Lvl 5-6 weald runs, need advice!

[Vaaksiainen]

Heya. been skulking these forums for since the release of early access and consider myself a rather skilled player... Now, though, i decided to call the community for help.

I'm having huge problems in weald.. Those fungal bastards are way too tough.. I cant seem to kill them fast enough or keep up healing their insane crits.. On the first hallway I surprised a group of two fungus-zombie and a stress-inducing cultist. The cultist went down easy enough, but those two high-prot, chaingun-critting 'shroomheads just wrecked me so bad I had to retreat.. And I was running an Arbalest, PD, Bounty and Leper-party.. Thought i was well enough prepared.

Is there just some strategy I don't realize? They were all resolve lvl 5 and had lvl 4 gear.

Any tips and advices would be apperciated! I so want to go back there to dish out sweet, sweet revenge!

[Nequis]

Weald is one of the toughest areas but for starters i can tell you some tips and comps:

To deal with the fungals you need to delay the scratchers for as long as you can while dealing with the backrow,since those are the ones marking your heroes,else the scratchers themselves aren't too dangerous.

You can run a Arbalest-Hound Master-Man at Arms and Hellion or any combination which lets you have characters with Stun and Backrow hitting,the MaA especially with Rampart Shield and Stun Amulet has so high of a chance he can quite chain-stun 3 times rather reliably.

You should avoid bringing in mere physical damage heroes like the Bounty or Leper,as the high PROT on the scratchers counters them along with their inability to switch ranks.

If you have problems with the artilleries poisoning you i suggest bringing a Plague with stun/scramble and then medicine. I usually blight both artilleries at once with a nade and keep it up until they die since i run it with stacked acid trinkets.

Feel free to ask any more indepth advice,also cause i don't know what you're working with.

[Rusty Bucket]

I take a MAA, hellion, hound master, and vestial. MAA, Hell, and vestial can stun while hounds master lowers prot on the fungi. I also wear prot trinkets on MAA and have him guard marked target. Once you get the fungi prot down, they fall pretty quick.

[Hound Archon]

Am I the only one who thinks Occultist's Curse of Vulnerability should be shredding enemy's protection as well?

At the moment, only Houndmaster can debuff the enemies' PROT stat. Another character with that ability would be welcome.

Then again, Occultists are already incredibly useful and don't really need more toys in their kit...

[LaserGuy]

One thing about the mushroom guys...

They can only hit the front two characters, IIRC. This means that if you have one character who can cover (MaA, HM) in one of the first two rows, and you have that guy protect the other one, then the mushrooms won't do much, if any, damage. If you have a good healer/stress reliever in the party, you can actually stall quite efficiently against two of them and use the time to heal up without ever triggering the stress penalty. HM is a really nice addition for this, since they can also mark the enemy and lower PROT as well. I believe the giants only hit the first two rows with Treebranch Smackdown as well, so this tactic works well against them too, although they can also shuffle the rows, so you have to account for that.

Using your Arbalest to clear the marks isn't a terrible idea either if you need to.

[Hound Archon]

Man-at-Arms and Occultist are pretty much the staple of my Weald runs because of the threat the giants and the fungal grabbers pose.

[h0b0king]

Originally posted by Hound Archon:

Man-at-Arms and Occultist are pretty much the staple of my Weald runs because of the threat the giants and the fungal grabbers pose.

Same though I sometimes swap the MAA for a Leper and just slice damage off the enemy frontliners with Intimidate instead of guarding. It doesn't work as well.

[Vaaksiainen]

Thank you so much for the tips and ideas! Got to try them strategies out. Houdmaster seems to be pretty efficient addition to the group and MAA is something i'm going to try there as well.
Another, totally unrelated question: i seem to have trouble making the most out of Hellions. They are okish damage dealers, but is it just me or is their breakthrough just underwhelming these days? Their self-debuffs also make them rather difficult to use. Would it be a good idea to stack on medicinal herbs for them?

[Hound Archon]

Originally posted by Dr. Jekyll:

Another, totally unrelated question: i seem to have trouble making the most out of Hellions. They are okish damage dealers, but is it just me or is their breakthrough just underwhelming these days?

Yeah, breakthrough is a dead skill. You take hellions because of their superior damage and the ability to hit any position from slot 1 and awesome camp self-buffs. Ability to remove bleed/blight from themselves also comes in handy.

[JessRivers]

Breakthrough is ideally used on a weakened enemy party to kill. Hopefully, the rest of your party can finish off what's left, but even if the Hellion gets another turn, she's still one of the better attackers in the game. Barbaric Yawp is another favorite of mine, though again, it exhausts her. Think of it as creating a 3.5 vs 2 situation.

If you want a less exhausted Hellion, stick with If It Bleeds, Wicked Slash, and Iron Swan. Round out her skills with either Breakthrough (as a finisher) or Adrenaline Rush.

[pi73r]

I haven't done much lvl 5 weald but at lvl 3 I used to go with occultist/houndmaster/highwayman/man at arms
With a bit of rng and properly carrying out the fights I used to do dungeons withough getting any considerable dmg at all. You could have pretty much disabled/killed the backline of most enemy compositions. Then you bleed and dodge the ♥♥♥♥ out of giants.