Is there something I'm not getting about stress?

[epinardscaramel]

First off, I don't believe that the "stress" mechanic of the game is explained during the tutorial/intro mission, which is weird for such an important part of the game.

Second, it feels really unbalanced, at least at the begining of the game: There are mobs and event that deal 15-20 stress to the entire party, and you have one or two spells that recover 2 to 5 stress. Am I missing something here?

[0x6495ED]

Your feelings are totally justified, stress is absolutely horrible in the beginning of the game, but quickly becomes super managable. The stress-"management" curve is horrible skewed and is in need of some balancing to make it increase presence later in the game and a tad easier in the beginning (Enemies that deals 15 stress each attack + natural stress from dungeon = ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ early game).

I'm all for a hard game, but it needs to be balanced.

[Davakar]

Nope, you will come out of dungeons early on stressed out. Learn to keep those mobs that use stress attacks stunned or focus them very quickly/early by using attacks that pull them to where you can hit them or you can attack them in the back of the line.

Its very important early to open up your barracks so you can rotate a team out each week.

[Thorgrax]

I dont remember the stress meachanic being adressed in a clear manner. Which is embarrasing if you consider that this is a key feature of the game. heros get distressed for so many things for such high values, yet you have so little and ineffective options to fix this.

You can not camp in short missions, which is a problem right from the start. I thought i was doing something terrible wrong only to find out that yet again the game did not bother to tell me how i make and utilise a camp fire.

[Answulf]

Agree that it should be mentioned in the tutorial mission.

There's a bit of a learning curve, but stress is managable in a few ways in the early game:

* Learn the bad guys that cause high stress and target them with stuns, focus-fire them or move them to a slot where they can't do a stress attack.
* Killing blows often relieve stress, so try to arrange it so that your high stress character gets the killing blow when possible.
* Critical hits reduce the stress of the entire party, so having a high crit guy helps.
* Jester has a mass stress heal. It doesn't do much with a single use, but if you are spamming it every turn it makes a big difference. Same with Leper: get enemies down to one, stun-lock the last enemy a few turns and spam stress and health heals.

Later on it becomes less of an issue as you get more crits - I actually think crits heal too much stress.

[km_md60]

From my experience, the bone courtiers are the bane of seeker heroes. They can deal significant amount of stress within a few turn. However, you can disable them with a few tactic

1. Switch their slot. Since the enemy mostly can't move around like we do and certain abilities are limited to certain slots. Using this knowledge to your advantage by forcing the bone courtier out of the back slot - there are multiple abilities which allow you to do that.

2. Stun them to oblivion. The Vestal and the Witch doctor can use stun abillity to nullify any threst from the back rank while your Crusader and Highwayman beat the front line to pulp.

And yes, the stress wasn't explained during the tutorial (unless you can accumulate 100 stress during the two fights which is impossible without dying from multiple crit). However, it's just another resource that you have to control and it's not particularly hard to understand through the UI (white is good, black and red are bad).

[0x6495ED]

Originally posted by km_md60:

2. Stun them to oblivion. The Vestal and the Witch doctor can use stun abillity to nullify any threst from the back rank while your Crusader and Highwayman beat the front line to pulp.

Originally posted by Answulf:

* Jester has a mass stress heal. It doesn't do much with a single use, but if you are spamming it every turn it makes a big difference. Same with Leper: get enemies down to one, stun-lock the last enemy a few turns and spam stress and health heals.

This is sooooo boring, and honestly shouldn't really be the focus on managing stress.

[km_md60]

Originally posted by August Strindberg:

Originally posted by km_md60:

2. Stun them to oblivion. The Vestal and the Witch doctor can use stun abillity to nullify any threst from the back rank while your Crusader and Highwayman beat the front line to pulp.

Originally posted by Answulf:

* Jester has a mass stress heal. It doesn't do much with a single use, but if you are spamming it every turn it makes a big difference. Same with Leper: get enemies down to one, stun-lock the last enemy a few turns and spam stress and health heals.

This is sooooo boring, and honestly shouldn't really be the focus on managing stress.

You can do only two things in the beginning of the game.
1. lower the cahnce of getting stress.
2. destress through ability which is underwhelming.

Once you have access to campfire and high crit trinkets, things are a bit more interesting.

[Answulf]

Originally posted by August Strindberg:

Originally posted by Answulf:

* Jester has a mass stress heal. It doesn't do much with a single use, but if you are spamming it every turn it makes a big difference. Same with Leper: get enemies down to one, stun-lock the last enemy a few turns and spam stress and health heals.

This is sooooo boring, and honestly shouldn't really be the focus on managing stress.

Your heroes will start to complain and gain stress if the fight starts to last too long, so it's not really abusable.

The more important point (that doesn't require stun-locking) is that in order for the Jester to heal stress effectively, you have to commit to it. Say for example a typical combat lasts 6 rounds - one stress heal of 0-3 stress per person is pointless. However, if your Jester did a stress heal every round, that's going to be around 12-15 stress relief per person. Sure, one guy will probably still finish the fight with higher stress from a RNG hit, but the other three will be lower if you are managing the stress-enducing bad guys effectively. The next fight, it will be a different three who get their stress lowered. Jesters are even more effective on longer missions. Trust me, it adds up over time. When I bring a Jester along, I frequently finish the quest with 0-20 stress on every character.

It's not something you always want or need to do every combat, but it's a nice tactical option to have.

[garr_71]

To me its simple, for the early part of the game heroes are ALL expendable, if i get out of a dungeon with heroes stressed out, i fire them. The only time i not do that is if after checking wich batch of new heroes i got and see that i dont have x or y to complete a new party i will keep a high stressed hero around.

The thing is altho the game doesnt explain stress properly (i hope they improve that a bit) the game did tell you in the begining that you will lose heroes, that the game is hard etc etc, so just fire them.

I play like that until i get about 80k gold or so, by then i have out of my 11 hero pool at least 6 or so that i can make into powerful teams. Thats when i start spending money on lowering their stress or runing easy missions with propper made parties, since doing fast encounters helps lower stress a lot.

[Grungi]

Originally posted by garr_71:

To me its simple, for the early part of the game heroes are ALL expendable, if i get out of a dungeon with heroes stressed out, i fire them.

I do the same. Early on, I focus on buffing the coach as much as I can, then cherry-picking the best heroes to make 2 solid groups while using the "spare" heroes as dungeon fodder to advance the weeks and perhaps nab a few treasures before they have to bail.

I don't even worry about group composition on the spares, I just send 'em in regardless without supplies and do the best I can. Sometimes I barely make it out of the first couple of rooms before they're all nearly dead/insane, but it still advances the week and I get a few resources out of it.

Once I have my two teams, I alternate between them. Working so far.

[Augustus Gloop]

Originally posted by Grungi:

I don't even worry about group composition on the spares, I just send 'em in regardless without supplies and do the best I can. Sometimes I barely make it out of the first couple of rooms before they're all nearly dead/insane, but it still advances the week and I get a few resources out of it.

Once I have my two teams, I alternate between them. Working so far.

This sounds like a good strategy. I think I'll try it.

[Mcbain]

honestly the biggest hint I can give is to bring keys for the ruins the almost 100% of the time pay out well above their cost. mid game advice try to get a party that can deal somewhat with being surprised. the crusaders holy lance moves and attacks as does duelest advance, lunge. also point plank shot and shadow fade move you back one if they get pushed to the front. surprises rarely put my party in a terrible position anymore. also save some interactables for AFTER you clear the dungeon because your shovels and supplies take up space. once you make sure you don't need them drop them, go back, loot, fill up the empty spaces. Also on medium missions try to save camp for after the dungeon is over and use it to lower stress right before you end the mission (sometimes this might not be possible.) Honestly I feel the game is a little too easy towards the "late game"

[Mondo! is sexy]

I don't think he/she is asking for ways to help with this in game more so asking the question "Is there something I'm missing". I think it's more important to kind of turn this toward the devs and ask the question.

It's funny because I was aking the same thing last night. This is a hug part of the game. I would LOVE to just go in and fight my way though dealing with health only but they added the stress mechanic. Ok, fine, now give me a good way to deal with it. I find myself leaving dungeons with good health only because my team is too stressed to move forward. Or the stress has gotten a few members killed ( Not taking heals, missing atts, Hurting themselves ).

As stated, I can only camp on some missions and only once at that? why can't camp fires be bought for all missions? Why cant there be spells that lower stress? Why does nealy every attack have to cause stress? why aren't enimies taking stress? They dont want to run when it's 4 v 1? ( How cool would it be for them to try to run away only for you to get a back hit? or if they do get away they show up in a later fight ) why isn't there some kind of item I can buy to feed their stress level? Why cant clean victories yeild stress relief? ( such as clearing a fight without taking damage or without taking too much damage )

Thanks,

[epinardscaramel]

All great points, thanks! I started a new save last night, and found it much much easier this time around. You really need to focus on the stressful mobs first for instance.

I think we agree that the importance of stress in this game should be "stressed" (sorry) in the intro/tutorial.

[Thradar]

Stress is still an enigma to me. I can just be standing there, full light, decided what to attack and m guys get stressed. What? Or I can see stress pop up over a character 3 times in a row for some reasons I know nothing about. It's gotten to the point where I no longer loot any crates, sacks, cabinets, etc in dungeons. The risk to reward is FAR too high. Since I stopped doing this dungeons (at least early on) are relatively managable.

But I don't think this is what the designers intended.

Why can't a stress induced affliction be erased in a dungeon of you get your stress back down to a certain level? And not down from 100 to 0, that's a bit much. I work hard to get a characters stress back under control, but there's no reward for that effort. Once they hit 100 it doesn't matter, just throw them to the pigs I guess!