Any good guides how to tackle early game?

[Rozpierdalacz]

I had some success with lone wolf as he does not require wages and can hit something sometimes but i am unable to get past day 10 with anything else.
Rewards are not existent, wages+food+tools+replacing fighters cost more than 200-300 coins earned.
Everything is better than my squad. 1v1 means death 9 out of 10 times. even 5v1 against surrounded target often means loosing 1 person.
There is lots of fights in this game. with hit ratio around 50% it means that sooner or later you will have a fight where you miss every hit but be hit every time.
Loosing 2-3 people tanks morale resulting in a wipe.
Loosing 1 person means you lost coins and you are worse of compared to where you were before fight.
Expensive fighters can be worse than beggars due to rng stats.
How do people even play this game?

[The Duck Knight]

The early game is why I prefer to play defensive builds, so here are my rules for a save start:

1. Pick your fights carefullly. At the beginning you want thugs and wiedergangers, nothing else. Beasts ain't worth the risk.

2. Invest in shields. The defensive stats of a shield are a HUGE impact during the early parts. Yes, 2H weapons deal more damage, but during early game nearly every hit is such a huge impact, that it's just not worth it. You also get to keep them should the wielder die.

3. Spears and swords. Both grant an additional chance to hit with their first skill and since everything dies in 2-3 hits anyway, these are the best option to make sure that you DO HIT.

4. ALL of your brothers are soft targets at the beginning, so getting hit should be avoided at all costs. Remember point 3? Enemies also get that effect. so spears and swords wielding enemies should be a priority target, since these will be the ones most likely to hit you. Also flails because these mess with your shields. axes next, to keep your shields save.

5. Don't rush a full team, 5-6 is enough for a while. Saves you wages and investment in gear.
Get new recruits AFTER you got gear for them. a recruit without gear is dead meat.

6. throwing weapons are your friend. The damage is rather impactfull and if you time it right you can deal damage before the melee starts. replacements with a halfway okayish ranged stat can make your early game easier with quickhands and some throwing weapons

7. as long as you got spears make good use of spearwall, softens them up, might even kill some enemies and makes sure the enemy has harder times flanking and surrounding you.

8. found a net? put these in your bags, not just your inventory, these might be just the ace up your sleeve you need to save a brother from death. remember rule 6.? these guys are perfect to carry your nets for just that moment to come.

9. Use the terrain to get advantage. Remeber good old obi-wan: if possible, always get the high ground.

10. Not every fight is a fight you want to fight. There is no shame in doing a Sir Robin if you are not sure the fight is worth the risk. "Flee you fools!"

the rest is just experience as a player.

[turtle225]

Duck has a good list, though I disagree with point number one. Wolves, Nachos, Hyenas, and Spiders should all be pretty easy if you learn how to fight them (ie don't Nachos eat, free yourself out of spider webs).

The main reason though is that you want to get as much xp and money as possible, which means taking every fight you can as long as it isn't going to get you killed. Those beasts are not too scary.

Serpents though are sketchy as heck early on.

That aside, a couple of other points I'll add:

1. Buy armored dogs. Contract scaling counts the number of bros you have, but not dogs or gear, and an armored dog is pretty good against most early game enemies. Most enemies will not attack your dogs if they can attack your bros instead, so you can safely drop dogs in most situations without risk of them dying. They give you free attacks, and extra surround bonuses, and extra morale checks.

If everyone can drop a dog then you can punch way above your team's weight early on.

2. Early perk choices are very impactful. Avoid Student until your team is in a comfortable position. Fast Ad., Colossus, Nine Lives, Dodge, and Gifted are all good choices for your first two perks. Other perks are good too, those are just safe picks.

If you open instead with something like Student -> Recover then you have a level 3 bro that basically has no meaningful perks for this stage of the game.

3. Not all backgrounds are equal, as you probably noticed. Among the cheap backgrounds, Brawlers, Thieves, and Farmers are among the better options. In the early game you can't really be too picky, but when you are making your initial hires then those may be preferred picks if they are there.

You may also find Sato's new player guide useful. It isn't an early game guide specifically, but maybe skim through it and see if it touches on any questions or struggles you're having.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2549815780

[A5G_Reaper]

Most of the good points are already mentioned. Let me add that you should repair weapons past certain tier (in a nutshell shortsword and anything better) before you sell them off. This do adds up over time. You can probably forget about armor because the ones that worth repairing are midgame ones at least, and you'll likely just ends up wearing whatever you find anyway.

Your dudes with the right perk and weapon should be better than a random thug. You gotta properly asses the enemies and decide which one to focus fire and which one you can afford to leave alive for a bit longer, based on their equipment.

[SpectatorBehold]

Originally posted by Rozpierdalacz:

Rewards are not existent, wages+food+tools+replacing fighters cost more than 200-300 coins earned.

It is true that often, the rewards you're paid by the questgivers for completing quests often do not really make it seem worth it, but the again, the real key to prospering economically in the game lies not in the quest rewards, but in the loot you obtain while doing the quests (or on your way to the quest area, or on your way back from there, or your own adventuring strolls, whatever). Loot of all kinds - equipment, treasure, trade goods, trophies and so on can be sold for a good price in towns and that's where you should be able to make a profit. Just remember that there's several nuances (if that's the right word) to it:

- You get better prices in the big towns than the small villages, usually.
- You get better prices if you are on friendly terms with the settlement you're selling the stuff to, so it can be worth doing some questing for a big town to get into their good graces.
- Certain things such as settlement situations (Warehouse Burned Down, Collectors, etc) and certain Origins also affect the prices you get, which can be worth paying attention to.
-If you obtain some Trade Goods, it can be a good idea to put some thought into where to sell them. Wares from the south often seems to fetch a high price in the north and the reverse can be true as well. Just don't sell a certain kind of trade goods to a settlement that already produces it...
- As said above, repairing higher tiers of weapons that you've obtained from enemies can be a good idea, for they will sell for more in that case.
- Consider which enemies enemies to target for the best loot with the lowest risk involved. In my current playthrough, I headed for the north at the start of the game for the purpose of going for the barbarians - specifically, groups of barbarian thralls, because they have little to no armor, no archers and most importantly, often drops Bone Figurines and/or Bead Necklaces.

In short: Don't rely on just quests to keep your war chest filled...

[Machiavelli]

I just go shield walls with spears and use daggers to snag bandit mail and helms.

[The Duck Knight]

Originally posted by turtle225:

Duck has a good list, though I disagree with point number one. Wolves, Nachos, Hyenas, and Spiders should all be pretty easy if you learn how to fight them (ie don't Nachos eat, free yourself out of spider webs).

The reason why I advise to not deal with beasts early is because during the early game the loot from these is not worth the risk. It's not because it's hard to fight, but because the loot itself is just not usefull at the start. That's why I say they are not worth the risk: the reward is just too low for the risk. As part of a contract, okay. without contract? nah, not worth it. the damage they can cause for only exp/reknown rewards ? nah.

[Heron]

Originally posted by The Duck Knight:

The reason why I advise to not deal with beasts early is because during the early game the loot from these is not worth the risk. It's not because it's hard to fight, but because the loot itself is just not usefull at the start. That's why I say they are not worth the risk: the reward is just too low for the risk. As part of a contract, okay. without contract? nah, not worth it. the damage they can cause for only exp/reknown rewards ? nah.

An early scout retinue unlock is pretty strong though. I go for early beasts that I think I can handle mainly for the scout.

[turtle225]

I think beast loot is worth it. Not as good as Thug loot immediately, but it's good to eventually get some Nacho necklaces, Direwolf attachments are decent, and Hyena Fur is highly desirable and can be hard to find.

Spider loot is the worst of the bunch and probably worth selling early on. It has uses later for reinforced nets and LPR attachments, but early game it is probably better to just sell for money.