OK, let's talk weapons, armor, and researching them

[EatExcreteRepeat]

First, the reason I started this thread is strictly without complaining in mind. I am in love with Thea, and MuHa has done a great job designing it. I wish to approach a discussion of the game with the idea of either taking this well-designed game and making it even better, or as a way to explore and learn more efficient strategy by talking about our perceptions and strategies.

In general, all the weapon types seem to be well thought out and specialized, but there are a few particular problems I would say need to be addressed.

First, 2-Hand Swords seem outright unnecessary. You already have Sword/Shield for the same tech investment, which offers about the same thing but with more protection and less offense, or you could get Axe/Shield for about the same thing with more offense and less protection. Sure, there is some conceivable middle-of-the-road situation where you want ALL the protection and ALL the offense of a 2-hand sword rather than any of the weapon combinations with a shield, but that's rare enough as to really be a non-factor. When you consider research, the ability to manufacture shields gives so much more flexibility and basically the same benefits, I don't really see when you would ever want 2-hand swords. I would like to see 2-hand swords be given their own unique niche, maybe as an entirely different damage type, because they seem sort of pointless right now.

Second, the way to research weapons is cumbersome. When I intend to get 2-handed versions of a weapon, I must go through the 1-handed version. But since I intended to get the 2-handed version, there is no point in actually crafting the 1-handed version. Alternately, if I just wanted the 1-handed version, there is no reason for me to go research the 2-handed version. This is especially true of the blunt weapons line, where clubs are vastly inferior to warhammers pretty much all of the time, so you could pretty much just consider 2-handed hammers to cost 2 research points.

Third, the way armor is researched is cumbersome. The limited number of materials that can be turned into Heavy Armor means there will be cases where you upgrade into Heavy Armor, only to find out that the medium armor you were already using was still better, depending on what materials you have available. Even if all materials were available, scaled leather medium armor is fairly powerful and I don't really think there's any heavy armor I would prefer over it that wasn't also incredibly, stupidly more expensive, like Mithrill. The ability to make fairly good heavy armor out of bone or leather would help immensely.

Alternately, perhaps you could abbreviate the armor tech line and make Heavy Armor a tier 1 tech. You have one line for light armor to medium armor, and then another line of heavy armor to something else, maybe brand new super-heavy armor, or brand new helmets. Heavy armor is already basically armor that is so massive, it is rarely viable for classes other than Warriors to have them, and so fulfills a totally different function than the light and medium armors.

[meiam]

Well 2 handed sword have some limited use because they can be pretty light, so it's usefull for character who can't carry a lot and couldn't wield a proper sword and board, but not worth teh research point imo.

Yeah the research tree is a bit meh with 1 handed and two handed, but my solution to that is to move shield to it's own tree and maybe have an heavy variant. That way you don't have to go trough sword and you have some use out of the 1 handed variant of every weapon.

You can see what can be turned into heavy armor when you research it, plus getting mithril is just as hard as getting dragon bone, so I'm not sure why it would matter wether or not you could make good bone heavy armor. I'm not quite sure what situation I would ever unlock high level bone over mithril, to get attract demon I guess maybe.

I think my only real complain with the gathering research is that a lot of the line feel secondary since the material are usefull to only a very limited number of stuff. Like vine, why would I get that over anything else? Similarly for most dead end tier two stuff, it's hard to justify them when I'll have to spend a point to get the other tier two and eventually get T3 and rarelly ever use the T2 stuff anymore. Maybe if all T2 could link to T3, that way you could switch up your strategy from game to game. Or maybe if you could see the location of the gathering spot before spending the research so sometime it'd be worth grabing them since you know there's a gather point close by.

[Halfgeek]

Balance is slightly off with 2 hand hammers being very good while 2 hand axe and sword are pretty weak.

Spears should definitely be 1 handed, allowing spear + shield combo.

Generally 1h sword is much superior to 1h axe or clubs, since the damage gap between them are very low, ie. Top 1h sword has 17 base damage with shielding. Club has much less dmg no shielding (but blunt) while Axe has 20 damage with nothing.

Currently all you really need is 1h sword + shield + 2 hand hammer.

2h axe could be useful with Elven fighters since they retain Piercing bonus.

[EatExcreteRepeat]

Why allow bone versions of heavy armor? It is simply another resource you can turn into heavy armor, which makes the tech itself more flexible, which makes it more powerful. To be honest, though, the more I think about it, the more the armor problem seems to lie in Scaled Leather being way too powerful as an armor material that I don't really feel like advancing past it.

As for materials, I agree there are definitely problematic research lines there.

The wood lines I quite like. Dark Wood is a fairly cool material while Elven Wood is sort of dubious, so it makes sense to force people to choose between a good material that is a dead end, or a poorer material that opens the way to more advanced tech.

The metal line I quite disagree with. Gold makes relative sense as a dead end because it provides something unique in boosting Will. But Silver outclasses Steel in just about every way - in value, in weight, and in the fact that it has a special associated attribute that steel does not. Why is Silver also favored as being the metal to continue into Mithrill? Now, I am willing to entertain that perhaps steel has an advantage I have overlooked, but as I recall, it is similarly difficult to gather compared to silver. Perhaps Silver and Mithrill should be made significantly harder to gather, or steel easier, in order for steel to become a stronger tech option?

Getting the advanced string is stupid. Not enough items require string as main or secondary ingredients, and none of the types of string are particularly strong to be desirable. Furthermore, Spider Silk is both powerful (even moreso than vine, I believe?) and much too commonly available, so the options to tech into Vine and Spider Silk are almost never desirable.

Wicker is very cool, but I don't get why Cane exists, and I have honestly not used Nimblewood much to understand its role. I have not had the opportunity to use Nimblewood because there is very little to craft with the straw type of ingredient, so I just use wicker and call it a day.

I think Dragon Leather should come after Fur Leather, because Scaled Leather is so strong. It's the same scenario as the wood lines - force players to choose between a better material that is a dead end or a worse material that is not a dead end.

The bone tech lines is fairly straightforward.

The Stone tech lines is very good design, in my opinion, and the straw tech line could borrow from it. Most stones are just about only good for buildings, but then the tech line ends with Moonstone that is also very good for weapons. Maybe if Nimblewood was very good for shields and/or armor or something, it'd be more tempting to research advanced straw.

[Pentalis]

Hhm, I'm going to experiment researching 2-handed swords in this game to see what the niche for these weapons could be.

I've noticed that the game is implicitly balanced in many aspects that don't seem obvious at first. For example, 1-handed axes are really strong, but the reason they are so strong is that you must use 7 units of bone plus the other materials to craft one. The more material you need for something, the stronger it is, but also heavier and harder to gather materials for it. A one handed axe requires more units of material than a pike!.

So now I'm going to see what benefit I can get from 2-handed swords, because just as you say, I've never researched them XD they seem useless to me, but perhaps they have a specific hidden application, like gearing up low-strength characters.

Before I perform my tests, I believe 2-handed swords should either be much heavier, or much lighter than the sword-and-board alternative, because if it is about the same weight, then it is redundant and less versatile, and therefore inferior.

[Black Raven]

i think heavy armour should have shielding tbh

half its Armor value, and the rest is shielding, which will make it much more viable

[76561188078797539]

Nice analysis, sLaughter.

Quick personal take on things:
- 2 handed swords underperform. Perhaps give them an additional shielding bonus that's applied to any neighbouring ally card (but not the wielder)?
- shields deserve their own line (there was a thread already discussing that)
- 1 handed axes need either a damage boost, or something different to make them more appealing to use. In the same vein as 2 handed swords, maybe have both 1h and 2h give offense bonus to neighbouring ally card?
- nobody will use clubs anyway >.>
- the whole armor line needs rework (perhaps with inclusion of shields into it). There's no point in tiering up to heavy - by the time you can afford to make those, you're unlikely to actually need them. Also, best medium armor is probably too good (or heavy underperforming stat-wise).

Resources:

Frankly, I think current system of 1RP for each unlock might add to a lot of things being lackluster compared to easily reached alternatives.

Cane, Nimblewood, Vine, Dryad Wood, Fur Leather, Clay, Granite... Aside from very, very specific instances when some of them are used as + Attract resources for specific playthroughs, or for some end-game item creation (and even then they are hardly a necessity), there is little point in unlocking them.

Not knowing where the nodes spawn prior to spending the RP doesn't help prioritise potentially closer lower-quality resources. but I doubt this part is going to change.

I completely disagree on Spider Silk, though. It's a very beneficial an unlock, if only for mass-producing items for RPs. Although the additional gathering bonus on tools is very, very, very nice and well worth the unlock expense, especially on Insane economy.

Also, the stone line actually could benefit from switching granite with obsidian - Obsidian has +stealth bonus on it, and it also serves as + Attract Goblin resource. Granite doesn't have any such utilities.

I believe balancing both Gathering and Crafting tech trees around the idea of multiple RPs being necessary to unlock higher quality options could alleviate current situation. Though it would also require a change in RP gain calculations (and corresponding balance changes to Construction).

[Pentalis]

Originally posted by Sheepify:

Nice analysis, sLaughter.

Quick personal take on things:
- 2 handed swords underperform. Perhaps give them an additional shielding bonus that's applied to any neighbouring ally card (but not the wielder)?
- shields deserve their own line (there was a thread already discussing that)
- 1 handed axes need either a damage boost, or something different to make them more appealing to use. In the same vein as 2 handed swords, maybe have both 1h and 2h give offense bonus to neighbouring ally card?

What?,
1 handed axes are extremely powerful. You can make a 1 handed axe that hits for 35 (dragon bone + mithril), that's extremely powerful!, on top of that, 15 of that damage is just leech. These weapons are already very powerful as it is.

Originally posted by Sheepify:

- nobody will use clubs anyway >.>

Dragon bone 1 handed mace is a feasible option specially when you need a shield.

Originally posted by Sheepify:

- the whole armor line needs rework (perhaps with inclusion of shields into it). There's no point in tiering up to heavy - by the time you can afford to make those, you're unlikely to actually need them. Also, best medium armor is probably too good (or heavy underperforming stat-wise).

I find myself beelining up to heavy fairly often. Never underestimate the fact that heavy armors can be made out of wood, as I said at the start of this thread. There was a game where the only resource I could safely access close to my base was Ancient Wood, and I made all my gear with it. Then I could get out of my base and actually win the game.

Originally posted by Sheepify:

Resources:

Frankly, I think current system of 1RP for each unlock might add to a lot of things being lackluster compared to easily reached alternatives.

Cane, Nimblewood, Vine, Dryad Wood, Fur Leather, Clay, Granite... Aside from very, very specific instances when some of them are used as + Attract resources for specific playthroughs, or for some end-game item creation (and even then they are hardly a necessity), there is little point in unlocking them.

Dryad Wood is a fantastic resource, not only it is very light allowing for the lightest shields in the game (while still being powerful), but also you can make Tears of the Dryad with it (a jewelry item requiring 4 Dryad Wood), and of course emergency Heavy Armor. It also allows crafting the lightest, strongest Crafting Tools (4 mithril, 4 dryad wood). So it has its applications; less so than Ancient Wood, bit it's still good on its own.

I have to agree with Cane, Nimblewood, Vine, Fur Leather and Granite though.
Clay has some applications, mainly the fact that you can instantly click on it and get a powerful building material that is also very easy to collect and gives a lot of research points. But yes, in general... it's not worth researching them.
Fur leather is very good, but we get enough of it from kills.

[EatExcreteRepeat]

Sheepify's idea of abolishing the 1RP per tech system could definitely solve the current balance problem between materials, but it strikes me that this would just cause further balance problems of how much to value each tech. I also quite like how intuitive the 1RP per tech system is.

But speaking of ideas for quick fixes to materials imbalance, why not allow players to see resources they can't take, and just red out the button? If you have a desirable resource farther away and a slightly worse version conveniently close, it might factor into your calculation of what to research. This could also help people get out of their shell and start playing a more varied game. If you usually prefer to get advanced metals quick and make swords, perhaps seeing that you have good axe material close by might push you into a more axe-based playstyle instead. That could be a fun way to subtley have players change up their style.

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by Sheepify:

- nobody will use clubs anyway >.>

...

I do. It's an easy way to get some Blunt damage going and, being one-handed, you can also equip shields. I think they're quite useful.

[Halfgeek]

Originally posted by Pentalis:

1 handed axes are extremely powerful. You can make a 1 handed axe that hits for 35 (dragon bone + mithril), that's extremely powerful!, on top of that, 15 of that damage is just leech. These weapons are already very powerful as it is.

You're talking about the 2 handed axe there.

1h axe with dragon bone and mithril only do ~20 damage with 13 leech.

A 1h sword with dragon bone and mithril do close with less leech but lots of shielding. Or a perfectus 1h sword that does 17 damage, lots of shield and other stats.

The problem with axe/club is they are stuck in no-man's land. They do don't enough damage to justify losing the defense of a sword. Whereas 2h has very high damage, it can focus on killing things outright to not need defense.

Blunt damage is really only useful with high base damage, so that it can overkill and transfer to the next target. Clubs lack punch, with the 1h variants topping out at ~7 damage, way too low to be useful.

[Pentalis]

Originally posted by Halfgeek:

Originally posted by Pentalis:

1 handed axes are extremely powerful. You can make a 1 handed axe that hits for 35 (dragon bone + mithril), that's extremely powerful!, on top of that, 15 of that damage is just leech. These weapons are already very powerful as it is.

You're talking about the 2 handed axe there.

1h axe with dragon bone and mithril only do ~20 damage with 13 leech.

That's a total of 33 damage, I off by 2 points. Leech is damage.

[Pentalis]

Originally posted by Halfgeek:

Blunt damage is really only useful with high base damage, so that it can overkill and transfer to the next target. Clubs lack punch, with the 1h variants topping out at ~7 damage, way too low to be useful.

There are enemies with low HP but high damage that come in large numbers. To dispose of them, one club user in the party is not a bad idea at all.

[EatExcreteRepeat]

The meta seems to be 1h swords and then 2h hammers going by this forum. I certainly don't think that is the only way to play, though, merely the best for some people, and since it's worked for them, everyone is trying to copy it.

I can see the potential of clubs. A club + shield can feasibly neutralize the damage from 3 small creatures by shielding one and then killing 2, whereas a warhammer can only neutralize 2, and someones after taking damage from 1. The shield/club is also safer to play against decks that may have piercing damage. Would I rather use club/shield than warhammer? Still probably not, for the vast majority of situations, but I can at least conceive of some use for them. On the bright side, you can still pump their damage with Support Ally if a double kill is out of reach for your club user.

Staffs and pikes are similarly able to perform a double-kill, or hit the single target for 1.5x damage. Pierce users are also a bit safer due to themselves being immune to enemy pierce users when used correctly, and a bit easier to control with their ability to sometimes negate the opponent's turn 1 advantage.

I think single handed axes definitely have their niche as well. I think of the option to take ax over sword as a playstyle thing. Some people just prefer a slightly more offensive bent without sacrificing the ability to avoid a wound or two from a smarmy Malicious spider. It is a sad thing that you can't access shields from axes in the tech tree, though.

As an aside, I think pikes being made 1-handed was a good suggestion. The piercing weapon line could invert the usual tech progression by starting with 2-handed staff weapons, and then allowing you to have 1-handed spears that did comparable damage. I'm sure people would enjoy the ability to use piercing placement along with armor to block a chump on the left while trying to kill a heavy hitter on the right.

[Draken]

I have played the game for quite some time, and as of now I manage to clear it with pretty much every game on around 150% diffaulty. So I guess its the time now for me to take part in a discussion, as im fairy unhappy with how things are regarding the weaponry. I given throught explanations for combinations i've used mostly:

One handed combination + shields:

1h Sword + Board:
I can agree, that sword + board is one of the best combos, but the weight of it can be severely reduced if using light material (like moonstone, silver and gold) along with gems. Gems are what really make it powerhouse, as both 1h sword and shield can be crafted using them, and they are fairy light as well. Random bonuses tend to be nice even when using amber (had things like +4 damage, or +3 shielding, or +2 stealth, etc). Low material cost of swords allows you to mass produce them, and just recycle ones with bad bonuses.

Usually equipped on: Crafters, medics, gatherers, mages.

Pros:
- Skill boosts that can cover what your exploring party lacks;
- Can achive low weight (70~ for both sword and shield);
- Great as a tactical card with shielding that can go to up 15-20;
Cons:
- Pretty luckluster dmg on low end gear, but its a combo that offer survability for your low strenght, and low endurance characters so its all right.

1h Axes + Board:
Not using them. The difference between sword and axes is too meager, and they don't offer any tactical adventage. I usually ignore them. It would be nice if you could dualwield two of them for some extra tactical move, or if you introduce some special abilities during combat like undead ressurecting unless you sewer thier heads if you don't kill them in one combat play.

1h Hammers + Board:
Would propably use them, if the damage could be a bit higher. But its even lower compared to swords. I usually ignore them. Its weak even on characters with high inherent strenght.

Twohanded Weapons:

2h Swords:
Truthfully, never bothered to unlock this tech so I don't really know how nice is to have a high garde twohanded sword. I usually use it when very early in a game, as they are common drops from ruins, and allows my crafters to have balanced offence and defence - at least for a while before I research 1h swords and shields. For a same RP cost its totally not worth.

2h Axes:
At this point, even 10 more damage per axe would be too low compared to pike bonuses which is half damage dealed first + first strike.

2h Hammers:
Was using this combination for a while, but i still find it less powerful then pikes bonuses. Because it certainly need tactical cards with high first strike abilities to be useful. I rarely get elves, but I guess its well worth with using them.

2h Pikes:
It is where unfairness is. Really. For a low amount of materials, you can craft fairy decent weapons with a superb tactical abilities - it may seem low compared to axes and even swords. But do not underestimate high strenght bonuses - in one playtrought equipped three dwarves smiths with pikes. And they pretty much decimated everything in thier path with 25 dmg pre-hits.

It was certainly fine with just first strike, but the preempetive damage made it totally unfair.

Usually equipped on: Everything else.

Pros:
- First strike, which allows you to slide in before the pesky monster. If majority of your fighting force is equipped with spears, its only the first monster that can move before you.
- Deals half of its pike damage as damage to the monster they slide before. Its utterly devasting for higher strenght characters and it outclasses the higher damage from axes as even if you don't outright kill enemy with one hit, then you deal half of your dmg to it, so the overall is: +50% dmg and first strike.
- One of the most important: You can get the preempetive damage and first strike even for tactical cards Get Closer option - so when your warriors end up on tactical side, they still can contribute greatly to combat, more often then not outrighty killing the weaker enemies and weakening the stronger ones.
- Low material costs for its usefullness, compared to other 2h weapons.
Cons:
- I don't see any!

Staffs:
As a pre-requirement for pikes, I often employ in my early game. Darkwood staffs with amber are pretty decent, easy to produce for RP and allows me to win early fights without taking any damage. I don't really make staffs from other materials though - I consider it a waste, and just keep them for pikes instead.

Pros: (of the darkwood staff)
- First strike and preempetive damage, same as pikes.
- Poison damage is great for vanquishing weakened foes (which you weakened with preempetive strike).
- Easy to get materials - its usually one in ten games that darkwood is located far away.
- Skill bonuses from amber.
Cons:
- Quite low damage, so fairy ineffective on characters other then warriors.

Ranged weapons:
I find if fairy useless. No, rather then fairy, totally useless. Pikes serve as better support items (!) because its half of combat damage dealt and the character can participate in second round of combat. It got its uses if it comes to blunt users, I guess, but is it really worth 4 RP as compared to 2 RP of pikes?

Overall:
What i written here is just my personal opinions, but lately, every game feels repetitive and boring for me. I always start a gathering village (as I prefer hunter instead of medic). After I get to pikes, its just a matter of securing decent materials for medium armors, and then proceeding to kill everything that wander on map and solve all the events.
A mithril drops here and there allows me to make a overly powerful pikes, and securing scaled leather or dragon leather source allows me to craft superb armors.
As my group grew larger, I'm trying to include a mage, a healer, and some of the other folks - goblins and dwarves are my favorite. Goblins usually are like your regular fighters with a bit more of stealth and speaking. Dwarves are true fighting powerhouses, and when equipped with pikes they utterly destroy even the hardest of foes.

Possible solutions:
- Change the damage of hunt challanges from gathering to ranged damage (because, right now gatherers are better hunters then hunters actually, and you can solve a lot of challanges with hunt only). It would be pretty beneficient to research simple bows to help with hunting.
- Change how support ally works - a use like half of bonus added to last ally attack + full of support dmg dealt as damage to the last enemy. Pikes don't really nessesary need more damage, as first strike is pretty powerful ability in its own right. I never really research ranged weapons because of that, which in turn leads me to never researching string materials.
- Increase the number of enemies special abilities, I know that the fights should be pretty easy and straightforward - but things like undeads raising with a little hp if you don't defeat them in one combat round, more tactical abilities like hexing during combat, immunity to pre-empetive strike damage from pikes etc. will provide players with more tactical decisions during fights - so it will be trueer to its roguelike orgin. To make it fair for newbies - It may be possible to 'unlock' enemy special abilities with diffaulty slider of the game (so for example undead re-assemble would be from 120% diff, dragon's scale immunity to pre-empetive damage would be from 180% diff, and so on).
- Nerf pikes - dwarven smith with a mithril pike with moonstone tip (22 dmg) and 28 strenght deals 50 pierce damage and 25 pre-empetive damage. So 125 damage total in two combat rounds with first strike. Can axes really beat that?
- Axes are plain. I don't really know what you can do with them to help fix it, but the meager damage rise is usually not worth a lackage of special abilities. Maybe bleeding, head sewering or intimidation bonus during social challanges? Or even a freaking dualwielding 1h axes, which would allow to hit two enemies both in front and in back of your character.

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Thank you for reading my wall of text, im still pretty inexperienced as I tend to only use the combinations I see working. Thats why majority of my opinions are either very detailed or very brief.
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Dziękuje bardzo studiu MuHa za wspaniałą grę - nie żałuje ani złotóweczki za ten zakup i mam nadzieję, że w dalszym ciągu przynajmniej przez jakiś czas będziecie dopieszczać tą wspaniałą grę. Pozdrowienia z Krakowa.

[Halfgeek]

Originally posted by Pentalis:

That's a total of 33 damage, I off by 2 points. Leech is damage.

Really? I got leech on my 2h axe, it doesn't do the 20 leech damage. It heals the warrior though.

On enemies I notice leech does damage.