Fast Traveling Has Better Random Encounters

[DobbyBaby]

I’m not playing on hardcore, but I almost never fast travel. I just enjoy the scenery and stopping to explore here and there. However, now I’m making an exception. I had 97 combos and I just want to get it up to 100 to get the trophy, or badge or whatever. So I paused everything and started just fast traveling in order to get more random encounters. My current position in the main quest has made both Bernard and the tourney unavailable.

I feel like there is a greater variety of random encounters when fast traveling. And these occur with greater frequency. And the ambushes are more deadly because you tend to be a little closer when the baddies rush forth from the bushes.

Why the differences? I assume the devs intended to impose a cost to the convenience of fast traveling by making more deadly encounters happen more often. But then, why the greater variety? Maybe it’s just that the slow traveller has less chance of cycling through all possible encounters?

As a side note, I’m having a hard time finding opponents to use combos on. I need a bad guy armored enough to stand and take it when Henry shwackz him two times in a row. So many opponents I find along the road either die too fast, or the Cumans are dodging so much I can’t get a chain of blows to land, or I get knocked off my horse and have to face a mob of ten bad guys and resort to a very defensive style not conducive to executing combos. I am now up to 99 , almost there!

[Lieste]

I can assure you, that after hundreds of ambushes and other encounters on the roads that they appear whether riding or using the fast travel. A major difference is that with fast travel I found myself "in the middle of the ambush" with the scene loading over the first few seconds... not a happy place to be. When riding, I had the option to approach the fallen tree, the suspicious chest, the suspicious looking peasant or to skirt around them, and *already* had the scene loaded fully so could choose to charge into the midst if I so wanted.

I would recommend riding/walking over fast travel, especially if this is the only reason you would be using it.

(In Hardcore this decision is made for you and fast travel only exists for quest specific reasons).

[theo]

There's no difference, same encounters appear when you're fast travelling and riding normally.
As to why it seems different to you I can only guess. Maybe you're missing some of the encounter spots by going off road or simply not noticing them.

[DobbyBaby]

One example of an encounter I didn’t see until I fast traveled near the end (?) of the game, is the lone Cuman archer. He was standing in the middle of the road, was quick to use his bow, and he moved to the underbrush on the side of the road as he did so. Another is a heavily armored bandit with a polearm and longsword that come out of you stop to look at a corpse. It could be that in the past I may have avoided these situations while slow traveling.

As for the apparent increased frequency of encounters when fast traveling, that might be because encounters are programmed to occur randomly according to either the number of miles you travel or the game time you’re on the road , and not the real world time you spend on the road. So, fast traveling all over the place has you on the road for more real world time and, accordingly, you have more encounters in a shorter span of real world time.

[nauzicaa]

Originally posted by Jonnie:

One example of an encounter I didn’t see until I fast traveled near the end (?) of the game, is the lone Cuman archer. He was standing in the middle of the road, was quick to use his bow, and he moved to the underbrush on the side of the road as he did so. Another is a heavily armored bandit with a polearm and longsword that come out of you stop to look at a corpse. It could be that in the past I may have avoided these situations while slow traveling.

As for the apparent increased frequency of encounters when fast traveling, that might be because encounters are programmed to occur randomly according to either the number of miles you travel or the game time you’re on the road , and not the real world time you spend on the road. So, fast traveling all over the place has you on the road for more real world time and, accordingly, you have more encounters in a shorter span of real world time.

Btw if you didn't ramp up your combos yet, I just trained combos with Bernard. Just don't do the one he requests you to do, instead do lower left to "jab" (2x) (it's a short sword combo, but it will work while combo training with bernard). Doing this you get like 10-20 combos per run, I had 20 combos at the start and finished it within 10 minutes.

[DobbyBaby]

I currently have 98 combos. About 20-25 of those are from either the tourney or training with Bernard. The rest are from our in the wild.

I did, however, have to drink a savior schnapps one time while standing in front of Bernard’s Ring of Pain and use that save point as a means of grinding up MY proficiency, without grinding up Henry's stats.

[STiAT]

Encounters happen in both modes, but I agree that it's by far less when you travel manually. I personally find those encounters pretty annoying and repetitive not really providing any benefit. I think that encounters should have been limited to happening once.

It's the same about the Skalitz encounters, it's the perfect gold farm to just travel there and every time there is an encounter guaranteed.

I think "fixed" encounters happening once or twice, maybe once in each setting (bandits vs cumans, cumans vs guards etc.) would have been better, but well .. it is what it is.

I agree on enjoying traveling the land. I got a lot out of hardcore for just finally getting to know the bits and pieces of the map I basically never saw before. Since I'm basically done with the game, the slow mode of traveling everywhere manually actually is a much better experience.

[DobbyBaby]

Originally posted by STiAT:

Encounters happen in both modes, but I agree that it's by far less when you travel manually. I personally find those encounters pretty annoying and repetitive not really providing any benefit. I think that encounters should have been limited to happening once.

It's the same about the Skalitz encounters, it's the perfect gold farm to just travel there and every time there is an encounter guaranteed.

I think "fixed" encounters happening once or twice, maybe once in each setting (bandits vs cumans, cumans vs guards etc.) would have been better, but well .. it is what it is.

I agree on enjoying traveling the land. I got a lot out of hardcore for just finally getting to know the bits and pieces of the map I basically never saw before. Since I'm basically done with the game, the slow mode of traveling everywhere manually actually is a much better experience.

Yeah that Skalitz fight is a weird one. I'm not sure if the devs were trying to emphasize the lawlessness of the area by ensuring there is always a fight there, or if they just made a mistake somewhere in the coding. . . .

You know what would have been wicked, is if the types of encounters there in Skalitz included something like this: there is a corpse on the ground near a building with a golden chalice and some groschen laying next to it. When Henry stops to investigate, a Cuman stealth walks up behind him and tries to stealth kill him. Or, the Cuman fires a poisoned arrow from hiding then runs and hides somewhere else, and repeats. Imagine the panic as the player sees Henry's health drop precipitously, and then has to decide whether to risk going after the hit-and-run Cuman or escape.

A few encounters like that and the player would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their pants before walking in there every time.

[dcain3456]

I've played enough Bethesda games to cure me of Fast Travel forever.

[DerRitter]

Originally posted by dcain3456:

I've played enough Bethesda games to cure me of Fast Travel forever.

this game actually has nice fast travel- I avoid it in Bethesda at all costs.