Rank the origins from favourite to least favourite

[suejak]

Has there been a thread like this? Anyway, everybody’s had a ton of time to play all the origins, so I thought it could be good feedback for the devs. I’m not so much interested in “the best” origin or “the hardest” – just your favourite. Just a list with no reasons is fine too. Also feel free to include suggestions for possible improvements.

1. Cultists
Although I’ve discovered I don’t like background restrictions much, I absolutely love the chaos of this campaign. I would play it even if there weren’t player buffs for sacrifices. There’s nothing like trekking out in Siberia and getting a sudden sacrifice that causes a third of your band to quit in protest. The weird extra pressure to hire cultists whenever you see them, try out for Dumb guys, pray extra hard for Brain Damage, visit the tavern in every town for a couple rounds, and of course hunt necrosavants and alps specifically to make cocaine -- all these things really pull it all together. (Last night, I had a happy accident in which a named weapon rumour led me to a necrosavant camp on day 37. Two happy powders and a mediocre named greatsword, shortly followed by a random sacrifice that saw 4 reservists quit!! This is like drugs to me, I love it.)

2. Beast Slayers
It wouldn’t be a suejak post without something infuriating in it, so here you go. I’m not sure whether I like this origin for good reasons or because it was my first long WotN campaign. I really enjoy the feeling of scarcity and having to count every penny for much of the game. The rough price of tools leads to a heavy Nimble bias. I do think this origin would benefit from an easier to way to find beasts, be it tavern rumours or even a direct symbol on the UI showing you what settlements are offering beast contracts.

3. Northern Raiders
As an RNG lover, this origin takes the cake for swingiest RNG. If you pick your seed, it’s probably one of the easiest origins, but if you go full random you’re just as likely to wind up with 3 friendly settlements and no contracts. I like that, and I like levelling on militia. Also the barbs are often quite fun if you’re an initiative fetishist like me. Overall, waging war on two factions, although not strictly necessary, is a real hoot, and easily makes for a ton of funny three-way fights between bloodthirsty hostile mercs and the closest orc encampment.

4. Lone Wolf
Many fun ways to play this one, from true solo to ablative armour. It even rewards true solo play with a free squire! Although I really like having a bunch of reservists and treating all my guys as expendable, I do also think the Lone Wolf himself is such a medieval Rambo that he can carry a campaign regardless of how many fluffers he brings along. The sky's the limit when it comes to fun Lone Wolf builds.

5. Band of Poachers
I like being able to see into camps and it can be really fun to effectively snipe camps throughout a campaign. However, three guaranteed good archers and safer sniping make for a somewhat featureless campaign. A bit on the easy side. I would appreciate more downsides or origin-specific events to this one. Maybe some more lawman-like events.

6. Deserters
The beginning of this campaign is both infuriating and hilarious, and I like it a lot. However, I feel like the deserter theme is not super important after a few in-game weeks. You might not even have your original deserters anymore, so it just becomes a straight player buff (always go first, almost always run safely). At least there is a (single?) origin-specific event for this one. I’d appreciate more of these.

7. A New Company / Rebuilding the Company
Good ol’ Hoggart / not-Hoggart-but-still-Hoggart. Can’t hate this one; we all love it. It’s quite easy in retrospect, though. I actually find the relatively standardized companions quite uninspiring in the brave new post-WotN world. Yes, there is not enough RNG for me here. I would love to replace one of these with a purely random origin where you get three random bros from random backgrounds with completely random stars, etc.

8. Trading Caravan
Utterly featureless campaign that gives the player a roundabout way to lower economic difficulty in exchange for less contract variety. Truly boring parameters. Rethought ambitions (pro renown takes too long) and maybe some unique events would help this one. Maybe we could compete with hostile merchant cartels who are hiring mercs and raiders to sabotage us?

9. Peasant Militia
The scaling doesn’t do this one any favours, and since camps don’t even scale to the player, it quickly becomes a cakewalk simply due to the raw math of quantity over quality. There’s a reason the world record for Monolith is a Peasant Militia run (using mediocre mid-level bros…). I also like hiring from a wide range of backgrounds, so the restrictions here are a bit snoozer to me. Strongly, strongly encourages endless hiring and firing for stars because almost every recruit is cheap and they all have low base rolls. I feel this grindy hiring strategy, though of course very strong, is not important in a normal campaign, when you can try out premium backgrounds to intelligently pick guys who will carry your group through basically anything (and they’re good at hire, rather than after a couple hours of grinding levels).

[Scathe]

Originally posted by suejak:

5. Band of Poachers
I like being able to see in camps and it can be really fun to effectively snipe camps throughout a campaign. However, three guaranteed good archers and safer sniping make for a somewhat featureless campaign. A bit on the easy side. I would appreciate more downsides or origin-specific events to this one. Maybe some more lawman-like events.

well, I haven't played all the origins, but I just want to say, please no additional downsides for band of poachers lol. if you wanted your post to be infuriating in some way, it was certainly not because of your opinion that beast slayers is fun. I would personally rate band of poachers higher. I think that the downsides of not starting with anyone at all skilled at melee, and having less space in your cart, are plenty of downsides. I think being able to see what camps compositions are saves you from the hassle of retreating to change equipment, or stumbling into a deathtrap. not all players want their origin to punish them harder, this game is already plenty punishing.

I agree that all the origins could use more origin specific events.

[Scathe]

ok, I'll try to put it to a list

1 - band of poachers - fun

2 - beast slayers - fun

3 - peasant militia - fun

4 - new company - fun

5 - trading caravan - focusing on playing it the way it is intended, focusing on trading and keeping the company small, makes it a bit boring. I'm not much into using trading for money in this game.

never tried any other origins.

edit - while I have watched other people play the other origins I did not list, I'll still not offer an opinion on them other than they did not interest me enough to try, but I could see them all belonging higher than trading caravan on my list if I had tried them.

[Elder Borjoyzee]

1. Lonewolf - Because of the RP aspect. I would like there to me more backgrounds with the "avatar" gameplay. I thought of an ultra hard one where you start off as a a beggar from the worst possible ending (my avatar) and you somehow get a break and have to work to recover from your time as a beggar (think kings guard buff). Haven't thought about starting level or anything like that but I would appreciate more RP focus'd origins. Maybe have the option to select an avatar option for all the origins as a side thing. (Can you save edit "avatar" onto characters? Maybe I will do that in the future if that's the case)

2. Barbarians - I like the set up, I like starting with characters that aren't easily replaced, I like the aggressive style, I like the map icon and music (then darn becoming professional ruins everything).

3. Hoggart - its Hoggart. Ok, its because the main story is tailored around the original origin. I grow attached to the companion bros.

4. Deserters - I like the start, but basically what suejak said, kinda boring after the start and is just a superior hoggart origin company.

5. Beast Slayers - It has potential. I like the idea of distrusted monster hunters earning their place in the world. But my god that passive is

6. Trading Caravan - When I feel like chilling. - Definitely is the easiest origin. Just trade and buy a hedgeknight ezy. I enjoy making tons of money and this helps with that. This is for purely non-stress campaigns though which are rare for me.

7. Cult - I don't like being limited on what I can hire. Haven't gotten far enough to see the so-called amazing buffs from the sacrifices so this is an incomplete assessment.

8. Poachers - Neverplayed and starting with good ranged seems too easy, 1 archer that will last the game and 2 poachers that are above average/good. Just survive the initial "No Melee" section (no wolves) and enjoy have 3/6 of your ranged lineup which gives you a huge boost against the poor thugs/raiders.

9. Militia - Limited on what I can hire. Too easy. Got achievement in less than an hour.

[Whatever100500]

1. Militia - I wasn't going to hire premium backgrounds in significant numbers anyway. Top-rolled mid-tier backgrounds are the best. Here I get additional benefits for using them.
2. Almost everything else
3. Lone Wolf - having only 12 slots is too limiting.

[Trappist]

1 Poachers - Seeing into camps is my favourite feature ever. I made a plea on the suggestion board for a more limited version of this (runied fortress only) to be one of the team squad upgrades available with upcoming dlc.

2 Lonewolf - Kinda under developed in my view and would benefit from some optimisation for QOL (Like a temp 13th spot for hiring/firing), but still really cool.

3 Hoggart - Else no chance to meet Hoggarts ghost and get that named 2h

Equal 4, 5, 6 - N Raiders, Militia, Cult - All interesting to me, but i never seem to get a decent game going.

7 - Beast Hunters - Just a bit too much like hard work for my tastes

8 - Caravan - Meh

9 - Deserters - Actively dislike this one - My bands live on strong resolve and I cant deal with 3 starting bros with such low resolve.

[Poss]

1. Lone wolf - avatar starts are fun
2. Cultists - the unique events are great flavour
3.Poachers - add an interesting mechanic
4. Militia - cool concept, needs more late game distinction
5. Trading caravan - trading could be fun, in practice its just an economic difficulty modifier

In general i rate origins by how much they change the late game. We have seen a lot of modded origins, anyone can slap together a few backgrounds and call it a unique start. The thing is by midgame most starts to look the same as you end up hiring the same people who get the same perks and the same gear, the origin specific stuff starts fading away. About half the vanilla origins suffer from this phenomena.

I very strongly agree with adding a Random Trio origin, it is pretty easy to make and adds so much replayability. It also allows people to share new origins as seeds, creating a blossoming marketplace of user found origins that can be copied from player to player.

[Scathe]

I also agree that a random trio origin with no bonuses or penalties would be nice, or maybe it could have an additional factor randomized by it's seeds as well, such as 1st noble house on the list starts randomly either hated, cool, or neutral, second noble house starts neutral, third noble house starts randomly anywhere at all on the friendliness chart, even allied.

[suejak]

Originally posted by Elder Borjoyzee:

1. Lonewolf - Because of the RP aspect. I would like there to me more backgrounds with the "avatar" gameplay. I thought of an ultra hard one where you start off as a a beggar from the worst possible ending (my avatar) and you somehow get a break and have to work to recover from your time as a beggar (think kings guard buff). Haven't thought about starting level or anything like that but I would appreciate more RP focus'd origins. Maybe have the option to select an avatar option for all the origins as a side thing. (Can you save edit "avatar" onto characters? Maybe I will do that in the future if that's the case) :JackRE4:

I am superstitious and afraid of modding my game, but there's a cool Lone Wolf Witch Hunter mod out there that I find very cool. Would love something like that in the base game.

[Abel]

1° Peasant Miitia

I just like the feeling of utterly destroying my enemies, whether they are a plethora of Chosen accompanied by ugly trolls, a swarm of nasty Goblins with treacherous daggers and spells or whole armies of soldiers armed to the teeth.
With this origin, you can finally own the RNG. So players who complain about it, should just play it and enjoy total domination.
I kind of hate the hiring/firing game but it's so rewarding that, in the end, I put up with it.
What's truly remarkable about this origin is that due to the higher active roster limit, you can come up with entirely new and bizarre formations and experimental character builds.
This origin is definitely overpowered but it's great fun.

2° Davkul Cultists

What's not to like about sacrificing brothers in exchange for divine power? These cultists are an interesting bunch. The background itself and the stories of Davkul are ominous and enthralling. As warriors, the cultists can either suck completely or be outright gods in the making. I feel like this variance, what suejak calls chaos, is what defines this origin. Davkul does not wait for anyone nor does he care for the mood of your team. Does a sacrifice happen while you're in the middle of nowhere? Bam! Half the team deserts! Have fun!
Cultists, being religious fanatics not too right in the brain, don't ask for outrageous sellsword's wages. So, you'll probably never run out of copper to hit them with.
And when they start getting promoted by Davkul, oh my, does it start being quite fun to see a bunch of weirdos becoming blood crusaders, empowered by their absolute craziness.

I feel these are the two origins that impact gameplay the most and are for that reason, my favorite. Other origins I like include the Northern Raiders, the Lonewolf and the Band of Poachers. But I don't have much to say about them.
The default Hoggart starts feel kind of bland. Traders are a boring 100 days of sluggishness. Deserters and Beast Hunters never appealed to me so I haven't tried them.

[千仞万渊]

Mostly because Im a really old player since V0.4, so Im just too used to old playing ways like team cooperating, and dislike few men squad like lone wolf.

1. Davkul
Same on sense of immersion, sudden chaos, random death.
2.Hoggart
No special reason, Im just too used to it.
3.Poacher
It has its feature, but not too appealing to me.
3.Merchant & beast hunter
Ordinary start with some feature not affecting game really.
4.Militia
Good idea, but I personally dont like it, it's too tiring to build, remember and control too many men.
5. Lone wolf
Like stated above, I hate individualistic heriosm.

[['w']]

Originally posted by Elder Borjoyzee:

1. Lonewolf - Because of the RP aspect. I would like there to me more backgrounds with the "avatar" gameplay. I thought of an ultra hard one where you start off as a a beggar from the worst possible ending (my avatar) and you somehow get a break and have to work to recover from your time as a beggar (think kings guard buff). Haven't thought about starting level or anything like that but I would appreciate more RP focus'd origins. Maybe have the option to select an avatar option for all the origins as a side thing. (Can you save edit "avatar" onto characters? Maybe I will do that in the future if that's the case) :JackRE4:

2. Barbarians - I like the set up, I like starting with characters that aren't easily replaced, I like the aggressive style, I like the map icon and music (then darn becoming professional ruins everything).

3. Hoggart - its Hoggart. Ok, its because the main story is tailored around the original origin. I grow attached to the companion bros.

4. Deserters - I like the start, but basically what suejak said, kinda boring after the start and is just a superior hoggart origin company.

5. Beast Slayers - It has potential. I like the idea of distrusted monster hunters earning their place in the world. But my god that passive is :blech:

6. Trading Caravan - When I feel like chilling. - Definitely is the easiest origin. Just trade and buy a hedgeknight ezy. I enjoy making tons of money and this helps with that. This is for purely non-stress campaigns though which are rare for me.

7. Cult - I don't like being limited on what I can hire. Haven't gotten far enough to see the so-called amazing buffs from the sacrifices so this is an incomplete assessment.

8. Poachers - Neverplayed and starting with good ranged seems too easy, 1 archer that will last the game and 2 poachers that are above average/good. Just survive the initial "No Melee" section (no wolves) and enjoy have 3/6 of your ranged lineup which gives you a huge boost against the poor thugs/raiders.

9. Militia - Limited on what I can hire. Too easy. Got achievement in less than an hour.

legend mod features the single starting beggar origin

[msunavygrad]

1. Poachers - scouting camps and then taking them down in the early game is a lot of fun.
2. Hoggart - I like the balance of the initial game.
3. Deserters - Provides the fun of having a single Noble house against you, allowing for raiding Caravans and such, but not as isolating as the Barbarian start. My game ends if the original 3 deserters are killed. The low Resolve start is really challenging. I also like how the Noble houses hire other Merc Companies to kill you after you raid their Caravans.
4. Beast Slayers - No real advantages.
5. Barbarians - Really overpowered starting group. Map seed is too critical.
6. Caravan - Makes things too easy really.
7. Militia - not a fan, overpowered by sheet numbers.
8. Cultists - not a fan of the theme, but that is just me. Would much prefer a Witch Hunter group out to kill off the Cultists.
9. Lone Wolf - Really wanted to like this, but I enjoy the early game challenge and this start kills it, making things too easy by being overpowered.

[turtle225]

1. Poachers - auto scouting saves me from the hassle of having to poke my head in and retreat if I don't like what I see.

2. Companions (no Hoggart) - The simple BB that I love.

3. Barbs - I usually don't bully the Nobles, so this start lets me play differently than I usually play. Being locked out of most of the map is really annoying though.

4. Cultist - I like the unique gameplay here, but lategame is too easy with the nutty Cultist buffs.

5. Beast Slayer - Like the bros, like the extra trophies, not a fan of the -economy.

6. Deserters - Like the start, but I find the "everybody goes first" thing to be incredibly annoying rather than useful. That's their main thing and I would rather they didn't have it.

7. Lone Wolf - Encourages being picky about recruiting and discourages specialization builds, which makes me not want to play this.

8. Caravan - Too easy, too slow.

9. Peasants - It was fun once but I probably won't ever play it again. Way too easy, and battles take forever.


If a random trio origin gets added that will likely become my favorite.

[Poss]

Legends has Random Solo, Random Trio and Random Party, the Devs are free to use any or all of that code or modify it anyway they see fit.

Even with those options our most requested origin is a 'build your own adventure' origin where you select your party and their gear. Some people want this to have detailed planning down to the traits and talents, but I think that is too fiddly. We're planning to add it as an event at the start of the game where you answer some questions about yourself and it builds a party based on your answers.

[suejak]

Originally posted by turtle225:

6. Deserters - Like the start, but I find the "everybody goes first" thing to be incredibly annoying rather than useful. That's their main thing and I would rather they didn't have it.

Interesting - what don't you like about it? Have you talked about that somewhere?

Originally posted by Poss:

Legends has Random Solo, Random Trio and Random Party, the Devs are free to use any or all of that code or modify it anyway they see fit.

Even with those options our most requested origin is a 'build your own adventure' origin where you select your party and their gear. Some people want this to have detailed planning down to the traits and talents, but I think that is too fiddly. We're planning to add it as an event at the start of the game where you answer some questions about yourself and it builds a party based on your answers.

Nice, this reminds me of the old Elder Scrolls personality quizzes. "One summer afternoon your father gives you a choice of chores. What do you do?"