshot.

 

[Edija]

Give me a good seed for barbarians, pretty please.

 

[Maculo]

Give me a good seed for barbarians, pretty please.

I saw this one seed off of https://bb.frukso.se/seed/DIHMPRFEIA/, and apparently it is okay for Barbarian: DIHMPRFEIA. Apparently, the main noble house near by is neutral, although the traits seem meh. Here is the description:
"I then investigated this seed for all the other origins. most of them were not noteworthy, but I think I'd also recommend it for barbarians. the house with 9 settlements is the one the barbarians start not being hostile to. barbarians: barb1 - traitless. barb2 - hates greenskins, dexterous. barb3 - atheletic. monk - traitless."

I expect to find more in the coming days.

 

[Reinhardt]

AT LAST

I guess he will die in next battle. Because reasons.