Getting past turn 100-200?

[aaroc]

I've restarted this game dozens of times and I can never seem to get past about turn 150 or so when inevitably, some high level thing suddenly just wrecks my entire party, or at least enough of it to keep me from effectively really doing anything.

What are your best tips, tricks and strategies for early game?

[megapat2]

don't hang out around lightbringers thats about the time in the game they start trouble,

magic based chars will really help also witches,wraiths shamans, druids what ever you can get.
get fitghers in armour get all magic chars with artifacts or scrolls/books. if you do these things will help also settle a city on coal and stockpile and make some nice foods for morale.
you will need the coal for late game cooking

if you get jumped by lightbringers do a ritual to get your loses back or attack them first for red combat.

early game random is kinda tough don't be afraid to restart if its bad.

good luck

[utilityguy]

Originally posted by aaroc200:

What are your best tips, tricks and strategies for early game?

On hard mode:

Don't start with more than two non-red challenge focused characters(preferred with shielding), if you aren't confident that you can find and/or produce food to last however long it's gonna take you to be able to survive all the red challenges that game will throw at you until enough party members become leveled up enough to handle those challenges through auto resolve. Otherwise all the generated luck that goes into party placement in the overworld is gonna be make or brake for your party.

Equally as important as that, hunters obviously making life easier(since they can yellow challenge their way out of Red beast encounters as long as the party attacks first in the overworld), is to research every beast technology that gets dropped after event battles. Gaining that 20% bonus damage for autoresolve(not in actual battle) is gonna make surviving through turn 100 and forwards significantly easier. Otherwise you're gonna have to heavily really on using battle "pets" to tank enough damage from the enemies to guarantee the rest of your party can win the battles before their HP reaches zero.

After the two paragraphs above are taken cared of, all you need to worry about is advancing in rainbow armor and damage to be able to take care of the light bringers. Best way to do that(before the game gets updated next week) is to grow witches from girls.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by aaroc200:

I've restarted this game dozens of times and I can never seem to get past about turn 150 or so when inevitably, some high level thing suddenly just wrecks my entire party, or at least enough of it to keep me from effectively really doing anything.

You're not staying on top of the power curve.

Probably the most frustrating thing for newer players about Thea is that because the world scales without regard to the player, it's quite possible to fall into a failure state without knowing you've done so. In order to really succeed at Thea, you need to make sure that you keep growing in power, at least for the first 100-200 turns or so.

So, for starters, try to make a group with as many people as possible. One or two adults and two or three children should be pretty easy for you to get right away, no matter which deity you like you play. Rush through Theodore's early quests so that you get your kids a few levels; that will in turn get them some bonus stats, which will make it more likely they can grow into better classes. Right there, that will provide you with a lot of help.

You don't need to leave the starting island for quite a while if you don't want to, but you do need to keep moving around. You need to hit all the monster groups and lairs that you are able to, as often as possible. This means that, unless you want to learn how to balance a village and an expedition, it will be simpler to play a nomadic group for a while. However, if you're willing to learn how to handle that balancing act, you'll find villages to be extremely valuable and powerful additions to your game.

Regardless of whether you settle a village or not, you're going to need some decent equipment. That means you're going to need some research points. You can gather the world resources when you find them, and you'll get researchable creatures from time to time as you fight, but you're going to need to have some camped time to actually do the research (and goodness does that research go faster in a village...). Once you've acquired enough research to get some advancement points, make sure you spend a few of them on crafting gear; personally, I like Heavy Armor, Shields, and 1-handed weapons for almost all my people, but whatever works for you should be fine.

You should know about the reinforcement radius, since you're going to be spending some time camped fro research and crafting. See, you can keep your camp, run characters out a couple hexes to fight groups and lairs and visit event nodes, and the characters in your camp will join in as long as you're close (~5 hexes distance between groups). So you can still be doing things while you're camped, and that's an important part of staying on top of the power curve.

That's a lot to think about, but if you can get in the habit of just doing stuff that matters every turn, you'll find it much easier to stay on top of the power curve. When it becomes second nature, you'll be able to start getting off the newbie island right away and settling down on better islands, like Ice Demon island. Once you've got that on lock, you'll be able to beat the game on any difficulty setting, no matter long the game world has to grow stronger.

[aaroc]

I actually did get a decent game going on my last run. Running under Dzieranna? The Harmony and nature goddess, I learned the value of having a hunter in the initial group, I managed to get two children to grow up into Zercas, one girl to grow up into a young witch, and the next attempted to become a witch, but became a Wraith instead. While travelling to the Ancient Forest (after having nabbed a bunch of diamonds from the cold island) she also .. uh.. gave birth? to an unliving corpse.

BUT! Once I landed in the ancient forest,my Chosen (the hunter) gave up some of his soul as a sacrifice, which dealt 100 spirit damage to him and he only had 35 or so max, so recovering from -75 spirit was not really a thing that could happen because I never managed to get a healer. Even running spirit rituals didn't really do anything for him. On the upside, I unlocked Triglav, but that game was still done on turn 209. I even managed to get my goddess's Nature blessing, but never had a chance to reap the benefits of it.

[utilityguy]

Makes sense. Ancient Forest(Green island) is, like, the most dangerous island. It's highly advisable you go in there with a full part of characters wearing rainbow armor that goes into (at least) the 40s and high damage dealing yellow and purple weapons. It's still probably to survive with less, depending on how lucky you are.

Purple island is the second easiest, Red and Ice island is harder than purple island, Silver island is harder than red island, and green island is harder than silver island.

[aaroc]

Thanks for the breakdown of island difficulty. I really only went to the forest island because it was part of my divine quest.

I'm actually learning that hunters are pretty powerful. With Perception as primary stat, Ghostly Axe and Outmanoeuvre, they're good in every type of challenge, plus really good at gathering.

I think my biggest gripe with the game is the randomness with leveling up. Most of the time it seems like I'm given stats that don't match my skills and skills that don't match my stats.

[tiamats4esgares]

Originally posted by utilityguy:

Originally posted by aaroc200:

What are your best tips, tricks and strategies for early game?

On hard mode:

Don't start with more than two non-red challenge focused characters(preferred with shielding), if you aren't confident that you can find and/or produce food to last however long it's gonna take you to be able to survive all the red challenges that game will throw at you until enough party members become leveled up enough to handle those challenges through auto resolve. Otherwise all the generated luck that goes into party placement in the overworld is gonna be make or brake for your party.

Equally as important as that, hunters obviously making life easier(since they can yellow challenge their way out of Red beast encounters as long as the party attacks first in the overworld), is to research every beast technology that gets dropped after event battles. Gaining that 20% bonus damage for autoresolve(not in actual battle) is gonna make surviving through turn 100 and forwards significantly easier. Otherwise you're gonna have to heavily really on using battle "pets" to tank enough damage from the enemies to guarantee the rest of your party can win the battles before their HP reaches zero.

After the two paragraphs above are taken cared of, all you need to worry about is advancing in rainbow armor and damage to be able to take care of the light bringers. Best way to do that(before the game gets updated next week) is to grow witches from girls.

What do you mean about the game getting updated next week?

[utilityguy]

Originally posted by tiamats4esgares:

What do you mean about the game getting updated next week?

It's more I'm referring to the upcoming addition of being able to grow Male Slavian kids into... uh, male magic users without the need of going through the chance option. 'course, you can just opt into the beta(and start a new game) to be able to have that option.

But if you do: It's important to note that you need to complete a certain early game quest first for the Male Magic User option to have the chance of coming up during Human growth events.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by aaroc200:

my Chosen (the hunter) gave up some of his soul as a sacrifice, which dealt 100 spirit damage to him and he only had 35 or so max, so recovering from -75 spirit was not really a thing that could happen because I never managed to get a healer. Even running spirit rituals didn't really do anything for him.

Spirit rituals heal about 50% of the max value of a characters spirit pool. So, if your character had 35 max, a ritual would heal them for something close to 17. If you're down 100, you'd need six rituals to get back into fighting fit. So, running the rituals *might* have done something if you'd been able to run a bunch in a single turn and had unusually good luck with the RNG. Anyway, for future reference, that's how it works. It's why it's by far the better move to let your deep-pool characters take the purple damage - they heal a tremendous lot more per ritual. It's sort of the opposite of red pool, where lower-health character heal up faster.

[aaroc]

Originally posted by dergefata:

Originally posted by aaroc200:

my Chosen (the hunter) gave up some of his soul as a sacrifice, which dealt 100 spirit damage to him and he only had 35 or so max, so recovering from -75 spirit was not really a thing that could happen because I never managed to get a healer. Even running spirit rituals didn't really do anything for him.

Spirit rituals heal about 50% of the max value of a characters spirit pool. So, if your character had 35 max, a ritual would heal them for something close to 17. If you're down 100, you'd need six rituals to get back into fighting fit. So, running the rituals *might* have done something if you'd been able to run a bunch in a single turn and had unusually good luck with the RNG. Anyway, for future reference, that's how it works. It's why it's by far the better move to let your deep-pool characters take the purple damage - they heal a tremendous lot more per ritual. It's sort of the opposite of red pool, where lower-health character heal up faster.

Yeah, at that point I didn't have many resources for doing the healing ritual, nor did I really have many people good at doing rituals; I'd just spent a bunch of time wandering around not really doing anything, and the boat took forever to build. I didn't really have much choice in who took that damage, as part of an event, part of my divine quest, it automatically went to my Chosen. This time I'll be prepared for the psychic hit and have a bunch of herbs to mend him with. I've actually got a really good game going now. Still on the first island, I've got a Forest Demon, a Wraith, I just rescued a baby orc from some slavers and he's the most adorable thing ever , and I've cleared a few Lightbringer settlements. I think I'm around turn 200 or so, but I'm definitely stronger than I've been in any previous games.I've got a few pieces of medium rainbow armor, all 17 or less, but I think that's about as good as can be expected with the resources available on start island. Right now I've got at least one t2 resource of each type unlocked and I'm downsizing all my t1 resources and trying to collect enough Elven Wood and Scaled leather to build a ship. Meanwhile, destroying some Lightbringer camps.and collecting high level germs from recycling all the wraith pets I've been getting from them.

[tiamats4esgares]

I don't know how to play the beta, but good to know it's coming soon.

[Lorska]

go to right click on the game > properties > Betas > choose alpha

[tiamats4esgares]

What quest must you do for boys to become witches? New or old? Feel free to use spoiler tags so others don't see, but I don't mind being spoiled. :p

[utilityguy]

In the first hundred turns there should've been a village that randomly pops up nearby your characters. It's a 5 red challenge quest, and Idunno if everything stops if you fail, but completing it lets you be able to get the chance of another quest to pop up which tells you more about lightbringers and the Vohl. I think completing that last quest is the one that allows boys to become purple classes, but I'm not sure as I didn't have any boys grow up before I completed that that quest(so I can't confirm if boys can become male witches directly after the Village quest).

[tiamats4esgares]

Originally posted by utilityguy:

In the first hundred turns there should've been a village that randomly pops up nearby your characters. It's a 5 red challenge quest, and Idunno if everything stops if you fail, but completing it lets you be able to get the chance of another quest to pop up which tells you more about lightbringers and the Vohl. I think completing that last quest is the one that allows boys to become purple classes, but I'm not sure as I didn't have any boys grow up before I completed that that quest(so I can't confirm if boys can become male witches directly after the Village quest).

Thanks. I just got the quest on turn 47, tho I delayed doing the village quest so maybe it could be sooner. My first boy grew up 7 turns before sadly, and no witch option.

After having seen the quest myself, I'm like 85% sure boys growing up can't be purple classes before it.