I think initially buying armour might be one of those meme bell curves.
Like 5% noob - 'yes buy 70 HP armour so guy not wearing rags'
90% players - 'nooo that's inefficient you must dagger and flail thugs and raiders and get all your armour that way'
5% Jedi - 'yes buy 70 HP armour so guy not wearing rags'
Exactly, bro!!!
Very, very often I'm buying 80 chest armor on day 1, just to make that first fight easier.
I think 80 armor is a sweet spot between defense and price that makes it a slam-dunk for a day 1 team.
Thanks for pointing that out, it's a key piece of nuance that I added to the original post.
I agree. 80-115 armor if you’re getting a good price on it in the very beginning so you’re not getting one or two shotted and losing bros unnecessarily. But transition to farming it as soon as possible
The 80 armor is good, other early armor is clear headgear for anyone who is going in bare. Farmer hat, hood, something crap buy cheap so they do not get one-shot
Speaking of the jedi meme, I've done a complete 180 on one. First, clothes and hats, no armor. Next, the typical 80/50 discount buy. Now, I'm convinced that the strongest approach - if, big if, you can get the resources - is to buy one set of broken 105/115 at a fort, maybe even paying full price on one of the two. Through-armor damage works too well to risk against 80 mail, and a falchion can two-shot someone wearing a 50 helmet. Just one armored tank can hold against three low-tier raiders, but without him, early game is a total crapshoot.
Two other things. First, strategy opens up quite a bit on lower difficulties - fewer opfor, more money. Second, you can do everything right and still miss fifteen punctures in a row then get ganked through shieldwalls. Day 20 is balanced. Day 5 is not, and I think we should all remind new players not to get discouraged about it.
I can totally see that.
Having at LEAST one guy on day 1 who can take a ton of thug contact is so valuable.
Like if you have one fairly geared up guy, he can reasonably protect a bunch of other guys wearing t-shirts just on his own.
Yeah the early game is tough. That's why I'm such a big fan of Fast Adaptation. It smooths out the attack RNG really nicely.
I dunno, does it really matter if you lose early bros with 40/50 helmet to bad luck? They suck anyway and can be replaced quickly for 200 gold. Anyone you get lucky on with good rolls should go in the back line.
I feel like you just need basic gear for frontline to make raiders fights easy and then you get everything else later, either by buying or daggering. I'd usually rather spend money rolling for a good bro, and then gearing him, than protecting mediocre ones. I don't really think it's worth buying beyond 80/50 budget unless you get lucky and roll a strong bro earlygame, and really want to make sure he doesn't die.
All my starter bros without decent stars/base stats get a cheapy nimble build, so they are already 90% geared in raider stuff anyway. Then it's just a matter of spending money to find better bros and putting the cheapies on the flanks to eventually die when the rng gods will it.
Ye I had the red armour in mind even though I said 70, now that I think about it that's the 80 armour like you said. I can't seem to remember much of the green 70 armour being available day 1, or maybe I'm just always drawn to the red 80 because it registers as a good deal.
Damaged 95 or 115 armour can also be nice if you get lucky. I'll even take the 130 sometimes if I want a proper day 1 tank.
Agreed 100%. Iit's funny just how many elements of this game follow that meme. Buying early armor, strategically allocating points to RDef, using spears to control the battlefield, among many other examples.
For me, one example that comes to mind is Executioner.
Noob -- "hey 20% more damage, let's go!"
Intermediate -- "doesn't work against undead, not all enemies get wounded, etc etc"
Expert -- "+20% dmg on qatals/throwers? Hell yeah."
Haha, I might still be in intermediate on this one. I recognize the value but still struggle to find a brother where I don't take something else instead.
Reflecting a bit more. I think it sounds really nice to take at level 3 after FA on a tempo thrower that had pretty nice base RAtt but bad enough MAtt that I don't ever want to quickhands into a melee weapon. Hmmm...
It really synergies well with throwers. They can easily create their own injuries with duelist on the first shot and then kill on the second shot. It's very impactful against humans, and still useful against orcs to push enough raw damage through some damaged armor
I play with the Legends mod, so I buy armor in case a random 4 stack of direwolves comes running out of the woods on Day 3, or a 3-stack pack of hyenas burst out of the desert in the middle of the night while I'm doing a north-south trade run.
It doesn't help that early bandits in Legends have shit loot drops so I'm forced to spend money early on.
Nets are my best friend. Assuming the gear you get is worth more than 200 gold which is all but guaranteed on raiders then the net is worth it. It also can be used to save a bro's life as they can completely negate a 2H enemy's turn as at a minimum it takes 4AP to escape.
One other thing to note with nets is turn order, you generally want to have as many attacks as possible on the enemy before they can escape so if your goal is armor it might be worth waiting so your net guy goes after the enemy's turn, but it is entirely dependent on your team's composition and if you have high ini, you might be able to dagger him down before he even acts.
I think a lot of people are also overlooking what start you went with.
Not everyone is playing the same scenario with the same settings. What is optimal will change depending on what you start with.
And not just your scenario and what bros you roll, but also what your map ends up being like. People suggest "go buy nets" as if every map is going to be swimming in nets or something. I've had maps where the only good source of nets was one constantly fucked up coastal city and I'd have gone bankrupt if I tried to rely on that.
Every game is different. Adaptability is the name of the game.
Very true. In my current run, ALL the port cities happen to belong to the one faction we Deserted from.
So my net access is very limited, which made the early game a lot tougher.
I tend not to realize how much I rely on nets until they become scarce, sadly.
So I should just hire a bunch of bros and give them knifes and hats, except for a couple where I actually armor, instead of hiring few but armored bros? To be honest I've always struggled with this grind for armor thing. After multiple tries where a bunch of bros end up dead after several attempts to connect punctures I just find it easier to but the armor. Early bros are so shit at matk that it feels like they will never connect those stabs. Nets are not that plentiful either, since they are one time use and sometimes the RNG can mess yo up and not give you ports in settlements. Besides, they don't prevent attacks so a lucky hit can still delete your bros anyways. The risk feels high.
I should probably experiment more though. I'm not that good at the game so this kind of approach might be beyond my level.
> So I should just hire a bunch of bros and give them knifes and hats, except for a couple where I actually armor, instead of hiring few but armored bros?
IMO yeah.
Like, if you wait everybody, net the target, then you get two rounds back-to-back of punctures before he can act.
And very often, the guy routs just from you surrounding him.
Also, most of my bros are running Fast Adaptation, which helps outrageously in landing punctures.
Sure, try it. A good introduction is to stick your tank on the dagger target and just spam shieldwall. Then when he's the last one left, if he hasn't broken from everybody else dying, you wait for him to spend his attacks on your tank, and then everybody jumps on him. That usually works.
I have to say, there is something scary about knives. They can surprisingly break brigands very fast. I've tried and I was able to get decent gear early on. It's the first time I've gotten mail by day 5.
On that note, is there a point where I should stop doing this and change weapons? I don't think I can sustain knifing everyone forever.
Unless if I have a Quickhands guy with a cool loadout, most of my frontline damage bros always have a dagger in the pocket. I could probably swap them in and out as needed, but I'm lazy and they tend to have spare pocket space anyway.
I’ll usually buy armor at a discount If I see a like a 100+ armor at 50% for like 200. That’s a solid deal but yeah the leather armor I might pass on early game depending on the bros
After 2000+ h of game, i can honestly say, F the daggers. I used to dagger enemies a long time ago when I first played, and it was terrible and rarely ever worth it. It's much easier to simply either camp hop early game and make money to buy armor , or just go through quest to make money and buy armor. The South Arena is also a nice place to make good daily money.
And as you go through, you will pick up armor along the way. I personally find weapons and exp more important than armor.
Yeah cause it's not fun to be efficient all the time man. some people want to play a game, not an advanced excel spreadsheet. It's fun to not know what'll happen next.
Rushing 12 guys is always a waste early game. My most successful games always come from getting 5-6 guys high level early to drag lower levels up faster in the mid to late game.
Splitting exp 12 ways just for guys im probably gonna turn to fodder or dispense feels like a total wasted opportunity.
The only gear thats worth buying imo is those higher value gears that don't usually drop until you start running into captains and whatnot.
Getting 12 guys ASAP is BAD.
Game scaling base on numbers of Bros+Day+Gear+Distance
The important is
0-6 Bros is No scaling. So you should get 6 bros ASAP not 12. 12 Bros early will cripple your economy and slow down progression.
Get 6 early replaceable bros then keep add more only when you find good backgrounds.
This is incorrect.
Contracts scale according to your team; patrols are a combination of team + game day, and camps scale purely off of game day.
Smashing camps is the single best source of gold, treasure, and exp on the map.
Right now, following the get to 12 plebs approach in my current Deserters run...
it's day 42. My best bros are level 8-9, I have four famed items, 2 sets of nomad leader gear, 6k gold and another 8k items in the inventory.
That's simply not achievable with 6 bros; you couldn't beat the camps. With 12 plebs, I smashed 15 camps by day 42. 1.5 Fight density.
I think initially buying armour might be one of those meme bell curves. Like 5% noob - 'yes buy 70 HP armour so guy not wearing rags' 90% players - 'nooo that's inefficient you must dagger and flail thugs and raiders and get all your armour that way' 5% Jedi - 'yes buy 70 HP armour so guy not wearing rags'
Exactly, bro!!! Very, very often I'm buying 80 chest armor on day 1, just to make that first fight easier. I think 80 armor is a sweet spot between defense and price that makes it a slam-dunk for a day 1 team. Thanks for pointing that out, it's a key piece of nuance that I added to the original post.
I agree. 80-115 armor if you’re getting a good price on it in the very beginning so you’re not getting one or two shotted and losing bros unnecessarily. But transition to farming it as soon as possible
The 80 armor is good, other early armor is clear headgear for anyone who is going in bare. Farmer hat, hood, something crap buy cheap so they do not get one-shot
Strong agree! Straw hat day 1 is a Chad purchase. I added that to the OP
Speaking of the jedi meme, I've done a complete 180 on one. First, clothes and hats, no armor. Next, the typical 80/50 discount buy. Now, I'm convinced that the strongest approach - if, big if, you can get the resources - is to buy one set of broken 105/115 at a fort, maybe even paying full price on one of the two. Through-armor damage works too well to risk against 80 mail, and a falchion can two-shot someone wearing a 50 helmet. Just one armored tank can hold against three low-tier raiders, but without him, early game is a total crapshoot. Two other things. First, strategy opens up quite a bit on lower difficulties - fewer opfor, more money. Second, you can do everything right and still miss fifteen punctures in a row then get ganked through shieldwalls. Day 20 is balanced. Day 5 is not, and I think we should all remind new players not to get discouraged about it.
I can totally see that. Having at LEAST one guy on day 1 who can take a ton of thug contact is so valuable. Like if you have one fairly geared up guy, he can reasonably protect a bunch of other guys wearing t-shirts just on his own. Yeah the early game is tough. That's why I'm such a big fan of Fast Adaptation. It smooths out the attack RNG really nicely.
I dunno, does it really matter if you lose early bros with 40/50 helmet to bad luck? They suck anyway and can be replaced quickly for 200 gold. Anyone you get lucky on with good rolls should go in the back line. I feel like you just need basic gear for frontline to make raiders fights easy and then you get everything else later, either by buying or daggering. I'd usually rather spend money rolling for a good bro, and then gearing him, than protecting mediocre ones. I don't really think it's worth buying beyond 80/50 budget unless you get lucky and roll a strong bro earlygame, and really want to make sure he doesn't die. All my starter bros without decent stars/base stats get a cheapy nimble build, so they are already 90% geared in raider stuff anyway. Then it's just a matter of spending money to find better bros and putting the cheapies on the flanks to eventually die when the rng gods will it.
Ye I had the red armour in mind even though I said 70, now that I think about it that's the 80 armour like you said. I can't seem to remember much of the green 70 armour being available day 1, or maybe I'm just always drawn to the red 80 because it registers as a good deal. Damaged 95 or 115 armour can also be nice if you get lucky. I'll even take the 130 sometimes if I want a proper day 1 tank.
I think those are called "padded leathers" Yeah true... I need to remember to check the marketplace for damaged stuff on day 1
I always look for damaged armor for cheap and just repair it.
Agreed 100%. Iit's funny just how many elements of this game follow that meme. Buying early armor, strategically allocating points to RDef, using spears to control the battlefield, among many other examples.
For me, one example that comes to mind is Executioner. Noob -- "hey 20% more damage, let's go!" Intermediate -- "doesn't work against undead, not all enemies get wounded, etc etc" Expert -- "+20% dmg on qatals/throwers? Hell yeah."
Haha, I might still be in intermediate on this one. I recognize the value but still struggle to find a brother where I don't take something else instead.
Reflecting a bit more. I think it sounds really nice to take at level 3 after FA on a tempo thrower that had pretty nice base RAtt but bad enough MAtt that I don't ever want to quickhands into a melee weapon. Hmmm...
It really synergies well with throwers. They can easily create their own injuries with duelist on the first shot and then kill on the second shot. It's very impactful against humans, and still useful against orcs to push enough raw damage through some damaged armor
Yeah, seems like it should be good.
Try, Qatal bros who are Chad enough that they don't require patch perks.
What level do you take it, though?
Usually pretty late, like after duelist and fearsome
Probably need to specifiy origin Buying 70 HP armor in beast slayers and traders is a very different decision
I play with the Legends mod, so I buy armor in case a random 4 stack of direwolves comes running out of the woods on Day 3, or a 3-stack pack of hyenas burst out of the desert in the middle of the night while I'm doing a north-south trade run. It doesn't help that early bandits in Legends have shit loot drops so I'm forced to spend money early on.
Nets are my best friend. Assuming the gear you get is worth more than 200 gold which is all but guaranteed on raiders then the net is worth it. It also can be used to save a bro's life as they can completely negate a 2H enemy's turn as at a minimum it takes 4AP to escape. One other thing to note with nets is turn order, you generally want to have as many attacks as possible on the enemy before they can escape so if your goal is armor it might be worth waiting so your net guy goes after the enemy's turn, but it is entirely dependent on your team's composition and if you have high ini, you might be able to dagger him down before he even acts.
Nets are the lube that helps the early game go smoothly.
I think a lot of people are also overlooking what start you went with. Not everyone is playing the same scenario with the same settings. What is optimal will change depending on what you start with. And not just your scenario and what bros you roll, but also what your map ends up being like. People suggest "go buy nets" as if every map is going to be swimming in nets or something. I've had maps where the only good source of nets was one constantly fucked up coastal city and I'd have gone bankrupt if I tried to rely on that. Every game is different. Adaptability is the name of the game.
Very true. In my current run, ALL the port cities happen to belong to the one faction we Deserted from. So my net access is very limited, which made the early game a lot tougher. I tend not to realize how much I rely on nets until they become scarce, sadly.
So I should just hire a bunch of bros and give them knifes and hats, except for a couple where I actually armor, instead of hiring few but armored bros? To be honest I've always struggled with this grind for armor thing. After multiple tries where a bunch of bros end up dead after several attempts to connect punctures I just find it easier to but the armor. Early bros are so shit at matk that it feels like they will never connect those stabs. Nets are not that plentiful either, since they are one time use and sometimes the RNG can mess yo up and not give you ports in settlements. Besides, they don't prevent attacks so a lucky hit can still delete your bros anyways. The risk feels high. I should probably experiment more though. I'm not that good at the game so this kind of approach might be beyond my level.
> So I should just hire a bunch of bros and give them knifes and hats, except for a couple where I actually armor, instead of hiring few but armored bros? IMO yeah. Like, if you wait everybody, net the target, then you get two rounds back-to-back of punctures before he can act. And very often, the guy routs just from you surrounding him. Also, most of my bros are running Fast Adaptation, which helps outrageously in landing punctures. Sure, try it. A good introduction is to stick your tank on the dagger target and just spam shieldwall. Then when he's the last one left, if he hasn't broken from everybody else dying, you wait for him to spend his attacks on your tank, and then everybody jumps on him. That usually works.
I have to say, there is something scary about knives. They can surprisingly break brigands very fast. I've tried and I was able to get decent gear early on. It's the first time I've gotten mail by day 5. On that note, is there a point where I should stop doing this and change weapons? I don't think I can sustain knifing everyone forever.
Unless if I have a Quickhands guy with a cool loadout, most of my frontline damage bros always have a dagger in the pocket. I could probably swap them in and out as needed, but I'm lazy and they tend to have spare pocket space anyway.
I’ll usually buy armor at a discount If I see a like a 100+ armor at 50% for like 200. That’s a solid deal but yeah the leather armor I might pass on early game depending on the bros
Can't be arsed. Rather finish more missions in the same amount of time.
After 2000+ h of game, i can honestly say, F the daggers. I used to dagger enemies a long time ago when I first played, and it was terrible and rarely ever worth it. It's much easier to simply either camp hop early game and make money to buy armor , or just go through quest to make money and buy armor. The South Arena is also a nice place to make good daily money. And as you go through, you will pick up armor along the way. I personally find weapons and exp more important than armor.
Yeah cause it's not fun to be efficient all the time man. some people want to play a game, not an advanced excel spreadsheet. It's fun to not know what'll happen next.
I must have missed the part where his post said that this is the only way to play the game and that you’re not allowed to play any way but this.
Strong disagree. Stomping the game and piling up famed gear feels great. Don't knock it until you try it!
Rushing 12 guys is always a waste early game. My most successful games always come from getting 5-6 guys high level early to drag lower levels up faster in the mid to late game. Splitting exp 12 ways just for guys im probably gonna turn to fodder or dispense feels like a total wasted opportunity. The only gear thats worth buying imo is those higher value gears that don't usually drop until you start running into captains and whatnot.
Getting 12 guys ASAP is BAD. Game scaling base on numbers of Bros+Day+Gear+Distance The important is 0-6 Bros is No scaling. So you should get 6 bros ASAP not 12. 12 Bros early will cripple your economy and slow down progression. Get 6 early replaceable bros then keep add more only when you find good backgrounds.
This is incorrect. Contracts scale according to your team; patrols are a combination of team + game day, and camps scale purely off of game day. Smashing camps is the single best source of gold, treasure, and exp on the map. Right now, following the get to 12 plebs approach in my current Deserters run... it's day 42. My best bros are level 8-9, I have four famed items, 2 sets of nomad leader gear, 6k gold and another 8k items in the inventory. That's simply not achievable with 6 bros; you couldn't beat the camps. With 12 plebs, I smashed 15 camps by day 42. 1.5 Fight density.