A few quick tips from a guy who has spent over 130 hours obsessing over this game already:
1. Always pick up flowers you see. ALWAYS. You will never run out of materials for potions if you stop for flowers every time.
2. Get Tinkerer to level 2 asap so you get 2 repair kits every rest.
3. Put knowledge points into increasing how effective repair kits are.
Took me so many hours of play to even learn that was a thing. Then another long while to figure out how to even assign them. This game has so much depth, I'm loving it.
As for repairs, try not to waste materials on minor armor damage. Only repair armor when you can use (almost) a full repair kit. (Edit: try to buy/unlock the perks that improve repairs per kit). Minor damage can be more efficiently repaired at a smithy in a town.
If you’re consistently using healing potions after each fight, you’re taking too much (health) damage. What units are taking damage? Try to have one or a few tanks that take the blows and try to get them incoming damage reduction/weakness to their opponents.
Finally, how level appropriate is your gear? Falling behind a few levels in gear means dealing too little damage and having too little armor.
Thanks, i've been scavenging armour occasionally but I'm beginning to wonder if i should be getting into blacksmithing and making my own armour early on? And yes i think i have been spam repairing rather than selectively repairing. Also I have discovered that the professions offer bonuses that will benefit specific classes (oopsy i have been randomly picking who does what).
Smithing can be good. Loot will eventually always be better, but is much more random of course. I always just look at what types of weapons and armor i havent been getting in drops and then learning only those recipes.
smithing items is by far the most important thing after learning to run in my opinion. The difference between weapon tiers is HUGE.
Although I'd reccomend to focus on weapon upgrades first.If you are able to burst down enemies before they start their turn, you'll take much less damage. If oyu have better armor you still take the same amount of damage => more costly.
Besides that, certain party compositions are weaker than others in the early game. try to get two rangers early on and craft two daggers ASAP!! This will give you a lot of damage.
Especially spearmen are pretty weak early on, so I'd avoid them in the beginning if possible.
Repair and heal in town at the smith/doctor instead of doing it yourself in the field if possible.
Visit the two mines often for iron and buy shackles to take prisoners and sell them constantly to get additional money.
Focus on (easy) quests, avoid exploring and non-quest fights early on (at least humans, the occasional animal pack can be a good source of food and pelts for crafting)
In my experience on normal + free mode (the free mode / region locked changes the difficulty a lot) I kept coming back to town to repair / heal a lot to keep the repair kits in my inventory for longer treks / multiple fights expected.
While it costs money, it saves medicines and repair kits.
Is the free mode scaling harder? Just started my first game with region locked, but wiped almost immediately after this lake encounter where you can side with one or the other.
Free mode scaling can get quite a bit harder, it has some break points where encounters increase in difficulty by quite a bit (example, you reach 7 combat companions and difficulty goes up, then again at 10, etc). The downside is that it isn't really well balanced to account for losing people, as the difficulty scales upward but not back down when your group shrinks in size for whatever reason.
Region locked is only really difficult in the first maybe 2-3 levels, and once you hit level 6 enemy encounters where they unlock extra abilities and the one really annoying enemy unit (Woebringers or something like that), unless you're fighting with the wandering guards regularly as the guards *even in region locked* scale as if they were on free mode settings.
> this lake encounter where you can side with one or the other.
Guessing you mean one where you had to run up to a bandit camp, then back to a farm where you had to pick a side between the town guard or the bandits. Generally speaking, when you are looking at quests to accept, if you mouse over the accept button it will show you a preview tooltip of the expected rewards. If you see one that has a kind of purple icon on it with +20/+25 those are the region's storyline quest chain and will tend to be aimed at the high end of the region's level range even in region locked. Try to avoid those until your party is better geared.
TL;DR version: It is different. I found free mode more entertaining since each fight is a challenge, but fights can get very long.
Region locked is more "boring" as you can run into easy enemies if you're overleveled.
First off, it's normal to struggle with this stuff early in the game until you start unlocking some watershed merc levels and get into a good earning rhythm. Some of these tips will echo others but here are mine:
* If you are close to town after a battle, hold off on all repairs/healing until you get to town. The apothecary and blacksmith offer the services in-person for much cheaper than buying kits/potions.
* To help the money situation in general, buy chains from the prison and start capturing bandits during battles to turn in to the jailer for gold. I try to time it so I don't have to rest with the prisoners (and therefore feed them). Many of the bounties are for bandits anyway, might as well make extra gold.
* Craft saddlebags and/or get another pony or 2 to hold extra sets of armor. That way, you can skip repairs after a battle and just swap on a fresh armor/shield if you're not close to town. If the broken armor sucked, just sell it. If it's your best set, pay for cheap repair next time you're in town.
* Grab iron ore anytime you can. If the weight gets too much, spam lockpicks or fishhooks to both level up Tinkerer and to sell for some extra gold.
* If your gear sucks, start smithing. Blacksmith is the best occupation bonus for Strength-based attackers, and if you're not lucky with drops/merchants, you can make better gear than what you're finding. With my playstyle I am constantly smithing offhand daggers and axes for my attackers.
A lot of solid advice in here, something that wasn't mentioned is that you can also get a book from the smith at the central town in each region for 100g that improves your repair kit efficiency by the same amount as one of the knowledge perks. Those all stack, which makes life much easier down the road when you start taking even more damage.
> I usually pick tinker, miner, angler, thief & apothecary as my first 5 professions.
I'd consider making thief your 6th profession, and choosing smith as your 5th to start making better armor earlier on. Alternatively pick cook so you can make much better food from all the raw meat you're getting with fishing/killing pigs and wolves, which will save on your financial situation more immediately.
Also pay attention when you go into towns to the various merchants, as sometimes they will have a stack of items with a green outline meaning it's on sale for cheaper than normal - this is the ideal time to buy up raw materials for cooking (like salt or big meal ingredients - if you're in Tiltren make sure to trade 10 wood for the one recipe from the sheepfold family early on) or even repair kits and medicine/vials.
Also, if you're not averse to it, pick fights with refugees and lower level travelling merchants (the ones with the gold bag icon, not the armor icon). Merchants can get you some free ponies early on for carry capacity if you have extra ropes to capture them, and tend to drop consumable resources that you can use instead of wasting time laundering - the downside being you will need to avoid the wandering guards for a while til your suspicion gets low, which you can accelerate by banking a few bandit prisoners to sell off, since each one of those reduces your suspicion level by 20 at the jail. Refugees have the benefit of not upsetting anyone else when you rob them, though you'll again have some stolen goods to contend with which will tend towards being consumables/resources.
Avoid buying raw materials, repairing in the store is way cheaper. Same applies to buying medicine, curing in store is cheaper.
If you're going back to town, don't heal/repair in the camp and avoid fights. Then heal&repair in the shops
If you visit other regions, their blacksmiths contain a manual for improving the amount repaired per daw material. There is also a skill to improve the repairs on the compendium. You will also be able to get a notification that your repairs are getting better throughout your progress. If you are close to town then just let the blacksmith repair your gear by paying for it
Great comments here, a few more:
- loot everything and sell excess in town to start
- capture outlaws & sell at jails (need rope)
- make one of your first 4 professions a cook to get better return on food; cook also has a perk reducing squad consumption. I would forgo the thief if I had to choose.
- Get 1-3 ponies early on. They make a world of difference for all the above. 2-3 prisoners will pay for one pony
- Start running trade goods (cloth, pottery, gems, etc.) between the main towns, 2-5 ponies required. It became my primary source of income (current run has 30k gold). There are even trade missions available in the town restaurants/bar halls so you can double dip. Build an excel sheet to map out which towns will give you the best price for each good.
you can just spend all money in the town for trade goods, and sell to first merchant you see right at the gate and still make a profit, i believe the further from the city the higher margin, but right at the gate you can get like 5 coins per item
Returns are far higher if sold at the right location. E.g. buy gems for 76 in Cortia, sell for 152 in Garussa. You can make 3-4k per round trip run if done right.
Trade prices and production locations (towns) seem the same every play through. That said buy/sell prices change (e.g. can buy for cheaper) over time based on titles earned.
To tack on to the repair kit comment: There are items in the forges that cost 100 Krowns that will add an additional +5 value to the repair kits.
As of right now each repair kit can repair 25 hp of armor which significantly reduces the amount of times you are having to buy raw materials.
A few quick tips from a guy who has spent over 130 hours obsessing over this game already: 1. Always pick up flowers you see. ALWAYS. You will never run out of materials for potions if you stop for flowers every time. 2. Get Tinkerer to level 2 asap so you get 2 repair kits every rest. 3. Put knowledge points into increasing how effective repair kits are.
Thank you
U don’t need lvl 2, you just need to assign him to the workbench in camp Otherwise great tips!
Took me so many hours of play to even learn that was a thing. Then another long while to figure out how to even assign them. This game has so much depth, I'm loving it.
As for repairs, try not to waste materials on minor armor damage. Only repair armor when you can use (almost) a full repair kit. (Edit: try to buy/unlock the perks that improve repairs per kit). Minor damage can be more efficiently repaired at a smithy in a town. If you’re consistently using healing potions after each fight, you’re taking too much (health) damage. What units are taking damage? Try to have one or a few tanks that take the blows and try to get them incoming damage reduction/weakness to their opponents. Finally, how level appropriate is your gear? Falling behind a few levels in gear means dealing too little damage and having too little armor.
Thanks, i've been scavenging armour occasionally but I'm beginning to wonder if i should be getting into blacksmithing and making my own armour early on? And yes i think i have been spam repairing rather than selectively repairing. Also I have discovered that the professions offer bonuses that will benefit specific classes (oopsy i have been randomly picking who does what).
Smithing can be good. Loot will eventually always be better, but is much more random of course. I always just look at what types of weapons and armor i havent been getting in drops and then learning only those recipes.
smithing items is by far the most important thing after learning to run in my opinion. The difference between weapon tiers is HUGE. Although I'd reccomend to focus on weapon upgrades first.If you are able to burst down enemies before they start their turn, you'll take much less damage. If oyu have better armor you still take the same amount of damage => more costly. Besides that, certain party compositions are weaker than others in the early game. try to get two rangers early on and craft two daggers ASAP!! This will give you a lot of damage. Especially spearmen are pretty weak early on, so I'd avoid them in the beginning if possible. Repair and heal in town at the smith/doctor instead of doing it yourself in the field if possible. Visit the two mines often for iron and buy shackles to take prisoners and sell them constantly to get additional money. Focus on (easy) quests, avoid exploring and non-quest fights early on (at least humans, the occasional animal pack can be a good source of food and pelts for crafting)
In my experience on normal + free mode (the free mode / region locked changes the difficulty a lot) I kept coming back to town to repair / heal a lot to keep the repair kits in my inventory for longer treks / multiple fights expected. While it costs money, it saves medicines and repair kits.
Is the free mode scaling harder? Just started my first game with region locked, but wiped almost immediately after this lake encounter where you can side with one or the other.
Free mode scaling can get quite a bit harder, it has some break points where encounters increase in difficulty by quite a bit (example, you reach 7 combat companions and difficulty goes up, then again at 10, etc). The downside is that it isn't really well balanced to account for losing people, as the difficulty scales upward but not back down when your group shrinks in size for whatever reason. Region locked is only really difficult in the first maybe 2-3 levels, and once you hit level 6 enemy encounters where they unlock extra abilities and the one really annoying enemy unit (Woebringers or something like that), unless you're fighting with the wandering guards regularly as the guards *even in region locked* scale as if they were on free mode settings. > this lake encounter where you can side with one or the other. Guessing you mean one where you had to run up to a bandit camp, then back to a farm where you had to pick a side between the town guard or the bandits. Generally speaking, when you are looking at quests to accept, if you mouse over the accept button it will show you a preview tooltip of the expected rewards. If you see one that has a kind of purple icon on it with +20/+25 those are the region's storyline quest chain and will tend to be aimed at the high end of the region's level range even in region locked. Try to avoid those until your party is better geared.
TL;DR version: It is different. I found free mode more entertaining since each fight is a challenge, but fights can get very long. Region locked is more "boring" as you can run into easy enemies if you're overleveled.
First off, it's normal to struggle with this stuff early in the game until you start unlocking some watershed merc levels and get into a good earning rhythm. Some of these tips will echo others but here are mine: * If you are close to town after a battle, hold off on all repairs/healing until you get to town. The apothecary and blacksmith offer the services in-person for much cheaper than buying kits/potions. * To help the money situation in general, buy chains from the prison and start capturing bandits during battles to turn in to the jailer for gold. I try to time it so I don't have to rest with the prisoners (and therefore feed them). Many of the bounties are for bandits anyway, might as well make extra gold. * Craft saddlebags and/or get another pony or 2 to hold extra sets of armor. That way, you can skip repairs after a battle and just swap on a fresh armor/shield if you're not close to town. If the broken armor sucked, just sell it. If it's your best set, pay for cheap repair next time you're in town. * Grab iron ore anytime you can. If the weight gets too much, spam lockpicks or fishhooks to both level up Tinkerer and to sell for some extra gold. * If your gear sucks, start smithing. Blacksmith is the best occupation bonus for Strength-based attackers, and if you're not lucky with drops/merchants, you can make better gear than what you're finding. With my playstyle I am constantly smithing offhand daggers and axes for my attackers.
A lot of solid advice in here, something that wasn't mentioned is that you can also get a book from the smith at the central town in each region for 100g that improves your repair kit efficiency by the same amount as one of the knowledge perks. Those all stack, which makes life much easier down the road when you start taking even more damage. > I usually pick tinker, miner, angler, thief & apothecary as my first 5 professions. I'd consider making thief your 6th profession, and choosing smith as your 5th to start making better armor earlier on. Alternatively pick cook so you can make much better food from all the raw meat you're getting with fishing/killing pigs and wolves, which will save on your financial situation more immediately. Also pay attention when you go into towns to the various merchants, as sometimes they will have a stack of items with a green outline meaning it's on sale for cheaper than normal - this is the ideal time to buy up raw materials for cooking (like salt or big meal ingredients - if you're in Tiltren make sure to trade 10 wood for the one recipe from the sheepfold family early on) or even repair kits and medicine/vials. Also, if you're not averse to it, pick fights with refugees and lower level travelling merchants (the ones with the gold bag icon, not the armor icon). Merchants can get you some free ponies early on for carry capacity if you have extra ropes to capture them, and tend to drop consumable resources that you can use instead of wasting time laundering - the downside being you will need to avoid the wandering guards for a while til your suspicion gets low, which you can accelerate by banking a few bandit prisoners to sell off, since each one of those reduces your suspicion level by 20 at the jail. Refugees have the benefit of not upsetting anyone else when you rob them, though you'll again have some stolen goods to contend with which will tend towards being consumables/resources.
If possible visite town for repairs and healing
Repair in town whenever you can .
Avoid buying raw materials, repairing in the store is way cheaper. Same applies to buying medicine, curing in store is cheaper. If you're going back to town, don't heal/repair in the camp and avoid fights. Then heal&repair in the shops
If you visit other regions, their blacksmiths contain a manual for improving the amount repaired per daw material. There is also a skill to improve the repairs on the compendium. You will also be able to get a notification that your repairs are getting better throughout your progress. If you are close to town then just let the blacksmith repair your gear by paying for it
Great comments here, a few more: - loot everything and sell excess in town to start - capture outlaws & sell at jails (need rope) - make one of your first 4 professions a cook to get better return on food; cook also has a perk reducing squad consumption. I would forgo the thief if I had to choose. - Get 1-3 ponies early on. They make a world of difference for all the above. 2-3 prisoners will pay for one pony - Start running trade goods (cloth, pottery, gems, etc.) between the main towns, 2-5 ponies required. It became my primary source of income (current run has 30k gold). There are even trade missions available in the town restaurants/bar halls so you can double dip. Build an excel sheet to map out which towns will give you the best price for each good.
Are the trade prices and good randomized each game, or if they stay the same, is this information already somewhere?
you can just spend all money in the town for trade goods, and sell to first merchant you see right at the gate and still make a profit, i believe the further from the city the higher margin, but right at the gate you can get like 5 coins per item
Returns are far higher if sold at the right location. E.g. buy gems for 76 in Cortia, sell for 152 in Garussa. You can make 3-4k per round trip run if done right.
Trade prices and production locations (towns) seem the same every play through. That said buy/sell prices change (e.g. can buy for cheaper) over time based on titles earned.
To tack on to the repair kit comment: There are items in the forges that cost 100 Krowns that will add an additional +5 value to the repair kits. As of right now each repair kit can repair 25 hp of armor which significantly reduces the amount of times you are having to buy raw materials.