Save scumming at pirate brute

[Entropy]

The upgrade dialog implies "this is broken", so I understand why i'm over 10+ attempts. But damn, this is taking a long time!

[Gilmoy]

If you can't kill it with 10 attempts, then perhaps you're simply not strong enough yet.

Brutes are a canonical red-9 foe. Brutes has:
~180 Health + Shielding
50-60 damage (sometimes with T-splash)
Net Shot for ~35 damage each time it deploys (= up to 3 times before the fight)

The AI tends to love Brutes' high stats, and will triple-deploy him in hand 1.
That's 3 Net Shots + 3 huge hits you have to soak up.
If you deploy your own guys incorrectly, your 1 guy might eat all 3 Net Shots and get hit 1-2 times before he acts, which can "kill" even L20 Little Pirate with 200 health + shielding.

Generally, to kill Brutes (and red-10s), your 3 Physical goons need:
+ ~100 Health + Shielding = T3/T4 Elemental heavy armor (so they can survive 1 hit)
+ 2H legendary stone-and-bone double-leech = T4/T5, with total damage at least 30
+ deploy them to spread out the Net Shot damage

Then even if Brutes hits you for 60, you double-leech 30+30 back, and he makes zero progress. So your goons can go toe-to-toe with him forever, and even make runaway shield profit. Fill your backfield with archers and codices. Random Blast 3 and Chain Lightning are particularly good vs. triple-deployed monsters, since they do full damage to each copy = up to 3x damage. With 3 weapon hits + 4 ranged guys, you should be killing Brutes at the end of hand 1 round 1, so that he never swings twice.

If you're not at this level of power, maybe build up your strength first.
Why do you need to kill a Brutes right now?

[Entropy]

Thanks for the reply!

But sorry, I wasn't that clear. One of my kids was growing up, and I wanted a Pirate Brute. After 20 or 30 attempts I did get one, and she is amazing!

I will keep your strat in mind though. I've yet to try a dual leech legendary, they seem really hard to build. Currently, I use a sheild leech elemental weapon on my heavy hitter. He has been doing doing very well with it.

[Gilmoy]

"Hard" is relative. Around turn 300, it's hard or impossible to have the materials yet, so Elemental weapons are your natural best-so-far. Around turn 500, you'll have dozens or hundreds of spare T4/T5s in your ship's cargo.

Your starting island gives you T2s, and a chance at 1-2 T3s from Terrain Artefacts. Conversely, most weapons and armor are deliberately scaled so that T2/T3 cannot build a legendary. Keep exploring other islands, and you'll eventually craft with T4/T5s.

Most of your T4/T5s you'll find as loot, by winning fights. Sea lairs are a renewable resource, as the game engine randomly spawns new ones to fill any empty sea. Eventually, you could sail laps around 1 island and constantly hit every new sea lair created since your last lap. With a decent ship (speed 8-10) in a tight channel between islands, you could fight 3-5 times every turn, and win them all, then see new sea lairs pop into existence behind you. You get those the next time around

Generally, sea encounters have these difficulty tiers (on Hard 200%):
Red-5 = random orc pirates, during sea movement. Loot = sometimes 1-2 T5s.
Red-7 = wandering czytlica/jurata/sharks. Loot = 20-30 T4s, sometimes a couple T5s.
Red-8 to 9 = pirate ship (really a ship), with 1 Brutes. Loot = 5-10 T5s, and -- the ship!
Red-9 to red-11 = small pirate village, with 1 Brutes. Loot = 10-20 T5s.
Red-11 = 1 kraken, alone (so he triple-deploys self). Loot = 10-30 T5s.
Red-13 = 4 krakens. Loot = 30-50 T5s, 40-80 T4s, and about 4 rows of lesser stuff.

N.B. all sea lair fights are Physical (red) only. A natural benchmark for your Physical challenge strength is to consistently beat red-13s. Then search every sea tomb/clam, always investigate south, always fight the red-13. When you can win 3 of those fights per turn, every turn, your T5s go through the roof. Roughly, 1 lap around the island lets you farm about 20 such fights, and then you craft maximal legendary weapons and armor. ("maximal" = leftmost expert recipe, with all 4.3 essence T5-wild ingredients)

Now, you may complain that you had to win those fights in the first place just to get those weapons, and so they're too late to help you, by definition But that's half the fun in these kinds of games. Elemental double half-leech weapons are perfectly sufficient to do about 2/3 of that list, including 1 kraken alone iff you also have high Health + Shielding.

I hired an Ogre for 50 food, and he's up to 117 damage with a legendary double-leech battle axe. A Pirate Brutes gets close to that, so eventually you should be close to 100 damage with him.

[NixBoxDone]

Half of the fun of games like this is to snowball to the point where you become an invincible murder machine.
Challenge is important, but it's kind of hard to make infinite challenge. At some point you have the best character, maximum level and the best in slot gear - might as well enjoy it and go bash some dragons, krakens and other critters like they're vermin squatting on your treasures.

[Entropy]

Ya, I'm having fun. I figure ill finish up this easy game by trying out a few odd races/classes/weapons and some completionalist achievements. Next play through i plan on moving onto a harder difficulty, and without save scumming crafts/classes/children.

[NixBoxDone]

Sounds like a plan! I'll likely go hunting for elves at some point, see if it's possible to switch for the better models. >_<