what's the downside of not maxxing all crusade stats in act 3?

[rumpelstiltskin]

there's a quest to max them, and it's marked as ending in act 3 (which i presume happens when i assault midnight fane with the queen). i have all except diplomacy at 4, and pumping them to 5 looks pretty tedious, like buying some useless mercs for military, squeezing in some more useless buildings for logistics, and i'm not even sure how to raise leadership (with leadership-related decrees?).

[LordSith]

from my 3d playthrough: almost nothing if you know what to do with crusade mode and react at thes tart of act 5. I found it easy enough from 1st playthrough but maybe not everyone will find it so.

(Use marksmen. That's the only good advice.)

[Applied Mediocrity]

It's all for the ending. It will be so much harder to pump them to 10 later. Unfortunately if you do not, no matter how well you will have done on the whole, your efforts will be considered unremarkable.

[rumpelstiltskin]

Originally posted by Applied Mediocrity:

It's all for the ending. It will be so much harder to pump them to 10 later. Unfortunately if you do not, no matter how well you will have done on the whole, your efforts will be considered unremarkable.

hmm ok, but is there some hard switch when all are 5 in act 3, or is it just that 5 is a bit closer to 10 than, say, 4.7?

[Fistimus Maximus]

got all mine to 5 except one, didnt realise there wasnt a way to boost it till to late. Think its the leadership one, someone said only way was through the mini events.

[jsaving]

Owlcat added that quest to the middle part of the game because lots of players thought they were doing well having crusade stats at 2-3 when they left for the Abyss. This way, even if you don't know what you are doing wrong, you're at least made aware you missed a target.

As to in-game downsides, underperforming will harshen Galfrey's review of your performance and will mildly change the endgame slides you see. But there aren't broader implications like Kingmaker where you could actually use strong kingdom management performance to impact the game's final conflict.

[rumpelstiltskin]

ok thanks. i probably don't care that much about endgame slides.
i've cleared all stationary armies in the accessible parts of the map and did all available fort/bastion upgrades, but i'm still 4.x on 3 out of 4 stats, so all 5s looks more like an achievement than some minimal viable level of performance. but i'll see if getting 5s is too tedious or not.

[gravexxi]

Originally posted by Applied Mediocrity:

It's all for the ending. It will be so much harder to pump them to 10 later. Unfortunately if you do not, no matter how well you will have done on the whole, your efforts will be considered unremarkable.

Isn't max level of crusade stats is 8?

[aWhiteScreen]

I think that if you dont get military to 5 in act3, you wont be able to progress it to level 8(itll softlock at some point)

[rumpelstiltskin]

Originally posted by aWhiteScreen:

I think that if you dont get military to 5 in act3, you wont be able to progress it to level 8(itll softlock at some point)

ok that's an important detail. i read that you lose all your act 3 armies in act 5 though, is that correct? so i'll be buying them for nothing i guess. and what about generals?

[aWhiteScreen]

generals stay, although you will have to wait a few days to use them

[Applied Mediocrity]

Originally posted by gravexxi:

Isn't max level of crusade stats is 8?

Sorry. You are correct. The max level is 8.

[ExcaliburV]

All of your stats bump up to 5 at the start of act 5, yet weirdly enough the XP tracker itself won't be raised to reflect that, so you'll be spending a long time farming just to catch up to your current rank before you can even think about leveling more.

Beyond that, the only major difficulty is, as was mentioned, the ending, and also that any rank-up decision you didn't do will be automatically filled in with a default choice (basically Galfrey making the choice for you while you were away), which for things like your Military rank-ups could lead to you having unit types you don't want, or in Leadership's case your generals having sub-par abilities when they could have been better, etc.

[gravexxi]

There is quest at the end of army rank 5 if you not complete it before end of the chapter 3 you will fail it. It was like that about month ago doesn't know how the situation is right now.

[rumpelstiltskin]

ok so i decided to go for it after all. military took the longest, and by the time of its rank 5 quest i got something like 500+ marksmen lol.

[provokastoras]

you miss an achivement. Thats it the quest wont even give exp, and unless you are going for a very specific ending then no effects..