A guide on how to win at Thea 2 on all difficulties:

[VoiD]

1: Don't be greedy
2: ????
3: Profit!


No, seriously, nearly every single death in this game is rooted in greed, the RNG does not matter, the difficulty spikes do not matter, the hard quests do not matter, you can survive it all (save for rare repeated attacks by multiple super strong groups in the exact same turn, which is very, very rare) just by retreating or forfeiting battles you know you can't win, as long as you don't get greedy, as long as you don't just throw your lives away in pointless combat you can get through it all.

Tactics, strategies, skill combos, good races, everything helps, everything is nice, but none of these matter if you're being greedy, and none of them are needed if you aren't.

[XenoReaver]

100% honesty here...

10/10 good guide. Everyone should read this and take note.

[Greg Bahm]

I don't think that's accurate on hard difficulty. At around 200, with RNG it's very possible to only have 8 characters. At this point, you'll die if you turtle with your 8 characters, because the world will start flooding with enemies you can't beat, and your turtling characters will die to them. So before turn 200, you need to split your party up so that you get more characters. But that means that, for a while in there, you'll have two groups of 4 characters and it will be incredibly risky.
The game is easy once you make it to 12+ characters. You can have a safe base and a safe adventuring team and the adventuring team can unlock all the research points while the base can pump out level 4+ gear. But even with perfect play, a small party around turn 200 can just get crushed.

[DNLH]

I feel like turtling in general won't get you far, unless you want to just buckle up for finishing the game on starter island (though I am quite slow at completing playthroughs, so maybe that's just me). The hard difficulty achievement I got was me falling behind the difficulty curve and bunkering down on some remote island to farm resources and create decent equipment. By the time I was ready to leave the roaming groups had three leshy, so I just beelined and breezed through the main quest. It was awful experience.

[rcis]

I had some runs on hard difficulty, and it were ended sometimes really fast even without greed. With the speed world is developing, on auto-save turn some events can literally kill you and you can't do nothing about it. Hard difficulty is more less luck depend, even if you know the game. Starting terrain, resources, enemies, artifacts have really big impact on whats happening on start.
If you survive first 150 turns game usually become much easier, but in first 150 turns I died few times without even chance to react - mostly on first 50.
I made run on normal, and the start seems really balanced, so it's just hard difficulty that requires some starting luck to survive. Mid and end game seems just a little bit harder than normal in my opinion, when start is difficult and luck depend.

[VoiD]

I'm playing a hard game right now, everything set to max difficulty, no shenanigans, chosen is a Rat, had an orc child and a ranger too because why not and playing as Mokosh, her early game shield did help but not being able to equip the Other Ring might be the worst late game trait in the game.

I got beaten left and right, I even forfeit against the same enemy 4 turns in a row (didn't want to stop crafting my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ shield) and for the first time I felt like I needed to craft low tier crap to survive during the starting island, no infinite stat farming, no crazy attributes either.

So far I have not found any issue I couldn't solve by just not being greedy.
Black smoke event and I don't have a mage (still don't)? Run/Forfeit
2 leshys with nearly 40 damage AoE? Forfeit
kraken encounter? Forfeit
2 curses and a dif 7 mental challenge? Forfeit

Granted I have been lucky (or unlucky) the only one who died, so far, was the chosen, but since villages are just not worth the trouble and I can't use the Other Ring anyway I just spent a cosmic seed.

First turns started with 5 turns worth of food, winter, and not much wood (some coal), first 100~150 turns were basically a forfeit-fest, still not as deadly as it seems, never turtled, never "ran away from the world", I keep adventuring everywhere, just don't attempt challenges I can't beat.

[rcis]

So you are lucky then, I just get beaten by an event on starting turn 18 which killed my 2 fellas, so the game pretty much killed me again with bad luck. Even ♥♥♥♥♥♥ bees or boars can attack you on turn ending and you woke up without party and game saved.
By the time I'm giving game chance to attack my crew by leshys or kraken game is already switched into easy mode. Start is the problem, after it game is pretty much beaten

[arnaud_defrance]

You can die easily in the first hundred turns since you'll lack proper gear. Of course if you just fort up during that time, you'll have problems on higher difficulties when a high-level threat wander in.

Going purple challenges-heavy is pretty good to survive though. It's the only vanilla challenge you can heal from with rituals, with no chance of killing you instantly.

[awg]

Hard difficulty game is a pure grind. It's really hard to survive at the beginning, and the game demands long and tedious preparation for the final fights. You just have to grind everything: levels, equipment, resources, reputation. Everything! Otherwise, how can you beat a leshy who has 300 hp and armor (and he can stack even more armor) and spam AOE true damage? Not a complain, but the combat could be reworked a bit. It was way too brutal for a party of 9 people I had by that time. I was unlucky with lots of child characters who died because of various circumstances, so I had to grind levels and proper equipment for my characters I got at the beginning of hard difficulty marathon.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by awg:

Hard difficulty game is a pure grind. It's really hard to survive at the beginning, and the game demands long and tedious preparation for the final fights. You just have to grind everything: levels, equipment, resources, reputation. Everything! Otherwise, how can you beat a leshy who has 300 hp and armor (and he can stack even more armor) and spam AOE true damage? Not a complain, but the combat could be reworked a bit. It was way too brutal for a party of 9 people I had by that time. I was unlucky with lots of child characters who died because of various circumstances, so I had to grind levels and proper equipment for my characters I got at the beginning of hard difficulty marathon.

I agree that on hard it's more likely bad things will happen and the player will need to grind a lot in preparation but, isn't it working as intended? After all Normal is pretty much normal, and hard is as the name suggests, hard.

I would guess you had to forfeit a ton of battles and challenges to stay alive when everything went wrong to stay alive long enough to grind yourself back into the race, right?
My last game was rather similar, 1 rat, 1 hunter, 1 orc child on 100% hard difficulty, first 100+ turns I had to forfeito nearly half my encounters and couldn't find food anywhere near the starting location, it wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible either.

[awg]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by awg:

Hard difficulty game is a pure grind. It's really hard to survive at the beginning, and the game demands long and tedious preparation for the final fights. You just have to grind everything: levels, equipment, resources, reputation. Everything! Otherwise, how can you beat a leshy who has 300 hp and armor (and he can stack even more armor) and spam AOE true damage? Not a complain, but the combat could be reworked a bit. It was way too brutal for a party of 9 people I had by that time. I was unlucky with lots of child characters who died because of various circumstances, so I had to grind levels and proper equipment for my characters I got at the beginning of hard difficulty marathon.

I agree that on hard it's more likely bad things will happen and the player will need to grind a lot in preparation but, isn't it working as intended? After all Normal is pretty much normal, and hard is as the name suggests, hard.

I would guess you had to forfeit a ton of battles and challenges to stay alive when everything went wrong to stay alive long enough to grind yourself back into the race, right?
My last game was rather similar, 1 rat, 1 hunter, 1 orc child on 100% hard difficulty, first 100+ turns I had to forfeito nearly half my encounters and couldn't find food anywhere near the starting location, it wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible either.

Well, actually it wasn't hard. It was insane! I had to sacrifice most of my characters at the final fight, so the summary after that looked a bit trolling. Like, "You really want to continue after that???" :D

And with all those dead children, the flashbacks of hard difficulty playthrough will haunt me till the end of my days... Will never forget my favorite, named Payroll.

Edit: And isn't it 203% on a hard difficulty, by the way?

[XenoReaver]

Originally posted by awg:

Hard difficulty game is a pure grind. It's really hard to survive at the beginning

Even using non modded assets, I find the start on hard to be very easy. If anything I'll immediately head to another biome or start with a "gimped" starting party just to make the start actually hard.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by awg:

Originally posted by VoiD:

I agree that on hard it's more likely bad things will happen and the player will need to grind a lot in preparation but, isn't it working as intended? After all Normal is pretty much normal, and hard is as the name suggests, hard.

I would guess you had to forfeit a ton of battles and challenges to stay alive when everything went wrong to stay alive long enough to grind yourself back into the race, right?
My last game was rather similar, 1 rat, 1 hunter, 1 orc child on 100% hard difficulty, first 100+ turns I had to forfeito nearly half my encounters and couldn't find food anywhere near the starting location, it wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible either.

Well, actually it wasn't hard. It was insane! I had to sacrifice most of my characters at the final fight, so the summary after that looked a bit trolling. Like, "You really want to continue after that???" :D

And with all those dead children, the flashbacks of hard difficulty playthrough will haunt me till the end of my days... Will never forget my favorite, named Payroll.

Edit: And isn't it 203% on a hard difficulty, by the way?

yeah, 203% is the max difficulty I think

[awg]

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

Originally posted by awg:

Hard difficulty game is a pure grind. It's really hard to survive at the beginning

Even using non modded assets, I find the start on hard to be very easy. If anything I'll immediately head to another biome or start with a "gimped" starting party just to make the start actually hard.

I think my previous question wasn't correct, so I have to rewrite it. I just don't understand what a "gimped" starting party means.

What is a good / best starting setup on hard, in your opinion? I mean what god, characters, other traits to pick to make it easier?

[rcis]

Originally posted by awg:

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

Even using non modded assets, I find the start on hard to be very easy. If anything I'll immediately head to another biome or start with a "gimped" starting party just to make the start actually hard.

I think my previous question wasn't correct, so I have to rewrite it. I just don't understand what a "gimped" starting party means.

What is a good / best starting setup on hard, in your opinion? I mean what god, characters, other traits to pick to make it easier?

I just finished my rat run on hard (Lada), so I get 2 hardest achievements in a game with relative ease.
Start is easy on hard only when you are lucky, and didn't get killed by random events and running monsters. After first 150 turns game become really easy, and its hard to loose it. Boosted orc/pirate/elf characters can easy solo kraken. With several of good characters you can take last expansion boss without a problem.

What makes heroes op in mid/late game:
- Legendary heavy armors! + weapons with highest possible dmg for stat used.
Crafting is really important, so its necessary to have one super strong crafter boosted with items and town buildings. Best materials in game can be farmed almost anywhere on the sea, sometimes even without strong party.
- Strong race/class combinations etc. orc/pirate for melee fighters, gob/elf for mages. Humans are decent only for mind challenges (zerca + inventor), on the other hand elf can be good for almost anything.
- Boosting stats by right events choices, and proper character development.
- Numbers: don't let anyone die, and use every opportunity to get child/grown up characters. Even with a loot of weak characters, stronger characters will eventually come. In every main non-human race city there is always a good choice for potentially strong hero:)

How to survive start:
- lucky starting position, best with 1,1 material for town idol, food and basic wood. This made game much easier.
- lucky with events/ spawning monsters.
- farmed gods with good traits. Some gods and traits are better then others: orc child, 2 children for 1 point, are always guaranteed big boost around 40-50 turn; elf-slave can solo almost everything on start etc.

[awg]

Originally posted by rcis:

Originally posted by awg:

I think my previous question wasn't correct, so I have to rewrite it. I just don't understand what a "gimped" starting party means.

What is a good / best starting setup on hard, in your opinion? I mean what god, characters, other traits to pick to make it easier?

I just finished my rat run on hard (Lada), so I get 2 hardest achievements in a game with relative ease.
Start is easy on hard only when you are lucky, and didn't get killed by random events and running monsters. After first 150 turns game become really easy, and its hard to loose it. Boosted orc/pirate/elf characters can easy solo kraken. With several of good characters you can take last expansion boss without a problem.

What makes heroes op in mid/late game:
- Legendary heavy armors! + weapons with highest possible dmg for stat used.
Crafting is really important, so its necessary to have one super strong crafter boosted with items and town buildings. Best materials in game can be farmed almost anywhere on the sea, sometimes even without strong party.
- Strong race/class combinations etc. orc/pirate for melee fighters, gob/elf for mages. Humans are decent only for mind challenges (zerca + inventor), on the other hand elf can be good for almost anything.
- Boosting stats by right events choices, and proper character development.
- Numbers: don't let anyone die, and use every opportunity to get child/grown up characters. Even with a loot of weak characters, stronger characters will eventually come. In every main non-human race city there is always a good choice for potentially strong hero:)

How to survive start:
- lucky starting position, best with 1,1 material for town idol, food and basic wood. This made game much easier.
- lucky with events/ spawning monsters.
- farmed gods with good traits. Some gods and traits are better then others: orc child, 2 children for 1 point, are always guaranteed big boost around 40-50 turn; elf-slave can solo almost everything on start etc.

Thanks for tips, rcis. As I already mentioned I had only about 9 human characters at the end of my hard playthrough.