So, Men-At-Arms are clearly (too) awesome (and I hope they will not be nerfed to the ground like Hellions), but has anybody really found a great use for Arbalest? I look at their skills and there doesn't seem to be the sort of killer app that would make them great. Not a big fan of the skills that require a mark to be effective and the heal is weak. Bola might be great if it actually knocked back both targets but that's either bugged or not even supposed to work like that. Covering Fire might be interesting, and Blind Fire is a decent way to hit the last remaining enemy from the back rank I suppose.
I'm sure somebody has a higher rank Arbalest by now - how are they?
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
So, Men-At-Arms are clearly (too) awesome (and I hope they will not be nerfed to the ground like Hellions), but has anybody really found a great use for Arbalest? I look at their skills and there doesn't seem to be the sort of killer app that would make them great. Not a big fan of the skills that require a mark to be effective and the heal is weak. Bola might be great if it actually knocked back both targets but that's either bugged or not even supposed to work like that. Covering Fire might be interesting, and Blind Fire is a decent way to hit the last remaining enemy from the back rank I suppose.
I'm sure somebody has a higher rank Arbalest by now - how are they?
Covering Fire and Blind Fire are both pretty respectable. My Bounty Hunter got gibbed before I could try a mark-based damage team, though.
And yeah, Man-at-Arms is way, way crazy with riposte right now. Bellow's pretty handy, too.
I'm running a level 4 group of hellion-crusader-occultist-arbalest with full skill and gear upgrades and arbalest is the backbone of the party. the occultist with +4 speed quirk usually goes first and marks a back-row target, then the arbalest goes and hits for 20-60 damage. crusader and hellion stun and mop up.
I think if you have to pick between arbalest and highwayman, the former has more consistent damage in a party that can mark and a more tanky body, along with a respectable AOE debuff in covering fire (-18 ACC, -9% crit).
yeah I just killed the level 3 prophet, ignoring the barricades it has, in 3 hits/2 turns with a 38 crit from the hellion's back row attack as well as a 35 hit and 78 crit from the arbalest. I assume kills could be even quicker with the arbalest/bounty hunter/occultist combo, but those three would probably necessitate a double healer party with a vestal, which would probably struggle more against the actual dungeon with a lack of CC and non-marked damage.
I assume arbalests are crazy for killing bosses like the hag.
Assuming they don't get dumped in the pot like mine did the first time I fought her, but yeah.
I took a party against the Swine King, Arbalest, Vestal, Bounty Hunter, Crusader in that order. Bounty Hunter marked the King and the Arbalest, who was carrying the Ancestor Ring which gives increased ranged accuracy and crit chance (and a dodge charm to equalize the lost dodge) critted him every time three times in a row for 52 damage a shot. Dude had like 192 HP, so that was almost all of his health, the Bounty Hunter scored a crit in between and the Crusader dealt some damage, but she basically took down 3/4 of his HP all by herself. With the right trinkets and the right support, the Arbalest is a brutal killer from the back row.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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EshTending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered Userregular
Sort of related question. Are threads for Kickstarter based games only allowed when and if the game hits its goal and/or after the game is over. There's a Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter that just went live and I'm surprised that there's not a thread yet.
Sort of related question. Are threads for Kickstarter based games only allowed when and if the game hits its goal and/or after the game is over. There's a Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter that just went live and I'm surprised that there's not a thread yet.
There is a ban on the linking of any kickstarters, can't remember if a game thread is ok as long as you don't mention that it has one. I think i've seen a few threads about games in ks, as long as they didn't mention it, but not sure. I would PM a mod to be sure before making one anyway.
To be honest, this site is how I find out about most kickstarters. I ended up linking one in my Exalted thread, but I PM'd a moderator to ask permission first. Just make sure that your post is about the game, and that there is a kickstarter involved, not the other way around.
Yea, look at all the game OPs in the forums. They talk specifically about the game itself and such, and most only mention that they have a kickstarter. It's up to the reader to do a search to find the starter
Oh wow, Point-Blank Shot knocks the target back now. This changes all the things!
If we're talking about Highwayman, uh, it has always been like that.
Nah, PBS used to push the Highwayman back, which allowed for a bizarre(but not especially effective) group formation with two Highwaymen that just rotate Point-Blank Shot. I believe it's mentioned somewhere in the bowels of this thread a few times since this is the original thread.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited June 2015
It has always done both, pushes Highwayman back, and knocks the target back if it hits
To be honest, this site is how I find out about most kickstarters. I ended up linking one in my Exalted thread, but I PM'd a moderator to ask permission first. Just make sure that your post is about the game, and that there is a kickstarter involved, not the other way around.
I'd really like to see a Kickstarter forum here. Just because there's no way I can keep up with all the cool shit on Kickstarter and most of the ones I've paid into I've found out about here.
I mean, I know why there's a ban on linking Kickstarter. I don't think any of us, especially the mods, want to see waves of one off posters showing up to pimp their potato salad kickstarters then disappearing forever.
But maybe if it was like the Writer's Block, where it can't be seen unless you're logged in it would dissuade the one off posters. Alternatively, maybe put some timer based on it where you can't create a thread unless you've been here for some time (thinking 60 days, the maximum KS funding period). Or both, assuming Vanilla has that functionality.
Sure, that would mean that a person could create an account, wait for some time to pass and then use said account to pimp their KS. But really, if a person's willing to put that kind of foresight and planning just to pimp their stuff here, I'd be pretty interested in seeing what they were trying to fund.
Here's something I realized so late it makes me feel kind of stupid - the skills that deal less than normal damage like Arbalest's Suppressive Fire or Grave Robber's Flashing Daggers have an additive damage penalty, not a multiplicative one. What that means is when you stack enough damage trinkets and buffs on the guy, those AEs hitting 3-4 targets for -90% damage instead hit them for -50% or -30% and suddenly you are murdering your enemies by just yelling at them. Or in case of attacks like Grapeshot Blast, you one-shot three enemies. No wonder they completely removed damage component from some skills.
Man, even post-nerf, the Man-at-Arms is still quite powerful. He doesn't take zero damage from riposte anymore, but he can still rather easily bulwark everything to death.
Man, even post-nerf, the Man-at-Arms is still quite powerful. He doesn't take zero damage from riposte anymore, but he can still rather easily bulwark everything to death.
I'm glad they didn't nerf him to death. Now if they could just buff the weak classes and skills next I'd be truly happy. I understand it is easy for a dev to forgot stuff like Bounty Hunter's utterly useless bleed skill since they have enough useful skills that the class works. Making all skills useful would make the early game better (when you don't have money to select the skills you need), improve the newbie experience and give more depth to the classes, though.
Also, the prot nerf made most protection trinkets and Crusader's prot skill useless. MAA's protection skills both do something else as well and the protection is an added benefit so it didn't really ruin those, but a Crusader getting 20% protection (and +torch, yay) for wasting a full turn is crap.
Just got this in the steam sale, as I imagine a lot of people did. Played eight hours, lost a dozen or so heroes and these are my thoughts.
The game? Amazing. Execution is fantastic, the art direction (Mike Mignola's muse runs the joint!) is something we all need more of.
But the punishment, it's just a bit too much. I've gotten to week 20, I have 1-2 upgrades on all my buildings, 13 heroes, most level 1 and some level 0 with really like - no tangible progress. That's my problem with this game. I have nothing to show for it. The one of two guys I did have to show for it (level 1 highwayman with upgrades and like 7 positive traits) was summarily critted by an enemy and killed before I even had a chance to act. This is a guy I probably sunk 5,000 gold into that just gone - leaving me with shitty DPS to actually like, progress to medium maps.
So, that's my problem, ease up on the RNG nonsense a bit and the game is gonna be perfect, right now it feels like you spin your wheels for eight hours or more until you get a series of positive RNG events in your favor to get an A and B team to alternate.
Just got this in the steam sale, as I imagine a lot of people did. Played eight hours, lost a dozen or so heroes and these are my thoughts.
The game? Amazing. Execution is fantastic, the art direction (Mike Mignola's muse runs the joint!) is something we all need more of.
But the punishment, it's just a bit too much. I've gotten to week 20, I have 1-2 upgrades on all my buildings, 13 heroes, most level 1 and some level 0 with really like - no tangible progress. That's my problem with this game. I have nothing to show for it. The one of two guys I did have to show for it (level 1 highwayman with upgrades and like 7 positive traits) was summarily critted by an enemy and killed before I even had a chance to act. This is a guy I probably sunk 5,000 gold into that just gone - leaving me with shitty DPS to actually like, progress to medium maps.
So, that's my problem, ease up on the RNG nonsense a bit and the game is gonna be perfect, right now it feels like you spin your wheels for eight hours or more until you get a series of positive RNG events in your favor to get an A and B team to alternate.
This is a kind of recent thing (Month or so?). Everybody on their boards were demanding things be harder, so everything is. I kinda don't like it now, but eh.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I've been finding this easier, or at least prone to RNG domino-chains of doom, myself. The loss of guaranteed multi-crits was nice.
I guess my overall feeling is after spending 8-10 hours in the game I should actually be making some progress to the initial of four bosses, right? But, instead I'm basically trying to re-make my squad which is gonna take another 4 weeks of running scrubs with stress management to try and get some positive perks.
And this is from someone who read the guides of torch and food management and squad building on various forums.
I mean, how long do the developers think that players should need to finish less than 25% of the game?
And, if that's true - the developers are listening to the vocal minority who bought the game, registered on their forums, and then proceeded to complain rather than I'm guessing the Steam stats of people who bought it and played it once and never again - it's a terrible sign.
I guess my overall feeling is after spending 8-10 hours in the game I should actually be making some progress to the initial of four bosses, right? But, instead I'm basically trying to re-make my squad which is gonna take another 4 weeks of running scrubs with stress management to try and get some positive perks.
Uuh you're not talking about the necromancer specifically now, are you?
No, not any particular boss. The bosses 'quests' in each area were labeled as '1' so I was guessing you needed a full party of level 1 guys to do it - which got wiped out in a single battle where I got critted four times before I got to act.
A lot of people, from what I've seen on streams, don't play this game "right". As in, they get by, but don't get better. Off the top of my head:
Figure out what items activate which curios how. Don't fuck around with curios you don't know how to use. Google that shit if you have to.
Always be curing negative quirks. Your sanitarium should almost always be in use.
Weapon and armor upgrades are your next spending priority.
Only invest in the skills you think are useful. Only upgrade them with spare cash - look at what each upgrade actually gets you, since some are not worth it early in the game. (Heal skills are probably the best to upgrade first.)
Immediately unlock the good skills on new heroes. Don't try to make the bad skills work, and there are quite a few of them.
Run medium or long missions over short ones. Use the rest not just to heal, but to BUFF, which will make the rest of the mission much easier.
Rotate your dudes. You need way more than 4 dudes, even 8 dudes, to use a fresh party every mission. Also, you learn the ins and outs of each class when you mix and match your party more, and have more flexibility to customize your team to the enemies you'll be facing (and especially bosses).
FOCUS FIRE. The enemy squad can almost always out-damage your ability to heal. Make sure you build your party in such a way that they can either disable enemies or grind them down one at a time. How you do this depends on you - you can leave no damage, stress-causing enemies for the end, for example, or you can kill melee enemies so that ranged enemies come up and have to use weak attacks, or you can reach into the back rows and kill low hp/prot ranged enemies.
Similarly, your priorities in a battle are to kill/stun/heal. With the Death's Door mechanic, you can leave heroes near death while you cut the enemy down, and then spend turns healing when there's only one or two of them left.
Bosses are hard. Consider leaving them for later. (The game difficulty curves down in the middle, and then back up at the end.)
Bosses typically require some sort of special strategy. Don't be afraid to run the first few times as you try to figure it out.
Consider being a lamer and stalling on the last enemy to heal your heroes. You can, IIRC, stall for one round without any penalty. With certain skills that do very little damage, you can stall for even longer. (Otherwise, if you don't use any non-stun attacks, your party starts gaining stress.)
hippofant on
+5
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
The resting thing is a big one
In a long mission, I would frequently rest after just a few rooms, just so I could buff for the majority of the dungeon
Some classes are completely defined by their camp buffs, in my opinion, like Highwayman
If you're bringing home the stuff that upgrades your buildings, then you're making progress. All of your heroes can be insane, maimed, and dead but if your townis improving then you're winning.
飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
+5
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I don't entirely agree with retraining fresh heroes to have better skills; I just don't let the ones with bad ones off the stagecoach, which I tend to upgrade at least a bit pretty early on.
Otherwise hippofant's on the same page I am. I've been having remarkably poor luck actually reaching the Prophet or beating the cannon, but theHag and Necromancer I don't even worry about my last few tries, once I've got a mark-friendly team.
I've been watching a lot of different people play this on youtube, and most of them just play this horribly badly. I wasn't all that great myself for the first X hours I'm sure. Hippofant's tips are all very solid advice* and there's all sorts of other stuff as well you can do either badly or well, like equiped trinkets, paying attention to your light level (pressing "T" lights a torch, you don't need to click the inventory every time) and so on. Once you make the mental switch of playing an adventurer party that spends time in a hamlet and then makes dungeon runs to playing as somebody who controls the hamlet and sends hirelings to clear dungeons and generally get better, the game changes from being difficult to being rather easy most of the time.
I actually think that the difficulty at the moment is at a good level, though there's still a lot of balance changes I'd love to see like buffing the crap skills and the few bad classes.
*I do disagree about the priority of upgrades - I find that upgrading weapons is the single most important thing to do early on, especially for your damage dealers. The faster you kill, the less time the enemies have to stress you and kill you back.
Nah, I'm on board with stage coach first: You must be able to field a fresh, sane team every week, but this the first ~15 minutes of the game we're talking about so...
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I honestly think most of the people playing this "badly" were expecting a more-linear progression than this game is shooting for. I got here off stuff like X-Com and Etrian Odyssey and apart from finding the multi-crit possibility on the enemy AoE attacks infuriating and the lack of reliable "Oh damn," buttons to invest in surprising, it's been about what I was expecting. Now that they've cured the former problem (mostly), if they sort out some of the weaker classes, add some new dudes to the two not-implemented areas, and maybe tone down the cannon fight a bit so you're less likely to lose it to plain bad luck even if you're doing it right, I'm going to be playing this a long time.
Nah, I'm on board with stage coach first: You must be able to field a fresh, sane team every week, but this the first ~15 minutes of the game we're talking about so...
Yeah, I always use the free heirlooms to upgrade Stage Coach to 4 new heroes. Just don't think Sanitarium is that important early on - discard heroes with crippling negative quirks (and there's not that many of those, IMO), ignore the not-so-bad quirks. There's plenty of time to use Sanitarium later on but weapon upgrades are a game changer and make it a lot easier to get through the early game hump where you get punched in the face a lot more than you get to punch the bad guys in the face.
Nah, I'm on board with stage coach first: You must be able to field a fresh, sane team every week, but this the first ~15 minutes of the game we're talking about so...
Yeah, I always use the free heirlooms to upgrade Stage Coach to 4 new heroes. Just don't think Sanitarium is that important early on - discard heroes with crippling negative quirks (and there's not that many of those, IMO), ignore the not-so-bad quirks. There's plenty of time to use Sanitarium later on but weapon upgrades are a game changer and make it a lot easier to get through the early game hump where you get punched in the face a lot more than you get to punch the bad guys in the face.
My upgrade path starts with max Sanitarium cost first, since I find gold to be a limiting resource early. However, the Sanitarium uses busts and the Stage Coach uses deeds, so there's not much conflict there, if you prioritize walking out with Crests, which you should since Crests are required for every building.
As for how to spend my cash, it's on unlocking level 1 skills - like for the f-ing Vestal without any heal abilities - quirk removal, stress removal, heal skill upgrades, weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, skill upgrades, camp skills, trinkets.
Primarily though, I'm using the Sanitarium to remove negative quirks my heroes pick up on their missions. I suppose I could be more casual about discarding experienced heroes, but I've usually spent some cash upgrading their stuff, so I prefer not to. I also don't let bad heroes off the Stage Coach, but I evaluate them based on the cost of removing their bad quirks + the cost of unlocking the crucial skills.
Just started up a new game after letting this sit for a few monthes.
It seems a lot more difficult. A short mission had all four heroes constantly on Death's Door. I lost two. I'll embark a few more times and see if I can pull together some victories.
This lucky penny is bullshit.
Hearthstone - Webber #1330
3DS: 0920-3235-4071
Just started up a new game after letting this sit for a few monthes.
It seems a lot more difficult. A short mission had all four heroes constantly on Death's Door. I lost two. I'll embark a few more times and see if I can pull together some victories.
Ever since they added the heart attacks instant death for filling the stress meter twice the difficulty seems to have gone up a lot. It makes those throw away runs with newbies much more difficult to profit from since you can't just coast through with everyone stressed out and fire them afterwords.
All right I just totally sat down to play this with the suggestions to do it right, only to close the game when again realizing it doesn't support steam and my 8 hour game is entombed on the laptop.
Do you still have to sit through a fight for fifteen minutes to heal your team? That was a major beef. I would rather the party just automatically heal and rebalance battles accordingly. Come to think of it, the use of healing and food in general is my biggest gripe with the game. You're just walking through the dungeon and your party decides its Starve O Clock.
But make no mistake, this game is still excellent.
Posts
I'm sure somebody has a higher rank Arbalest by now - how are they?
Covering Fire and Blind Fire are both pretty respectable. My Bounty Hunter got gibbed before I could try a mark-based damage team, though.
And yeah, Man-at-Arms is way, way crazy with riposte right now. Bellow's pretty handy, too.
I think if you have to pick between arbalest and highwayman, the former has more consistent damage in a party that can mark and a more tanky body, along with a respectable AOE debuff in covering fire (-18 ACC, -9% crit).
Assuming they don't get dumped in the pot like mine did the first time I fought her, but yeah.
I took a party against the Swine King, Arbalest, Vestal, Bounty Hunter, Crusader in that order. Bounty Hunter marked the King and the Arbalest, who was carrying the Ancestor Ring which gives increased ranged accuracy and crit chance (and a dodge charm to equalize the lost dodge) critted him every time three times in a row for 52 damage a shot. Dude had like 192 HP, so that was almost all of his health, the Bounty Hunter scored a crit in between and the Crusader dealt some damage, but she basically took down 3/4 of his HP all by herself. With the right trinkets and the right support, the Arbalest is a brutal killer from the back row.
There is a ban on the linking of any kickstarters, can't remember if a game thread is ok as long as you don't mention that it has one. I think i've seen a few threads about games in ks, as long as they didn't mention it, but not sure. I would PM a mod to be sure before making one anyway.
Edit fucking phone!!
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
If we're talking about Highwayman, uh, it has always been like that.
Nah, PBS used to push the Highwayman back, which allowed for a bizarre(but not especially effective) group formation with two Highwaymen that just rotate Point-Blank Shot. I believe it's mentioned somewhere in the bowels of this thread a few times since this is the original thread.
I mean, I know why there's a ban on linking Kickstarter. I don't think any of us, especially the mods, want to see waves of one off posters showing up to pimp their potato salad kickstarters then disappearing forever.
But maybe if it was like the Writer's Block, where it can't be seen unless you're logged in it would dissuade the one off posters. Alternatively, maybe put some timer based on it where you can't create a thread unless you've been here for some time (thinking 60 days, the maximum KS funding period). Or both, assuming Vanilla has that functionality.
Sure, that would mean that a person could create an account, wait for some time to pass and then use said account to pimp their KS. But really, if a person's willing to put that kind of foresight and planning just to pimp their stuff here, I'd be pretty interested in seeing what they were trying to fund.
I'm glad they didn't nerf him to death. Now if they could just buff the weak classes and skills next I'd be truly happy. I understand it is easy for a dev to forgot stuff like Bounty Hunter's utterly useless bleed skill since they have enough useful skills that the class works. Making all skills useful would make the early game better (when you don't have money to select the skills you need), improve the newbie experience and give more depth to the classes, though.
Also, the prot nerf made most protection trinkets and Crusader's prot skill useless. MAA's protection skills both do something else as well and the protection is an added benefit so it didn't really ruin those, but a Crusader getting 20% protection (and +torch, yay) for wasting a full turn is crap.
Just got this in the steam sale, as I imagine a lot of people did. Played eight hours, lost a dozen or so heroes and these are my thoughts.
The game? Amazing. Execution is fantastic, the art direction (Mike Mignola's muse runs the joint!) is something we all need more of.
But the punishment, it's just a bit too much. I've gotten to week 20, I have 1-2 upgrades on all my buildings, 13 heroes, most level 1 and some level 0 with really like - no tangible progress. That's my problem with this game. I have nothing to show for it. The one of two guys I did have to show for it (level 1 highwayman with upgrades and like 7 positive traits) was summarily critted by an enemy and killed before I even had a chance to act. This is a guy I probably sunk 5,000 gold into that just gone - leaving me with shitty DPS to actually like, progress to medium maps.
So, that's my problem, ease up on the RNG nonsense a bit and the game is gonna be perfect, right now it feels like you spin your wheels for eight hours or more until you get a series of positive RNG events in your favor to get an A and B team to alternate.
Well, I guess I'm putting this down until it's finally released. Not playing another eight hours upgrading.
This is a kind of recent thing (Month or so?). Everybody on their boards were demanding things be harder, so everything is. I kinda don't like it now, but eh.
And this is from someone who read the guides of torch and food management and squad building on various forums.
I mean, how long do the developers think that players should need to finish less than 25% of the game?
In a long mission, I would frequently rest after just a few rooms, just so I could buff for the majority of the dungeon
Some classes are completely defined by their camp buffs, in my opinion, like Highwayman
Otherwise hippofant's on the same page I am. I've been having remarkably poor luck actually reaching the Prophet or beating the cannon, but theHag and Necromancer I don't even worry about my last few tries, once I've got a mark-friendly team.
I actually think that the difficulty at the moment is at a good level, though there's still a lot of balance changes I'd love to see like buffing the crap skills and the few bad classes.
*I do disagree about the priority of upgrades - I find that upgrading weapons is the single most important thing to do early on, especially for your damage dealers. The faster you kill, the less time the enemies have to stress you and kill you back.
Yeah, I always use the free heirlooms to upgrade Stage Coach to 4 new heroes. Just don't think Sanitarium is that important early on - discard heroes with crippling negative quirks (and there's not that many of those, IMO), ignore the not-so-bad quirks. There's plenty of time to use Sanitarium later on but weapon upgrades are a game changer and make it a lot easier to get through the early game hump where you get punched in the face a lot more than you get to punch the bad guys in the face.
My upgrade path starts with max Sanitarium cost first, since I find gold to be a limiting resource early. However, the Sanitarium uses busts and the Stage Coach uses deeds, so there's not much conflict there, if you prioritize walking out with Crests, which you should since Crests are required for every building.
As for how to spend my cash, it's on unlocking level 1 skills - like for the f-ing Vestal without any heal abilities - quirk removal, stress removal, heal skill upgrades, weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, skill upgrades, camp skills, trinkets.
Primarily though, I'm using the Sanitarium to remove negative quirks my heroes pick up on their missions. I suppose I could be more casual about discarding experienced heroes, but I've usually spent some cash upgrading their stuff, so I prefer not to. I also don't let bad heroes off the Stage Coach, but I evaluate them based on the cost of removing their bad quirks + the cost of unlocking the crucial skills.
It seems a lot more difficult. A short mission had all four heroes constantly on Death's Door. I lost two. I'll embark a few more times and see if I can pull together some victories.
Hearthstone - Webber #1330
3DS: 0920-3235-4071
Ever since they added the heart attacks instant death for filling the stress meter twice the difficulty seems to have gone up a lot. It makes those throw away runs with newbies much more difficult to profit from since you can't just coast through with everyone stressed out and fire them afterwords.
But make no mistake, this game is still excellent.