Tips on avoiding lightbringer game-wipes?

[Kathryn]

So in my last game, I think I accidentally settled too close to a lightbringer village - I didn't know it was there, it was probably about 5 hexes away, and I didn't realise that it eventually spawned guys. Around turn 140 it spawned three level 3 lightbringer groups and my village didn't have a chance. I came back with my expedition to help defend and they got wiped by the first group, no way I would have been able to hold off 3.

So, for my next game, I was wondering whether there's a way to avoid this happening?

I quite like the randomness and don't mind game-wipes from interesting events or bad luck or that just being how something goes, but I don't want to put myself in a position where I feel like it's inevitable, because then what's the point continuing the game.

I also don't really want to have to read a guide (though I have skimmed some to look for answers to some of these questions) to play the game - I'd like to take things at my pace, discover and explore things for myself, and work out good approaches / strategies myself, but without feeling like death is inevitable because I didn't find out and stick to the perfect equipment / group / strategy. Is that possible, do you think?

I think the main thing I wanted to know, was if there was a way to avoid the lightbringers until I'm stronger?
Where would I have to settle / how far away from them, to stop them sending waves of guys out to kill me around turn 150? Are there just always loads of mobile units that will eat my village? Are there always one or two, which is do-able, or are there always huge waves?
The expedition can always avoid them, but it's sad to lose my village, I don't really want to do the nomad route.

In my current game, the starting island is split into two islands, both have a lightbringer village on them - does that mean settling anywhere on the starting island is screwed? Or if I stay xx hexes away, would it be okay? How much is xx? :)
Are there lightbringer villages on other islands? If not, maybe settling there would be better? I just miss having a village, but I'm too afraid to create one because I don't want to die the same way I did last time.

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to navigate my way through my next game, and I couldn't find this information anywhere else easily!

[XenoReaver]

I'm not sure on how far you should settle from the Lightbringer settlement but maybe try 10 hexes. I'm honestly not sure as I don't have trouble fighting them. These settlements are on every biome and there will always be 2 of them, 1 medium and 1 small. They are the main enemies of the game so you can't avoid them per say.

The Lightbringers attack with social challenges so try to get yourself some of the following, Zerca, Healer, Witch, Scoundrel or Craftsman as early as you can. They all have decent to good Intelligence and Wisdom stats so will help out a lot. You'll also want to arm them with scrolls/codexes or relics/artifacts. Codexes will be your best bet though.

You can also attack them first if you feel your party is good enough in combat or magic as attacking first will let you choose the challenge type.

If you feel you can't win surrender right away in battle, you'll take some wound but usually you'll be able to get away with only a few wounds rather than being wiped out in one go.

[asdf]

I'm not sure how well I can answer this because I never really had this problem - I generally only found them particularly difficult when I went to the more difficult islands too early in the game. I can say without a doubt that this game does have a large amount of room for error, and you definitely don't need to stick to one specific party combination or use specific sets of equipment, though there are some characters that I'd say are very helpful to have at least 1 of (but not mandatory). I think it's possible to not only deal with the roaming lightbringer enemies at turn 150 but to straight up win the game by then if you know what you're doing.

I think the problem a lot of people have is just playing too passively. You shouldn't spend much time sitting in one place - try to avoid gathering food/wood when there are other options, because the more time you spend gathering the more experience, loot and various stat bonuses from some events you'll be missing out on from having your characters roaming the map and doing quests/ruins etc.., not to mention improving your reputation with other factions to help get more and better characters.

As far as avoiding them goes, I don't think there's any specific place that you'll be safe, but there is a maximum number of enemies that can spawn at a time so the further away you are from spawners the fewer you're going to fight generally, because if it takes longer for you to reach you then it also takes longer for them to spawn more of them (and they also don't just beeline for your town unless they're already close by so it'll take more than a linear amount of time on average for them to reach your village compared to the distance from the spawns).

It's worth noting that if you pre-emptively attack some enemies you get different options for fighting them than if you let them attack you - in some cases you can even bypass the fight altogether. Sometimes against the lightbringers if you have a demon for instance (and if it's within 6 tiles of your town the demon from your town should count for it) it gives you the option to just make the enemy disappear more or less - it gives no loot and less experience, but you don't always need to fight them (the option won't always be there though).

Most enemies also aren't equally strong in every type of challenge. Most lightbringers (other than leshies) are weaker in physical challenges in my experience, while against leshies mental challenges are usually better. Magic challenges can also be a useful option sometimes mostly because having low faith doesn't result in characters dying directly - if you fight them in a magic battle it's okay to let characters go down to 0 health as long as you use the faith healing ritual immediately after the fight. You can also make it significantly easier to defend your town by researching various buildings if you're inclined to, especially the watch tower and armory to give stat bonuses to the characters in your town.

[madrigal]

It seems like you get XP faster if you do nomad, so I didn't make a village until I know I can defeat the lightbringers. Even after you clear the lightbringer settlements, there are lightbringer spawns that show up so there's no getting rid of them.

[tiagocc0]

More events happen when walking so it's not just less xp if you have a village and go nomad, if you stay camped or inside the village with no one moving around you will get less events and thus less xp.

[Lumisteria]

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

I
The Lightbringers attack with social challenges so try to get yourself some of the following, Zerca, Healer, Witch, Scoundrel or Craftsman as early as you can.

I think there are two different lightbringer enemies : the nests and the village. And as far as i know, village attack you with spirit. Most people having troubles with Lightbringer are probably having trouble against the village rather than the nest, since being ready for purple challenge is a bit harder than for yellow.

[XenoReaver]

Originally posted by Lumisteria:

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

The Lightbringers attack with social challenges so try to get yourself some of the following, Zerca, Healer, Witch, Scoundrel or Craftsman as early as you can.

I think there are two different lightbringer enemies : the nests and the village. And as far as i know, village attack you with spirit. Most people having troubles with Lightbringer are probably having trouble against the village rather than the nest, since being ready for purple challenge is a bit harder than for yellow.

I was more talking about the roaming groups than the villages and nests.

But attacking the village and nests varies depending on your gods domains and they seem to function the same just with different difficulty ratings. Turmoil and Light allow you to fight a physical challenge, Harmony and Intellect allow you to fight a social challenge while Nature and Magic allow you to fight a magic challenge.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Originally posted by Lumisteria:

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

I
The Lightbringers attack with social challenges so try to get yourself some of the following, Zerca, Healer, Witch, Scoundrel or Craftsman as early as you can.

I think there are two different lightbringer enemies : the nests and the village. And as far as i know, village attack you with spirit. Most people having troubles with Lightbringer are probably having trouble against the village rather than the nest, since being ready for purple challenge is a bit harder than for yellow.

And there is the third option: roaming lighzbringer armies. Nests and villages dont move and dont attack you. The roaming armies do. And they start out at least with difficulty 3 which you are likely be undergeared to do.

[Lumisteria]

Sorry if it wasn't clear, i speak about the roaming monsters spawned by nest (yellow) and village (purple).

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Originally posted by asdf:

I think it's possible to not only deal with the roaming lightbringer enemies at turn 150 but to straight up win the game by then if you know what you're doing.

Enlighten me. How do you possibly get gear good enough to beat the red cave by turn 150?
I finally managed around turn 650...

[asdf]

Originally posted by Zlorfik CH/BY:

Originally posted by asdf:

I think it's possible to not only deal with the roaming lightbringer enemies at turn 150 but to straight up win the game by then if you know what you're doing.

Enlighten me. How do you possibly get gear good enough to beat the red cave by turn 150?
I finally managed around turn 650...

You don't need particularly good equipment to beat the game. In fact, I was playing a challenge run on one of my recent playthroughs where I would use no equipment ever, and I won on turn 203 - I was playing efficiently but I wouldn't say that I was rushing it to the point of calling it a speedrun of any kind, and there was definitely plenty of room for improvement if you were aiming to win as quickly as possible (it was actually really anti-climactic, I went to the final boss and then I autocalced it and won with minor injuries, so clearly I didn't need to prepare for it as much as I did). If I had been really rushing myself, and of course actually using equipment, then I'm pretty confident that it would be possible to win before turn 150 with a similar playstyle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NACs0g7B9Y0&list=PLEug45oBtA7LjcCGgJT_stWva5IPXwzsj

In a previous patch I also won on turn 69 using an elf child - it's probably harder to do something like that now that the elf child costs 3 points and doesn't have ancestor's voice, but it's probably possible to still use an elf to wreck the game before turn 150. I was using an elf child solo just as a challenge to myself and of course the child solo won't be very viable after the elf child nerfs, but it should still probably be doable with something like Lada using an elf child and the scoundrel+rat trait from intellect - it might scale a little bit slower with the experience being divided between 3 characters, but it could almost certainly be able to win the game really fast still. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8kesr5fnV4&feature=youtu.be

Both of those games were on maximum difficulty and also played without savescumming, and you could of course get *way* faster times if you savescummed to the max.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Ok gotta watch these. This still sounds like fairytale to me xD

[Nombrilist]

Originally posted by Lumisteria:

Sorry if it wasn't clear, i speak about the roaming monsters spawned by nest (yellow) and village (purple).

With the roving armies, I usually have a choice of ways to attack Lightbringers even if I let them attack me. It's typically at a minimum social and mystic, but sometimes it's all three - and sometimes it's all three plus move away (yes, even when they're the attacker).

It's possible I'm only remembering nest-spawned armies, though. Village-spawned ones (the ones who have a Lightbringer-faction crest like other village-spawned groups) are definitely stronger than nest-spawned groups - in my most recent game I went from spanking elf island nest groups to squeaking by first island village groups (I neglected the first island from ~150 to 300 before going back to deal with the cave).

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Originally posted by Nombrilist:

Originally posted by Lumisteria:

Sorry if it wasn't clear, i speak about the roaming monsters spawned by nest (yellow) and village (purple).

With the roving armies, I usually have a choice of ways to attack Lightbringers even if I let them attack me. It's typically at a minimum social and mystic, but sometimes it's all three - and sometimes it's all three plus move away (yes, even when they're the attacker).

It's possible I'm only remembering nest-spawned armies, though. Village-spawned ones (the ones who have a Lightbringer-faction crest like other village-spawned groups) are definitely stronger than nest-spawned groups - in my most recent game I went from spanking elf island nest groups to squeaking by first island village groups (I neglected the first island from ~150 to 300 before going back to deal with the cave).

I struggle(d) with the ones with faction symbol. They had two mental and one spiritual challenge for me (maybe wisdom influenced that). I sometimes had the option to run away, but that cost me around 75% of Faith with the troop still standing at my doorsteps and attack on every single turn. Running is not an option for a village.

[madrigal]

Originally posted by asdf:

I think it's possible to not only deal with the roaming lightbringer enemies at turn 150 but to straight up win the game by then if you know what you're doing.

Depends on your definition of winning the game. If winning the game is just finishing the Lightbringer quest, then maybe. If you also want to complete the Divine quest and achieve Domination Victory, that's another thing entirely. No way to do that with only one character.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

Originally posted by madrigal:

Originally posted by asdf:

I think it's possible to not only deal with the roaming lightbringer enemies at turn 150 but to straight up win the game by then if you know what you're doing.

Depends on your definition of winning the game. If winning the game is just finishing the Lightbringer quest, then maybe. If you also want to complete the Divine quest and achieve Domination Victory, that's another thing entirely. No way to do that with only one character.

Well winning the game is when the game brings up the summary screen on its own.