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[Majestic7]

So am I imagining things or is the game harder economically after the DLC? I've been playing with raiders start, I headed to the south while the north forgets that I'm a bad boy. I've been doing missions and feels like I'm making a lot less money than I used to before.

I tried the Davkul start as well; it is fun concept but needs serious balancing as cultists are trash and you tend to lose all your other bros to sacrifices. Plus the sacrifice boni aren't that great. Hmh, kind of wish the Davkul cultists had something going with Alps, as Alps are creatures of Davkul. Like being able to clear those contracts without fighting and/or sometimes rarely getting an Alp on their side in a night fight.

[Wiles]

This is just a guess, but the playing as the northern raiders starts you with a low reputation with all of the human factions so you're probably going to get less coin for jobs and get charged more at the shops.

I don't really think the cultist start needs balancing to be stronger, part of the reasons starts are different is that some of them offer up more of a challenge than others, and the dakvul cultist start is harder by design. I'm enjoying my cultist run and I find the buffs they get to be quite nice, I don't have morale problems with my cultists most of the time. Having your trained brothers desert when you offer one of them up to Dakvul is pretty harsh, but I see it as part of the challenge of a cultist run.

[Greenbane]

Got the most recent DLC and gave the Lone Wolf start a spin. It's fun, but...

I really like this game but feel I just can't get good at it, and my pride doesn't allow me to bring the combat difficulty down to Beginner.

I do have the economic difficulty down to Beginner, but even then I feel there aren't enough contracts to go around, which means I either have to waste a lot of time travelling or taking on risky jobs which may well cause me to reload just to make some progress. Fortified cities barring contracts until you reach an unreasonably high rep with that noble house don't help the global employment situation.

With games like this, I tend to go for a "soft Ironman" mode, avoiding reloads but not enforcing it through game settings. However, in BB's case, I feel the clock is rushing me, which means I feel I can't lose any relatively experienced merc: as far as I know, the endgame crises aren't dynamic in that they trigger once your company reaches a certain power/reputation level. Instead, they're liable to begin after a certain number of days. Even something like 100-120 days feels pressing and gets in the way of playing at my own pace*. So I feel I'm stuck in a lose-lose situation: either due to savescum remorse or the risk of getting to the crisis unprepared and having wasted many hours on a bad playthrough.

Overall, lots of bad feels, as you may have noticed.


*I'm not suggesting being able to control/exploit when crises trigger, but rather that it'd be good if your progress were tracked and they kicked off roughly around the time the game deems you're strong enough. Could be tied to a new difficulty setting.

[Majestic7]

I think slings should cause normal damage against skeletons unlike bows and crossbows. Sling bullets will crush bones on impact after all.

[Mephansteras]

@Greenbane: Note that you don't have to do the first crisis. You can head away from wherever the crisis is happening and just do other jobs. Or just focus on the really easy crisis jobs. Eventually it'll end on its own. I had a greenskin crisis once where I happened to be on the other end of the map from where all the action was. By the time I got over to it, I got maybe...3 or 4 jobs and it was over.

Also, as a general tip for money, look for trade opportunities! Finding a good trade route between a big city and one or more trade good producing towns can do wonders. Salt, Dyes, Furs, that sort of thing. Ideally you can find a loop that lets you go between multiple towns for both jobs and trade goods.

Also, the more jobs you do for a place the better jobs you get, the more money you get from jobs, and the better the prices both buying and selling in that town. It can really pay to build up your rep with a few close towns.

[Greenbane]

@Greenbane: Note that you don't have to do the first crisis. You can head away from wherever the crisis is happening and just do other jobs. Or just focus on the really easy crisis jobs. Eventually it'll end on its own. I had a greenskin crisis once where I happened to be on the other end of the map from where all the action was. By the time I got over to it, I got maybe...3 or 4 jobs and it was over.

Good tips overall, but about that one, is that really viable?

Isn't there a high risk a chunk of the world's settlements will be taken out without significant player involvement? Or am I simply overestimating crises in general? To be honest, I've never really reached any.

[Mephansteras]

In my experience, the first Crisis isn't that bad. I've rarely seen any settlements get destroyed entirely, even if I wasn't heavily involved.

I may just be lucky in this regard, of course, but that's what I've seen.

Also, if you aren't already, use daggers and flails early on to get better armor off of brigand raiders & leaders. It'll help your survivability greatly and let you take on harder/more missions. I find it worthwhile to get one or two Flail Masters early on. It's not the best mastery late game, but it's always at least viable and I find it helps a good bit in getting to the late game.

[Majestic7]

Raider start gives you more loot, btw. It is their special ability, I've been recovering 0% armor.

[Greenbane]

I've heard about the dagger strategy for ages yet always forget to actually implement it. Will give it a shot this time!

[Mephansteras]

I've heard about the dagger strategy for ages yet always forget to actually implement it. Will give it a shot this time!

Best way to do it is to pick one raider with armor you want (or the leader if there is one) and just kind of mitigate it. Push them around, net him, send a shield guy to just block tank him, whatever. Then, once their morale breaks as you start killing off the rest you can surround them and use dagger punctures to kill them without damaging the armor. Works great, but it takes a bit of planning. And a knife or dagger as a secondary on everyone, but that part is easy.

Early game I find flails to be even better most of the time, since many brigands don't wear helmets. You use the lash ability to hit the head without risking the armor, and with a decent flail you can often one-shot them. Flail mastery lets Lash ignore shields, which is why I take it as my first mastery on a front line guy.

[Majestic7]

Blah, they still haven't fixed the "Find X" quests. They are total shite, sending you at the other side of the world. Never take them.

[Man of Paper]

The find the location ones? Where you don't need to engage in any combat to complete them? You can always negotiate for a quest then say you need to think on it, look for the area it wants you to check out, and judge whether it's worth taking based on that. And you can always try to clear the places for more loot at your discretion, as opposed to the alternative method of spending money at taverns to maybe get hints for locations. Tbh they're my favorite missions.

[Sindain]

as far as I know, the endgame crises aren't dynamic in that they trigger once your company reaches a certain power/reputation level. Instead, they're liable to begin after a certain number of days. Even something like 100-120 days feels pressing and gets in the way of playing at my own pace*.

*I'm not suggesting being able to control/exploit when crises trigger, but rather that it'd be good if your progress were tracked and they kicked off roughly around the time the game deems you're strong enough. Could be tied to a new difficulty setting.

Actually that's literally exactly how the game scales. There was one guy who got 500+ days in and never triggered a crisis cuz he just sat in a corner with one dude.

[Greenbane]

Actually that's literally exactly how the game scales. There was one guy who got 500+ days in and never triggered a crisis cuz he just sat in a corner with one dude.

Really? It's hard to tell how those background mechanics work, but that reminds me of something I read about company size being a factor.

I assume there are many factors involved, but I don't get the impression a significant portion of them are dynamic.

By the way, I've just begun using this mod, which ups the looted equipment sales price to 25% (default is 15% I think). It helps, making everything a touch more rewarding.

[Kot]

I've did some memory editing (in other words, cheats) to screw with the game couple of times. Once I edited the reputation to be in hundreds of thousands and a crisis triggered very quickly, maybe 10-20 days in. Haven't played enough since it was mostly screwing around, but it was a war and I've seen a lot of military units and cities switching sides in few days. Also, every contract had insane payment and pretty much every encounter was with best units and highest numbers once I got past the stuff that was presumably already in place before I changed the reputation. I don't know how advanced the mechanics are, but there is certainly relationship between how well you're doing and how dangerous the world is. Notably some encounters look for more specific stuff like number of people in the party, which easily can get broken with things like mods that allow you to have higher number of mercenaries (or at least they did before, with Peasant Militia being a thing it might be fixed now), so if you used those mods and went to fight Webknechts, you could easily get something like 20 of them and then 100-200 eggs. So, yeah.