When do you start building for materials

[Unembellished Genius]

What day should I start building for materials. By production day 2 I like to have at least 3 mines and 4-5 houses. On day 4,5 and 6 I buy heroes with the gold ive made. I feel like my base defenses are being neglected because during all of that I tend to only manage to get maybe 2 scavenger camps set none upgraded.

Should I go straight scavenger camp grind after getting my gold right. How do I build up both a strong team and strong base at the same time. Should I be skipping ballista for big sturdy walls instead.

[Kaysoky]

There are a variety of ways to play, and no strictly incorrect approach (as long as you end up winning).

Focusing on gold and heroes is usually a safe approach, since they are your most important defense. In my experience, there are many havens where I never build any scavenger camps and still end up with plenty of walls and ballistae.

[Bumc]

Pretty much every time I built scavenger camp I figured out I would have been fine without it.

Unless you roll like 3 engineers early and try to force feed all kills to ballistas, your gold is better spend on equipping 3, 4 and eventually 6 heroes. Rolling for mana & watp ctystals and good consumables is more relevant than having a third outer ring of walls.

[hawklaser]

While I'm still pretty new at the game, I've found that don't really need the scavenger camps until run out of other things to spend gold on.

Walls essentially become a luxury, especially anything past the base wooden walls. Ballistas and Catapults are a much better return for your resources. The big difference here is ballistas and catapults contribute to clearing out the hordes of enemies, while all walls do is delay the hordes temporarily.

Originally posted by Kaysoky:

Focusing on gold and heroes is usually a safe approach, since they are your most important defense. In my experience, there are many havens where I never build any scavenger camps and still end up with plenty of walls and ballistae.

I just finished up Glenwald for the first time the other day, and didn't build scavenger camps until the final wave and that was more to use them as walls themselves. Found plenty of materials through out the run to hit the cap for both ballistas and catapults, maybe if had done an earlier scavenger camp could have upgraded the ballistas to have seasoned operators.

I've just found investing the gold in equipment making buildings goes a lot farther than getting extra resources. So for gold investment I kinda go mines & housing, inn & hero recruits, then temples and wells, then equipment buildings, and finally whatever is left.

While I'm sure there's a way to play around with the stone walls and be successful, they have seemed more like a hindrance than anything. Between blocking line of sight and repairs, they just suck up so many resources that could have gone elsewhere. As you end up needing to add extra watchtowers, upgrade ballistas to have vision, spending extra movement to get LoS on enemies, etc. There's also the fact that if your heros are doing well, bout the only thing that frequently make it close are either fast enemies, which die pretty quickly to having extra ballistas, or very tanky enemies such as boomers and elites.

[ei]

The order of building, focusing on economy, would be houses, upgrade houses, gold mines, upgrade gold mines, item shops. Inn would be built if you're not able to kill enemies quickly enough. I generally focus on inn even before gold mines, while going for panic run = every enemy killed within confines of your town contributes to generating mountains of corpses that significantly boost your economy (I quite enjoy Aldenpotamus channel where I saw him use this strategy, so will drop a link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd4VgfJe0tI) but this guide https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2729860442 also delves into corpse mechanics + gives you breakdown on what / when to build on each map

For example - here's my Runeberg after night 1 on Apocalypse 6: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337241790 with 3 mountains of corpses (216g + 384m) and one elite carrion (22g + 38m) requiring 7 population. Mountain of corpses is worse goldwise (72g) than fully upgraded gold mine (120g for 2 population including passive income) but gives materials (128m), so altogether this is the focus economically.

Here's my Runeberg after scavenging corpses:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3337247358
with 8 population (moved houses closes to the circle), 1 additional hero thanks to the existing inn and built balistas. Probably I've made mistakes with placing upgraded balistas rather than standard + maybe it wasn't necessary to move houses so early (especially since there's no attack from that side), but I'm rusty :)

You don't need scavenger camps - you'll obtain enough rock from scavenging corpses.

Firstly invest in balistas, surrounding your mages. Then catapults around night 3, then again ballistas. You don't need to build walls - again, the goal is for the enemies to enter the town thus generating panic and contributing to corpses.

Bear in mind that gold, initially, will come from corpses. Maybe around night 3 / 4 sometimes I use my population to get gold from the mines, but most of the time I only focus on passive generation, not even investing into more usages in the night. Then, when I've got item shops this is your main source of gold, contributing also to equipping your team.

[Postman Pat]

Great tips, thanks EI!