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The Banner Saga

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Regarding the singleplayer game, would it have killed the developers to put in a "you're almost out of food" popup when you arrive at a settlement and a "you're leaving camp with no food" popup when you leave? There's a certain protracted sequence at one location that lasted long enough that I forgot I was low on supplies when arriving and only remembered after I was abruptly kicked out. The game helpfully saved right after.

 

Honestly, I hate to say it, but the numbers-based parts of the trekking, while reminiscent of King of Dragon Pass, are the weakest part of the design. I'd rather just each section be a series of scripted events that affect morale and caravan size, than that and a bunch of fiddly little numbers. Not to mention that using renown to buy supplies is unthematic and uninteresting in terms of decision-making. Like Clyde said, leveling up isn't that important, so it's no hardship to pass it up, but transmuting all your renown into food is just boring. I'd rather there just the the tension between leveling up one high-level character, leveling up several low-level characters, or holding out for items at the next town.

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Regarding the singleplayer game, would it have killed the developers to put in a "you're almost out of food" popup when you arrive at a settlement and a "you're leaving camp with no food" popup when you leave? There's a certain protracted sequence at one location that lasted long enough that I forgot I was low on supplies when arriving and only remembered after I was abruptly kicked out. The game helpfully saved right after.

 

Honestly, I hate to say it, but the numbers-based parts of the trekking, while reminiscent of King of Dragon Pass, are the weakest part of the design. I'd rather just each section be a series of scripted events that affect morale and caravan size, than that and a bunch of fiddly little numbers. Not to mention that using renown to buy supplies is unthematic and uninteresting in terms of decision-making. Like Clyde said, leveling up isn't that important, so it's no hardship to pass it up, but transmuting all your renown into food is just boring. I'd rather there just the the tension between leveling up a high-level character, leveling up several low-level characters, or holding out for items at the next town.

The supplies-system is messed up. I'm pretty sure that I have bought supplies in a town and then have them not show up once we start trekking (I'm talking about buying a large quantity of supplies and them not showing up).

I completely agree about the buying supplies with renown. I would prefer supplies to be based entirely on the decision-instances. 

 

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This game is just too damn gorgeous when you're caravan is marching, it's crazy. 

 

I think I'm learning to get better at this game, but I'm losing some silly battles. I'm not experienced at all in turn-based RPGs on PCs.

 

Is there a way to heal yourself during the battle? I saw that there's a "rest" option that should do it, but I'm at work now and can't see what it does.

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The supplies-system is messed up. I'm pretty sure that I have bought supplies in a town and then have them not show up once we start trekking (I'm talking about buying a large quantity of supplies and them not showing up).

I completely agree about the buying supplies with renown. I would prefer supplies to be based entirely on the decision-instances. 

 

 

Its a little convoluted, but I think the formula that is happening is  (number of supplies/size of of party=days of food)

 

So you could buy 28 "supplies" but if your caravan is huge that is not going to make much of a dent in the ways of full days of supplies for t hem.

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This game is just too damn gorgeous when you're caravan is marching, it's crazy. 

 

I think I'm learning to get better at this game, but I'm losing some silly battles. I'm not experienced at all in turn-based RPGs on PCs.

 

Is there a way to heal yourself during the battle? I saw that there's a "rest" option that should do it, but I'm at work now and can't see what it does.

Later on, you get a character that can replace some of your armor, but I'm not aware of one that can replace your health. 

The "rest" option allows you to regain a willpower point (represented by the yellow star). The willpower points are used for special abilities and exertion. 

Exertion (represented by the green chain that is breaking) is how much extra damage you can do, armor you can break, or spaces you can move beyond your normal ability (if you have the willpower for it).

 

If you are having trouble winning the battles, this may help. I apoligize if you already know this:

Damage is typically calculated in this way: the attacker's health minus the targets armor.

I'm pretty sure that armor-break is a constant. So if your character has 3 armor-break, they can remove three armor even if their health is low. This is way different than attacks which are determined by how much more health the attacker has over the armor of the target. Usually, when people lose, it's because by the end of the match, the opponents armor is far higher than the player's health. This means that you only have a chance to do one point of damage. 

 

So let's suppose that you have two characters that both have 10 health, 10 armor, and 3 armor-break (the blue shield number).

Bill does a strength attack on Sasha, doing 1 point of damage to Sasha's health (10 strength against 10 armor will still have a 100% chance of doing 1 damage)

Bill 10a/10h Sasha 10a/9h

Sasha does 3 points of damage to Bill's armor instead of doing a strength attack (how much armor you remove is determined exclusively from the attacker's armor-break number represented by the blue shield; it has nothing to do with how much armor the target actually has, or how much health the attacker has).

Bill 7a/10h Sasha 10a/9h

Bill does another strength attack (10-10 = 1(minimum limit))

Bill 7a/10h Sasha 10a/8h

Sasha now does another armor-break (7-3=4)

Bill 4a/10h Sasha 10a/8h

Bill does another strength attack (10-10 = 1(minimum limit))

Bill 4a/10h Sasha 10a/7h

Sasha does another armor-break for 3 (4-3=1)

Bill 1a/10h Sasha 10a/7h

Bill does a strength attack (10-10=1(minimum limit))

Bill 1a/10h Sasha 10a/6h

Sasha now begins to do strength attacks because Bill's armor is very low. 6(Sasha's remaining health) - 1(Bill's remaining armor) = 5 damage

Bill 1a/5h Sasha 10a/6h

Now Bill doesn't even have enough strength/health to have a 100% chance to hit. He receives a 10% penalty for each point of strength lower than Sasha's armor. 5 (Bill's strength) - 10(Sasha's armor) = -5.

-5x10%= a 50% chance to do 1 point of damage. Bill misses.

Bill 1a/5h Sasha 10a/6h

Sasha does another strength attack (6-1= 5 damage).

Bill is dead, Sasha has 10 armor and 6 strength to take out someone else.

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Finished my first campaign on normal. Came for the art and Norse setting, stayed for the combat. Excellent game.

 

I've not been in the loop, but have Stoic mentioned anything regarding their plans for chapters 2 & 3 of the saga? Are those hinging on how chap. 1 sells? Kind of curious, as this has left me wanting more of the world.

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I was just defeated for the first time in Boersgard. I think I'm going to just roll with it (Chris Remo playing Metro 2033 style). My people are tired, moving from one desperate situation to the next. I lost all my Varl and all my fighters by the time we arrived in Boersgard, hospitality there was our last chance. 
I'm looking forward to starting over again. The times that my intentions as a player were misunderstood were few, but enough of them accumulated that I look forward to starting over with an understanding of the mechanics, the world, and the game-systems. I'm also interested to see how much variation there will be in my party composition and the caravan-events.

I never felt that I could compose a war-party to my preference; I have much more freedom to do that in Factions. I think I would have preferred no limitations to how I made my team (even though Factions does have it's own). If I have 30 Varl in my caravan, it feels like an arbitrary limit to only be able to use two bespoke Varl characters at a time. I can think of a lot of ways that the game could have used more general systems to it's benefit. If dredge are catching up with us, why not allow me to make make a war-party whose absence will have a direct correlation to the count of my caravan. Then allow me to keep them back an extra day for each successful battle (without healing) until I decide to retreat with the remaining members? The main characters wouldn't have to be used, but I wouldn't be against sacrificing them, it's not like there is a huge quantity of dialogue that another character couldn't move forward. In this completely different fantasy game that is inspired by Banner Saga, I wouldn't mind being forced to use nothing but archers and a spear-man when things get desperate or when events happen that divide the caravan, but those situations would be more fun for me if it wasn't the usual case.

 

Anyway, here is my favorite part of the game so far, don't read this spoiler if you haven't gotten to Boersgard or visited the godstone Dundr

Waiting for Juno was awesome. This was one of those moments in gaming where I felt exactly like my character. I didn't know if she would come. We were running out of supplies every day that we waited. The town was hostile and I wanted to leave because my caravan kept getting smaller. We waited and waited, and I said to myself "Is the dream of some mender worth waiting here until we all starve, get killed, or leave?"


 

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Later on, you get a character that can replace some of your armor, but I'm not aware of one that can replace your health. 

The "rest" option allows you to regain a willpower point (represented by the yellow star). The willpower points are used for special abilities and exertion. 

Exertion (represented by the green chain that is breaking) is how much extra damage you can do, armor you can break, or spaces you can move beyond your normal ability (if you have the willpower for it).

 

If you are having trouble winning the battles, this may help. I apoligize if you already know this:

Damage is typically calculated in this way: the attacker's health minus the targets armor.

I'm pretty sure that armor-break is a constant. So if your character has 3 armor-break, they can remove three armor even if their health is low. This is way different than attacks which are determined by how much more health the attacker has over the armor of the target. Usually, when people lose, it's because by the end of the match, the opponents armor is far higher than the player's health. This means that you only have a chance to do one point of damage. 

 

So let's suppose that you have two characters that both have 10 health, 10 armor, and 3 armor-break (the blue shield number).

Bill does a strength attack on Sasha, doing 1 point of damage to Sasha's health (10 strength against 10 armor will still have a 100% chance of doing 1 damage)

Bill 10a/10h Sasha 10a/9h

Sasha does 3 points of damage to Bill's armor instead of doing a strength attack (how much armor you remove is determined exclusively from the attacker's armor-break number represented by the blue shield; it has nothing to do with how much armor the target actually has, or how much health the attacker has).

Bill 7a/10h Sasha 10a/9h

Bill does another strength attack (10-10 = 1(minimum limit))

Bill 7a/10h Sasha 10a/8h

Sasha now does another armor-break (7-3=4)

Bill 4a/10h Sasha 10a/8h

Bill does another strength attack (10-10 = 1(minimum limit))

Bill 4a/10h Sasha 10a/7h

Sasha does another armor-break for 3 (4-3=1)

Bill 1a/10h Sasha 10a/7h

Bill does a strength attack (10-10=1(minimum limit))

Bill 1a/10h Sasha 10a/6h

Sasha now begins to do strength attacks because Bill's armor is very low. 6(Sasha's remaining health) - 1(Bill's remaining armor) = 5 damage

Bill 1a/5h Sasha 10a/6h

Now Bill doesn't even have enough strength/health to have a 100% chance to hit. He receives a 10% penalty for each point of strength lower than Sasha's armor. 5 (Bill's strength) - 10(Sasha's armor) = -5.

-5x10%= a 50% chance to do 1 point of damage. Bill misses.

Bill 1a/5h Sasha 10a/6h

Sasha does another strength attack (6-1= 5 damage).

Bill is dead, Sasha has 10 armor and 6 strength to take out someone else.

Thanks a lot for the info! I didin't really know any of this (well, I found out that breaking the armor was important, but not that keeping your health was also that important).

 

This totally changes everything. I just gone through two battles and was able to win them now. At first I was just striking the enemies with the Varl, because I thought they were stronger, but now I realize I should keep some squad members safe so I can give some deadly hits when the enemies armor is weakened.

 

Now I'm feeling more hooked to the game. Some of the set pieces are really beautiful and interesting, and the choices you have to make are a nice addition to the game, I just imagine if there's going to be any consequences in the future.

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I'm glad I started over. I enjoyed my first attempt all the way to Boersgard, but I'm enjoying my second attempt atleast as much. I'm making different decisions during the dialogues and getting significantly different results. I'm not the type of player who needs to get the good ending on the first play-through, but if you are you may want to read a guide. What's cool about it for me is that my first play-through (not to the end, I just died when I died) feels so much more deliberate now that I am seeing what my choices affected.

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It appears that my frustration about not being able to use a variety of class combinations was due to the fact that I lost a lot of available characters due to poor narrative decisions. I like that, it makes the failure of my first attempt more justifiable.

It's going to be hard role-playing a third time when I know how to not lose characters. I wonder what the balance of this type of thing is (narrative choices that give you bonuses). Making the narrative choices in FTL felt a lot different when I knew that I needed a conditional option than when I didn't know. I like consequences, but these decisions seem to be based on optimization rather than a narratively believable risk/reward.

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Admittedly, I didn't get very far, but I don't know if I was completely understanding the game mechanics. Is there a reason why the big shield guys hardly do any damage? It kind of sucks that they wield heavy swords and are very bulky but don't do much. I thought breaking the armor first would make a lot of difference, but perhaps it didn't.

 

On the Oregon Trail type stuff, can you get stuck if you don't have enough supplies and not enough days to rest to restore your crew?

 

I'm having fun so far though, I don't know if I will be able to do a complete playthrough of everything very soon. I don't really understand what's going on with the story, and I'm sure it'll make more sense the second playthrough. Especially because a lot of strange names of towns and people are being thrown around and I don't have much of a clue of who is who.

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Are you asking how to calculate the big-shield dude's damage? Or are you asking how to effectively use them?

I've run out of supplies and gradually everyone left the caravan. I'm not sure what the game-mechanic consequences of that is, but it sure did affect my morale as a player ;)

I thought that the setting and story would be tiresome during my second play-through, but I'm not finding that to be the case because the familiarity of the setting and characters is foundational for my enjoyment of them.

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I find this game surprisingly difficult. I am often "winning" battles but with most of my units dead at the end.

 

Can anyone explain the death mechanic to me? On my heroe's stats page there is a skull with a big X/Y implying that my guys can only die a limited number of times? But it's not clear that this is enforced.

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I haven't played it yet (just downloaded it late last night!) but on Three Moves Ahead they said there is a kind of tutorial/training wheels time period in which there is no permadeath, guys are just injured.  But past a certain point, permadeath for soldiers kicks in.

 

Now that I've played it, I have no idea what the 3MA people were talking about. 

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I typically get atleast one character killed during every battle. If I do the optional second battles, it's not odd to have one left standing.

I believe the skull thing is (how many enemies your character has killed) / (how many they need to kill for their next promotion).

I think that the death-mechanic is that they are injured and recieve -1 to health/strength until they heal. If you take them into battle anyway, they can recieve an additional penalty and take longer to heal.

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Are you asking how to calculate the big-shield dude's damage? Or are you asking how to effectively use them?

How to effectively use them. Also I should probably go back and read the whole thread before posting again so I don't look like a total asshole just in case this has all been answered before.

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I honestly consider shield-bearers to be my most useful unit. The reason is that they can ruin the opponents armor and make a wall while doing so. I'm going to assume you read the post on an earlier page where I break down the relationship between health/damage and armor. 
So the shield-bearer that has the "Bring the Pain" ability is kinda bad-ass. If you upgrade his armor-breaking value (the blue shield with the number beside it), he can prepare the biggest opponents to take a lot of damage. I have my armor-break at 4 of 4 available and what I do it focus on the most armored units and use his special ability. That removes 4 armor points from the opponent, removes a little bit of armor from any adjacent enemies (the dredge do that as a passive flaw whenever they lose 3 armor-points at a time) and it also makes it so any opponents that hit your shield-bearer before his next turn will lose 2 more armor-points everytime they hit him. So let me illustrate:

 

The opponent is 2 large dredge and a smaller one. We will call then Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, standing in that order.

Groucho has 15 points of armor and 12 points of health.

Chico has the same

Harpo has 10 armor and 10 health (and he only communicates with whistles and pats). 

 

You walk up to Chico (who is in the middle) and bring the pain. 

Chico loses 4 points of armor. 

Both Groucho and Harpo also lose a point of armor. 

Groucho 14a/12h, Chico 11a/12h, Harpo 9a/10h

All three of them hit you. I'm not going to calculate how much damage you take, but it'll be around 4 armor points and 1 health. When each of them hit you, they lost 2 additional points of armor (because Bring the Pain was active).

Groucho 12a/12h, Chico 9a/12h, Harpo 7a/10h ......you are at lets say 11a/11h

So then you bring the pain on Groucho removing 4 of his armor and 1 of Chico's because Chico is standing beside him.

Groucho 8a/12h, Chico 8/a/12h, Harpo 7a/10h

They hit you some and you are at 9a/7h (I'm not actually calculating that, it's not that important to my point) But everytime they hit you, they lost 2 armor each again.

Groucho 6a/12h, Chico 6a/12h, Harpo 7a/10h

Now your team comes in and mops up:

Sven comes in with 18h and is like BAM! Hits Groucho for 18(Sven's health) minus 6 (Groucho's remaining armor) and Groucho is fuckin dead. If Sven had hit before your shield-bearer did all that armor removal, he would have only done 6 damage.

Now your archer is like "I want some too." and she doesn't move before taking her shot (giving her +1 extra damage for every 2 points of armor the target has lost.) She's at 7a/8h and she shoots at Chico. 8(archer health) minus 6(targets armor) plus 4 (Chico's lost armor divided by two. 9/2 rounded is 4) So she just did 6 damage. It doesn't kill Chico, but now Chico has a 10% chance of missing your shield-bearer during an attack (+10% chance of missing for every point less of health the attacker has than the targets armor) 
I think you get the idea. If you remove armor early, your entire team does a lot of damage later. The shield-bearer removes damage more effectively than any other unit.

 

What happened to Harpo?

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Thank you Clyde, I will have to return to the game and use your tips. I will probably enjoy it more that way, since I kept putting that guy in the line of fire and doing pretty much nothing with him.

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Started this up tonight and really dug the bit I played.  It's a bit slow and hand-holdy to get going, would have liked it if they just let me jump in.  I think I'll play for another hour or two, then probably start over on purpose once I feel more comfortable with the battle system.  It has a completely different flow to it than I was expecting.  I'm way to used to Xcom where I can dog pile on enemies with all my troops at once. 

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After getting 4-5 hours into it, I'm loving this game.  Every battles has a sense of weight to it that I feel has been missing from a lot of other similar games.  To be fair, the only recent tactical strategy games I've played are Xcom and King's Bounty, so I'm not up with what the genre has done, particularly from Japanese developers. 

 

The conversation/decision gameplay makes me a nervous wreck though.  Some decisions have some guidance to them if you've been paying attention, but others are just making guesses.  Which makes sense, what with the warning early on about how leaders just have to make it up as they go along sometimes. 

 

I've seen a lot of people comment and praise the uniqueness of how Attack and Health come out of the same pool.  It took me a few matches before I realized King's Bounty has been doing this for years, but it's also persistent across battles.  In KB, you have a stack of units, and as the numbers are killed off, their attack power also drops off, then you have to go get some more between battles.  Which actually creates a problem where a lot of people prefer armies that are unlikely to take many casualties and playing for minimal losses, simply to save the time of having to run around the world backtracking to reload your army.  Which unfortunately means that a lot of interesting army possibilities end up not being used simply out of annoyance.   Since in TBS your units heal between battles, it eliminates that worry about having to restock your army and lets you play with a preferred loadout or strategy. 

 

The always alternating turns took some getting used to, realizing that crippling multiple enemies was actually a better strategy than killing them outright.  And by the same token, I've intentionally killed off one of my own people a couple of times so that my stronger units get to go more often.  I know a lot of people have criticized the turn mechanic as the biggest pet peeve, but ultimately I think I like it for novelty, if nothing else. 

 

I do wish that it explained a few things better.  Some skills clearly point out that they have friendly fire, while other skills don't mention it, but do still cause ally damage.  It would have been nice to know the level cap was 5, I might have leveled up the stats of a couple of characters slightly differently.  You should be able to move items around between people on the loadout screen.  It's kind of a pointless time waster to force you to camp just to move a necklace from an injured unit to a healthy unit. 

 

I think I would love a procedural mashup of FTL/Oregon Trail version of this game as well.  You have a goal making it from A to B in a certain number of days.  Give the player a small pool of Renown to outfit the caravan initially, then GO!   Difficulty could be set by deciding what two points on the map you would like to go between.  Give each location on the map a difficulty modifier, so each game is decided by the combined difficulty of the endpoints. 

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I just wanted to mention that reading and participating in the discussion here about maiming and armor-reduction has had a noticeable effect on my capability to win in Factions

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This game is amazing!

I'm at a point in the game that I'm really hooked to the world and the story. I think the narrative has a nice pacing, it's a bit slow, just building up to its most important events.

I just gone through the

Part where we control Juno, when she is talking/fighting the serpent

And I'm crazy to see what happens next. It's a shame I need to sleep now.

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This game is amazing!

I'm at a point in the game that I'm really hooked to the world and the story. I think the narrative has a nice pacing, it's a bit slow, just building up to its most important events.

I just gone through the

Part where we control Juno, when she is talking/fighting the serpent

And I'm crazy to see what happens next. It's a shame I need to sleep now.

 

Ha!  That's exactly the same spot I quit tonight, about an hour after I should have gone to bed.

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Just finished the game now. What an amazing game! The writing kind lost itself by the ending a little bit, but it's still a great game.

 

I honestly care about this world and it's characters, and can't wait to see what's coming next. I just hope that stupid Candy Crush developer don't prevent the guys from releasing the sequel.

 

The game was really nice to play and Iearned it's mechanics to a point that I haven't had any trouble until the final battle. 

 

The ending sequence is incredibly gorgeous, the art is fantastic and the music is so beautiful. By the way, all the music during the game is amazing, and sometimes and find a way to match the soundtracks with some specific moments in battle, giving some "grandiose" moments to it.

 

When the credits rolled, I could understand why the music in this game is so good - Austin Wintory. This guy is ridiculously talented.

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