350% Horos 1 Gatherer Focus Attempt

[aardvarkpepper]

Started a new profile, had choice of Horos and Mokosh, chose Horos as Mokosh's Gathering bonus makes games easier.

Terminology

I usually send all the villagers staying in the village on a little expedition, returning to the village at the end of the turn to gather and craft. I call this the "village expedition".

Any expeditions that don't end up on the village at end of turn I just call "expeditions".

Often I'll have an expedition camp a location and start harvesting resources. But I still want to trigger encounters, so I'll leave one villager camping and send the rest on a "sub-expedition" to move around and try to trigger encounters, returning to the camp at the end of the turn to resume harvesting.

Practices

For the first thirty turns or sometimes more I typically go three turns without food (losing a hit point each turn) then turn food consumption on while camping (healing three hit points). I usually turn food consumption back on at night.

I try to get two foods going at once for the expedition, for the hit point bonus. Depending on the playthrough, I may or may not be able to sustain five different sorts of food, which gives a movement bonus (so more chance of triggering encounters that may be profitable).

I typically will not send the single villager left over from a sub-expedition to scout then return to the main expedition. Even early on things like pits with snakes can mean a dead villager. Later on there's all sorts of things that can kill a solitary villager.

This could be avoided with savescumming (even in a 350% game there's ways to savescum) but I'm going to try not to savescum this playthrough.

Efficient gathering has some priority over scouting in that if an expedition has a choice of effectively losing movement to stay near a spot it can efficiently gather from, or being slightly more efficient in terms of scouting, I'll choose to gather efficiently.

However, if an expedition has to cross a spot with no good gathering spots (say snowy mountains) then I'll just go ahead and try to push through, since scouting the area will involve lost gathering efficiency sooner or later anyways.

Scouting takes priority over moving additional hexes to trigger encounters. I prefer to scout an area thoroughly especially if it's within twenty hexes of the village - as I'm looking for good spots to gather resources from that aren't too far away.

(Going far away from the village usually ends with an expedition having too much weight to carry. Some items can be dismantled (they end up dismantled anyways as they will be used to craft new items), and some items (particularly plain bone) can be discarded, but going far from the village is really best not done until quite late, if ever.

I'll typically put any unused resources into crafting production queues with no intention of actually crafting. Locking resources in production queues protects them from being stolen by bandits - but only the first item in a production queue locks up resources, so it's a good bit of micromanagement. Still, I really don't want to lose resources to bandits, so there it is.

1

Start Position

Chose 10 Crafted Foods for Theodor, village spawn with vegetables, bone, two wood, wood to south and northeast, sandstone to north. Moved expedition onto village, unequipped all.

Short Term Plan

I plan to rush smithy; once it's built I'll have all additional villagers be crafters so will benefit from the skill increase. This is pretty important to possibly having higher Craft (for crafting items I don't want to turn out poor quality) or higher Strength (to carry armor and weapon/shield as well as heavy crafting tools). This usually means gathering nothing but wood at the start of the game, but double wood in the village means I can keep all villagers on the village, make an expedition with all seven villagers, move it about to trigger encounters, then return to the village to gather and craft at the end of the turn.

Started with some two-hand swords, a one-hand sword and a dexterity-boosting shield, a 9-damage blunt weapon. I'd typically prefer one-hand sword combined with shield for a high Shielding bonus, but two-hand swords give better damage (which is important) and don't weigh as much as a one-hand-sword/shield combo. I'd like some piercing weapons, but that's as it goes; I'd probably end up building pikes anyways.

Mid Term Plan

Nearby sandstone means I can build a Blessed Tree Symbol for the village (it requires materials other than wood). The downside of sandstone is it gives a Beast attraction bonus, and I don't want Beasts. The upside is I won't have to wait to accumulate enough quartz or other materials, which can normally take a pretty long time, especially as I don't plan to research or gather quartz.

Why build a Blessed Tree Symbol at all? Keeping blessings on village members is super good, especially for players like me that tend to leave the village at low combat strength (leaving more villagers and best equipment for the traveling expedition).

I could get sandstone for the Smithy I'm building soon, but that would mean Beast attraction bonus, waiting longer to gather the materials (only one sandstone source opposed to multiple wood sources), and splitting the villagers into two parties. Normally splitting the villagers into two parties is inevitable anyways, but with no piercing weapons and multiple wood sources in the village itself, I'm fine with keeping all villagers in one group on the village.

Sitting on the village means I won't be exploring, and I do need to explore. By the time I gather enough material for the smithy, the best time for scouting (day) will be over, and I won't be able to risk moving too far from the village especially since enemy mobs could show up from unscouted territories to attack the village. Still I can make up for scouting later.

The probable mid-term goal will be pikes. It really depends on what I find in encounters though; if I end up with a load of good piercing weapons I'll be able to put off pike research a bit. Blessed Tree Symbol sets the village up to be less vulnerable, but good pikes means I can fight a lot of 3-skull encounters successfully so get better material rewards that I can use to craft better items.

I'll also probably rebuild my smithy for the highest craft bonus I can get (provided other priorities like well building are met). I used to build with elven wood, but I now think a higher Crafting bonus is worth the loss of Elf attraction (especialy as I try to get elves through events mostly anyways).

Long Term Plan

As usual, ancient wood/moonstone pikes and dragonbone/ancient wood two-hand axes, as well as enchanted bone / gold (for magic and will bonus armor) or enchanted bone / elven wood (for attractiveness bonus). But also probably silver/topaz weapons and armor for Stealth bonus to push for Giants, and backstab items for similar reasons.

I'll also end up with an archery range instead of manger - archery range gives elven attraction bonus and allows Hunters (who have stealth. Mangers would give Gatherers with plenty of attribute bonuses, but I think the Stealth may be more important when pushing into Giants - though if I keep popuation up I won't have a lot of babies maturing into Hunters, every bit may help (and of course if a lot of villagers die then babies will grow up)

Gathering Tool Research Or No?

As usual, I choose "no". Of course one doesn't actually research gathering tools - one researches wicker or spidersilk, and uses the materials to craft a better gathering tool. But even though I won't be getting wicker any time soon, typically the only thing I use gathering tools to get early on are food and basic materials anyways. So I wouldn't be using a gathering tool to catapult my research points. Pushing into pikes instead of one-hand swords means research points from crafted weapons will be slow and a long way off. (One-hand swords tend to be pretty efficient in terms of research points generated per materials used, and almost everything can be used in one-hand-sword crafting. On the other hand pikes require three research points to reach, are pretty inefficient in terms of generating research points, and only take particular materials to craft that often aren't too readily available.

That means I need to save up all the research points I can get. Pushing into one-hand swords for the short term could generate more research points in the short term sure, but research points get more expensive to generate over time so I'd end up paying for it in the long run.

So I decide (as usual) not to research materials for gathering tools.

Inventory

Four two-hand swords of weight 90 or less, some fairly decent (first-tier materials and no good quality, but still not bad), one hammer with 9 damage, two one-hand sword (one weak), one dex-boosting shield, one dex-boosting armor, bad quality bow, artifact that boosts 2 damage.

5 wood, 5 elven wood, 5 dark wood, 5 clay, 5 malachite, 5 leather, 110 meat, 10 string, 5 spidersilk, 2 children

I'll want the elven wood for heavy armor and buildings with elven attaction bonus, but that's far in the future. Dark wood is good for crafting tools with decent bonuses and pikes (considering my short-term plans) - dark wood also makes decent shields and heavy armor, but I don't plan to research shields for quite a while and it makes for heavy armor so I won't use it for that purpose. Clay is a great building material that can also be used for crafting tools and gathering tools - but I typically try not to use it for that purpose as it's just so heavy, leaving less weight for armor and weapons (and typically I use all the weight I can get for heavier armors). Malachite's a low-tier gem useful for random bonuses; I'll probably use it with iron when I get to heavy armors. Leather I can use for dex-boosting clothing (I probably won't need to save it as one tends to gather a good bit of leather); string I'll want to conserve for building projects (some of the buildings require fiber and I may end up needing to use string), spidersilk's good for wells and gathering tools (though I tend to use scaled leather for gathering tools to save on spidersilk).

So I'll need the dark wood for crafting tools (but can't use it now), the string for buildings or catalysts for pikes, and about the only thing I can make right now is leather goods and crafted foods.

Villagers

Gatherers at 5, 4, 4, 4, and 4, which is quite good - some games end up with a bunch of 4s and 3s. Why is 5 and 4 important? 5 (primary gatherer) plus 1/2 * 4 (secondary gatherer) = 7, which is enough to bring in one lot of basic resources (typically wood, vegetables, or fruit). If only 4s and 3s were available, it would require three villagers to bring in a lot instead of two. Having just a point or two more in Gathering on key villagers is like having another whole villager, or even two villagers.

Crafter at 4. Not spectacular, but not bad either.

Equips

I put Dexterity-boosting armor and shield on my Hunter to increase his already-decent Stealth, the hammer on my warrior (as he has decent hit points so can soak up hits and the moderate blunt damage combined with his innate higher damage means his damage will be applied efficiently). Most of the other weapons are sort of low-damage, I don't have other good Stealth, and no good piercing weapons - what that all means is 3-skull boar encounters are out of safe reach (so I won't be able to get wicker and enchanted bone for a while).

I distribute the remaining weapons, giving higher-Strength villagers higher damage weapons. One might think it would make sense to give lower-strength villagers better weapons to compensate for their low strength, but as I'll be deploying my highest-damaging villagers first anyways, spreading damage out just means my front liners would be less efficient. I give the damage-boosting artifact to my blunt weapon warrior.

I give the bow to the crafter. Normally I'd leave it off to avoid skill dilution, but the crafter already has ranged damage.

(A character that levels up typically increases a class skill. But they may also increase any skill they already have. Giving too many different skills to villagers ends up making them not very good at anything. Making an early Smithy causes skill dilution, but the tradeoff is having better crafters and bonus skill points on children that grow to be crafters, and since just about every additional child in the village will be a crafter, well there you go.)

Actions

Scout southwest, find a mystery spot, return to village, distribute villagers so I'll be bringing in two wood lots every turn as I'm rushing smithy. Regular wood consumption on (so villagers will gather at full efficiency), all food consumption off.

Scouting also showed exotic fruit and a lot of wood spots to southwest - suitable for gathering multiple wood.

If I were about to explore a mystery spot with an expediiton, I'd leave food consumption on for that expedition, and probably wait until the expedition was fully healed from any wounds previously sustained. This is especially as enemies like spiders and snakes are venemous so will do extra damage to wounded characters, which can be super important early on, especially in the usual case in which villagers are split between two groups and there's no good arms or equipment to go around.

But in this case I'm sitting on the village with one big group of villagers, and I'm not chancing mystery spots - only random encounters. So I think starting turns wounded is an all right tradeoff for the food resources saved.

Even if I split the villagers, I'll probably not try exploring mystery spots with my current loadout. I could probably handle skeleton/rats, but utiopec/snakes would just be trouble. (Utiopechas hefty stats and snakes are venomous, so it can get pretty bad)

I assign villagers to bring in two lots of wood every turn, ignoring vegetable and bone (as I'm rushing Smithy). Warrior is assigned to meat-meat dish, crafter to leather clothing. If things went as I'd originally planned, I'd switch the two and after two turns of the Warrior working on the leather clothing, I'd put the crafter on the clothing to finish it (to reduce chance of low quality). But I'll probably be splitting the villagers given the multiple-wood-spots to the southwest, and sending the Warrior with the mobile expedition.

Producing crafted foods does slow the smithy rush, but I think it's worth it. It'll take a good while to bring in enough wood for the smithy and I don't want my crafter idle in the meantime.

Next turn I'll redistribute equipment and villagers to send a gathering expedition southwest to gather wood from multiple spots. This is only a small increase in efficiency, but every bit helps. I didn't think I'd find a multiple wood node close to the village as I didn't plan to scout much at all, but it's right there, so I might as well take advantage of it despite the risks of splitting the village population.

Herbalist spawns some distance south of village. It's not far at all, probably two turns of travel.

Wandering elf comes to village.can give food, rob him and chase him off, or kill him for his stuff. The later choices probably carry penalties and are not particularly nice besides. On the other hand food is at a premium. Still, there is a small chance the elf may join the village if food is shared, and the food situation isn't desperate. Share food, two villagers get folklore, herbalism, and intelligence - a bit of skill dilution, but that's as it goes.

2-3

Warrior, hunter, two gatherers head south to gather three wood every two turns. Remaining villagers head north to scout and return to village. The sandstone spot to the north also has two wood lots and coal nearby; a very nice spot to sit on once I've gathered some foods and built the smithy.

There is a mystery spot north by northwest as well. Along with the one to the southwest, that's two, but I won't be heading there until after I've gotten some better gear. I could perhaps clear the spots and get the loot by sending most of the village population, but that's something to consider only after the resources for the smithy are gathered.

Sub-expedition finds campsite, signs of bloody struggle, pieces of human body, from some time ago possibly. Takes a bundle (no other option), get 11 meat, 24 fruit.

4-5

Transfer resources to the main village, turn consumption of meat and fruit on for village and expedition. I'll end up short of meat in time as meat combines with almost anything else (except grains) for basic crafted foods. However, I'd rather use meat than fruit (which is pretty non-replenishable at this time). Still I'll probably get more fruit later so using it shouldn't be an issue. After moving wood into the village, the village has 36 of the 60 wood it'll need to craft a smithy.

Crafter starts fruit/meat crafting.

6-7

Village and expedition combined have 62 wood - just enough to start a smithy and keep fires burning for full villager effectiveness. I turn off food consumption (having forgotten to turn it off on turn 5) and start smithy.

1-skull snakes come up from southwest. Resolving it manually would probably result in wounds; auto-resolving might let me complete without suffering any damage. I move the village expedition into the regular expedition and merge, then send all members of the expedition against the snakes. (Using the village population and merging it meant the resource gathering progress wasn't lost. I could even have used this to send the entire village population against the snakes, but the villagers from the village wouldn't have enough movement to return and that would mean lost efficiency)

Auto-resolved 1-skull Hunting challenge for 6 scaled leather, 3 grain. The grain will be useful for attraction bonuses on buildings once I get enough; I can use the scaled leather to craft not-terribly-heavy gathering tools that are high in efficiency - once I get some straw.

Expedition moves about, finds another campsite / body / loot stash. Gets 10 mushrooms, 8 dryad wood, 13 meat. Dryad wood is paired with mithril for lightweight +5 crafting tools, and can also be used for lightweight armors, weapons, and shields - but for weight savings is ideally paired with diamond. So basically I can't use it, but it's nice to have.

I lock the rare woods I have (elven, dryad, and dark) in production queues against bandits.

8

Villagers level up. One expedition gatherer gets +1 Speech, giving a total of 5, which is close to the 6 I eventually want for encounters (actually two Speech 6, but that's as it goes). Hunter gets +1 Stealth. A gatherer at home gets +1 Strength. Other stuff is health, speech, intelligence - nothing useless. (Eventually I want two characters with Intelligence 6 in each party. and will increases are handy for when I eventually have magic armor).

Night is coming on, and though it's only the first night so encounters may not be that dangerous yet, even a one-skull undead encounter could be dangerous for the poorly equipped village. I plan to keep the expedition near the village, heading southwest towards straw and seaweed that I scouted on earlier turns. I'll likely use the straw and string to make some +1 Gathering Tools, and any excess straw I may use as building materials or a catalyst later (though not good for jewelry, it takes less straw than wood to produce roasted foods down the line, and I do eventually research roasted foods often as it allows me to use any grain or nut surplus I have in recipes.)

I switch village gathering to wood and vegetables, and send expedition southwest. The expedition doesn't quite have the movement it needs to move onto a square with movement cost 1 (which would allow more movement for the sub-expedition to trigger encounters) so I'll set up camp for now and move the expedition two turns from now.

I turn meat and meat/vegetable consumption on to heal up, especially as night is coming on.

9-10

With the expedition fully healed, I look at the equipment loadout and stats again. There just isn't enough to safely take on a mystery spot (if a Utiopec and snakes result) - if I got lucky with the warrior and his blunt damage sure I could still handle it, and I had a Stealth for first action, but it's still just a bit too chancy especially with no pikes and not much armor.

I settle the expedition on a seaweed-wood-wood-straw-exotic fruit spot, assigning the 5-gathering hunter to gather seaweed every three turns, the 4-gatherers to gather wood and straw every other turn, and the warrior to wood after twelve turns (i.e. never). I'll still need to import wood to the village as I plan on building a pasture, then I usually use a good lot of wood for crafting food - I'm always short on wood, always, so I always try to import wood whenever possible. The straw I'll want for the aforementioned reasons, and I do need to diversify foods available for crafting purposes so I'm getting seaweed as well.

The exotic fruit at 180 gathering would require four turns to bring in. If I had a gatherer at 6 I'd go for it instead of seaweed (seaweed's at 150); exotic fruit can also be used to make buildings that don't function better than buildings crafted with regular vegetables or fruit but that do get research points. But as useful as research points are, I'd rather have diversified food for now - especially as rebuilding buildings would ultimatley cost a good deal of effort and material that I'd rather use for other projects.

I turn food consumption off again; will turn it back on for turn 11 just before deep night hits.

[aardvarkpepper]

11-14

Uneventful. Attacked by 4 x Malicious Spider, autoresolve for 1 Spidersilk, 3 Vegetables.

15

Deep night ends, so I can see a bit and send the expedition to scout. There's another turn left to gather seaweed so I leave the expedition in place. Smithy finishes. I turn food consumption off. The village almost has enough resources to start a pasture, and would have had enough if I had turned off vegetable consumption last turn (I could have used meat), but that's okay.

Theodor shows up with 9 coal 9 gold as I've got enough special foods in the village. The gold (along with the already-in-stock dark wood) will be quite useful for a nice gathering tool.

16

Village expedition sees a falling star, follow Horos' mate (it's a special option so will likely give something nice) other option was to leave it. Get a blessing of dexterity on a gatherer, and either giant spider nest for 2-skull sneak, or 2-skull fight. With a three-member expedition the Sneak challenge will probably be a failure, and the 2-skull fight will probably be a failure as well. I view my village expedition; all wounded (because starved last turn) so poison will be quite damaging, one character with 12 damage, others at 9 and 7 respectively (the crafter having 6 ranged damage).

Even with the blessing of dexterity, any normal 2-skull Sneak challenge with three expedition members is certain to fail, whether autoresolving or manually resolving.

A 2-skull Fight challenge *could* be successful with luck, I'd guess I have around 25% to win with some pretty good-sized wounds. The issue is there's probably a Spider Queen with 19-22 hit points and a whopping load of damage; if she is in the offense deck then she will get her damage off at least once and villagers will go down. If she is in the tactics deck then the villagers might kill her before she can do anything, though the weaker spiders will also have First Action that make it less likely to be successful if manually resolving - yet autoresolve might work out.

But autoresolving would be all or nothing; if I manually resolved I could at least retreat.

Considering everything, though, I still decide to go with the Sneak challenge, as it was enabled as a special option from Horos. Hopefully even a failure won't end up in bad results. The worst case scenario would be taking wounds then forced to try a Fight challenge.

Autoresolved, everyone got poisoned.

I start a gold/dark wood crafting tool, and turn food consumption on for the village (vegetables and fruit/meat) for the bonus hit point. I think I'll unite the village population with the main expedition and head to the herbalist hut to try to cure the poison.

4 x Malicious Spider attack expedition, autoresolve for 1 Spidersilk, 1 Porrige (crafted food)

Theodor shows up with 11 Malachite 5 Diamond.

Village snares in fields catch something, spores on fur, examine it (special option probably enabled by sufficient Folklore?) release it

17

Village expedition finds ruined tower. I decide to go inside (normally a bad move with poisoned villagers without good equipment but it could give valuable materials). Got 1 iron and 5 wounds on everyone

Witch/rats come up from south. Manually resolved this could be challenging, but as I'll be joining the village population with the main expedition I can probably crush it with autoresolve.

18

I send one expedition member to the village so it won't be empty.

Expedition (now three strong) finds campsite, body, loot 18 exotic fruit, 24 fish.

I messed up movement and didn't have enough left to camp. This means the poisoned villagers won't heal. I also don't have enough movement to move onto the witch/rats.

19-21

Move onto Herbalists Hut, two-skull to fix poison (Physical), autoresolve, poison removed (huzzah). I also scout grain and bird meat; grain is good for human attraction so I'll be gathering it before I build a pasture. Villagers are still damaged by poison, but I try moving onto the witch/rat 1-skull encounter, get 1-skull fight, sneak, social, and tactic options, choose sneak (with a crafter and a hunter in the group, and a villager with a blessing of dexterity, should win easily). Get 5 exotic fruit, 5 nuts, 1 wooden ring, 4 meat, 1 leather, 1 lucky button.

There are now three mystery spots in one cluster to the north.

The normal village population can't make it to the village so they camp. I leave one villager on the village so a random encounter won't result in game over.

Village finds spider webs, three skull fight option, leave them be. Heavy sickness all around.

22

Sub-expedition moves onto 1-skull spiders, autoresolves for 1 Spidersilk, 1 Ivory Bracelet. Finds goblins torturing some humans, just leaves. (There's some chance I could win a battle but it would depend on the warrior deploying first and getting his blunt attacks off. Goblins often don't have a load of hit points but they do a load of damage. The high damage also makes them dangerous to retreat from, especially for villagers without armor).

Village queues up items so various things won't be grabbed by bandits.

23

Village expedition finds herbs, takes 32 herbs, 7 cane. Special option "by the grace of Svarog we survived the darkness" etc - nope, run away.

Sub-expedition gets the same encounter, 35 herbs, 9 cane, this time a Spider Queen that could be the queen in wait, could attack it by surprise. (Instead of the Svarog text the village expedition saw). Well I don't know. Three expedition members, none wounded, warrior with hammer, hunter with stealth and sword/shield, one gatherer with decent strength and two-hand sword - if a spider queen was in the tactical deck and the warrior deployed from offense that could work out well, and the loot would be nice. The text did say "by surprise" so - I try it.

Enemy has 8 cards (one a spider queen, others probably malicious spiders, some of which could have First Action).

Offense: 11 hp 14 dmg 6 shield; 13 hp 19 blunt damage
Tactical: 22 hp 10 dmg 9 shield Counter Tactic 5 Counter Offense 4 Shield Ally 9 First Action 8

Deploying the sword user first will just see the AI deploy a chump blocking malicious spider, so I deploy the fighter first - which is just as well as he doesn't have any shielding, where deploying the other villagers that do have shielding later will spread damage among the party.

Opponent deploys Malicious Spider from offense and Spider Queen from tactical. This is probably "wrong" as it should be deploying weak spiders from tactical to soak up damage, but that's okay with me. (At any rate the AI will probably use some First Action). I deploy my villager from offense, AI deploys a malicious spider from offense, I pass (I want to put a few attackers in between my shielded villager from offense and my to-be-deployed villager from tactical, so the enemies won't end up all ganging up on the villager from tactical). AI deploys another spider from offense then uses First Action (as predicted), I pass again, malicious spider deploys from tactical, I deploy from tactical, enemy deploys two from tactical. Of all the malicious spiders, only one had poison damage.

Sadly with a bit of not so great RNG, my warrior ended up taking a load of damage and will almost certainly die. Get a Dark Pendant, 4 Spidersilk, 1 Ivory Short Sword, 1 Armored Arm, 5 Wheat, 20 Fur Leather.

However the Herbalist Hut is close at hand, so I go there. She needs 30 food and 5 wood. I take the leftover villager from the expedition, break the encampment, and join the expedition to bring food and wood. Turns out I need to pass a 2-skull Sneak challenge, which just isn't very likely with only a Hunter in the party. So it's probably either lose the warrior, or lose the warrior and 30 food and 5 wood.

I send the expedition back to the wood/grain site to gather wood and grain.

A few words about cabbage patches and babies and population replacement. There's a formula that computes a "normal" population depending on starting villagers (determined by settings before the game starts; a player may change the value from 7 to 10 I think) and turn count. If population is below normal, there's a better chance villagers will be attracted or babies will grow up. This helps prevent losing games from becoming blowouts. However a player really doesn't want to rely on replacement too much, as there's a limit to babies, and always being under population means harder time trying to beat challenges and taking more wounds or running away and not getting loot.

Still in this case there's not much to be done at this point.

Warrior dies, 1-skull undead shows up near village.

24

All the village villagers are at below maximum hit points as they're heavily sick. However this is offset by the +1 hit point from eating two food types. I move onto the 1-skull undead to see if I can trigger a non-fight challenge. I can't, so I run away.

With only three villagers in the main expedition, I can only send parties of two out in any sub-expedition. That's really unsafe, but I do it anyways as it's early yet and I think I may get away with it.

I'll end up needing quite a good bit of wheat to build a cabbage patch and a pasture, but I plan to break off gathering after this turn and head north with the expedition to take care of the undead.

A raging storm comes on the expedition, enter with pride or we don't follow Perun. Well defying Perun will probably not end well, so enter with pride, find cover (rather than try the 3-skull Physical).

25

Transfer goods to village via village expedition. Gold-dark wood crafting tool turned out all right, start straw/string gathering tools. They're only +1 gathering tools but with two gatherers at +6, +1's quite good. I also have cane and scaled leather for gathering tools for later.

Undead moves north, away from village.

26-29

Expedition moves onto village, finds a dead goblin, tries to free it (3-skull physical), fails. From previous playthroughs, I know failing results in random food or perhaps other materials, and no bad consequences. Get 12 wood, goblin dies.

Merge expedition into village to re-equip. I decide to send the expedition back south for wheat to prepare for a cabbage patch, removing a villager from the normal village population and adding it to the expedition.

Sending the expedition south for wheat carries some risk as the gathering spot is more than one turn's travel from the village, night is coming on so monsters will be more aggressive, and there is a dangerous undead in the area. On the other hand the south has spiders and snakes (both spidersilk and scaled leather will be welcome) and possibly the expedition may chance into gear that makes fighting undead easier. As it is, with little armor, no piercing weapons, and no mid-tier weapons, the party isn't quite geared to take on undead in combat.

1-skull spider nears the village from the north.

I decide to send the 2-strong village expedition against the spiders. It's chancy, but both villagers are armed with two-hand swords that are not the weakest of the first tier of materials. Autoresolve 1-skull Fight challenge against 4 x Malicious Spider, get short sword.

A child matures, have standard options (gatherer, crafter, warrior), I choose crafter. With gathering tools starting to be produced, the village will soon have need of more and more skilled crafters. Another gatherer wouldn't address the crafting deficit that's coming up, nor would a warrior. I think a warrior might enable the village to take a tactics challenge against undead if they come near, but a second crafter will enable Sneak, I think - provided I have two villagers with Sneak 6.

Dziody show up, the new crafter gets +2 Folklore.

I check the new crafter; the new crafter has better crafting than the old crafter. Not a big surprise with a smithy giving bonus attribute points. I re-equip to optimize crafting scores. I check to see if I have Sneak 6 x 2 (the crafters have enough), otherwise I might consider crafting some fur leather items).

I only have one crafting tool between the two crafters, so I cancel all queued crafting jobs that were locking material up against bandit raids. I have enough scaled leather for one cane-scaled leather +4 gathering tool, enough gold but not enough dark wood for a +4 crafting tool, and regular wood but not enough iron for a +1 crafting tool. However I have various items I can dismantle to try to get materials, so I do that, looking for scaled leather (none), iron (some), dark wood (some). Dismantling results in no dark wood, so I look at equipped items to see if there's any more dark wood, and of course the +2 damage artifact has dark wood in it, so I dismantle that as well. Luckily this time around I get dark wood from the dismantle, so that's another gold-dark wood crafting tool coming up. I lock everything in production queues again.

At some point I'll produce fur leather clothing for armor. It's heavier than regular leather for the same stats, but fur leather usually comes in good quantity, and fur leather clothing generates excellent research points for materials spent. In the meantime I start working on a gold-dark wood crafting tool and a wood-grain pasture.

With the new crafter in place at the village, possibly protecting it against attack, I send the expedition farther south than I'd planned just a couple turns ago, to harvest grain, bird meat, and fruit, rather than wood and grain. The expedition had built up a good stock of wood on its way south so could sit in place and gather. I prioritize gathering fruit (every turn), wheat (every two turns), and bird meat (every three turns), planning to camp for six turns through the night turns that have terrible visibility anyways.

30-32

Deep night starts.

Expedition happens on ruins of a house, signs of struggle, move rubble, 2-skull goblins attack. As expected, they have not great hit points but decent equipment so some shielding or high damage for each. I retreat, two characters suffer deadly wounds and one minor wounds. One of the characters is reduced to negative wounds, but only -3, so might survive (might) - I think the game might allow characters with only slightly negative wounds better chance to survive in the early game. That didn't apply to the warrior earlier; he'd been reduced to -15 and was going to die one way or another.

33

One character recovers from deadly wound range, another is still at 0 hit points. Village expedition happens on a near-dead goblin, attempt to free it with 3-skull physical, fail (as expected), get 10 bird meat. Expedition scouts a 1-skull spider, attacks for 1-skull fight option (only one available), autoresolve, get 2 bird casserole

I could try to reach the herbalist hut but I'd forgotten about it so didn't have any movement left after sending a sub-expedition out.

34

Sub-expedition scouts 1-skull snakes southwest, doesn't engage (not enough to engage and return to camp).

Divine quest spawns.

Nobody dies (everyone's out of deadly wound range)

35

Expedition finds a black wolf that wants us to follow, could be a sign from Horos (but not a special option). I decide to chance it; wolves do good damage (but not on the level of goblins) and are somewhat durable, I'd be in trouble if there were any alpha wolves but hopefully there wouldn't be. There were also other possibilities that wouldn't involve fighting. From there three options; one-skull Hunting, two-skull Fight, or leave though it may displease Horos (nope, not going to risk that). Autoresolve, get Blessing of Dexterity all around, hunter gets +2 Dexterity permanently, 4 bone, 5 fur leather.

36

Move expedition onto village, start straw-fur leather gathering tools (which I ought to have started sooner) and wood-grain cabbage patch after researching cabbage patch.

With day coming on, I reassign a crafter from village to expedition, so a 5-strong expedition can try the clustered mystery spots to the north. There are reasons this isn't a good idea - there's still plenty of material to craft so the crafter should be working at crafting, the expedition isn't particularly well equipped (especially with no armors), I still need to scout west and east rather than retreading already-scouted areas to the north. On the other hand, I don't have much dark wood or iron, which is the minimum I want to craft pikes with, nor do I have much heavy armor. If I want materials and/or equipment (both of which I really do need if I ever want to press on set 3-skull encounters like boars that give good loot, or spider queen autoresolving which also gives good loot) the mystery spots are the best bet, and leaving the village under-strength is best done during the day when there's less chance of wandering monsters attacking.

[aardvarkpepper]

37

First mystery spot yields a skeleton and four rats; enemy moves first and deploys skeleton from offense. Gatherer takes deadly wounds (at -12 wounds); get 1 buckler, 1 leather, 1 battle slingshot, 16 quartz, 3 wheat, 1 clay. Second mystery spot same encounter but I go first, multiple light wounds, black sword, heavy armour, 2 meat, 2 monster bone, 1 leather, 1 quilted cloth, 8 iron, 17 fish, 6 topaz. I camp.

Taking on the second mystery spot was foolhardy; after all I was running the risk of utiopec (which is really deadly) and I'd already lost a member (though not dead yet, zero or negative wounds means they won't participate in challenges). However with an armored and shielded sword/shield hunter, I figured I could maybe squeak out a win - a lot depended on who went first, and whether a skeleton deployed from offense or defense.

As it is, I could have probably saved a villager by trying the mystery spots later, but that would have meant trying to get materials or equipment from other encounters, without really having enough villagers or equipment to win encounters with. So I risked village population for loot, got a little unlucky (both skeletons had more hit points than I'd anticipated; I figured they might have 22-25 but they both had 33+), and here I am.

It isn't all bad though; I still have a child in the village that may mature, I have materials to craft gathering tools with, and I will be building a cabbage patch. Still, it's not like babies or villagers are just going to drop out of the sky; I've really been pressing my luck a lot.

As anticipated, the badly wounded villager dies.

Though I've lost two villagers, I think on balance it's all right. Certainly not great, but pushing for materials was the right thing to do, and the village had enough babies and attraction present or upcoming to offset losses - and having the appropriate materials would be very important.

38

With a villager having died, the expedition is now overweight. I dismantle a two-handed sword (it was all-iron so had pretty decent stats and weight) but that's as it goes. I probably won't have anyone capable of equipping the heavy armor but some Strength boosts from leveling or Strength bonuses from monster bone / monster bone jewelry could fix that.

1-skull spider moves near village from the north

39

I send 3-strong expedition to attack spider, get 1-skull Hunting challenge, autoresolve, get 2 spidersilk 1 meat kebabs (crafted food). With only 3 in the expedition, I don't want to send a 2-strong sub-expedition scouting around, and it happens to be daylight, so I'll send the expedition around to scout.

I discover a 1-skull undead to the northeast, and park the expedition within village-expedition movement range. Next turn I'll transfer excess material from the expedition to village expedition, move a newly crafted +2 gathering tool from village expedition to expedition, and depending on where the undead ends up, may attempt to take the undead out with a non-combat Sneak challenge.

Undead runs off to the north.

40-41

Village expedition happens on dragon bones, better safe than sorry so leave the place (if I try to gather them, either spiders or dwarves or something will pop out and I can't fight that even though I could get away even if that happened). But why go through that and delay? I think. Well I get Bless of Intelligence on the village expedition so that works out well.

42-45

Expedition happens on hidden stash, get 18 nuts, 6 scaled leather, 7 gold. That's pretty much gathering and crafting tools right there - probably I'll get another crafter sometime soonish and I can get dark wood somewhere to go with the gold, and I need scaled leather for the cane I already have for +4 gathering tools. I run away after that instead of fighting 3-skull boars that would kill me.

Even if I'd had more villagers it wouldn't really help. Boars can take something like 22-25 hit points of damage or more, and deal 20-24 or so blunt damage. The issue is I simply need to kill them before they kill me, which means pikes, first action with Stealth, and/or some whopping big weapons. But the dead warrior wouldn't have been enough on his own, usually I leave crafters in the village so there wouldn't have been first action, and I haven't researched pikes nor do I have the material to make dark wood / iron pikes anyways (I'm saving monster bone for Strength-increasing rings).

Expedition has black cat cross its path. Well either this gives a Blessing of Dexterity or lose a party member, and I really can't afford to lose party members so I run away.

I scout a 1-skull sitting on top of a Goiblin Village lair (the village is probably a 2-skull). Thinking it might be spiders I move onto it, but it turns out to be undead. The opponent deploys a broken skeleton from offense, and I can deploy two cards, so things work out really well; I played badly but got lucky. I get 1 ribcage (shield), 1 monster bone, 3 seaweed cookies

Expedition is attacked by 4 Malicious Spider, autoresolve for 2 spidersilk, 2 bird meat.

A Lapiduch shows up, I leave it alone, get +1 will on a villager.

Kid matures, standard options, choose crafter. As it is, the village is running terribly short on wood (only 45 in stock and decreasing rapidly), adding another crafter means wood will disappear even faster. I may use a crafter for the expedition for more Stealth, or transfer a gatherer from expedition to village to perma-gather wood, at any rate I have to consider it.

46-50

I start production of some iron-wood crafting tools. Not enough dark wood for gold-dark wood, Village expedition attacks 1-skull spider, autoresolve Fight, get 2 spidersilk, 1 smith's apron.

I check the expedition and dismantle a bone-dark wood shield (dark wood / bone isn't a great shield; if it were dark wood / dark wood it'd have good stats but bone just makes it bad); I dismantle it for 3 dark wood. So I'll have enough dark wood to produce a gold-dark wood crafting tool when I get home, but I still produce iron-wood crafting tools - they generate good research points and I can equip to excess crafters that I'll probably get sometime soon anyways.

Expedition attacked by 3 x Broken Skeleton, 1 x Unliving Corpse. Suffer deadly wounds on a character (goes to -3). Move expedition onto village, 6 x Karakandra attack. Retreat from combat, two characters suffer deadly wounds (-10 and -11)

Move village population onto 2-skull Karakandra, autoresolve Sneak, get Leshy's Wrath (two-hand sword), Stone Warhammer, Heavy Armour, Scaled Coat, Leather Jerkin, Shadow Armour, Bone Spike Armour. Since two villagers will die next turn I figure I may as well try to take out the 2-skull while I can.

Attacked by 1 Unliving Corpse, 2 x Broken Skeleton. Manually resolve, get Buckler, 2 x Monster Bone, 1 x Leather Jerkin. For whatever reason they didn't do much damage, maybe because the village is down to 5 population

[aardvarkpepper]

50 Turn Retrospect

I took a lot of risks to push for better materials early, lost population, and without population had a difficult time with encounters so lost even more population. It's still possible to recover; the village still has strong gathering, crafting, stealth, and now almost-decent equipment (though no pikes yet).

I did have some slightly bad luck in that multiple attackers hit one particular character instead of splitting their attacks among targets, but I'd chosen to engage in the first place and take the risk, so really at least one early death was avoidable. Of the other deaths, sure I was attacked and couldn't do much at that point, but if I hadn't lost population earlier, I would have had more to deal with the opponents.

I also had some bad luck in that early encounters didn't pull in any piercing weapons or much armor.

On reflection, I could have taken it easier and suffered fewer casualties. That might not have turned out well though - with a serious lack of good materials to craft, I lacked equipment, as well as research points to push into pikes. Trying to be very conservative would result in more population but much less material, and uniting the village population at the village would result in less various materials being gathered, though possibly the population could win a lot of 2-skull non-Fight challenges and avoid risking wounds or doing poorly because of a lack of equipment in combat.

As it is, I now have 5 population, and a good amount of decent low-tier equipment. It's pretty bad considering 3-skull encounters may be showing up soon, but with the village population so low, attraction bonuses may pull in some replacement villagers, so things may yet turn out all right.

[aardvarkpepper]

50-58

Dismantle some items to get quartz to rebuild cabbage patch with quartz / grain. Dismantle more items to get dark wood for dark wood / iron pike. Village expedition finds silver location. Use five food types for a turn so village population can reach mystery spot (the combat won't be great but there's a shortage of dark wood and equipment's almost reasonable now with one dark wood / iron pike, and everyone armored to some extent even if the armor isn't very good). Utiopec and 3 Warped Snake (it wasn't spiders, my bad), the utiopec has 26+1 hit points and does 41 damage also is level 6 so would be hard to Confuse though I don't have a warrior with Tactics anyways. What with decent damage from two-hand swords, light shielding from the same, counter tactic, first action, and the pike, win handily with no wounds, get club, heavy monster chopper (two-hand axe with monster bone; this one also has steel), laminar armour, 2 scaled leather, shadow armour, 9 amber, 4 grain, 2 granite.

No children yet.

[marko]

Perhaps you were a bit too greedy on turn 23 (risking a spider queen party with only 3 pop expedition). Usually such a fight is about making sure you kill the queen before it can attack. Here your 13 HP warrior (no shielding) is really vulnerable on the one hand but still necessary on the other hand (because of its blunt damage). The tactical First Action didn't help you out either as you probably needed it to soke up some damage from the malicious spiders on the right.

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by marko:

Perhaps you were a bit too greedy on turn 23 (risking a spider queen party with only 3 pop expedition). Usually such a fight is about making sure you kill the queen before it can attack. Here your 13 HP warrior (no shielding) is really vulnerable on the one hand but still necessary on the other hand (because of its blunt damage). The tactical First Action didn't help you out either as you probably needed it to soke up some damage from the malicious spiders on the right.

As I wrote, that's not the case. On some playthroughs, such as this one, a player needs to consider gear, materials, and monster progression as well as population. Trying to take the "safe" route to protect population ends with complete loss of map control and waiting in the village to die. Also I did not misplay. I am quite familiar with spreading bodies out and passing turns if need be to spread damage out. It's simply that the party was outnumbered *and* three enemies attacked in one direction rather than splitting attacks. I took a chance, the chance didn't play out in my favor, but that's as it goes.

==

I'll be a bit more explicit about the need to take risks.

A player can be maximally safe by keeping all the villagers in a single party in the village and doing nothing but harvesting and crafting. The downside of this is less triggered encounters means less chances for loot, and the economic settings at 350 mean the village is usually barely making ends meet insofar as food is concerned much less making any advancements in gear. As the player huddles in the village, though, monsters get increasingly more powerful, which isn't a problem until 3-skull encounters show up as early as turn 40 or so. Even then it's hardly fatal, but it is a turning point - without good gear to increase non-Fight challenge skills, or gear to help in Fight challenges, the village now stands some real chance of being attacked and sustaining some fairly serious wounds.

Well this sounds all right, because a player can take measures such as increasing food types consumed and building a Herbalist for faster healing to reduce danger periods from slightly negative hit points. However, a player still enters a pseudo-fail state at that point, which happens when multiple aggressive 3-skull encounters show up around nighttime and repeatedly attack the village. Without time to recuperate, wounds pile up, and villagers die.

Granted, that does not necessarily happen as early as turn 40. But once a player enters that low-resource-income game, the outcome gets pushed towards that conclusion. When 4-skull and 5-skull encounters show up, the population is so ill equipped, at that point the player takes a huge risk by splitting village population into an expedition to gather any sort of materials at a distance. Just sitting in the village means death, sending an expedition out means death, a player runs out of options.

==

On the other hand, a player can send their expeditions abroad during daylight hours, and otherwise take steps to try to increase material income while simultaneously trying to protect villagers. In *most* games, this works out all right. However, in *some* games such as this one, even some turns into the game, playing "safely" ends up with no armor (I had one piece of armor) and no good weapons and not even enough materials to craft anything worth crafting.

Again, this isn't seemingly a problem at first, even less so as a player is getting some material income and is making some progress. But again, without good materials or equipment, inevitably a player gets pushed into huddling in the village, and inevitable fail state. Mind, this is *not* the case for many playthroughs, but *some* playthroughs such as this one have a serious lack of decent even low-tier equipment and armor in early drops.

Explicitly in this playthrough - early game I had a 9 damage 2-handed hammer, which allows for more efficient damage distribution, and a selection of decent low-tier two-hand swords, which allow decent damage but not enough shielding against any sort of serious damage dealing monster (undead, goblins, boars, dwarves, as well as boss-types leading weak swarms). I had some low-tier-grade armor, no pikes or even decent staves or even any piercing weapons at all. In terms of material, there was scarcely enough dark wood to put together a couple crafting tools, never mind weapons. Mind also the upper carry weight limit was 350 on the warrior, 300 on a gatherer, and the rest mostly lower in the 200 range.

To be explicit on that point - a player can craft protective gear out of low-tier materials, but typically such armors provide 9-10 protection and weigh 200-250+. For the weaker characters, that means no leftover weight for weapons or any other sort of gear (if they're even able to carry the armor). But that means they're pretty useless because their weak attacks can't even kill battle fodder. Even characters that can carry 300-350 are often left without good options - either they use a two-hand sword for all right damage but not good damage distribution that a blunt weapon would offer, or they use something else similarly "not good" - many randomly found blunt weapons won't be light enough to wield, one-hand-sword/shield often weighs in the area of 160+ so there isn't enough weight for that, and though pikes are ideal, in this playthrough I didn't have any pikes or any materials for crafting even decent low-tier pikes.

Reading through the early turns shows I was risk-averse in that I didn't simply head towards nearby mystery spots. My thought was I would randomly get materials (perhaps) that would let me push into those areas - but it wasn't happening, and the game monsters were advancing. So I took risks.

What would I have considered adequate for this playthrough to not take such risks? One or two staves with 3 damage and 2 poison damage perhaps, one suit of armor providing at least 8 hit points weighting 150 or less, twelve additional dark wood (I'd used eight dark wood for crafting tools, but I'd want some for pikes). I'm not saying *all* of those, mind. ANY of them would have been enough. But none were at hand, and the game was advancing, and I didn't think I could afford to wait any longer to push for materials or equipment.

After all as I wrote, without decent armors, without piercing weapons, with only a few low-tier weapons,, without any serious materials to craft better gear, what is the outcome most likely? Stagnation and game failure. Researching armors wasn't a real option; there wasn't material to *make* armors that would provide decent protection that would yet be light enough for villagers to carry yet fulfill any sort of real role other than damage sponges that could only die slowly in combat.

==

Then too there's a question of earnable rewards. Once a player can break the 3-skull challenge level, a player stands to gain a great deal from various random encounters, particularly boars for straw and enchanted bone (gathering tools and magic-imparting gear), spider queen for various rewards, &c &c. So there's a really big incentive *not* to just sit around and try to wait for things to come to you, because the longer one waits, the more rewards one must give up.

So there's a serious incentive to push for gear or materials to craft decent gear that allows a player to press on those 3-skull challenges.

==

Besides all those factors is also the fact that villagers are replacable. Granted a player really doesn't want to grind through population as replacements are slow to come even if population is below the normal maximum, giving better chances of babies growing up &c. But if one *has* the gear, one *can* possibly recover villager count through attraction and child growth

On the other hand, if one *doesn't* have the gear then there really aren't any options or possibility of advancement or recovery.

==

Mind in *most* games I don't think players should take risks with their population. Just one good piercing weapon, a couple okay low-tier armors, and some materials, and a player can press for advancement, breaking the 3-skull barrier while not needing to take risks to get better gear and/or equipment.

In *this* particular playthrough, though, I pretty much had nothing to work with in terms of equipment or materials off early turns, so I thought it necessary and appropriate to take risks.

Even if this particular game run ends in failure, I still think it was the correct thing to do to take risks in those particular situations. Better a 50% chance of failure over the next twenty turns than a 95% chance of failure over the next sixty turns.

==

Readers are free to dispute this interpretation. But rather than open-ended comments like "this risk was unnecessary" or "this is where things could have been done differently", commenters should look to describing *specific alternatives* and possibly supply reasoning as to why those alternatives would be better. It's not just "oh okay just put more people in the expedition" - that means less in the village. Everything added somewhere has to come out of somewhere else.

I described the outcome in turn 23 as "not so great RNG". But more specifically, it only turned out badly for me because of the 1/8 outcome of all monsters in a group attacking to one side rather than splitting. Taking on a Spider Queen with a party of 3 without great gear is normally somewhat risky, but the dialogue in-game led me to believe the Spider Queen might deploy from Tactical (it did) and things turned out the way they did.

If the Spider Queen had deployed from offense then you could say I made an ill-infomrd decision based on my thought that the Spider Queen would deploy from tactical. But that worked out, and as it worked out I had a 7/8 chance of escaping with only moderate wounds off the encounter, and I did need the materials. So I can't say I was wrong not to retreat either.

[marko]

I totally agree with the above. You really want to be aggressive on 350%; it's a very different experience than 300% for example (and therefore much more enjoyable).

As far as specific alternatives go, there are two things I do a bit differently (I think) and want to note here:

You mention that increasing your expedition comes at a cost: less people at home. So far my experience is that having only 1 person at home is doable in the beginning. I usually would have two: my best crafter and one gatherer (hopefully a 7). The expedition then would consist of 5. While camping for gathering one would leave 1 behind (the weakest fighter). This leaves 4 as a minimum. I very seldomly move a group with less than 4 even one step and most often it is 5 or more. Having 5 is nice of course as it is odd: 3 on offense and 2 on tactical. During the night time I would keep my expedition in the neighbourhood of Ostoya in case it needs to be rescued. Could this be an alternative tactic?

Secondly, in the beginning I want to maximize the number of foodstuffs the expedition eats. For example usually within the first 10 turns I would equip the expedition with at least 5 foodstuffs. This gives an extra movement point which is important for triggering more events. Above 5 the bonuses get very interesting imo. Sometimes you find a few foodstuffs of which you only get 1 (or very few). You can save them and then use them together to get the bonus increase in stats for just a few turns, during which you can even take more risks than normally. Cheers.