Bay 12 Games Forum

So far the most damaging thing in the game I've seen is a leveled merc using his collect bounty ability on a marked enemy. I had a level 2 merc with upgraded equipment crit for 40 damage with that. I wish there was another class that could mark enemies, so I could use it in tandem with the merc rather then having to use a second merc to make quick use of it. Its really great for bosses regardless, since the marked status lasts for a long time.

Occultists can mark.

So, here my first thoughts on the game, after playing it for around 5 to 8 hours:
- Bleed and Blight seem hillariously useless on anything but Bosses. In any regular fight, you want to kill everything as fast as possible. There is absolutely no reason to use a DoT that can potentially miss, not apply itīs effect (RESIST LOL) and only does 2 damage max on the hit itself. Stun is, thank god, very useful for keeping some of the really mean attacks from hitting.

Re Dots:
Since I didn't use them much on my first play through, I've been making it a point to use both a jester and a plague doctor a lot in my second play through, which makes for a very dot heavy team. I've found dots to be... not bad. A couple good +blight/bleed chance items really remove the worries about resist (and are almost necessary to counteract the increasing resistance of veteran and champion enemies). Furthermore they're rather useful against the tough "mini boss" monsters you start seeing in veteran like ghouls, swinetaurs, and blighted giants.

Though plague doctors kinda have a problem in that both the Swine and the fungal monsters have good resistances to blight, so the Ruins are the only place the plague doctor can make full use of her offensive capabilities. Though this will presumably be less of an issue in the final release with the final two dungeons available.

They would need to buff up the bosses.  With luck and a good plan, a boss can be destroyed just as easily as a party of maggots.

Yeah, the thing about the bosses is they all are weakest to a very particular team composition and strategy. If you happen to know that strategy they can be destroyed pretty easily barring some really bad luck or rough trip to the boss, but if you don't know the strategy you can very easily just get completely demolished.

So if you don't want to spoil yourself it would probably be a good idea to throw a couple expendable teams at a boss so you can learn it.

That being said, I think there are more elegant ways to handle the level cap then the current method, so I don't really support it in general. However, the bosses don't particularly need an exception.

I've found graverobbers to be most useful when using lunge in combination with shadow fade or w/e that stun ability is called. Lunge has high accuracy, decent damage, and really good crit mod and shadow fade can be used to get back into position for a new lunge while also stunning people.
Obviously to use this build you need a somewhat position flexible team. I would usually run with a helion in my 2nd rank when running with my graverobber.
Graverobbers also can get absurd levels of dodge, between shadow fade and toxin trickery they can get around 100 dodge at the higher levels which makes them rather good in the front line as a dodge tank.

Jesters are all right. Good crit mod and with their bleed abilities they can kinda work like a helion but with slightly lower base damage.

Anyone have any good tips on how to take on the swine prince? I had a good party - Crusader, Hellion, Highwayman, and Vestral. They pretty much walked through every battle up to the bastard, and then got completely stomped. He hit everyone every round for 6-12 damage and is immune to stun. I hurt him, but no where near as fast as he hurt me. Lost the Vestral and fled the battle with everyone else at death's door. I'm...just not sure how to deal with that one.

Where you attacking or pulling the little pig? Cause you really shouldn't attack the little pig.

Beware of relying on A Teams. Sometimes your heroes might leave (for good? I dunno). I just had one of my favorite bandits (not superDismas, thank Nyarlathothep) leave "looking for a vision" after I left him meditating in the abbey to de-stress him. After seeing this I think cycling characters is even MORE important, as to have something decent to fall back on if this (or dungeon death) happens, instead of raw noobs.

They return eventually (usually? I think? I've certainly have had them return from this.) and you can use this to actually get above max rooster size.

My rule of thumb food wise is 8 for short missions, 14 for medium, and 24 for longs. For torches ive been doing about 3/6/9 dependent on mission length. I generally only take 2 or 3 shovels if im going to the ruins but I take all the shovels if im going anywhere else (5+). I haven't bothered much with keys and such so far, but maybe I should check em out.

On another note, with my most recent mission, I've officially downed all the veteran level bosses. One party formation has definitely become my favorite and that is Occultist/Bounty Hunter/Helion/Crusader. Crusader for general smite/slaying/tanking, Helion because If it Bleeds is awesome, Bounty Hunter for the pulls and double damage on marked targets, and Occultist for the heals and marking shit for my Bounty Hunter.

I agree that jesters and plague doctors seem to be the weakest. The only ability I like for plague doctors is the scramble grenade.

I used to find lepers kinda lackluster, but after picking up intimidate on one of them I'm finding them quite a bit more useful. Still not sure if they're better than crusaders, but pretty good nonetheless.
Helions are rather nice at doing damage and are sturdier than many of the alternatives, I'm finding them to be one of my favorites for the 2nd rank.
A grave robber is one of my highest level heros, I mainly use lunge in combination with the backward move and stun ability. Though she really lacks in damage when related to my highwaymen and bounty hunters.
I rather like bounty hunters for their many move abilities and good damage, but all my bounty hunters seem to be rather unfortunate.
I'm really not sure if I prefer vestal's or occultists. Vestals have better stuns but lack the move abilities that occultists have. Though the bleed effect on wyd reconstruction increases as you level it up so vestals are probably better healers at higher levels.

One thing I've found to be rather important in being successful is having a party that can fight well in any formation, as this makes you much more resilient to ambushes and move abilities.

I may have missed it, but how did you guys get the game?

You need to be a backer, 20$ or more. If you are, you should have gotten an email with a link to the humble bundle store.

Otherwise, you can buy into Early Access on Monday.