Progression seems pretty unbalanced and unsustainable mid game.

[Amins]

I know, still Early Access.

When I first start a game, leveling comes extremely fast and it requires me to spend the majority of my time with base and resource management just to keep up with gear. Around level 20, I'm starting to see level 17 raids, which is fine. It's a nice challenge and keeps me supplied on a few nice drops. But once I hit around level 28, I'm being bombarded by level 38 raids and having my entire base decimated.

The best weapon I can come up with is a musket which barely does any damage. And Pals don't gain enough experience while working at the base, so everyone is extremely underleveled to even stand a chance against these raids. My own party members are all like ten levels under me now for some reason. Seems my only option is to build a base on high terrain and abuse the broken pathing of enemies so they can't attack my base.

Are there better strategies to keep up? I was thinking it might be good to focus more on exploration at the start and find more variety of Pals, but I'll still need to keep up with making the better spheres to catch them and doing all that exploration is just going to power level my character even further.

[armymdic]

I am the same level and I do not even fight in the raids. My pals destroy anything that comes their way. When assigning them to base, consider both their work but also their combat abilities is my strat.

[RubyCante]

i just turned off the Raid function from the option, that thing is not finished/balanced at all.. so don't bother the annoyance

[Khergit Horse Archer]

make sure to build dedicated no nonsense mining base when you get the chance, it helps alot with the grind and you really need the metal.

[DarkFenix]

The scaling of raids seems to be all over the place, just switch them off for now. Also there are some places that apparently raids just don't spawn. I (re)built my main base in the northwest, on one of those islands with bamboo instead of trees. It has a nice main entrance pathway for raids to easily path along, but it's never been raided. Many hours later when I put up random pal boxes for fast travel to resources, raids instantly start spawning to attack those.

[Murb]

Same.

There is a progression hole around that point as far as i'm aware. You aren't improving your damage/gear for a LONG time. The first pistol seems garbage. The second one is ok i guess, but i still mostly use musket.

Also base pals don't seem to level up almost at all, so even if i am around the same level as the raid, my base pals are 20 levels under them. I suppose if you want to do raids, you need to replace pals with fresh wild tamed ones, ignoring the traits because you can't level them all up.

They need to 10X base pal exp rate and i don't even know if that is enough on its own.

[Nathan]

I have noticed this too but I still want to play anyway, hoping for some balancing soon.

[paxtheconfused]

Originally posted by armymdic:

I am the same level and I do not even fight in the raids. My pals destroy anything that comes their way. When assigning them to base, consider both their work but also their combat abilities is my strat.

So i agree and disagree with this, Focus on work stuff first, SKILLS second then maybe look at combat power. Some skills just bonk WAY harder than other regardless of what the stats say. I use a world boss chillet whos only trait is swift (swift and runner are VITAL for mounts), and once she got the ice wave attack (shoots a wide ice blade that penetrates) she became unstoppable. Foxparks partner skill also does great against the raids. All that being said, if you have -def or -atk on your base pals, it will clearly be harder than it should be, those traits are merely to be used as fodder for the condenser

[Amins]

Originally posted by Murb:

Same.

There is a progression hole around that point as far as i'm aware. You aren't improving your damage/gear for a LONG time. The first pistol seems garbage. The second one is ok i guess.

Also base pals don't seem to level up almost at all, so even if i am around the same level as the raid, my base pals are 20 levels under them. I suppose if you want to do raids, you need to replace pals with fresh wild tamed ones, ignoring the traits because you can't level them all up.

This is pretty much what I've been doing. When a raid starts coming, I drop all my party Pals into the base, because for whatever reason, I can't get them to engage from my party and cut the enemies off before they arrive. I have been neglecting building my Pals up for battle and giving them new moves as I've had to spend most of my time with resource management. And that aspect never really seemed like the game's main focus to begin with. Everything they came with was good enough outside of the overleveled raids.

[Ackranome]

First Raid that hit my base was level 30 elite Relaxs

[TrailerTrash]

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

make sure to build dedicated no nonsense mining base when you get the chance, it helps alot with the grind and you really need the metal.

do all bases share resource. or do u just move the resource over as u need using quick travel? hadn't had a 2nd base yet.

[Amins]

Originally posted by Dr4given:

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

make sure to build dedicated no nonsense mining base when you get the chance, it helps alot with the grind and you really need the metal.

do all bases share resource. or do u just move the resource over as u need using quick travel? hadn't had a 2nd base yet.

I have a second base on the top of the mountain near the Chillet boss for ore mining. Raids almost always can't path up there. Resources are not shared between bases, but you can fast travel while overencumbered. So if you need to transfer a ton of ingots over to your main base, you can store them in a chest near the Palbox so you don't have far to go to activate it.

[Murb]

Originally posted by Dr4given:

Originally posted by Khergit Horse Archer:

make sure to build dedicated no nonsense mining base when you get the chance, it helps alot with the grind and you really need the metal.

do all bases share resource. or do u just move the resource over as u need using quick travel? hadn't had a 2nd base yet.

They don't share resources.

Put a chest near your command thing. Then you can have your pals dump ore in it, then you take out 10k weight from it, teleport to your other base and dump it in the chest there.

By processing the ore at your ore base, it is more weight efficient too.

You need so much ore in mid game that i don't see can progress at that point without a dedicated ore base.

[TemplarGFX]

I generally take a low level pal with me in the 4th slot when im off grinding XP or resources from wild Pals. I use my main battle pal, but every pal gets XP thats in your party. It only takes generally one outing to get 20 levels on a pal. Then I replace it with another low level one from base

Whenever any raid occurs, anything that manages to get past me gets insta-killed by the 13 high level pals at base

Also don't forget to use your duplicate skill fruit on your better base pals. Some of the commonly found skills are far better than the default skills pals come with, and giving them one of the rapid fire or lock on skills will dramatically increase their effectiveness