What difficulty is best ?

[Bozz 💀]

I played as adaptative but I feel like every battle is very hard, I mean most times the ennemies have 1 or 2 more troops than me and I'm having hard time keeping up with repairs etc...
But I fear that the other choice will make the game too easy ?

[Butcher]

In theory, the best would be 3rd difficulty that increased difficulty with time passed since the start of the game. But out of 2 existing ones adaptive is the best because in region locked you either overlevel fast or have to grind levels instead of playing.

You can change combat/management difficulty anytime.

[VipreRX]

Neither is really better than the other, it's all down to personal playstyle.
When playing in Region-locked I'd personally recommend keeping to less than 12 members with 8-10 being my playthrough group size the majority of the game.

[pd28]

Whichever one you choose, and I'd always go for adaptive, the important thing is to not dive straight into fighting human enemies until you have a decent base level of armour and weapons and a steady supply of food. Take as many non-combat bounties as you can, and hunt animals for food and leather. It takes a little while to get your head round it but you'll find it's often best early on to use knowledge points to reduce food consumption and boost income rather than go for all the weapons etc.

[Wandering Flare]

I'd go for Adaptive because it doesn't lock you into doing the regions "the developer-intended way".

[Zach L]

If you don't go adaptive the game becomes too easy unless you intentionally hinder yourself.

[Dying pancake]

Adaptive is pretty broken in late game, you may encounter enemy with 1000+ hp. Not sure they fixed or not.

I prefer region lock, and i am using cheat for the sole purpose to lock my level accordingly to the region level so i wont be over powered by killing wolves for fangs.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by Dying pancake:

Adaptive is pretty broken in late game, you may encounter enemy with 1000+ hp. Not sure they fixed or not.

I prefer region lock, and i am using cheat for the sole purpose to lock my level accordingly to the region level so i wont be over powered by killing wolves for fangs.

By the time you encounter enemies with 1000+ health you'll have abilities and gear that'll let you remove them from existence in a single turn, so it evens out.

[BedlamBetty]

Adaptive is the "developer intended way" to play the game.
Region locked was only implemented because some early access players asked for it, because they found it too hard.
It was by no means the majority of players either, but was a relatively easy thing for the devs to implement without much thought or balancing involved.
The game is essentially a true sandbox, and some players, unused to the idea as widely expressed as Wartales does, don't come into the game with as wide a perspective of gameplay as the game allows.
Unlike BB, the game is not on a clock forcing you to expedite your progression in the game along the battle lines one would expect.
A player can spend hours trading and exploring, never fighting any other battle than the first one you do upon entering, which battle gives the impression that battle is the primary focused means of progression you need to follow.
There are reasons why rushing through early levels by fighting can hamper your mid to late game progression, as you are discovering.
One of the ways I like to express the idea, is that if you were the guy who could only wield a wooden club, would you prefer to be capable of wielding the iron club before you had the money and resources to get the iron club, or would you prefer to build up the capital (resources and funds) to allow you to obtain the iron club before you were able to use it, and upgrade after?
In some ways, the game resembles a job, only you don't have access to loans and outside financing, so every time you expand your needs (through level progression or increased units), you need to rely on a properly built foundation to support that, or you will suddenly go from general growth, to general decline, which decline will require you to expedite the means of countering that decline, when all the tools were at your fingertips to safeguard against decline, before you expanded.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

A player can spend hours trading and exploring, never fighting any other battle than the first one you do upon entering, which battle gives the impression that battle is the primary focused means of progression you need to follow.

The caveat here is that you can't really trade properly early on because you are locked in the starting region, so running trade goods is out of the picture since you have nowhere to run them, and otherwise your only real top tier income method is stealing skill books, laundering them with the chest and selling them. Stealing in general is a great early income source, one should always steal as much as they can and just stay out of sight of patrols.

Trading is an acceptable substitute to doing mercenary work, you can get rich much faster that way too, but you have to put in some work to have the setup for it first.

[BedlamBetty]

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

A player can spend hours trading and exploring, never fighting any other battle than the first one you do upon entering, which battle gives the impression that battle is the primary focused means of progression you need to follow.

The caveat here is that you can't really trade properly early on because you are locked in the starting region, so running trade goods is out of the picture since you have nowhere to run them, and otherwise your only real top tier income method is stealing skill books, laundering them with the chest and selling them. Stealing in general is a great early income source, one should always steal as much as they can and just stay out of sight of patrols.

Trading is an acceptable substitute to doing mercenary work, you can get rich much faster that way too, but you have to put in some work to have the setup for it first.

If you're locked in the starting region, you don't know the game well at all.
2 ropes, 2 iron, which allows you to create two pitons gets you into Cortia within the first half hour of play.
I'd suggest that you don't have the wider perspective of the game I was specifically talking about.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

The caveat here is that you can't really trade properly early on because you are locked in the starting region, so running trade goods is out of the picture since you have nowhere to run them, and otherwise your only real top tier income method is stealing skill books, laundering them with the chest and selling them. Stealing in general is a great early income source, one should always steal as much as they can and just stay out of sight of patrols.

Trading is an acceptable substitute to doing mercenary work, you can get rich much faster that way too, but you have to put in some work to have the setup for it first.

If you're locked in the starting region, you don't know the game well at all.
2 ropes, 2 iron, which allows you to create two pitons gets you into Cortia within the first half hour of play.
I'd suggest that you don't have the wider perspective of the game I was specifically talking about.

I know the workarounds, I'm talking about a perspective of a new player, or at least someone inexperienced enough to be having trouble with combat in the game with some of the easiest combat even if you're fighting underleveled. Can't exactly expect someone to do a skip and a hop to the end of the game when they haven't even figured out they can move.

[BedlamBetty]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198023312533/screenshot/2417957458741832499/

This setup, right here in the screenshot can be achieved by getting that first iron as you start, going to the tiltren prison for rope and if you need a few more iron, getting the salt mine iron in Tiltren to round out.

[BedlamBetty]

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

If you're locked in the starting region, you don't know the game well at all.
2 ropes, 2 iron, which allows you to create two pitons gets you into Cortia within the first half hour of play.
I'd suggest that you don't have the wider perspective of the game I was specifically talking about.

I know the workarounds, I'm talking about a perspective of a new player, or at least someone inexperienced enough to be having trouble with combat in the game with some of the easiest combat even if you're fighting underleveled. Can't exactly expect someone to do a skip and a hop to the end of the game when they haven't even figured out they can move.

The guy has figured out more than how to move. Looking through the available mechanics a player has would be de rigueur in a game, regardless of which one it is.
Pitons allow one to go down mountains and you have a mountain that from your side straddles the border.
It's not rocket science.

[Wandering Flare]

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

I know the workarounds, I'm talking about a perspective of a new player, or at least someone inexperienced enough to be having trouble with combat in the game with some of the easiest combat even if you're fighting underleveled. Can't exactly expect someone to do a skip and a hop to the end of the game when they haven't even figured out they can move.

The guy has figured out more than how to move. Looking through the available mechanics a player has would be de rigueur in a game, regardless of which one it is.
Pitons allow one to go down mountains and you have a mountain that from your side straddles the border.
It's not rocket science.

...and yet many people would never notice or figure out how to do that skip. When it comes to giving new players advice, you have to assume they don't know anything and even less. To me and you the things that can be done with pitons sound like obvious second nature, to someone with 18 hours we might as well be discussing speedrun strategies in front of someone who hasn't even played the game.

[BedlamBetty]

Originally posted by Wandering Flare:

Originally posted by BedlamBetty:

The guy has figured out more than how to move. Looking through the available mechanics a player has would be de rigueur in a game, regardless of which one it is.
Pitons allow one to go down mountains and you have a mountain that from your side straddles the border.
It's not rocket science.

...and yet many people would never notice or figure out how to do that skip. When it comes to giving new players advice, you have to assume they don't know anything and even less. To me and you the things that can be done with pitons sound like obvious second nature, to someone with 18 hours we might as well be discussing speedrun strategies in front of someone who hasn't even played the game.

So assuming they know nothing, your advice is figuring out how to unlock and craft the camp chest and deal with robbing people and increasing suspicion, while running a food deficit, instead of thinking outside the box, or more aptly, firmly within the box of what is offered early on, notably tinker crafting, the only profession you know of at game start, and the use of the resources offered to you?
Your caveat isn't a caveat. Your advice is harder to implement and the idea that trading requires more set up than stealing or fighting is not true and gives the player false information.
The easiest way to start the game has and always will be the creation of two pitons and placing them on either side of the Arthes gate in order to open a route between Stromkapp and Cortia.
Any player who knows this is available knows anything else increases the difficulty of the early game.
Even going after the free border pass in Vertruse is more expensive to the player early game and much harder to accomplish, and still requires that the player knows about and understands pitons.
Every level gained increases game difficulty and early levels are gained fast.
This isn't a speedrun strategy, on the contrary. My suggestion is not fighting at all, not until the player can upgrade his equipment immediately upon reaching level 2 on a unit, which requires resource gathering, kp and profession xp, not combat xp.
To each their own as to the speed with which they wish to engage with the combat, but combat increases levels, increased levels increases difficulty. If he can't support the repair regimen of his current combat, he doesn't have the resources to continue fighting, because in fighting he will only expedite the increase in difficulty and dmg which he currently can't handle.
If he can't fight, what can he do, he can look to the game mechanics available to him which combat complement. These mechanics are fundamental to the structure of your troop.
The biggest problem for new players, as I said, is that the first battle gives the false impression that combat is the fundamental mechanic under girding the game, when the combat is just one of the rewards offered the player who plays the game.
Just like theft for that matter, which profession requires greater set up and engagement in mechanics a new player is only discovering than looking through the immediately available tinker profession compendium, and reading the known entries: lock-pick, piton, fish-hook...
Understanding combat is not fundamental to the game, or even really necessary, to a certain extent. A player could figure out a way to win almost every battle he can attempt, even if he never moved his units around before battle, by having a strong enough foundation to fight with the best crafted gear to level.
Theft is a strong economic advantage as well, but it's still unlocked after you have access to the description of a piton, which tells you that you can descend from heights.
It is not a viable "new player" strategy. While heading to the town would appear an obvious choice, the player is confronted with three paths after the first battle and four upon reaching the town, if they chose the town as opposed to the mine or the prison.
They have gathered comfrey and iron, both of which are always available at game start. They have had access to looking through all the things available to them, and can start crafting for kp, through just engaging with the items available in camp and moving their units around.

Suggesting a plan to craft a camp chest, steal and launder items to support the economy of your troop as a more organic idea for the player to come to rather than trying to find ways to trade seems insane to me. The player can trade from level one and can continue trading, at level one, for the rest of their life, their irl life.
Any player struggling with the game is benefited from understanding the game's economy. Some will eventually find it tedious and boring, once they've played enough to properly understand the game and have done everything, others will look for other avenues to engage them, because they enjoy the rewards of battle and controlling trait, relation and tilte acquisition.
There isn't an actual caveat to trade, because trade is the best way to create a foundation to your troops resource acquisition to always be top tier in gear in every battle. The player has everything available to start trade within a tripling of the size of the circle of exploration they have at game start. Then it's just exploration and knowing, for which theft is a greater barrier and a larger set up.