Survival and Equipment Setup Guide for Fight Challenges

[PL]

===General Development===
- The warhammers and pikes are apparently the game changers for early and mid-to-late game period respectively.
- Tactic (for confusion) and Trap (for counter offense) attributes are certainly useful during the first ~100 turns. However, to effectively tackle down those big threats in the late game, which usually have very high character levels and are thus immune to your confusion/counter offense moves, you will want to go for stealth (for first action) meta.
- Without a few good pikes, the combination of crafters and warriors might actually perform better than one primarily composed of warriors alone in a fight challenge, thus the popularity of crafter village focus despite the nerf on the additional two childrens provided with.

===Tech Development===
- Pike crafting is your go-to option. It will serve you well from mid to end game.
- Consider unlocking two-handed axes if you have some elves in your village to maximize their pierce damage effect.

===Resource Aquisition and Storage===
- The 30 ancient wood pieces from the 'kind' leshy of the cosmic tree quest is your easiest approach to get the first batch of materials for your end game gears. Those can be crafted into top notch pikes with poison damage and jewelry/artifacts that provides medic attributes.
- Without top tier nodes close to your village and the presense of skilled gatherer with tools of wicker or better, looting through events usually provides more mithril and dragon bones than gathering. The advance tech points required to unlock those nodes are also slow down your development quite much.
- You can see the closest elven wood node to your village by unlocking elven wood gathering at the very beginning of the game. You can simply reload without saving to get that spent advance point back.
- Hunt down spiders and snakes for spider silk and scaled leather. Both are used in jewelry/articaft crafting for some of the best or second-best gears.
- Store your gold, silver, steel and mithril in the crafting queue instead of the inventory to avoid loss in negative village events.

===Recruitment Strategy===
- Orcs, elves and dwarves have very high strength and usually greatly outperform most, if not all of, your human warriors. Equip them your best spears and two-handed axes.
- Consider not to build the pasture and the cabbage field if you aim to recruit characters of the mentioned races.
- Goblins characters are generally similar to the human counterparts.

===Building Strategy===
- Rush for Barracks, particulary when starting with gatherer/crafter village focus. The additional 10 points to newly grown up warriors is a significant boost to your combat efficiency during the early to mid stage. Gods or goddesses that provides additional advance points from the get-go, or buildings that can be teared down and salvaged for materials are particularly good for a baracks rush.
- Herbalist Hut is your secondary priority.

===Expedition Supply Management===
- If available, allways bring 5 coal pieces and 20+ herb/food that consist of herbs to prevent character loss or sickness from negative events from effecting your combat efficiency.
- Don't forget about the food variety bonuses. Always maximize the variety bonus before an important quest or against serious threats. The same idea also applies to village defense.


===Equipment Distribution===
Early Game
- Warhammers are particularly good against trash mob zergs, such as spiders, crows, bats, rats and bees, which are often encountered during this stage.
- Give the pikes to the characters with most original damage attributes, usually the warriors, to maximize the pierce damage effect.
- If there is no pike available, equip the metioned characters with warhammers and/or two-handed axes to maximize the blunt damage effect and one-shot potential.
- Give the range weapons (bows and crossbows) to the chacaters with highest total damage attributes that are not equipped with pikes, again, usually the warriors, for them being the main damage source while lacking in offensive tactical options, i.e., range damage and first action. This way, your warriors can still help taking down mobs even if they're put to the tactical deck.
- Two-handed and one-handed sword/shield is your go-to option for non-combatants.
- Gathers are often good damage source for their tendency to gain additional strength when leveling up. During the turns you send most of your villagers out exploring and only few gatherers holding the village, equip them with armors and swords/shields, so that they lose less health when attacked and surrendering. During the turns you have all your villagers stationed in the village and need additional damage, gear them up as you do with warriors.

Mid-to-Late Game
- Gradually swap from warhammers to spears if seeing less presense of trash mobs.
- Horns of Beasts and Gloves of Assassins are your go-to option for the artifact slot. Aim to have as many characters that are not wielding a pike able to perform first action. For jewelry, gear the characters with already sufficient stealth points (the same or higher than the main damage dealers' level) with Tear of the Nymph for better performance in sneaking challenges, and the ones still lacking with Silver Brooche.

[FlyingFrills]

Nice overview. Concise and good information.

Just to toss in my few cents regarding a few of your points.

re:Combat;

I think 1 warhammer is plenty, 2 max. It's very situational. Love 'em though.Also, the fights they'd be most effective in (tons of trash) are safely auto-battled.

For me Perception for counter-tactic is more useful than Trap, particularly with a primarily spear party's ability to control card positioning. Because the combat is all about orienting your numbers to line up precisely against the enemies', eliminating their ability to fudge that up is more important---Like, you have your 30atk spear dude at the leftmost about to hit a 30 health Striga, and they first-action a 3 health bat in front, meaning you might hit the bat, and the Striga gets his attack off, which can domino into a lot of damage as another character might attack the Striga, but only have 25 damage that you assigned to kill the next thing and now the next thing can attack and so on.

re: Buildings;

I'm one of those people that literally spams crafters until endgame and beyond so I would have to reccomend Smithy first for good quality option and bonus crafter points. You might want to get someone with high craft skill fast (in case starting villagers are like 5 craft skill), and Sneak is most reliable combat option early, with Intelligence/Speech great skills a little later. First action is also so important as you mention and I think you literally can't have enough of it.

I think barracks is too much point investment so early especially if you're going Spears (I like the Watch Tower along the way, just like T90 or something) and also costs more resources which are lacking early on. I think the Warrior provided at the start is sufficient for aiding in the odd Fight challenge, but they just don't scale well enough further into the game to warrant the investment in my opinion.

[erislover]

Since this is a fight thread I'll ask here.

Can any pro-fighter players here beat the game in under 100 turns with fight challenges at a reasonable difficulty? I'd especially love it if someone had a twitch or yt video of it. I feel like this achievement is only plausible on extremely low difficulty settings or with crafters (I used 205% with crafters but I could probably push the difficulty higher since the group limit and gathering didn't make the game as much as diety quest bonuses).

[DG]

I've beaten both the cosmic tree and divine quests in 80 turns, all high settings except bloodbath, then had to wait 100 more turns for the giants to even start.

I'm not really agreeing with much of the other advice in this thread. First action is the strongest tactical skill. That makes axes a strong weapon and the first choice in combat against the giants. Spears can just fail with low damage so they need strong characters and/or big pikes, not little staves wielded by weak characters. Pikes cost 3 research, so you can get started faster by using using swords (peaceful) or axes (warlike). The tactical benefit of hammers comes from using bows to boost damage and you can use a looted mace for that rather than big crafted hammers.

Warriors are generally good with the big sword and shield. You need someone to lead the line or take a hit and the warrior solves that problem.

[wms]

The most important thing on high difficulty levels is to get a Lvl 20+ medic. this is coming from playing games on 350% with bloodbath on. The game is borderline bugged when you have one in your party.
Most heavy hitting mobs in the game are hammer users. So when I get defeated, most time it's under -20 wounds, making my party almost un-killable.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by wms:

The most important thing on high difficulty levels is to get a Lvl 20+ medic.

You should edit that to be "the most important thing if you engage in a lot of fight challenges and routinely get hit and wounded." I get by just fine doing fights at 350% with almost no medic. Spears so fragile enemies die before they get a turn; at least two well-armored folk so if I have to take a hit, it's on someone who won't take much real health damage (plus gets shielded by someone in Tactics hand who's carrying a shield). First Action or Hunting/Traps to deprive an enemy of a turn.

No, I play 350% and I can't agree that medic is all that necessary if you're using the other tools at your disposal. Especially if you're staying ahead of the power curve.

[FlyingFrills]

Medic is nice for peace of mind but I agree with dergefata that it's not that useful to the end of Giants quest. Just give a bloodstone to whoever is blessed with the highest medic number or gets those juicy +medic skill events.

[love to resign]

Cool, dude. I enjoyed the read. There's a lot of solid advice in there. The point about bringing Coal & Herbs with your expedition is spot on and often overlooked.

I will say, your building analysis strikes me as unconventional. The idea of the Herbalist Hut as being a "secondary priority" is totally foreign to me. Most people, from my understanding, view it as a wasted tech point. I'm pretty high on it compared to the general opinion on the Steam forum (I like that it gives herbs for food variety, and it helps you sustain a spear&retreat strategy from a dangerous roaming monster pack), and I only think of it as a fringe pickup in games where you're somehow ahead on research but behind in population/power. What makes you like it so much? Give me your best pitch--I'm all ears.

The Barracks as a rush build also seems overemphasized. There are a fair number of players that would argue that Warriors are a situational, skipable unit (myself included--Crafters, baby!!), so I think it's fair to say that the Barracks is totally optional & not an every-game staple such as the Smithy. Furthermore, your first couple research points really set the tone for your game, and messing around with structures early is a challenge due to their tremendous resource demand and low RP output. I barely have the resources to reliably construct the freebie Pasture in the first 48 hours, yet alone a Watch Tower and a Barracks. The chance that you stagnate your tech progression by teching into two things that won't help propel you into your next research point is too great, in my opinion. I'd rather focus on stuff I can mass produce, like Spears or Light Armor, and keep the Research Points flowing. All in all, I see the Barracks as a very weak choice, because rushing it puts a huge strain on your tech progression and delaying it misses the window where the bulk of your children mature before Thea's wonky population mechanic stymies your growth. I like that you identify RP/resource-rich gods as a good choice for a Barracks rush, because that helps mitigate some of this problem; working a fast barracks into your normal routine, though, seems like a potential disaster.
_______

+1 to FlyingFrill's & dergefata's comments. Agree on all points.

[PL]

First of all, many thanks for all the replies! I'll answer each point you brought up down below, with some common ones taken together.


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re: FlyingFrills on perception over traps

I agree with you. And for the same reasons, I really love hunters. They typically have traps, perception and stealth, all packed together in one single character. That makes them super versatile when distributed to the tactical hand. I make sure that whenever I am randomly given the option to turn a newly grown-up into a hunter, I go for it.


-

re: love on the herbalist hut

As you pointed out, it adds to food variety and thus allows me to spam buffs from the variety more often, whether I am in need of that one extra movement point to travel across snow covered terrain, or the combat and healing buffs against dangerous opponents. The extra point of movement point is crucial to me, because it practically expand my expedition radius by 20%.

Although to me the hut is important for the protection it offers against negative events. The herbs alone it provides make fatal events such as Strong Sunlight, Plague and Food Poisoning tremendously easier, and if I feel comfortable with my capability in fight challenges, I might add another layer of protection by acquiring a medic. After all you don't always get herbs and coal pieces through looting, and it is just too much waste of turns to send expedition parties to gather stuffs.

However I do admit that there is also a roleplay aspect here, as I focus on the survivability of individual characters instead of survivability of the village as a whole.


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re: crafters/smithy vs warriors/barracks (oh this is going to be lengthy...)

Again, as love has mentioned, it is highly possible that the tech progression will stagnate if I invest the first couple AP in barracks.

However, I seem not to have experienced much impact on my survivability. The reason, I believe, is that the 10 extra attribute points the newly grown-up warriors gain via the barracks actually balance the negative impact out.

By going for barracks/warriors instead of smithy/crafters, I am less dependent on the quality of my gears, and am able to utilize cumbersome heavy armors looted from my enemies, instead of salvaging those, thus less dependent on crafting. If I go for smithy/crafters meta, then surely, I will be highly dependent on tech development and will likely have to craft armor pieces that are comparatively lighter since my crafters are probably not going to be as strong as my warriors. The same goes to axes and other weapons.

On the other hand, when I go for barracks/warriors, I can usually save up most of the resources and either go straight for the top notch gears, or go for buildings that attracts dwarves, demons, etc.

And since I always choose my village focus on crafters, I start with 4 characters able to perform first action (3 crafters and 1 hunter). That is generally suffice in most combats at the early-to-mid stage.

I consider both strategies gambling. By going for barracks/warriors, I bet on early maturity of my children and then I farm the mobs around my village with these newly grown-ups efficiently and systematically. I try to remember when each mob site spawns and farm only the mobile mobs spawned from the site until I feel that I have depleted the site and it is going to disappear. That way I maximize the amount of loots, particularly gears, I could possibly gain from each site and minimize the need of gear-crafting. While by going for smithy/crafters, I bet on getting events that grant the mid-tier resources I need (gold, steel, mithril, and enchanted bones in particular) early on and then build up my force from there. Theodore's quest helps with this quite a bit, and it adds a bit more diversity to the usually mundane, eventless early stage despite being repetitive.

Overall, I prefer barracks/warriors, because the sole certain incoming of mid-to-high-tier resources is the 30 ancient wood gifted by the friendly leshy. The reasoning behind it might not be immediately obvious. With these 30 pieces, I could either go for two-handed axes, or for pikes. Generally I would choose pikes, because it takes 6 metal ingots or 10 bones to make an axe, while only 2 metal ingots to make a pike. The latter is just more efficient regarding the utilization of resources. And as DG has pointed out in this thread, pikes “can just fail with low damage so they need strong characters and/or big pikes”. Thus, warriors become my preference.

The obvious downside though, by assigning most of my first batch of newly grown-up to the fighter class, is that I pretty much have to delay the engagement in any events that requires more brain. Although a quick victory is generally not my goal so I am fine with it.

And at last, on the drain on production, or wood particularly, I usually have a surplus amount of wood as long as there is a wood node within the gathering range of my village and my initial gatherers are not too bad. As for the watchtower, I never build it during the first ~50 or even ~100 turns. Usually I only build it before going for a long expedition and have looted enough gears and salvaged them into quartz, of which again I usually have a surplus amount of, as building blocks.

Generally I do not try to squeeze any bit of AP out of the construction of the barracks, as my objective here is to get it up as soon as possible and preferably before the first child grows up. And barracks made entirely of plain wood requires least crafting points, despite that it grants zero research point. Instead, I rely heavily on the lower tier gems, leather and fiber salvaged from the loots to craft into clothes, which will be recycled again, for research points.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by pallaslandan:

Overall, I prefer barracks/warriors[...] With these 30 pieces, I could either go for two-handed axes, or for pikes. Generally I would choose pikes, because it takes 6 metal ingots or 10 bones to make an axe, while only 2 metal ingots to make a pike. The latter is just more efficient[...]Thus, warriors become my preference.

Does this mean you build in to Warriors and then don't use their Monkey Grip (use two-handed sword in one hand) ability? That seems a strange way to go about things. Why not rush a Meeting Hall then (can usually build one in the first 10-12 turns) and pick up Inventors? They usually have 8-12 Strength, plus a freakish boatload of Social/Stealth skills plus obviously some nice crafting for grinding up those research points. Sure, you're not guaranteed that Inventor is available but with a handful of children I always get one or two. They work just fine as heavy fighters.

(In the last game I played just last weekend, I got three in the first 50 turns. What a ridiculous RNG outcome)

[PL]

Originally posted by dergefata:

Does this mean you build in to Warriors and then don't use their Monkey Grip

It really depends on how things go for me. For example, if I happen to get a bad luck streak on looting and do not get a single pierce weapon, then, yeah I might give my warriors two-handed swords and shields, so that they can either serve as body shields when distributed to the combat hand, or support with shield points when distributed to the tactical hand. Another example is the scenario against giants. If I am more confident in fighting instead of assassinating them, and I haven't met the planetnik, then yeah I might need a warrior or two equipped with two-handed swords and shields to tank a shot.

Originally posted by dergefata:

Why not rush a Meeting Hall then (can usually build one in the first 10-12 turns) and pick up Inventors?

And as to your second question, to be frank, I have never thought of that. It seems to me a very interesting idea, although I am not sure if I would want to bet my very first batch of grown-ups on RNG.