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[nenjin]

I moved into a new region last night and set about taking over the place. The first 5 captains I fought all turned out to be iron-willed.

Is there any effective way to inflict fire/poison/curse on enemies who are immune to ranged attacks? I'm not crazy about those swords that give a low chance to proc status on top of the already low chance to crit...

Elven Light bruh. Although you can’t get it in curse flavor

Have you guys had any orc captains follow you from one area to another? An orc from the start of the game who came back from death 3 times, once from being cut in half just showed up in another zone entirely and gained the 'obsessed' trait I guess? He said he had journeyed far to find me and put an end to me. He's also now level 30 rather than the 14 I left him at.

Confirmed by the devs prior to release, and I've experienced it. But I've never seen the "obsessed" tag.

[Folly]

Have you guys had any orc captains follow you from one area to another? An orc from the start of the game who came back from death 3 times, once from being cut in half just showed up in another zone entirely and gained the 'obsessed' trait I guess? He said he had journeyed far to find me and put an end to me. He's also now level 30 rather than the 14 I left him at.

I have not been paying super close attention...though I did take notice the one time I cut a captain in half, and had him show up a short time later complaining about the giant scar across his abdomen.
I've also seen about a dozen different orcs with the first name douche, but clearly different faces and titles.

[scriver]

I had my imported Nemesis do that. After I cut him in two the first time we met, he came back later having turned from Krakhorn of the Black Gate to Krakhorn the Machine. Rebuilt, better, faster, stronger, more. He even had a Terminator eye. He followed me from Minas Ithil to Snowy Valley and almost killekilled me there, if not for my bodyguard. I haven't seen him since.

[Folly]

So how is it? Is it worth buying?

Based on the quality and quantity of content, I'd consider it a fairly good value at the current price.
Did you want a more in-depth description than that?

[nenjin]

So I had something weird and infuriating happen.

Just finished up the side quests and main quests in Gogoroth, did the Carnan thing.

I return to Nurnen to find 85% of my non-warchief level captains are gone, replaced by enemy captains of frankly inferior levels. What's weird is I've got full intel on all of them. Does this coincide with the counterattack missions that pop up as soon as you start into the Carnan end quests? Because if I'm going to have hours and hours of work arbitrarily flushed down the drain, the Nemesis System can go fuck itself. There is no way my forces would have lost that many guys. Ugakuga Flesh Lover is still there, FFS. All my captains in other regions are fine.

I'm kinda pissed. An orc or two going missing, time passing Nemesis missions, w/e. But almost my entire goddamn force wiped out while I'm not there? WTF.

[Madman198237]

Doesn't this happen in SoM as a plot device at some point?

[Folly]

Last night I set out to complete the Champion pit fight in Nurnen, my last thing to do on that map. First I hunted down worms until I had identified every captain, then I hunted down the epic captains and dominated them. Next I sent the epic captains to assassinate lesser captains until they had leveled up sufficiently. Then I sent my most promising epic captain to attack the champion, who had no weaknesses. My guy died horribly. But afterwards, I ran in and murdered the Champion myself, forcing the arena to roll a new one. The third champion I murdered dropped a legendary sword, yay! The fourth champion finally had some weaknesses I could exploit, both taking extra damage from poison and also being dazed by it. The champ was level 39 and my last epic captain was only 22, but my guy had poisonous weapons, and he clobbered the opposition with ease. Phew.

[Folly]

New favorite combo

Dagger that regenerates 1 Elf Shot on Quick Throw, 30s cooldown. It also sets enemies on fire.
Quick Throw modded to throw 5 daggers at once. Combined with the above dagger, this regenerates 5 Elf Shots at a time.
Shadow Strike modded with Pull. I pull an enemy to me, dominate them, then Quick Throw at point blank range so all the daggers hit. The Shadow Strike costs 2 Elf Shots, so it's a net gain of 3 Elf Shots and a full heal from the dominate. Or against a captain that can't be dominated yet, it's still some easy free damage.

[ThtblovesDF]

I just use any orc to arena fight, then take over the champion or shame him till i can take him, then repeat.

So I basically finished the game now, I died plenty of times (I'd say 40+), but not even once was I saved by any orc, even with bodyguards at the ready, standing there, in a siege with littarly 7 friendly orcs and overtaken invaders next to me... basically none of the cool events from the trailer ever happen, besides the ambush...

[nenjin]

I literally just watched a Lvl 34 Hostile Legendary Orc disappear from the fortress screen, between choosing him as my target, going to the map screen then revisiting the fortress screen. He was replaced by a guy another commander who was already in the fortress screen, who was moved in to his place.

They need to fix this shit, it is seriously starting to piss me off. If I can't count on orcs being there between opening menu screens or not, why am I even fucking bothering with this game.

[Dunamisdeos]

Now, no snark here, but isn't this how it's supposed to function? Sounds like someone below him knockhim him off his perch and took his place, no?

I like hearing stories from this, so I am genuinely interest.

[nenjin]

No one should have done shit. No time passed. No action was taken.

My game is getting progessively more "out of sync." I'm doing a Death Threat mission and Talion is calling out the ork by the wrong name. He's calling him Flak while his name is actually Al-Azagur.

It's like the game is remembering the data from the other orcs it overwrote somehow.

[JimboM12]

It's like the game is remembering the data from the other orcs it overwrote somehow.

its the ork reveries.

nah, sounds like a major bug; im playing on the ps4 and im not running into any issues.

[nenjin]

So it looks like what was happening to my guys in Nurnen was due to the Bruz quest line.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In order to assure there's room in the hierarchy to spawn enemy captains during the Best Defense mission, the game will just keep killing off 99% of your captains in Nurnen somewhere around the time The Best Defense becomes available. (I'd sort of noticed it a bit before but it wasn't extreme so I'd just chalk it up to Nemesis stuff.)

Still, what a crappy solution. The game is about cultivating a stable of orcs. Murdering them without telling you why is bad. When the Best Defense mission showed up, it showed up with all the other Fortress Defense missions too. Did I run out and immediately start defending my forts, starting with Nurnen? No, I started shoring up my forts and my guys in preparation for the assault. Meanwhile my captains are being erased at a rate of 4 or 5 per cycle of one action, and I swear even grunts I'm dominating are turning on me until I finally do this fucking quest.

TLDR: as soon as you see The Best Defense just do it, if you want a chance at keeping any of your non-warchiefs/overlord captains alive.

I wish they'd stop handing out Blood Brother every other spawn. Every new orc that comes in can become a blood brother to one of your orcs, and once you control most of the hierarchy it's usually going to land on someone you care about. There's something weird with Blood Brother where even Dominating their Blood Brother and bringing them in to your army drives them crazy. Maybe it's intended, like seeing their Blood Brother humbled breaks your domination over them sort of like shaming does. I know Blood Brothers specifically get pissed off about shaming and deranging. That they get pissed about dominating too seems just a lil bit unfair though even if it makes sense. I'm losing guys constantly to Blood Brother, because they Iron Will up and I eventually have to Shame them so many times they end up crippled and likely to die anyways while I'm trying to get Iron Will off of them.

And while I really like the Fighting Pits, it's starting to feel a little like Salty Bet. On paper a guy should win but then the AI decides to potato the fight, and a level 34 Legendary gets taken out by a Level 15 Epic just by hits and counters, no exploiting weaknesses or anything. G'damn Defenders, I hate them so much.

Speaking of why everything feels like it's Defender Shields all day, I think I figured out how the orcs get designed, so to speak.

Every orc starts with a basic class.

-Warrior. (guys with a single weapon melee weapon.)
-Archer. (Crossbows.)
-Hunter. (Spears.)
-Savage. (Dual axes or swords or w/e. I think they also get some enrages from it.)
-Defender. (Spear and Shield.)
-Sapper. (Explosives.)
-Olog. (One large weapon and Olog Strength.)

From their basic class they get their weapon, and their general AI style, and/or a class bonus. (Ie. an Archer sits back while a Defender moves in close with their shield, while a Savage charges in.) This kinda represents their grunt training.

Then there are advanced classes, which they get when they're promoted to captain. All basic classes can become some of the advanced classes, but some are restricted by class and common sense. (Warriors without a crossbow can't become Marksmen, obviously. Ologs can't become Archers because they can't use a main ranged weapon, or Defenders because honestly, fuck that. (At least I haven't seen an Olog with a Shield and Spear.) I suppose actually Ologs can't be many of the classes because they can only use one main weapon, which is the super massive 1 handed weapon. Sappers aren't guys you typically run in to but it represents training with explosives which informs the Destroyer advanced class.

I'm sure this isn't how they're arranged but this is how I think of them.

Warrior: Slayer, Commander
Archer: Marksmen, Assassin, Trickster
Defender: Tank
Hunter: Beastmaster, Tracker
Savage: Berzerker
Sapper: Destroyer

So that's how you end up with awesome combinations like a Sapper who becomes a Berzerker. So they're a Berzerker with bombs and mines, and if they get immunity to their own trap damage type, they can wreck whole crowds. Savage/Berzerker means they get Savage Counter and will probably have a minimum of 4 Enrage triggers. A Sapper/Tracker gets mines, bombs and traps so they have the full compliment of placeable or throwable explosives. On the other hand, Archer/Destroyer or Hunter/Destroyer both get explosive shots which can destroy whole crowds of enemies or strip you of a lot of life. Defender/Berzerkers also turn out to be pretty nasty because they combine aggression with a lot of frontal defense and counters. Defender/Tanks are obviously pretty tough. Hunter/Tricksters are often pretty good because spears don't take long to throw so all the teleporting and dodging can be followed up with attacks. I'm not totally convinced Anything/Assassin is actually good except as a way to kill the player. Agile is cute and all but I see guys without Agile dodge each other all day in the Fighting Pits. Put another way, some classes seemed to be designed around making a player's life tough, while other classes are all around just better performers in the Fighting Pits. I love Slayers but, AI aside, I feel like they lose out to most other classes. Berzerkers seem to be one of the better classes in the FP, because they have lots of Enrage triggers and constantly attacking tends to overwrite the inherent shittinness of the AI. Ologs tend to do pretty well too just by dint of their strength. Archers and Hunters can be touch and go. Sometimes they zone their opponent the whole fight. Other times they get pulled in to melee and eaten alive.

In to this mix you throw the other modifiers like Cursed, Fiery or Poisonous and it modifies the traits underneath it to some degree. So when you end up with a Poisonous Hunter/Sapper with Poison-Proof they fill the screen with poison explosions all day.

I wish they'd been a little more creative with the Epic Traits, I feel like they could have done some fun things here. But most just make what's already in the game and its frame work more nasty.

For leveling guys, while I think the Arena gets you the most bang for your buck, it's super risky compared to doing Nemesis missions. But Nemesis missions tend to result in fewer levels for your orcs because you're farming up lower level spawns and investing time running around and death threating, etc....You also open yourself up to more Nemesis events, like get Blood Brothered because you're stopped paying close enough attention to the next orc in line to die, or you get preemptively ambushed by an orc you haven't met yet. Your other captains can decide to act on their own, complicating things sometimes because of rival or just too many damn bodies on the screen.

So I wish the Fighting Pit was a bit more reliable based on level. As it is if I'm trying to preserve my guys I level them up mostly on Maggot-tier fights, and even then I'd say I lose 1/5 just to AI that's deciding to derp around. It's a super convenient, entertaining and even profitable way to spend time in the game. I just get a little annoyed that it feels like there's a hard coded chance anyone can lose a fight.

I guess the moral of the story is that one does not simply level through Mordor.

[scriver]

So it looks like what was happening to my guys in Nurnen was due to the Bruz quest line.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In order to assure there's room in the hierarchy to spawn enemy captains during the Best Defense mission, the game will just keep killing off 99% of your captains in Nurnen somewhere around the time The Best Defense becomes available. (I'd sort of noticed it a bit before but it wasn't extreme so I'd just chalk it up to Nemesis stuff.)

Still, what a crappy solution. The game is about cultivating a stable of orcs. Murdering them without telling you why is bad. When the Best Defense mission showed up, it showed up with all the other Fortress Defense missions too. Did I run out and immediately start defending my forts, starting with Nurnen? No, I started shoring up my forts and my guys in preparation for the assault. Meanwhile my captains are being erased at a rate of 4 or 5 per cycle of one action, and I swear even grunts I'm dominating are turning on me until I finally do this fucking quest.

TLDR: as soon as you see The Best Defense just do it, if you want a chance at keeping any of your non-warchiefs/overlord captains alive.

I too began to suspect something like that might be the case. It's not just The Best Defense but every mission which requires hostile captains - if you don't have any in the roster it forces them in by overwriting your already existing ones. This really is awful design, I wish they would've implemented something like dormant "hidden" captain slots for such captains to take up. Then, once the mission was over, any surviving orcs could've fought it out with other captains for a place on the "normal" table through the Nemesis system, like captains already do.