Help out a noob please!

[JV]

Hello everyone!

I recently picked up the game after several people recommended it to me and I'm glad I did cause I am loving it! BUT, its combat is hard as hell. Sure, I am playing on hard difficulty cause I believe a game is only good if you are sweating blood and you want to punch your screen at least every 5 minutes however, I have lost like 85% of my combar encounters despite having artifacts equiped and being well rested and at full health on all of my charcters so my question is, what am I doing wrong?

If anyone would be so kind as to point me to some tutorials or suggestions I'd be so thankful!

[stoicmom]

Hope this helps . . . http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=216883318 and Aleonymous, steam moderator, will be along to comment soon :) He is a sure source for help!

[Aleonymous]

Probably the best advise is to use the Training Tent as much as you can, to practice fighting before you take up "story battles". Sure, the Dredge have different abilities than the human/Varl you will be fighting, but the basics are what you probably need. Here's some more tips:

Statting/Promoting advice -- First stat to max-out on most of your untis is Armor-Break, then pick Strength or Armor, depending on whether that unit is meant to be a "Bruiser" or a "Tank/Breaker", respectively. Varl Warriors and Archers make good Bruisers (Archers in the late-game, where enemy Armor is broken), whereas Shieldbangers and Raiders are good Tanks.

Initial Deployment -- Do spend a lot of time there, positioning your units, before you click on ready. Don't deploy them too close to the enemy lines, and always take into account the *order* of your units. Archers in the back, Tanks in the front and Bruisers "looming" in your flanks -- able to engage if needed, but not exposed.

Engagement -- Taking a "turtle" approach, and waiting for the enemy to engage you first, is probably the safest tactic. Click on enemy units to see their movement ranges (memorize them too, for your next battle's deployment stage) and make sure you stay clear of the enemy's Bruisers.

Basic#1 -- Break Armor first, attack Strength later! You might be tempted to go brute-force, but once your Bruiser is exposed, he *will* be taken down and you'll be left with low-Strength heroes only. Brute-force attacks work only against teams with a large number of weak foes. Take your time to study the battle-field and decide who-hits-who.

Basic#2 -- Understand the active and passive abilities of your units! It makes all the difference in the world! Some abilities also allow for cool combos. Also note that the enemy AI conveniently "ignores" most of your units' abilities/buff, e.g. Egil's StoneWalling, Oddleif's Rain-of-Arrows, Yrsa's Slag-and-Burn etc. Exploit that to the maximum :)

Basic#3 -- Turn-advantage! Don't kill enemy units, just lower everybody's Strength to 1 or 2 and only start killing them when everybody is "maimed". This is a bit complicated to explain, but it boils down to peculiarities of the turn-mechanic in this game. In short, having a small team of healthy/strong units is *much* better than having a large team of maimed/weak units.

Hope that helped!

[waTTe]

Good hints - I have probs with some fights too.

[JV]

Thanks for all of your help! I'll defenitely check everything out and train a lot more.

[Aleonymous]

The soundest advice, really, is take your time to understand how things work. Also, it might be worth actually doing a bit of math, to calculate damages and penalties

[Metadragon]

This isn't rocket surgery. Just plan your movements so that you press your advantage early.

[John Muir]

Originally posted by Aleonymous:

Basic#3 -- Turn-advantage! Don't kill enemy units, just lower everybody's Strength to 1 or 2 and only start killing them when everybody is "maimed". This is a bit complicated to explain, but it boils down to peculiarities of the turn-mechanic in this game. In short, having a small team of healthy/strong units is *much* better than having a large team of maimed/weak units.

I know you're right but this strategy is always the hardest for me to follow. If every other unit based game has taught me anything, it's that you almost always want to eliminate a unit.

[Metadragon]

Originally posted by John Muir:

Originally posted by Aleonymous:

Basic#3 -- Turn-advantage! Don't kill enemy units, just lower everybody's Strength to 1 or 2 and only start killing them when everybody is "maimed". This is a bit complicated to explain, but it boils down to peculiarities of the turn-mechanic in this game. In short, having a small team of healthy/strong units is *much* better than having a large team of maimed/weak units.

I know you're right but this strategy is always the hardest for me to follow. If every other unit based game has taught me anything, it's that you almost always want to eliminate a unit.

Its ingrained, sure. But relatively easy to overcome. Running smaller units is actually better than using more varls because of that. For both story and competitive play.