I don't think I even like heavily armored battle forged bros

[VoiD]

I always have to treat them as if they were made of glass, every time.
Nimble bros are very straightforward, you can see their HP, when it gets low, they are in danger, you take them out of combat and they are fine.

Battle forged bros are weird, they can take barely any damage from small arms, swords, etc..
But suddenly a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ goblin decides it would be funny to puncture and hit a couple of times and he's dead in full armor.
Ifrit throws rock and he gets hit twice and he's dead, in full armor
Schrat tickles his prostate and he's dead, in full armor
barbarian dude with a 2h weapon hits him once, he takes some damage, hit twice and he's dead from half HP and half armor

Happens all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time, 9/10 times they can go into combat and not take any damage whatsoever, then suddenly he just falls dead and it's annoying as ♥♥♥♥, and I don't even play them with low HP, I always aim for something between 70~100 HP for frontliners, armor or not, but they are way too unreliable.

Not to mention 200/200 bros in battle forged are fragile no matter what, before 300/300 it seems like they don't even have a passive, the damage reduction is just too low and wears down too quickly for me to notice they even have a passive at all, and 300/300 is not something you can get for more than a couple of bros before the first crisis is over, all of that money just to start being somewhat reliable, and it still eats away all the FAT the character had, I'm not even sure if it's worth the effort when you could have more fat, start being reliable from the start and have tons of FAT to AoE the ♥♥♥♥ out of enemies for no cost at all (just equip junk you drop from crap mobs) with nimble intead.

[Whatever100500]

Forged *starts* being useful at 300/300, and becomes actually good closer to 375/400 (max roll famed, the only 400 helmet is Emperor's). And even then without Indom up it's not quite as consistent as Nimble, though a lot tankier overall.
Early bros shouldn't bother with forged, with exception of few recruits that have exactly right stats (more fat than you know what to do with, mostly).

[romanzombiekiller]

Battle forged is a waste.Fatigue talented characters don't need it to wear heavy armor.Potential damage reduction is just not worthy of spending valuable perk point.Take nine lives instead if survivability is the problem.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

Forged *starts* being useful at 300/300, and becomes actually good closer to 375/400 (max roll famed, the only 400 helmet is Emperor's). And even then without Indom up it's not quite as consistent as Nimble, though a lot tankier overall.
Early bros shouldn't bother with forged, with exception of few recruits that have exactly right stats (more fat than you know what to do with, mostly).

What about exceptional bros you may start with?
Like the 3 veteran mercenaries in the standard origin, the 3 gladiators, or maybe some random dude that started with iron lungs and good talents?

In my current game I made 1 of the gladiators a nimble bro and the other 2 battle forged, thinking of the future, it is around the 80th day now and one of them is wearing 255/290 and the other is still at 240/150 but I feel like I have to and have been treating both of them as if they were made of glass, because they are, it's very annoying, but I didn't want to waste their late game potential.

[Krick]

there's also orc warlock with a man splitter past day 200 he has 55% damage increase, hitting the head first for critical damage and no steel brow = dead battle forged brother, at least that was one of the things that made me mostly drop battle forged brothers.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Krick:

there's also orc warlock with a man splitter past day 200 he has 55% damage increase, hitting the head first for critical damage and no steel brow = dead battle forged brother, at least that was one of the things that made me mostly drop battle forged brothers.

It seems that the things you don't need to worry about don't deal much damage to nor through the armor anyway.

The things you do need to care about ignore armor so it doesn't matter if you have it.

[Whatever100500]

Originally posted by VoiD:

What about exceptional bros you may start with?
Like the 3 veteran mercenaries in the standard origin, the 3 gladiators, or maybe some random dude that started with iron lungs and good talents?

Suffer through the early game.
The Lion or Lone Wolf are clearly Forged. They won't make optimal nimble frontliners, their hp is somewhat low for that. Bear could go either way. Viper is Imo better as backline nimble, since he has neither Hp nor Fat, but he could barely manage frontline Nimble.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

Originally posted by VoiD:

What about exceptional bros you may start with?
Like the 3 veteran mercenaries in the standard origin, the 3 gladiators, or maybe some random dude that started with iron lungs and good talents?

Suffer through the early game.
The Lion or Lone Wolf are clearly Forged. They won't make optimal nimble frontliners, their hp is somewhat low for that. Bear could go either way. Viper is Imo better as backline nimble, since he has neither Hp nor Fat, but he could barely manage frontline Nimble.

That's what I did, the viper is using a polesword as nimble, but the dude is just so deadly, and tankier than his brothers that he usually ends up leading the charge, tanking most hits, and sweeping 2~3 times on his first turn killing 1~5 foes as an opening move, he's a beast, the other 2 are going forged, but they are glass =/

[Whatever100500]

It shouldn't be that hard to find some famed forged armor though. I have close to 10 armor and helmets each sitting in inventory of my almost exclusively nimble company.
Only 1 forged bro, and even he is likely to retire after Monolith (because he's Indom tank with too low MDef, but at least he can try to Ini cycle Monolith).

[chandl34]

Battleforged characters have higher effective hp. You could probably find a chart somewhere here on the forums, but you have to have stupidly high hp to match a well equipped battleforged character. Not to mention that nimble characters have far more trouble with bleeds and poisons. The new whip is especially nasty with cleaver mastery against unarmored targets.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

It shouldn't be that hard to find some famed forged armor though. I have close to 10 armor and helmets each sitting in inventory of my almost exclusively nimble company.

I keep hearing people farm them easily, I haven't found anything, can't get very far even with 7 bros at day 80 because the wages are absurd for the gladiator start =/

I found 3 bandit leaders so far, all of them wearing garbage armor and some chainmail helmet that didn't give any -vision, none of them were named, cleared a few hideouts too, but nothing but regular loot and mushrooms.

Originally posted by chandl34:

Battleforged characters have higher effective hp. You could probably find a chart somewhere here on the forums, but you have to have stupidly high hp to match a well equipped battleforged character. Not to mention that nimble characters have far more trouble with bleeds and poisons. The new whip is especially nasty with cleaver mastery against unarmored targets.

Haven't found any of the nasty poisons yet, but whips aren't too common outside of the south, and you can just use a bandage to stop all the DoT can't you?

[chandl34]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

It shouldn't be that hard to find some famed forged armor though. I have close to 10 armor and helmets each sitting in inventory of my almost exclusively nimble company.

Haven't found any of the nasty poisons yet, but whips aren't too common outside of the south, and you can just use a bandage to stop all the DoT can't you?

You have to be out of melee to apply bandages. It's very difficult to apply them on the first turn. That's 20 extra hp damage a turn. Orcs also apply a lot of bleed. But again, this is only extra damage on top of the fact that you have lower effective hp as a nimble character.

[Coal Lobster]

Tavern rumors will let you know if a nearby hideout has legendary gear. Otherwise you kind of have to trek a bit out of your way to find them. Hideouts nearby civilization tend not to have them, and I believe quests reroll the loot or something.

[msunavygrad]

A Battle Forged 2H with the Bone Plating attachment is virtually unkillable with any semblance of teamwork.

[chandl34]

Originally posted by msunavygrad:

A Battle Forged 2H with the Bone Plating attachment is virtually unkillable with any semblance of teamwork.

I prefer additional fur padding. It stops enemies from bypassing your armor as easily.

[Whatever100500]

Bandit Leaders can't have anything famed. All my famed armors/helmets are from camps. Loot is generated on game start, but defenders scale over time. So the earlier you can start rushing camps, the better.

Whips are absolutely harmless even against 5-10 armor, unless paired up with duelist. And enemy whip users don't have it.
So you only need to start worrying if you allowed enemies to strip armor. Then, sure, retreat the bro asap.

Poison, yes. But the only poison-using enemy worth of note is Goblin Ambusher. For Goblin city fight, forged is definitely better by miles. But otherwise not a big issue.

Cleaver bleeds are genuinely dangerous, but cleaver-using enemies don't have that much Matk. Dodge/Overwhelm tanks should have 5% to be hit at which point they are reasonably safe. Nimble backline should avoid cleavers, of course. Nimble 1-tile 2h or duelists have no good solution to this problem (well, Indom helps but only for a short while).