Making the best out of a bad situation

[Dogishappy]

I see a lot of people claiming that they were forced to restart a game due to this game's difficulty, so I thought I would share how I deal with the numerous lemons this game throws at me.

Precursor
- Upgrade The Stagecoach: You are only guaranteed one healer when you start, and getting a second one should be a priority. If she dies on the first mission, this is the only time I would suggest restarting. I didn't get a second one till week 6, fortunately I had a Book of Sanity trinket, which I find priceless. Having a spare of anyone is never a bad idea.

Staying sane
- Equipped For Success: The best way to stay sane is to keep the light level near max and minimize unnecessary stress. Starting out, short dungeons will need 6-7 torches, 8 food, 2 anti-venom, 2 bandages, and one shovel. Medium will need 15+ torches, 20 food, 4 anti-venom, 4 bandages, and 2 shovels. As you play, keep track of what you use and adjust accordingly to your play style and the dungeon you choose. Don't forget that you can use torches in battle if you need to.

Choose Your Battles: This is where players make the game hard for themselves. Leaving a dungeon early does result in sanity loss, but it's better than loosing someone you've invested a lot of resources in training various skills. It may take multiple tries, but you should be able to retreat from every fight. Death's door is no joke, take it seriously and live to see another day.

Stun Heal: Every once in a while, I like to use my stun abilities and weak attacks to heal up my group. This is best when one target is left who is vulnerable to stun. By avoiding the killing blow, you can typically squeeze in 2-6 more extra heals if you are lucky. To avoid the unnecessary sanity loss associated with passing, have your heroes trade places with each other.

-Hamlet: Once a hero gets above 50% insanity, it's time to think about healing. 50% sanity is fine for a short trudge through familiar terrain, but anything medium or longer could be risking it. Observe the hero's character profile and see if they prefer a type of healing, then upgrade that facility.

This will lower the cost and increase the effectiveness, while not wasting valuable resources. Typical sanity recoveries I've experienced range from 50-70, so there is no point in waiting past 75% to recover sanity. (If keeping them sane is your goal.)

-Camping: The sanity recovery of a feast is essential to staying sane. Before setting off, ensure that your party has skills that reduce stress for the party, and can heal others if necessary.

Enjoying Insanity
While playing things safe works, it yields the least amount of loot, so let's take some risks.

Forget Sanity- Once even one hero goes insane, you will likely never get it back without having to pay for it. To do this, you have to get their insanity to 0 before leaving the dungeon. It's not impossible, just almost impossible.

Once insane, he/she will constantly drain the other hero's sanity, so good luck trying to halt it's effects through campfire perks, skills, critical hits, etc. Your best hope is to either mitigate their effect on the other party members, or embrace the darkness.

Guerrilla Warfare- Don't be afraid to go in with zero supplies only to retreat early. I've done this multiple times to get one Painting, while I waited for my one Vestal to recover sanity, or loot 1000 gold for an ability unlock. They are already insane so you can't make it any worse.

The A Team- These suicidal heroes will be the backbone of your economy. Find a group of 4-5 heroes that when insane, are either abusive or selfish. Then use these people whenever you run out of money or need to waste a week while your mains heal up. I say 5 so that you can have a go-to when you get a bad quirk that you can't live with. Even with the starting roster of 9, 4 mains and 5 insanes can work reasonably well.

Abusive and selfish people will listen to commands most of the time without hurting themselves or skipping turns too much. If the Vestal is Masochistic, that's fine, I've never had her reject a self healing (bandages though... wait till out of battle). I've found abusive Plague Doctors, Bounty Hunters, Grave Robbers, and Hellions. This personality could potentially be available to everyone, but these are the only ones I've encountered.

Campfires- Focus on self buffs, the feast is probably the only way they will gain health; but that's the price of insanity in this game. I've completed several medium missions with my A-Team. It's a little tougher to heal people, but fortunately, that's what Stun Healing is for. Except now, you can pass without worrying about going insane.

Kleptomania- By now, these people are REALLY messed up. Not only has insanity warped their personality, but it also reduces all of their resistances. As things stand, I would hardly suggest sending them off to fight a boss. So, why not steel everything that isn't nailed to the floor? Have someone read every book, pray at every alter, and search every grave. Sure they could get something bad, but that's the point.

To the best of my knowledge, there is a maximum to both the good and bad quirks you can receive. This is a perfect chance to get the negative traits that are slightly more desirable. Meanwhile, their collection of bad quirks makes them immune to the really bad ones, giving them a higher chance of getting good quirks.

Out of all of my hints, this is the only one I fear being wrong about. But 16 hours in, and I'm still right so far.

Hope This Helps! Have fun!

[UR|Dialetheia]

Wouldn't this work better in community guide form, rather than a forum post?

[Dogishappy]

Originally posted by UR|PointMaid:

Wouldn't this work better in community guide form, rather than a forum post?

Perhaps, but you read it here first.

[Kain]

My tip, dont bother in keeping you characters sane or alive until you upgraded some of the Town, the first warriors are there to die, so you can learn how to best use them, eventually you'll find a good strategy. Also, some places have consistent kind of threats, some have more poisonous enemies and traps for example, learn by dying,you have unlimited suply of heroes. So, no need to restart your game, just endure and get better in managinf what you got.

[Gurutsu]

Personaly i think only begining is hard after you unlock every building in town its only about some small grind and you will be set for no restarts. Frankly i dont understand why the game is ballanced so only begining is almost imposible.

[Kain]

Because the game is in Early Acess and they're still working on the game, balancing it and adding new features.

[Xerkics]

THe biggest hit to stress a starting player can get is not having a spade to remove a wall at least 2 spades is a must as you will have at least 1 at the very start which screws teams with low crit ability as you wotn be able to recover it quickly.

[HereticalPie]

The big difficulty in the game is the first few dungeons. It's kinda annoying to have to keep restarting because of a string of unlucky crits, misses, or resists. Imo, the game needs a bit of tuning in the beginning so players can become invested in the game, and then more difficulty in the later so they can then rage as those heros they love die.

[Blatherbeard]

/clap clap clap!

I also dont get the "being forced to restart" mentality. Ive never not been able to grab more heroes to make quick cash to upgrade stuff until i got enough to level the real characters.

I think too many get hung up on keeping every single guy alive.

[Mick]

I don't understand how restarting is ever the right option. Your town upgrades are persistent and hero recruits are free. What's the point of restarting completely?

[Randonx]

Originally posted by Dogishappy0:

To the best of my knowledge, there is a maximum to both the good and bad quirks you can receive. This is a perfect chance to get the negative traits that are slightly more desirable. Meanwhile, their collection of bad quirks makes them immune to the really bad ones, giving them a higher chance of getting good quirks.

Out of all of my hints, this is the only one I fear being wrong about. But 16 hours in, and I'm still right so far.

Sadly, you are wrong on this front. While it's true you can only have 7 positive, and 7 negetive quirks, you can still have new ones applied. What happens is your oldest quirk of whichever type you receive falls off the list.

[Our Lady of Fraudulence]

I regularly restart the game to check and see if they've changed the NPE at all. I noticed that early game difficulty spiked sometime between the first two days of public release and yesterday, for example. (But also found better loot -- a better introduction to the game than before for sure.) Late game was unaffected.

[CyberDown]

Appreciate the info out there OP, but the people making these posts dont read and are so conditioned to games that hold their hand in every way so they cant fail.

Its like reprogramming someone brainwashed. They just want it easy they dont care about anything else.

Sadly once you get everything upgraded and know how to manage bad situations better, the game gets really easy....still fun...but very easy.

[Dogishappy]

Originally posted by Randonx:

Sadly, you are wrong on this front. While it's true you can only have 7 positive, and 7 negetive quirks, you can still have new ones applied. What happens is your oldest quirk of whichever type you receive falls off the list.

Thanks, I'll keep this in mind and try to always keep one spot open.