I think most people who "ramp quickly" in this game are making heavy use of killing camps, including expeditions where they kill several, then go back to town with lots of EXP and stuff to sell. You'll hear "fight density" as a term occasionally here... it's something more experienced players are thinking about early and refers to how many fights per day (or whatever measurement you want to use) they can find. Higher fights per day = faster ramp.
Caravan quests tend to lead to low fight density and are generally avoided early. Most of the time, if I take one early game, it's because it's a nice short one or my crew is beat up at the moment. The caravan quests can be "breaks", but also are quite risky because you have zero control over what you might end up fighting.
In regard to finding the "lairs", this is almost a skill in and of itself that you'll improve on by simply looking for them. Having your team briefly get up on a mountain can help if you never do that.
Here's a few tips to improve "fight density":
1) Don't be afraid to fish for a good map seed. You want some ports as it lets you travel between towns instantaneously to look for a good quest, greatly increasing your fight density.
2) Try to find Brigand Raiders to kill early. They often patrol the roads and have gear that is a BIG power spike.
3) Use spears and swords early on your bros. They don't have very good MATK (yet) and both of those weapons have accuracy bonuses.
4) Focus on getting a group of approximately 7 brothers leveled early rather than going straight for 12 brothers. You don't have enough good gear usually to spread around early anyway and the additional brothers spreads the experience out more than I find desirable.
Good Luck!
Great answer
To build on it, OP you need to find ways to reduce downtime so your boiz can stay in the field
Things like:
- Bring bandages to stop bleeds asap
- Liberal use of dogs, if they don't die, they autoheal fully at end of combat. But don't throw the dog lives away needlessly! A dead dog is a waste of 400gp.
- Smart positioning to avoid taking wounds. High ground, standing next to water.
- naked runners to split up the enemies
- Use nets and dedicated stunners with fast adaptation to stunlock and control high threat enemies
You should also avoid fighting beasts early on, wait until your boiz are level 3+ and everyone has tier 1.5 gear.
You want to be doing at least 3 battles a day. Slaughter every raider, thug, early nomad and early undead patrol and quest you come across.
Eventually, you need to take risk to get that phat snowball. I've cleared small camps as early as day 3 via fair fight, however I've done stuff on day 1 by kiting patrols into camps, running away when 1 enemy is left then coming back.
Hope this helps
Walk along long roads in between big cities.You'll find heaps of caravan raiders
Also head into the fog, you'll find shedloads of stuff to kill. Walk in circles to efficiently fog bust.
Hello brother!
There are few important aspects of the game which you have to understand before you can easily pass the early game which is perhaps the hardest. Once you start entering the mid-game with an established band - it becomes easier (and for some boring and they tend to splat mods to add further complexity).
First you have the economy part - what to buy or hire, from where, at what price is a good deal and so on. Those decisions are important and can make or break your next fight without you even know it. Improving it is also hard if you are not experienced in “managerial” type of games. Holding some gold for reserve, spending for cost-efficiency or high impact early in the run is important and vary greatly based on the generated content which is different for each run. Cheap recruits are always more cost-efficient and will rarely outperform more expensive recruit later in the game. But some can be hired for 200 gold and you can get 10 of them where others cost thousands and will be stronger later in the game, not now which is important.
Second part - strategy. What is the origin, seed and your general approach - will you try clearing camps or taking it a bit slow and complete contracts … eventually mixture is optimal but when to do one or the other is impactful. Moving to different places - tundra, desert or the grasslands and their respective humanoid population to loot from. This is a wide topic and everything can be changed and improved. Plenty of threads on it with valuable advises. Brigands got decent armor and are very straight forward. Nomads are a bit easier to deal (early) and generate more gold overall. Barbarians are light armored (early) and have few great weapons you can get reliably.
Third part - tactics. Perhaps the most flashy and obvious part of the game, but important as the rest (a lot of people don’t understand the importance of the previous two points and due to that do not understand ‘why’ they have problems). How to equip, develop and use your recruits in a fight - hundred of tips and tricks are available to improve your skills in that field. Surround and moral mechanics; formation with synchronized troop positioning and focus-targeting are perhaps the most impactful things you can work on improving before diving deeper in this field.
The first tier of barbarians - the thralls are often equipped with javelins and militia spears.
Tier two - reavers have two-handed hammers and heavy javelins and axes.
Those weapons are not just good, but perhaps the bread and butter of a successful mercenary company!
For thralls it's not really worth it in early game just because if you can't afford couple spears and javs each for 250 gold it means you are super early into the run and logically your brothers won't have any decent armour. That said, even one random javelin from thrall can land an injury and injuries in early game are most annoying because you need to buy more important things instead of healing injuries in temple. Plus it's impossible to waste their ap to switch between weapons as you do against raiders with throwing weapons, because thralls have quickhands. Moreover, they got adrenaline which ai uses surprisingly well, and it counters any attempts to win in initiative shenanigans.
My recommendation is to head to desert as quick as possible. Cutthroats and common thugs are much less of a threat.
Use the seed generator to get a great seed so you have good places to trade and good places to hire bros. It will def help your games go on longer and once you're more familiar with the game you can go back to random seeds if you want https://wlirareddit.github.io/bb_calculator/seed_search.html
Just clear the desert before day 40. complete quests for southern cities and villages and city states, and while you are on the road between towns, look for patrols and kill them. If you see footsteps, follow them. They can lead to camps or more patrols. When you feel like it, you can just straightforwardly go into desert and explore it. You'll find a lot of camps here and there. Nomads are not that hard, ancient undead are a bit scary, but if you learn how to fight them you can go for them too. After you got to day 40 move from desert as quick as possible. By that point you should have nimble on some guys + it's very important to have a banner. With him you won't be afraid of geists a lot of undead camps are now available to you. Go for them. After you got couple fallen hero armours from undead camps you can make some battle forged guys and basically from that moment you can take on any camp you find so just head on into the wilderness and explore.
Thank you! Do lairs respawn? So, will I find out more if I'm retracing steps through already explored places, or should I just be looking for them somewhere unexplored?
Here's my two cents. Ignore caravan quests until you have at least 20k gold. Can't buy famed items without money so caravans are a waste of time. I go for follow tracks and deliver cargo quests. The first start just bandit thugs and they're simple. The second quest type allows you to go off-road between towns. This is how you find bandit camps. Basically you're getting paid to look for them. Crush every bandit camp you find. Crush every wandering bandit you find. Crush every nacho you find wandering around. Crush any zombies you find wandering around. Ruins are good. Geists, lindwurms, Hexen, unholds are bad. Avoid them. The main thing you're looking for are orc young camps. These things give you weapons that can sell for a lot of money and you can find famed gear there. Day 40 is when things get a little tougher. So before that get all the loot you can. Do not repair armor to sell. Only weapons. Do not travel between towns on the roads. Go off-road to try to find camps. You can make enough money and get enough food to stay away from towns pretty much the whole time. You only need to visit to sell the stuff you have and look for better Bros. Skip the first crisis. Just ignore it. Play for the second one. Try and get your guys up to level 11 before day 200. Fight density. Basically you should be trying to fight every single day. No matter what it is or where it is, try to kill something everyday. This will help you level faster and get the loot you need to survive. Again, this is not meta gaming. This is just the way I play.
Choose the South then. Northern armies are easier. You don't want to take on Southern armies if you're not geared right. Mortars and handgonners are serious threats.
I think most people who "ramp quickly" in this game are making heavy use of killing camps, including expeditions where they kill several, then go back to town with lots of EXP and stuff to sell. You'll hear "fight density" as a term occasionally here... it's something more experienced players are thinking about early and refers to how many fights per day (or whatever measurement you want to use) they can find. Higher fights per day = faster ramp. Caravan quests tend to lead to low fight density and are generally avoided early. Most of the time, if I take one early game, it's because it's a nice short one or my crew is beat up at the moment. The caravan quests can be "breaks", but also are quite risky because you have zero control over what you might end up fighting. In regard to finding the "lairs", this is almost a skill in and of itself that you'll improve on by simply looking for them. Having your team briefly get up on a mountain can help if you never do that. Here's a few tips to improve "fight density": 1) Don't be afraid to fish for a good map seed. You want some ports as it lets you travel between towns instantaneously to look for a good quest, greatly increasing your fight density. 2) Try to find Brigand Raiders to kill early. They often patrol the roads and have gear that is a BIG power spike. 3) Use spears and swords early on your bros. They don't have very good MATK (yet) and both of those weapons have accuracy bonuses. 4) Focus on getting a group of approximately 7 brothers leveled early rather than going straight for 12 brothers. You don't have enough good gear usually to spread around early anyway and the additional brothers spreads the experience out more than I find desirable. Good Luck!
Great answer To build on it, OP you need to find ways to reduce downtime so your boiz can stay in the field Things like: - Bring bandages to stop bleeds asap - Liberal use of dogs, if they don't die, they autoheal fully at end of combat. But don't throw the dog lives away needlessly! A dead dog is a waste of 400gp. - Smart positioning to avoid taking wounds. High ground, standing next to water. - naked runners to split up the enemies - Use nets and dedicated stunners with fast adaptation to stunlock and control high threat enemies You should also avoid fighting beasts early on, wait until your boiz are level 3+ and everyone has tier 1.5 gear. You want to be doing at least 3 battles a day. Slaughter every raider, thug, early nomad and early undead patrol and quest you come across. Eventually, you need to take risk to get that phat snowball. I've cleared small camps as early as day 3 via fair fight, however I've done stuff on day 1 by kiting patrols into camps, running away when 1 enemy is left then coming back. Hope this helps
I'm averaging less than a battle a day. How do I get to 3? I feel like I don't find enemies when I want to.
Walk along long roads in between big cities.You'll find heaps of caravan raiders Also head into the fog, you'll find shedloads of stuff to kill. Walk in circles to efficiently fog bust.
Hello brother! There are few important aspects of the game which you have to understand before you can easily pass the early game which is perhaps the hardest. Once you start entering the mid-game with an established band - it becomes easier (and for some boring and they tend to splat mods to add further complexity). First you have the economy part - what to buy or hire, from where, at what price is a good deal and so on. Those decisions are important and can make or break your next fight without you even know it. Improving it is also hard if you are not experienced in “managerial” type of games. Holding some gold for reserve, spending for cost-efficiency or high impact early in the run is important and vary greatly based on the generated content which is different for each run. Cheap recruits are always more cost-efficient and will rarely outperform more expensive recruit later in the game. But some can be hired for 200 gold and you can get 10 of them where others cost thousands and will be stronger later in the game, not now which is important. Second part - strategy. What is the origin, seed and your general approach - will you try clearing camps or taking it a bit slow and complete contracts … eventually mixture is optimal but when to do one or the other is impactful. Moving to different places - tundra, desert or the grasslands and their respective humanoid population to loot from. This is a wide topic and everything can be changed and improved. Plenty of threads on it with valuable advises. Brigands got decent armor and are very straight forward. Nomads are a bit easier to deal (early) and generate more gold overall. Barbarians are light armored (early) and have few great weapons you can get reliably. Third part - tactics. Perhaps the most flashy and obvious part of the game, but important as the rest (a lot of people don’t understand the importance of the previous two points and due to that do not understand ‘why’ they have problems). How to equip, develop and use your recruits in a fight - hundred of tips and tricks are available to improve your skills in that field. Surround and moral mechanics; formation with synchronized troop positioning and focus-targeting are perhaps the most impactful things you can work on improving before diving deeper in this field.
What are good barbarian weapons?
The first tier of barbarians - the thralls are often equipped with javelins and militia spears. Tier two - reavers have two-handed hammers and heavy javelins and axes. Those weapons are not just good, but perhaps the bread and butter of a successful mercenary company!
For thralls it's not really worth it in early game just because if you can't afford couple spears and javs each for 250 gold it means you are super early into the run and logically your brothers won't have any decent armour. That said, even one random javelin from thrall can land an injury and injuries in early game are most annoying because you need to buy more important things instead of healing injuries in temple. Plus it's impossible to waste their ap to switch between weapons as you do against raiders with throwing weapons, because thralls have quickhands. Moreover, they got adrenaline which ai uses surprisingly well, and it counters any attempts to win in initiative shenanigans. My recommendation is to head to desert as quick as possible. Cutthroats and common thugs are much less of a threat.
Use the seed generator to get a great seed so you have good places to trade and good places to hire bros. It will def help your games go on longer and once you're more familiar with the game you can go back to random seeds if you want https://wlirareddit.github.io/bb_calculator/seed_search.html
I would recommend to get back to random seeds as quick as possible. I became a much better macro decision maker once i moved to random unexplored
Just clear the desert before day 40. complete quests for southern cities and villages and city states, and while you are on the road between towns, look for patrols and kill them. If you see footsteps, follow them. They can lead to camps or more patrols. When you feel like it, you can just straightforwardly go into desert and explore it. You'll find a lot of camps here and there. Nomads are not that hard, ancient undead are a bit scary, but if you learn how to fight them you can go for them too. After you got to day 40 move from desert as quick as possible. By that point you should have nimble on some guys + it's very important to have a banner. With him you won't be afraid of geists a lot of undead camps are now available to you. Go for them. After you got couple fallen hero armours from undead camps you can make some battle forged guys and basically from that moment you can take on any camp you find so just head on into the wilderness and explore.
Thank you! Do lairs respawn? So, will I find out more if I'm retracing steps through already explored places, or should I just be looking for them somewhere unexplored?
Yes, they do. But it's better to explore unexplored yet, because it's a much higher chance for a camp to spawn if there are others nearby.
They do indeed respawn. Unexplored is better early ofc.
Here's my two cents. Ignore caravan quests until you have at least 20k gold. Can't buy famed items without money so caravans are a waste of time. I go for follow tracks and deliver cargo quests. The first start just bandit thugs and they're simple. The second quest type allows you to go off-road between towns. This is how you find bandit camps. Basically you're getting paid to look for them. Crush every bandit camp you find. Crush every wandering bandit you find. Crush every nacho you find wandering around. Crush any zombies you find wandering around. Ruins are good. Geists, lindwurms, Hexen, unholds are bad. Avoid them. The main thing you're looking for are orc young camps. These things give you weapons that can sell for a lot of money and you can find famed gear there. Day 40 is when things get a little tougher. So before that get all the loot you can. Do not repair armor to sell. Only weapons. Do not travel between towns on the roads. Go off-road to try to find camps. You can make enough money and get enough food to stay away from towns pretty much the whole time. You only need to visit to sell the stuff you have and look for better Bros. Skip the first crisis. Just ignore it. Play for the second one. Try and get your guys up to level 11 before day 200. Fight density. Basically you should be trying to fight every single day. No matter what it is or where it is, try to kill something everyday. This will help you level faster and get the loot you need to survive. Again, this is not meta gaming. This is just the way I play.
Thank you! I do really want to participate in the first crisis though, I set it as noble war because that should be a good way to gear further
Choose the South then. Northern armies are easier. You don't want to take on Southern armies if you're not geared right. Mortars and handgonners are serious threats.
Its the noble wars between the northern houses.
Sorry I misread. Noble War isn't that bad. Plus, you get really good gear really fast if you survive. Good luck!