Hereward the Wake

[hedop]

Could someone explain to me how I, as Hereward the Wake, can raise the resistance level and at what point do Story events pop up? Also what is the endgame of his story? Incite rebellion and become king? My Hereward is nearly 50 now with dozens of kids, William is long dead and the resistance is at level 11 even though I did every little event that popped up to increase it. How can I increase it more quickly? How high does it have to go? How do I fire story events? So far it's been like 25 years of rubbish and just sitting around the map in England with like 2 story events.

[hedop]

Okay I did another run. Nothing. I never moved the camp from Ely, I even engaged in schemes, successfully I might add, to murder Norman lords, I killed my Norman nemesis... nothing. In the end I supported a liberty faction and an Anglo-Saxon Northumbria rose up and gained indepedendance from England, yet the harrying failed because that also meant that there were no more Anglo-Saxon nobles left in England when Northumbria left the kingdom. I have absolutely no clue what to do here to get this to work properly. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[King David]

Can't help I'm afraid. This is why I always build a big army, and takeover the old fashioned way!

[Gradydad]

I've been looking into Hereward's campaign as many other players, myself included, are having the same problems as you are. It's either too unclear as to what you're supposed to do, or his campaign is glitched.

As for raising resistance, I got it quite high by staying camped in Ely and formenting revolts in the county. It *seemed* like I got more random events this way, sometimes I got multiple within a couple years of each other. Despite this, it took me until my 40's to reach maximum resistance, though I only started camping in Ely and formenting revolts when I was in my 30's. Maybe events occur more often in low control counties? Dunno.

After reaching maximum resistance, I had the same problem as you. All of William II's Anglo-Saxon vassals waged independence wars and I failed the harrying because at the end England was relegated to a few counties in the south owned by Norman vassals. I looked on the Paradox forums and apparently the only way to win the harrying is to raise an Anglo-Saxon character to the English throne. Theoretically this should happen as high resistance raises the chance of claimant factions, but I never even saw any Anglo-Saxon characters with claims on England.

Would be appreciated if the developers would chime in and tell us if we're doing something wrong, or if things aren't working properly.

[hedop]

I'll repost some stuff from the Paradox forum here:

De_Dominator69 wrote:
"Resistance and Pacification go up (or down) as a result of the events as far as I can tell, so there is no reliable way to increase resistance you just have to wait for those events to fire.

For Hereward there seem to only be the following events...

You have the story events: (I couldnt identify all of these in the event file I was looking at, but these are the one pretty much everyone experiences)
Travelling to Ely
Arriving in Ely
Dueling your brothers killer
Getting invited to meet the Duke of Mercia
William sends you a letter
You meet William
William offers to give you Cambridgeshire
You are thrown in the dungeon
You escape
Then there are the random events:
Rob local church ("The Greater Good" event where you have the options to steal a relic or just steal gold)
Interdict supply lines ("Blades in the Mist" event where you have the options to steal some weapons for yourself or for your allies)
Ambush Norman noble ("Your Money or Your Life" event where you have the option to duel the noble or just take his riches, after you duel him you then also have the option to recruit some people.
Call in Danish help ("From The Sea" event where you can ask the King of Denmark to claim England or to just ask for soldiers.)
Travel to another area of the country to intimidate a Norman sympathiser ("A Traitor's Comfort" in my couple attempts to play as Hereward I have never had this event trigger, seems the event is to travel there, confront the noble and have the options to kill them and steal their stuff, threaten them, reason with them or to just take some loyalists and leave.

There is also "Downgrade local building" and "Travel to other areas of the country to gather support" mentioned under Hereward events but I couldnt actually find these, so I assume they refer to some of the above random ones.

That is all I could find. None of those events give you a claim yourself or directly cause a claimant to rise up. So you basically just play the game wait for those random events to fire so you can build up resistance then keep your fingers crossed that a claimant who you can support appears.

For ways to get a claim on England the "Become a Great Conqueror" decision gives one, and also in my testing just now (this is having messed around with console commands so I cant absolutely guarantee this isnt some strange bug) taking the "Champion the Anglo-Saxon Culture" decision and then either winning the war, or being given the Duchy appears to have given me a pressed claim on the Kingdom of England, so that may be the most narratively fitting way to go about it.

What doesnt work sadly is pressing your spouses claim, that doesnt appear to be an option at all. During this test run I killed the starting wife via console commands and then quickly went and romanced then eloped with Cristina of Wessex, I assumed as she has a pressed claim on the Kingdom of England it would let me declare war to press her claim and make her Queen but I have not had such an option.

And that is all I can figure out about it.

There is also a "Foment Revolt" interaction on rulers whose lands you are in that costs gold in exchange for reducing popular opinion and control for the ruler... unfortunately this doesn't increase Resistance, event though it would make alot of sense for it to do so and would provide a way for Hereward to increase it without waiting for the random events."

So no, the foment revolt stuff does nothing for resistance and we have already tested where you camp. It doesn't make a lick of difference.

Swarmmind wrote:
"It's worth noting that all of the Hereward random events except for Ambush Norman Noble have a cooldown of at least 10 years. Which is why you get a bunch of events and then nothing happens forever. I think the cooldown for a lot of these events need to be reduced in order fully live the wandering outlaw experience. Also the fact that most of the Anglo-Saxon lords are under Morcar or Edwin means that only two Anglo-Saxon lords can press a claimant challenge against William. Or you can what happened in my first Hereward run and Edwin dies and Morcar is the super duke of the North. These seem to the main to stumbling blocks that keep it from moving forward.

Looking through and then testing a few things I came up with 3 tweaks that the Harrying needs to make this a truly amazing storyline:

1) The previously mentioned cooldown reduction (I'd suggest 3 years), otherwise it just takes too long and there is no feedback as to why. Another solution could be the addition of more events but with slightly longer cool downs (5 years)

2) More independent Athelings that can form or join factions against William, maybe giving them temporary landless duke titles while the Harrying is ongoing

3) A decision that is unlocked for Hereward at 16 resistance (or higher with the reduced cooldowns) that allows him to force a claimant war with a chance to force independent Anglo-Saxon nobles to join. This way you can decide to end it yourself

The Hereward story content is incredibly impressive for something that was developed in the free time of a passionate developer. I would love for it to reach it's full potential and become something that is easy to pick and play. Once you understand the mechanics they make sense they just aren't obvious at first. But Hereward could be one of the biggest highlights of the DLC and coolest features in CK3 with just a few small changes"

So again it doesn't matter where you camp. The events time out factor is simply too high.

Btw. if anyone wants to chime in, the thread is here:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/hereward-the-wake.1705336/

[Ecland]

So I succeeded in this by the luck of Morcar marrying one of Williams daughters who eventually was installed as Queen. Once I was certain that one of her Anglo-Saxon sons would inherit the crown I murdered her.

Never had any claimants show up but I also only managed to get to 14 for Resistance.

For reaching max level of Fenstalker I supporting various Normans in wars against each other until I was able to reach level 4 of Fenstalker.

I turned 50 just before this happened.

Fun little run with me being a criminal for the entire time doing my best to rob Normans blind.

[Gradydad]

This video that explains some things recently came out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRRm128ttrA
It seems like the problem is almost entirely because of the AI. Anglo-Saxon rulers are supposed to be doing events that also raise resistance, and then starting claimant wars. Problem is, they do none of these so the player has to somehow force an Anglo-Saxon character on the English throne.

[Dimatl]

I raised the Anglo-Saxon uprising, won, received a claim to England and, violating the truce, declared war. Hereward took the throne and the Normans were overthrown.