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[Cthulhu]

Share your knowledge of stress.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's no big deal. I'm sure you all have figured as much already; stress builds up after quests and it doesn't come down without bars or whatever. Therefore I cycle which heroes go into missions by looking at their relative stress levels. I keep several spares and thus use all my slots for useable characters and occasionally to test as-yet-unseen ones. I don't hire characters which I regard useless (most prominently the plague doctor and the jester) in order to make those slots avaiable to my more-useful ones.

In general I try to keep around 4-5 healers (did I mention that I like occultists better than vestals? They heal faster, despite the bleed risk), and grave robbers and highwaymen to spare. As of late I'm not even bothering too much with pure melee characters (crusader//leper etc..) because I like a lot the advance-retreat strategies provided by duelist-pointblank highwaymen and lunge-shadow stun strike grave robbers.

During quests themselves I keep an eye on the stress levels and start to consider to leave when they go up. That way you might get spared a crisis. You can afford to have a character break down if you're about to finish the scenario, but if it's at the middle or the beginning you might as well turn back, otherwise the combined stress of the environment and your breakdown character will eventually make the others break down as well, at the worst possible moment. I think this game rewards conservative strategies, in general. You can't afford to be 100% conservative as you have to cover your provision expenses at the very least (and you have to balance those as well, too many and you will break even at best. Too few and your characters will break down, and you wont be able to use items on chests and urns)

BTW: has anyone figured out scouting?

[Mephansteras]

Ugh. Just tried to take out the apprentice necromancer, and ended up with a party wipe. My people decided that missing was fun, and the monsters decided that critting was great fun. The one character of mine who was being useful was my grave robber, and she got ganged up on a critted to death in a single round. We actually killed the necromancer, but his skeletons just kept hitting and we just kept missing and the attempt to flee the battle failed.

Bad time all around.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I'm just getting straight up fucked trying to start a new game. Regardless of how stable my starting line up is, the enemy either crits their brains out, I get bled by bandit groups until no amount of non-Occultist healing will cover it, or the AI just focuses on a back rank caster and eliminates them Turn 2 with crossbowen. Or anyone for that matter. Even the Crusader can't stand up to every enemy stacking their attacks on him, when 2 out of every 4 attacks is a crit. Or you get a full 4 spider group and proceed to get blighted and stunned into oblivion because they got the surprise roll, despite a full torch.

I really want to know what the stealth patches were. It was bad at release, but it's even worse now. I've tried about 8 runs now and I haven't had a one that hasn't gone tits up within the first three rooms. Your first run being total shit just makes the rest that much more difficult. Let alone getting absolutely dominated in the tutorial by crits so Reynauld and Dismas are ready to crack right from the start.

I'm starting to notice 2 things with all these harrowings: your rewards are better the worse you come out of a fight. And the downside of support characters is that they're reducing your attacks per round. A miss or a stun or rank change, and you get stuck in a loop of trying to react to damage with the majority of your party instead of dealing it. I think pure offense with 1 support is probably the way to go. Because at the end of the day, enemies are going to leave you worse off every turn they attack than you will recover health and stress under normal circumstances. Every time your stuns don't work, or an enemy surprise crits (not much of a fucking surprise these days), you're a little farther in the hole that before. Maybe I need to get out of level 1 scrub gameplay. But it's a little hard when the game fucks you six ways from Sunday in just about every fight. Maybe I've just got a bad RNG today.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm starting to notice 2 things with all these harrowings: your rewards are better the worse you come out of a fight.

I think this is the other way around: tougher fights have better rewards but you come out worse from them

And the downside of support characters is that they're reducing your attacks per round.

This is why I love occultists better than vestals. You can have a healer and still keep a number of skills that can make it worth your while. My occultists come in two main flavors: knife +  debuff + abyssal + healing  or 2 debuffs + abyssal + healing



BTW: I'm pretty sure that it pays off A LOT to go out of your way to keep your adventurers at low stress levels. Not only they will not break in dire straits, but camping wont result in black thoughts... AND... I'm pretty sure the character traits you get tend to be positive more frequently. Which means that you will have overall stronger characters, and an easier time at removing bad traits.

I think combat retreat is unreliable. If the party is even a bit weakish, it's better to call it quits early altogether. You'll get to keep the loot anyway.

[Zangi]

I'm starting to think those loot cleanser items are really helpful in making sure you break even in a run or turn a profit, if you don't plan to finish it. Provisioning is not cheap at all once you start loading up for medium dungeons and start bringing loot cleansers.

Them loot items really do help.  At the very least, you want them shovels.  Half the dungeoning is being prepared.... to loot and mitigate stress.  It is normally a poor idea to try to loot some stuff without loot items.

Update: Killed all the apprentice level bosses with my A-team.  Was slightly concerned for my Highwayman for a moment against the pigs, but the little piggy missed... allowing me to continue my onslaught with impunity.  18 damage bleed/blight per turn... could be more, but only 2 of my people can stack it.

Spoiler: My non-spoilery recommendation to those having trouble (click to show/hide)

Upgrade your A members.
"Know when to hold em, know when to fold em."
Criticals are awesome.
If it looks unsanitary and you feel the need to wade into it... use Medicine.  (I'm not telling you not to, but you should use some protection when you do, ya know?)
Natural Swing is an awesome virtue.
Upgrade Stagecoach Network twice.
"Live to fight another day."
-Accuracy traits.  Cure em or toss em.
Bring Shovels if you have stress problems. Alternatively gravedigging is a lucrative pastime.
You don't need more then 8 food/4 torches in a small dungeon... if you don't fear a little bit of dark...
"Do not be greedy."
Consider upgrading your persistent B members.
Blight/Bleed is a big deal when you are on death's door.

[nenjin]

I think this is the other way around: tougher fights have better rewards but you come out worse from them

I'm basing this off the tutorial fight, one mob. Fights where I surprise him or lay him out Round 1 tend to result in like 25 to 50 gold pieces.

On the other hand, fights were he comes out the gate with a crit, dodges a couple attacks, or double crits with one his AoEs, I've seen the end of fight reward be anywhere from 250 to 500 gold.

So while it's true tougher fights leave you more fucked up and that might trigger better rewards, it's equally true that easy fights that go horribly sideways can yield good loot too.

Also to note, if you just want to have a week turn over, you can send out 4 guys and retreat them immediately. At the cost of ~30 stress per character and negative quirks. If you really need a new hero draw, or you just need a week for your better heroes to recover, it's not bad in a pinch. Starting to think it's good to really upgrade the stage coach from the outset, instead of just enough to get 4 and hold 2 squads.

[Knirisk]

And the downside of support characters is that they're reducing your attacks per round.

This is why I love occultists better than vestals. You can have a healer and still keep a number of skills that can make it worth your while. My occultists come in two main flavors: knife +  debuff + abyssal + healing  or 2 debuffs + abyssal + healing

Yeah, I get that people don't like how weak the occultist is, but seriously, that healing, ironically, has felt far more effective than the Vestal's ever did. The Vestal might be better after you rank up her skill using the guild, but until then, occultist heal still feels better. Although, that might just be because I got some fairly decent rolls and 10-12 healing feels SO good. I've also had success with the pulls. Pulls are especially pertinent when you have an enemy that takes up two spaces, because you can just pull one-space enemies in front of it and then you can hit them all with AOE attacks. Assuming you use AOE attacks.

Depending on healing feels like trying to staunch the blood flow of a lethal bullet wound. No matter whether you succeed or fail, you're still going to die. The only, albeit pretty mild, success I've had so far is through stun-locking enemies and depending on the occultist's RNG.

[Cthulhu]

Vestal heal gets pretty strong with levels, the big one that is.  The 1-2 aoe is only really useful for like maintenance when everyone's still high.

[ChairmanPoo]

Beware of relying on A Teams. Sometimes your heroes might leave (for good? I dunno). I just had one of my favorite bandits (not superDismas, thank Nyarlathothep) leave "looking for a vision" after I left him meditating in the abbey to de-stress him. After seeing this I think cycling characters is even MORE important, as to have something decent to fall back on if this (or dungeon death) happens, instead of raw noobs.

[Zangi]

I personally prefer the Vestal heals steady and reliable.  Sure, Occultist heals have the potential to be awesome... but it also can also fail you.  But, I reckon you can get trinkets that lowers chance to land bleed and/or +bleed resists on the others.
Mind you, I have not upgraded an Occultist yet.  The concept of basing my heals entirely on the whims of RNG is not something I can fully support.

I feel that basing your strategy on stun-lock parties severely limits your options.  There are enemies that have high stun resistance, so it can become a liability if your stun-lock party can't properly fight without the main tactic. 
Though, I guess you would have some luck with other strategies once you begin to gear your people at the blacksmith/trainers...

I personally advocate brute force with a smattering of bleed/blight/AOE when opportune.

Beware of relying on A Teams. Sometimes your heroes might leave (for good? I dunno). I just had one of my favorite bandits (not superDismas, thank Nyarlathothep) leave "looking for a vision" after I left him meditating in the abbey to de-stress him. After seeing this I think cycling characters is even MORE important, as to have something decent to fall back on if this (or dungeon death) happens, instead of raw noobs.

From my experience, they come back, eventually... as long as there is still room in the roster for them to come back.
And yea, your A team shouldn't just be 4 characters anyways... since they will eventually outlevel dungeons and you'll need to train up another team if you missed a boss or find that there is an awesome trinket reward...

EDIT:
For stress management, if you kill something with bleed/blight, noone heals any stress.  But, its a payoff in the end if you want to avoid further damage/stress.

[Sindain]

Beware of relying on A Teams. Sometimes your heroes might leave (for good? I dunno). I just had one of my favorite bandits (not superDismas, thank Nyarlathothep) leave "looking for a vision" after I left him meditating in the abbey to de-stress him. After seeing this I think cycling characters is even MORE important, as to have something decent to fall back on if this (or dungeon death) happens, instead of raw noobs.

They return eventually (usually? I think? I've certainly have had them return from this.) and you can use this to actually get above max rooster size.

[nenjin]

I think this game may become problematic to discuss on their forums. People that haven't had to struggle seem to think the people that have are crazy.

Also apparently people have already beaten the available content at 42 hours. The mind boggles. Maybe if I'd stuck out some runs I'd be farther along but I struggle to see how it would have been possible. I think there's just a threshold you pass with this game where bad runs don't hurt you as much. Getting to that threshold is the hard part.

[TempAcc]

Been able to play this today and having a blast till now. The presentation is really well done and the game itself is quite enjoyable and harsh in its mechanics. Managed to beat the ruins in my first try, though my heroes managed to get starved, despite the fact I had food and used it sometimes (only on two of them though). I've cycled out my crusader and my plague doctor for the next quest though, got my a merc and another highwayman. Sooooo I have some questions:

1-How do you keep track of hunger? At one point the game told me my party was starving and we took health and stress penalties because of it.

2-I saw the camping skills on the character sheets, but how exactly do you camp inside a dungeon?

3-How do you upgrade your team members?

[Cthulhu]

1.  It's random.  Periodically they'll get hungry.

2.  You can only camp in longer quests.  You'll automatically receive firewood when you can camp and you just right click it.

3.  Later on you'll unlock the guildhouse, where you can upgrade abilities; the blacksmith, where you can upgrade gear; and the survivalist, who upgrades camping skills.