Chance of failure = high

[hariel441]

I admit that I am a bit dejected, my first playthrough has been on Normal difficulty and very rough. I love the game but minor mistakes has made it almost impossible to recover on resources and my most of my knights rotate through some stage of injury.

The last straw is the paladin quest. The game calls for me to send one of my best off on some quest, I have to go one man down for a good while...and then he just %$@*ing dies. SERIOUSLY?! No gene seed to commune with, no replacement knight and certainly no leveled up higher class warrior. this game bleeds you dry every MINUTE in battle and out.

[Kevin]

when they compare the game to x-com they are not wrong. every game i played so far i lose control of the spread too quickly and cannot recover. game is odd to say the least

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Originally posted by hariel441:

I admit that I am a bit dejected, my first playthrough has been on Normal difficulty and very rough. I love the game but minor mistakes has made it almost impossible to recover on resources and my most of my knights rotate through some stage of injury.

The last straw is the paladin quest. The game calls for me to send one of my best off on some quest, I have to go one man down for a good while...and then he just %$@*ing dies. SERIOUSLY?! No gene seed to commune with, no replacement knight and certainly no leveled up higher class warrior. this game bleeds you dry every MINUTE in battle and out.

Are you saying he never came back as a paladin, or you lost him in a combat mission? In my normal run, bors got called to paladin training and I was happy with the result. But I won't risk it in the future if it is some rng. Can't be, can it?

[Uncle-Bin]

Originally posted by kamikaze4kanojo:

Are you saying he never came back as a paladin, or you lost him in a combat mission? In my normal run, bors got called to paladin training and I was happy with the result. But I won't risk it in the future if it is some rng. Can't be, can it?

They can die on their quest. There is RNG. Look up the "Events Guide" - it is almost complete.

[wicked lester]

Originally posted by Kevin:

when they compare the game to x-com they are not wrong. every game i played so far i lose control of the spread too quickly and cannot recover. game is odd to say the least

I find this game much more randomly difficult than xcom 2, which is odd given that there is no rng in attacks. Events are harsh. Bloom is harsh.

[hariel441]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Kevin:

when they compare the game to x-com they are not wrong. every game i played so far i lose control of the spread too quickly and cannot recover. game is odd to say the least

I find this game much more randomly difficult than xcom 2, which is odd given that there is no rng in attacks. Events are harsh. Bloom is harsh.

Thank you, I'm glad it's not just me and that I didn't immediately receive a slew of "gitgud" insults. I like a challenge and in this grimdark setting the difficulty curve SHOULD be steep...but this game just punishes you needlessly. My paladin aspirant never came back, I'm down a man and the sector is just full of warp storms and bloom riddled planets. It's not an uphill battle it's a flat cliff.

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Originally posted by hariel441:

Originally posted by wicked lester:

I find this game much more randomly difficult than xcom 2, which is odd given that there is no rng in attacks. Events are harsh. Bloom is harsh.

Thank you, I'm glad it's not just me and that I didn't immediately receive a slew of "gitgud" insults. I like a challenge and in this grimdark setting the difficulty curve SHOULD be steep...but this game just punishes you needlessly. My paladin aspirant never came back, I'm down a man and the sector is just full of warp storms and bloom riddled planets. It's not an uphill battle it's a flat cliff.

Mistakes have a way of snowballing and your overall state of game may well benefit from a little 'git gud'. Personally I did a few restarts before I was happy that I knew the mechanics well enough to play through even on normal. And the back-end of the game was easy (granted my particular run might have had some good rng; case in point this paladin quest...)

I'm shocked that you can lose the knight. The game encourages you to send him on his quest and it took mine like 60 days to come back as paladin, but there weren't any other benefits that make it worth risking him. I thought the time penalty was cost enough! Losing a resilience might be fine, but all that xp just GONE? What about his equipped gear? No way. Not ok. Not even in this game. Can requisition paladins at end of missions lol. Thanks for the heads up; I won't be risking this on my current Ruthless DE run.

[Bubs]

I don't know why people are so caught up on losing a knight to that. I believe it even says it's dangerous. If there was no danger, what is half the point in it?

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Originally posted by Bubs:

I don't know why people are so caught up on losing a knight to that. I believe it even says it's dangerous. If there was no danger, what is half the point in it?

I'll correct you there, It doesn't say it's dangerous. It says "___ will be unavailable for some time". I get that events are generally about mitigating disasters rather than gaining a bonus, but the Paladin Quest is presented as the latter.

But, your comment has me thinking, am I placing too much value on individual knights?Maybe I should let them get critically wounded more often just for the augmentation benefits, and happily gamble them in Paladin Quest.

I guess the RPG aspect of levelling up and speccing them out a certain way is very appealing to me, but perhaps it's just an illusion in this game? By the time you get the initial 6 knights to lv9, they represent a lot of effort; carefully thought out decisions in and out of combat, ie a tangible validation of all your efforts. But my sense of achievement is cheapened by the fact you can purchase lv7 knights for a lousy 3 req. Would I be upset if I lost a 'late game purchased knight' to paladin quest? Probably not. Interesting.

[Bubs]

Originally posted by kamikaze4kanojo:

Maybe I should let them get critically wounded more often just for the augmentation benefits, and happily gamble them in Paladin Quest.

you went full heretic. never go full heretic

I stand corrected though.

[BirdDinosaur]

If you find the game difficult now, it gets harder. I'm not one to shy away from difficulty but that last boss fight was on a whole different level for me. I loved it even though I barely made it out alive. I was lucky to take Castellan Crowe with me. Never used him the entire playthrough and figured this was the last fight, might as well take him with me in a glorious battle. Turned out to my favor and that's how I learned that the guy just won't die lol

[hariel441]

Originally posted by kamikaze4kanojo:

Originally posted by hariel441:

I'm shocked that you can lose the knight. The game encourages you to send him on his quest and it took mine like 60 days to come back as paladin, but there weren't any other benefits that make it worth risking him. I thought the time penalty was cost enough! Losing a resilience might be fine, but all that xp just GONE? What about his equipped gear? No way. Not ok. Not even in this game. Can requisition paladins at end of missions lol. Thanks for the heads up; I won't be risking this on my current Ruthless DE run.

That's what I felt exactly, having one of my best guys unavailable for over a month was cost enough! After that I restarted on easy, it is true I need more personal experience with the game mechanics...like how they gloss over exactly *how* you select strategems before a mission because I only had Quicksilver and thought I just hadn't really unlocked the others yet.

[kamikaze4kanojo]

Originally posted by hariel441:

That's what I felt exactly, having one of my best guys unavailable for over a month was cost enough! After that I restarted on easy, it is true I need more personal experience with the game mechanics...like how they gloss over exactly *how* you select strategems before a mission because I only had Quicksilver and thought I just hadn't really unlocked the others yet.

Bah, now you know what you know you'll probably find Merciful too easy. Or the concessions given there might cause you to continue glaze over some of the mechanics (because you might not need them). Whenever something isn't working for you, reflect on it. Is it just rng, or do your tactics need rethinking, or do you need to look for what you might be missing; read the in-game codex or search the net. The strategem slot is a perfect example. Personally I think the other t1 strategems are on par with Quicksilver, but by the Craftworld Mission you should have 2 loaded slots.

The big one for me was how crits work. I posted in another thread that I thought I had reduced Kadex to 0 health, but actually it would have been showing me the optimal result if that blow had been a crit. I thought the yellow bar was something along the lines of 'shock damage that will cause an enemy to die if it gets him to 0, but otherwise does not apply'. In the early game this is understandable because you don't really see knights equipped/specced well enough to actually inflict critical damage outside of +1 with hammerhand. The yellow bars crept in over time; when did I finally understand it? Maybe by my first reaper fight? But actually, understanding crits is probably now my number one consideration for how I equip knights and how I spend WP in mission. That is, I tend to either try to increase a crit chance + dmg as much as possible, or don't worry about it and focus on base damage etc.

Actually I'm still confused about how half the time an attack causes 1 stun (without any fancy wargear) but not reliably. Anyone know how to treat that one? Should I just consider it a %50 rng? All these challenges amount to one reason I love this game so much. Reminds me of an earlier era of gaming where we weren't spoonfed every lesson and couldn't re-do everytime something didn't go our way.

[Khloros]

Originally posted by wicked lester:

Originally posted by Kevin:

when they compare the game to x-com they are not wrong. every game i played so far i lose control of the spread too quickly and cannot recover. game is odd to say the least

I find this game much more randomly difficult than xcom 2, which is odd given that there is no rng in attacks. Events are harsh. Bloom is harsh.

Im almost 10 hours into this game on normal and im about to restart on easy because of this.

Blooms are insanely hard for how early it is, the enemies in the game are SUPER spammy, especially with crap like resurrection, which just boxes you in, the enemy LOVES to spam overwatch and suppression as well, like even xcom did not spam overwatch this much.

I want to like this game, because i really like warhammer, and i really like xcom, but man this game is trying really hard to get me to not want to like it.

[TormDK]

Originally posted by Khloros:

Originally posted by wicked lester:

I find this game much more randomly difficult than xcom 2, which is odd given that there is no rng in attacks. Events are harsh. Bloom is harsh.

Im almost 10 hours into this game on normal and im about to restart on easy because of this.

Blooms are insanely hard for how early it is, the enemies in the game are SUPER spammy, especially with crap like resurrection, which just boxes you in, the enemy LOVES to spam overwatch and suppression as well, like even xcom did not spam overwatch this much.

I want to like this game, because i really like warhammer, and i really like xcom, but man this game is trying really hard to get me to not want to like it.

Likely you are not playing aggressively enough if XCOM is your point of reference. You should be playing this more like Gears of War Tactics.

I do agree that the new Melta enemies are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ though, with their ability to strip your knights of their armor on turn 1.

[TheoreticalString]

Originally posted by hariel441:

I admit that I am a bit dejected, my first playthrough has been on Normal difficulty and very rough. I love the game but minor mistakes has made it almost impossible to recover on resources and my most of my knights rotate through some stage of injury.

The last straw is the paladin quest. The game calls for me to send one of my best off on some quest, I have to go one man down for a good while...and then he just %$@*ing dies. SERIOUSLY?! No gene seed to commune with, no replacement knight and certainly no leveled up higher class warrior. this game bleeds you dry every MINUTE in battle and out.

Your knights will spend most of their time injured. Injury is quite manageable. It's -5 to HP. Scales to -10 for a worse stage of injured.

So I have a marine with 26 HP base, he has 21 when injured... so? I deploy him injured. I specifically snagged a +6 HP wargear that literally negates the effects of injury just in case I want to level an injured marine.

That paladin quest is a bit of a joke, but oh well. I got got by it too. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ steals your wargear as well I believe. Easily one of my least favorite events because half the time I don't even want a Paladin, so it's all risk, no rewards.

The thing is, a lot of that "bleed you dry" is to give the game an oppressive atmosphere, but it's not actually that oppressive. Less XP because Ector is mad? Your guys didn't get any weaker, so it actually does nothing. Grand Master closes the armory? Jerk. But you still have all your wargear and you still earn requisition, so all you're doing is saving for a spending spree. Seed costs increased? Oh well, you still have all the upgrades you have.

Only one that actually sucks (rather than just feeling oppressive) is No Strategems. That one can blow.