Balance enemies and make progression a little less grueling

[emerald.melbourne]

Ok, I do ok with most games, and I have been enjoying Bellwright for a few weeks. It's got some great promise, and I really am enjoying the building up of your own villages, people, and organization. I know the game is still in early access. But please, for the love of god, balance the enemies to scale in difficulty instead of leaping from green one star bandit (which are still pretty difficult to defeat even with superior numbers), to super boss level in order to progress just to the first town taken down. I have highest tier 1, low tier 2 gear for all of my people with level 4 to 7 combat skills, and I can't even trust them to kill 4 bandit raiders when I'm not there. I set 11 of them on patrol when a raid was due, and I couldn't get back to camp. They died. like... WTF. I made it back in time to see 3 raiders escape out of 4. This level of combat difficulty is losing my interest in the game.

I have 3 towns freed so far. The only way I've been able to do so, is set up these massive cheese traps somewhere in the wilderness and hope to god I can shoot the archers before they hit me twice. This will only work until you fix the ability for enemies to climb fences and / or destroy them which I suspect is coming. Then things will be impossible. Even with the cheese, I sometimes have to reload the game 4 or 10 times. I feel like my armor is almost not there. I don't dare to bring anyone out with me as they will be almost useless against tier 2 bandits, much less brigands.

Hand to hand combat is a block and timing system, but there's no way I can fight more than one guy at a time even with a shield. If I could rely on my people as as an actual warband and not just brief speed bumps, this may be ok but right now its mostly a lost cause. I am only left with cheese.

Can I also suggest that the progression of buildings and technologies be a bit easier? and WHY is iron and peat deep in infested areas with the god tier bandits? My guys can barely handle bandits in hooded tunics and pitchforks, much less armored opponents. How do you expect us to get iron to push deeper into tier 2 equipment when its in the equivalent of tier 10 areas? I GET that you are trying to make combat challenging and not something that some single warrior can kill 100 guys by themselves, but there's got to be a better balance point than "I'm here with my 20 guys to fight..... dead" in about that long. Maybe put a slider under game difficulty to make opponents weaker or stronger?

Also, I have 3 towns, and I need to get the 4th town to get the apprentices. Towns are freakin difficult and I have to surround them with fences to keep them safe, along with the cheese traps. Maybe also offer us the ability to train our own people up to apprentices as an option? To get to fight legions of Brigands for one lame apprentice in order just to research 2 things? and what's up with having the laborer needed to make a tanning rack which is a MAJOR bottleneck to even low level 2 gear.

Ok, I will probably get a lot of folks who will make fun of me for whining. Yes, I am whining. I don't play games to give myself stress headaches and make myself want to throw my computer out of the window. Developers! Please help us non-super-crazy-hardcore gamers out!

[Zalzany]

You got 3 villages, you can let them reclaim any them your brigand threat goes down they get easier. and with apprentices from 3 villagers you should be rocking the best t2 gear you can get. Serriously you don't have to hold everything.

You want ballance but don't even get the basis of the system like you CAN GIVE UP VILALGES and lose threat lol. You still keep the apprentices from them and everything. Game is as hard as you want it you can literally take every town on the map and give it up and rest back to 0 threat with the brigands if you wanted to.

[Nihilus]

It is difficult but it forces you to think carefully about your battles and your troops. I have never used a fence exploit and Ive managed to liberate my third town (ive let the bandits retake it after I recruited everyone tho).
Some tips:
- swap your early recruits with better people. Look for ppl with min 3 strength so they can equip a T2 shield.
- have 3-4 good archers equipped with T2 bow and arrows
- Ive seen good results when using maces VS sword or axe
- MANUALLY fill their inventory with 3 types of food. Its a pain, but the buff from 3 foods is huge.
- Use a bow to headshot their archers. Swap to melee after. Have two stacks of arrows in the bag, you'll quickly run out.
- Sadly theres not much army control yet (like in Bannerlords par example), so dont waste time with multiple squads and such. Just equip all melee with shields and hope for the best, lol. Once I progress more, I plan on making a 2h squad to use to take down the archers. Will test.

[tamu1997]

You are making it much harder than it needs to be. I'm guessing like the other post suggests, you arent giving your people three meat meals? They dont need stamina only the HP.

If you are up to fighting brigands, your villagers should have at least that first iron hammer or at minimum the rugged axe(tier 2 weapons stun enemies). If they are still on tier 1 weapons it should be a mace. What are your squad tactics? 2-3 or three archers set to 'hold' with a shield wall in front of them?

If you aren't able to take on two guys with a shield, you just need more practice/experience. Are you using cover? trees, fences, rocks etc to break archers line of sight on you? Are you maneuvering around them to break up melee groups on you?

[Redhalo]

Progression is not too much of a grind.. I think it even needs to be slowed down a little. It would be nice to have longer days, nights, and seasons. As it is everything seems too rushed to me.. Suddenly, I'm blazing through the last two tiers, and bypassing several of the armor and weapon options. Same with some of the builds. I had a furnace and used it all of twice before I made a smelter, because the peat was such a pain to come by.. Charcoal is a breeze. The furnace shouldn't have a fuel source that's only found in one area of the map. Some things definitely need reworked, but going easier/softer because people want faster progression is rarely a good choice.

[emerald.melbourne]

My statements stand. I am keeping and holding the towns so I can trade with them for resources. Look, I am fine with those folks that want a super hard experience. go for it. Just put the enemies on sliders so their difficulty can be changed so those of us who don't want to be uber twitch gods can enjoy the game also. ALSO I want to be able to let my men do some of the work, and not have to be the lynch pin all the time. As for what I'm doing. I am soloing all of the content so far and have killed many reclamation parties so yeah, I know how to do it with fences and rocks and stuff. It's all cheese though. As I said earlier, my men get outfitted with highest tier stuff and I don't use swords. maces and hammers generally with shields. anyway, I get your critique, I'm just not in to the super micromanagement of every crisis and would love to have enemies nerfed with a sliding scale.

[sgruene]

Originally posted by emerald.melbourne:

My statements stand. I am keeping and holding the towns so I can trade with them for resources. Look, I am fine with those folks that want a super hard experience. go for it. Just put the enemies on sliders so their difficulty can be changed so those of us who don't want to be uber twitch gods can enjoy the game also. ALSO I want to be able to let my men do some of the work, and not have to be the lynch pin all the time. As for what I'm doing. I am soloing all of the content so far and have killed many reclamation parties so yeah, I know how to do it with fences and rocks and stuff. It's all cheese though. As I said earlier, my men get outfitted with highest tier stuff and I don't use swords. maces and hammers generally with shields. anyway, I get your critique, I'm just not in to the super micromanagement of every crisis and would love to have enemies nerfed with a sliding scale.

I dont think the other posters want to juge you for your playstyle, but you claym that the gameprogression is to grueling for you. But that it is that grueling was YOUR choise! If you want all liberatet villages to stay free, the game becomes a harder challange.
From an game story point, your startingcharakter sucks at the begining of the game, he is not goot at anything and you lead a group of pesants into an rebellion against a well equipt and traint force of brigants.
I think it is intendet that you have to chose guerillataktiks at this state of the game. If you want to win with pure force, your taktiks should be punisht from the game because there is no way someone can win this in reality. Shure this is a game and not reality, but I prefere games that are reasonabel and not pure fiktion.

on the other side, I think there should be also a little punishment for loosing liberatet villages, maybe a mooddebuff for all npcs relatet to this village because there familys were held hostage.

[Calimar_T]

Just give us a difficulty slider as in every other game. Then people can play on easy or even story mode whereas others can play on hardcore/nightmare. Doesn't hurt my gameplay in anyway. Thanks.