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

[Shaki]

I find it very hard to make even 200 per stack even if I go across the whole map.

Distance doesn't matter. What affects prices is:

Size of the settlement (big city big prices, shitty village low prices)

Settlement situation - for example ambushed trade routes make buying items from the settlement 20% more expensive, but also increase selling price by 10%, so selling in a big city with ambushed routes = big profit.

Relations - better your relations with the city (or noble house it belongs to), better the prices for you.

Economic difficulty - expert sets the selling prices to 90% of normal value.

Whether a city produces a specific good.

Culture assigned to the goods - it's complicated because there are many additional mechanics here, but in general, every trade good has assigned culture, and selling to cities belonging to different culture, increases price by 10%. Eg. selling furs to middle or southern settlements, or hauling incense/silk/spices from the south to middle/northern settlements, etc.

Some origins: Beast slayers gets 10% lower selling prices, and 10% higher buying prices. Trading caravan is the opposite.


If you buy in a big city with neutral/bad relations, then sell to a village with neutral/bad relations = you prolly just lost money.

If you have high relations, buy in a small villages and sell to big cities = you make good profit.

If you play trading caravan origin, buy in small villages with high relations, then sell to big cities in a different culture with high relations while it has ambushed trade routes = you're a fucking Jeff Bezos.


Of course, everything also depends on the map. Some have godlike potential trading loops that can absolutely break the economy if you abuse them properly, in others trade might suck and focusing on it would be a mistake.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Is there a must have mod for this that improves the game drastically but stays true to the vanilla experience?
For first playthrough?

Legends (newest test build) + PTR (Perk Trees Reworked) + Rise of the Usurper or Magic Mods (new version is in the work) + Stronhold.
PTR adds some merchant perks for non-fighting bros.
One retinue option adds merchandise spawn per town.
Stronghold is expensive to build but you can add up to 3 ports anywhere you like, it's expensive to build but you can also sell for a high price there.

I find it very hard to make even 200 per stack even if I go across the whole map.

If you have 1 southern city state with a port and one port on a big northern town, you can make some dough.

 

[Sratopotator]

Oh come the fuck on, BB, especially with all the DLCs, is feature complete and awesome. No mods needed at all for the first playthrough.
Maaaybe some QoL UI mini-mods, if you are bothered by the game withholding some snippets of info from the player, but even that's arguable (full town status, details of recruitable bros and whatnot).

Follow the advice from the post above only if you don't have time to play both BB and BB+L. Legends is almost a total conversion mod. It's true to the vanilla experience only as far as being awesome, you know, like the base game.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I would not recommend legends to anyone. It destroys the entire thematic tone of the game. Where in the Vanilla it is AKIN to a low fantasy mercenary company simulator (Akin to the Black Company or ASOIAF), in Legends it is turned into a DnD derivative with the player wielding magic, warlocks, necromancers and having runes and women fighters. How come people praise it when it obviously shits on foundational themes of the setting is beyond me.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I would not recommend legends to anyone. It destroys the entire thematic tone of the game. Where in the Vanilla it is AKIN to a low fantasy mercenary company simulator (Akin to the Black Company or ASOIAF), in Legends it is turned into a DnD derivative with the player wielding magic, warlocks, necromancers and having runes and women fighters. How come people praise it when it obviously shits on foundational themes of the setting is beyond me.

There's not a single truth in your whole post.

• The base game features magical beasts and magic users, undead priests, hexes, necromancers, huge fantasy monsters like the kraken or the Jirok, direwolves, goblins, orcs, undead, unholds ...
• Women are optional in Legends (none, only for special background or every background)
• Starting backgrounds are optional, there's some very good non magical backgrounds Legends exclusive like a special gladiator one and a swordmen company with old swordmen teaching recruits before retiring themselves, the Crusader, the Berserker, the Ranger, The Assassin, The Beggar challenge, etc.
• Runes are optional

And yet 5 other retards brofisted you, when did we turn into twatter?

 

[k0syak]

Playing Legends feels very different to the base game, even if you don't go with the weirder options. Diffrerent enough that it might be it's own game.

 

[Joggerino]

I must confess that I turned into a complete save scumming whore. I feel shame every time I reload that save after a bad battle. The upside is that you learn really fast how to play the game well when you repeat a battle 5 times and go from being wiped out to winning without any casualties. I'm gonna play for some time longer and then restart with the veteran/veteran/hidden map ironman mode. Try to beat that and then try out Legends.

 

[thesecret1]

I must confess that I turned into a complete save scumming whore. I feel shame every time I reload that save after a bad battle. The upside is that you learn really fast how to play the game well when you repeat a battle 5 times and go from being wiped out to winning without any casualties. I'm gonna play for some time longer and then restart with the veteran/veteran/hidden map ironman mode. Try to beat that and then try out Legends.

Make sure to switch to ironman after you feel you know how to play the game, or shit will get mad boring fast. It is designed to be played on ironman, and savescumming is mostly there for tutorial reasons. Recovering from loss is a big part of gameplay, and naturally motivates you to upgrade your roster with better recruits rather than levelling some early game beggars to max level and stuff of that kind. It is, no joke, an entirely different game if you can't just load a save and try again

 

[Ibn Sina]

My best play throughs in this game is when I tried to role-play the company origin I selected. I just finished a Merchant play through where I played as risk averse merchants where most of my recruits with either merchants/peddlers, militias, and other men of professions like Taylors, apprentices and a sell sword or 2. I never took any extremely hard contract and did most of the quests that did long merchant caravan deliveries. Furthermore, I also did lots of trading, bringing goods from the frozen north to the desert states in the south. By day 110 I had over 410k in cash and that is after buying my own unique weapons and armors from weapons smith and blacksmith like a boss (no venturing in ruins for this group). I simply retired the company as I was not really planning on doing any endgame stuff. With that amount of money, the captain can certainly buy himself a title and a nice spot of land somewhere.

I also did another play through as desert Bedouins/nomads who were raiding northern lands and were constantly at war with the noble houses to the north, until day 60 where my Bedouin raiders were corned by 2 fully decked noble armies and got slaughtered to the last man. Was also really enjoyable.

 

[Joggerino]

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Well, i take it back, this game is actually amazing. I'm typically a giant detractor of rng-heavy games and roguelites but this is something truly special. I think it's largely because there is just so much content, and it helps prevent repetition. Also the atmosphere and world design is top-notch.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Gonna play for the first time on the Switch since I get a lot of free time at work.

What settings should I use (eg Ironman) and first timer tips?

The most important thing in BB is the knowledge of what you can fight when. A new enemy can fuck your company up and that might come 10, 20, 50 hours in - if you can accept that, you can play ironman. I can easily see how that might get frustrating though, especially because it can happen multiple times.

• Use swords (+10% to hit) and spears (+20%) in the beginning to help your Bros deal damage.
• Don't spend too much money on expensive backgrounds: good gear > good Bros at the start.
• Stick to 1H weapon + shield for your frontline until you can give them 'nimble' or 'battleforged' - with fitting armor.
• Equip headgear on everyone to avoid one-shots.
• Don't hire more than 6-7 Bros until you can give them roughly the same gear your others have.
• Ranged Bros are helpful to make the enemy advance towards you, but don't expect them to hit many shots in the beginning.
• Look for damaged equipment on the town's markets to repair and use.

I don't know if they fixed this, but having ranged weapons in your pockets in all your bros make the ai think you have the ranged advantage even if you don't and makes them advance when they normally wouldn't. A useful exploit to force enemies to give you an advantage or yield an advantageous position.

 

[Joggerino]

I'm trying to brute force a trading company and I came to the realization that having a competent fighting force is an absolute must. Mainly to resolve town effects like raided caravans, then you can profit extra hard.
What do you guys think about the most important stats? What's a good resolve to have, how much initiative is too much, do you level up the defense stats?

 

[Serus]

I would not recommend legends to anyone. It destroys the entire thematic tone of the game. Where in the Vanilla it is AKIN to a low fantasy mercenary company simulator (Akin to the Black Company or ASOIAF), in Legends it is turned into a DnD derivative with the player wielding magic, warlocks, necromancers and having runes and women fighters. How come people praise it when it obviously shits on foundational themes of the setting is beyond me.

There's not a single truth in your whole post.

• The base game features magical beasts and magic users, undead priests, hexes, necromancers, huge fantasy monsters like the kraken or the Jirok, direwolves, goblins, orcs, undead, unholds ...
• Women are optional in Legends (none, only for special background or every background)
• Starting backgrounds are optional, there's some very good non magical backgrounds Legends exclusive like a special gladiator one and a swordmen company with old swordmen teaching recruits before retiring themselves, the Crusader, the Berserker, the Ranger, The Assassin, The Beggar challenge, etc.
• Runes are optional

And yet 5 other retards brofisted you, when did we turn into twatter?

The man originally asked for a mod that "stays true to the vanilla" and yet you offered him Legends*. When did we you turned into a twatter poster?

In addition, the point was that the fantasy elements are part of the world building in vanilla but they don't exist from player side, in the company that is semi-"realistic". Legends changes that a bit and in general is more magic heavy - and you know it. Used to be even more. Is more advanced on the fantasy spectrum than vanilla. So don't try to twist reality to suit your point. Legends is a fine mod as is, it doesn't need false advertisement on your part.
As to other points they boil to: "You don't like an integral part of the mod then don't use it and if it can't be disabled, ignore it in game". This an old argument - a bad one. The points stand (mostly).


*Nothing wrong with Legends, well maybe a bit, but it's fine - "true to vanilla" it is definitely not.

 

[k0syak]

I'm trying to brute force a trading company and I came to the realization that having a competent fighting force is an absolute must. Mainly to resolve town effects like raided caravans, then you can profit extra hard.
What do you guys think about the most important stats? What's a good resolve to have, how much initiative is too much, do you level up the defense stats?

Battle Brothers, not merchant brothers
You level MD every levelup on all frontliners, initiative only on initiative builds.

 

[Shaki]

I'm trying to brute force a trading company and I came to the realization that having a competent fighting force is an absolute must. Mainly to resolve town effects like raided caravans, then you can profit extra hard.
What do you guys think about the most important stats? What's a good resolve to have, how much initiative is too much, do you level up the defense stats?

Everything depends on a build (and also what named items you can get), but in most companies you usually want to end up with two-handers/duelists as a majority, and couple of guys in different roles. You want to level MD/MA on frontline bros at every level, which leaves you with 10 (11 with gifted) levelups for fat/res/hp, so it's not easy to find recruits which will hit decent values in all stats, and when you get them you wanna protect them at all costs.

Personally, my targets for what I consider a good late game frontliners are

For battleforged:

Fat: 120 for single target 2h weapons with berserk. 130+, preferably 140+ for AOE users and duelists. Can also go with fat-neutral build and completely ignore the stat, if bro can't hit the good values.

HP: 90+ after colossus, otherwise you're gonna hate your life when your best battleforged bro with 400/400 armor gets
2-3 unlucky rolls against enemies with wepons with high armor ignore %, and just fucking dies. Believe me, it'll happen.

Resolve: 40 is an absolute minimum, but ofc higher is better. Resolve is massive. Penalties from low morale in battles are crippling, so are most of the enemy skills that target resolve. High resolve also helps in getting the confident morale, which is an insane boost.

Init: Ignore it completely.

Melee attack: 85 minimum

Ranged attack: Ignore it completely.

Melee Defense: 35 minimum

Ranged defense: Ignore it completely.

For nimble:


Fat: ~100 for AOE/Duelists, pretty much whatever for anyone else.

HP: 100+ minimum, but go as high as possible.

Resolve: 40 minimum

Init: higher is better, since you'll usually be running dodge on nimble frontliners, buy you rarely will invest in the stat, unless it's a specific niche build for overwhelm or fencer. Generally you just want bro to have decent (100+) starting value to get a nice mdef bonus from it, maybe throw one or two levelups if you get +5 roll, and all other stats have completely shitty rolls on a levelup. 5 init = 0.75 mdef with dodge.

Melee attack: 85 minimum

Ranged attack: Ignore it completely.

Melee Defense: 30 minimum

Ranged defense: Ignore it completely.


Decent nimble bros are generally stronger in the early game, much easier to find, and cheaper to gear. But for super late game BF builds will outperform them.

Backline builds will generally ignore mdef, and focus purely on MA + decent HP + either superhigh FAT or RES depending on a build, init if it's an overwhelm build.

Ranged builds will obviously always level ranged attack, + some HP/RES/FAT/INIT depending on a build.

Tanks will want super high MD, fatigue and resolve, and decent hp (more HP and decent init but less fat needed for nimble tanks)

Hybrid builds are complicated, require really rare bros, and aren't really that strong, so I'd just ignore them until you're an advanced player.



Values are of course just a guideline, they're not set in stone, as without using mods it's really hard to find great bros, and tbh game can be "won" even with very suboptimal ones, as there are ways to deal with deficiencies in some stats, lower HP BF bro can use additional fur padding attachment to avoid some of the ignoring armor dmg, RES can be boosted with trinkets and arena, or you can just keep low res bro close to good bannerman, low FAT can stop being an issue if you find a good named weapon with -fat cost on skills modifier, lower than ideal MA bro with decent other stats can just become a sword user (swords have a bonus to hit), or use a fast adaptation perk, etc. Also you very rarely HAVE to take a fight, choosing your battles carefully and slowly grinding and using a lot of consumables on toughest battles, you can eventually survive every crisis and clear all legendary locations even with dogshit bros.

 

[Machocruz]

So I've had my eye on this for a while. I'm wondering if there is a campaign with an ending or do you 'write your own tale' and the game can go on essentially forever? The past few games I've been playing are all endless pretty much, I'm in the mood for something more "traditional," with a satisfying arc and conclusion.

And do you stay a mercenary company for the entire game, or can you raise your station in life, and how high?

 

[Shaki]

So I've had my eye on this for a while. I'm wondering if there is a campaign with an ending or do you 'write your own tale' and the game can go on essentially forever? The past few games I've been playing are all endless pretty much, I'm in the mood for something more "traditional," with a satisfying arc and conclusion.

And do you stay a mercenary company for the entire game, or can you raise your station in life, and how high?

It's kinda "endless", there is no campaign. There are crises every ~100 days, and after you survive one you have the opportunity to retire your company, as according to the devs game is balanced around surviving 1-2 crises then starting new game, though most people stick longer and usually consider a "win" by clearing every legendary location in a playthrough.

There is no raising your station. You can go from filthy band of thugs for hire, to a shiny band of thugs for hire, from working for farmers to working for nobles, but you'll always be just a sellsword.

 

[Tigranes]

I think one crisis + retire is the 'standard game' and I certainly have retired most of my companies soon after that. It's not a clear-end game but it's not a completely endless one in terms of how it feels.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I think one crisis + retire is the 'standard game' and I certainly have retired most of my companies soon after that. It's not a clear-end game but it's not a completely endless one in terms of how it feels.

What's the point of retiring a company?
When I'm done, I just stop playing, never retired a company, except once early on to see what happened.

Spoiler

If you're curious, the answer is nothing, just a standard description and it's over.

As to other points they boil to: "You don't like an integral part of the mod then don't use it and if it can't be disabled, ignore it in game". This an old argument - a bad one. The points stand (mostly).

But you can disable everything the retard I answered to mentioned.
Without the Magic Origins mod, which is broken and worked on as we speak, there's not a single rune in the game, even if you get the event to recruit the vala (which you can refuse), runes don't drop and forging a rune now requires 1 uncut gem.

Same for the rest of it.

Also, I didn't answer to the original question but the one I quoted because of his fallacious arguments.

Hence your retard rating.
You're welcome.

 

[Joggerino]

Shaki Thank you so much for that write-up on stats, it's incredibly helpful!

 

[Teut Busnet]

So I've had my eye on this for a while. I'm wondering if there is a campaign with an ending or do you 'write your own tale' and the game can go on essentially forever? The past few games I've been playing are all endless pretty much, I'm in the mood for something more "traditional," with a satisfying arc and conclusion.

And do you stay a mercenary company for the entire game, or can you raise your station in life, and how high?

There are - beside the already mentioned 4 crises - 8 'Legendary Locations' that include a fight (if you have all DLC). I consider a playthrough complete once I've beaten them.

For one of those you can choose the ambition to beat it, which will give you a nice text afterwards - but I don't think that qualifies as a 'satisfying arc and conclusion'. Even the crises often feel a bit incidental and you can ignore them completely if you don't play with 'permanent destruction' of settlements.

 

[k0syak]

Also, if you play long enough (past day ~200 IIRC), the scaling's gonna ensure some of the random fights or larger camps are almost as tough as the legendary locations.

 

[Alter Sack]

So after some time I started a fresh campaign with all dlc.

For unique weapons I started hunting enemy champions.

Are there any nomad champions (marked with skull)?

Until now I haven't encountered any.

Only some Bandit, Goblin, Ancient and Orc champions.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Are there any nomad champions (marked with skull)?

Yes.
And to advocate for Legends once more, there is favorite enemy perks (for each enemy group: southerners, bandits, nobles, nachos, unholds,...) which gives your bro buffs against those enemies (buff increase the more of that specific enemy he kills) and increase their champion spawn rate.