I noticed with the new 2960 build of A16 that it’s taking FOREVER to level up my combat classes now. XP seems to be about 1/3 or 1/4 of what it used to be. Was this by design? I have Apprentice Knights and Archers now who’ve seen over a dozen combats with no level gain. I checked their XP bars and they are getting a TINY amount of XP per fight, but at the current rate it will take another dozen fights to reach level 1. I thought that level 6 Footmen might be “stealing” XP from the group, so I broke them into a separate party that only patrols the “base” while only the younglings go out to handle combats and that didn’t impact the amount of XP they are getting - it’s still pathetically low.
This is from a save which I started on 2955 and reloaded in 2960. I have not yet tested a new game in 2960 to see if I can reproduce it, but I can try that today. I will update this post once I’ve given it a try.
I’m noticing this as well, on my fresh game I am already on Dewmoon 2 and I only have a level 4 footman, level 2 Knight, 2 level 2 footman and a level 2 cleric… I’ve been playing all day, itching to fight ogo, but i don’t think i’ll have the levels to do it.
Looking at the entity files for the mobs, the xp hasn’t changed. The xp to level amount in base_human hasn’t changed either. Division of xp is the same too which is the amount of xp from the entity divided among the amount of combatants - (exp = math.ceil(exp / num_nearby_combatants)
The patch notes mention “More encounter tuning” and looking at the encounter files, there’s a little more delay in spawns and how many of each. I’m guessing it’s just combat/encounter tuning to balance the length of the campaigns; we wouldn’t want max fighters after Ogo which I was pretty close to before with all the frequent random mob/crypt/camp spawns.
Oh and Ogo can be easy to take on, I took out his camp with an Apprentice archer, level 3 Cleric, a level 2 Knight and I think a level one or two footman. I used their aggro radius to lure them away in three or four separate groups during patch 2955 where my Cleric kept getting distracted.
I think it is just as quick as it was before. BUT if you get archers or knights, as with all upgraded classes, it will require more xp for them to level up, as to reach lvl1 archer, you effectively have the same xp requirement as for lvl4 footman.
No, I can’t even get to archer and knight - by the time I have steel armor and weapons in 2960, I barely even have 2 level 2 and 1 level 1 footmen. And 15 hearthlings - so if I pick up even 1 more hearthling I will trigger kobolds and this group’s woefully under-prepared for that slaughter. I did notice the much slower rate of invasions, perhaps that’s why the leveling feels so slow now. =/ Maybe I should go into the entity files myself and add a 2x XP multiplier just for the Hell of it to make up for the new slower pace.
I’d say increase your hearthling count and bring on the kobolds without modding for xp. Make a save and call it “release the kobolds” as a reference.
If you focus on getting a Cleric out as fast as possible, you’ll be able to handle anything within this range of difficulty with some amount of combat tactics. I prefer to single-target my mobs which gets around the combat bug of classes wandering off and trims down the packs faster. Maybe separate the level 1 footman to another group and let him sit in the base or demote to worker as you don’t want to spread the xp out too thin.
The difficulty has been adjusted from my play experience and what I can see in the files. There’s a number of changes under \stonehearth\data\monster_tuning that take some bite out of kobolds. I didn’t notice the monster_tuning folder earlier and it uses mixins to add to the mobs. They did make some xp changes for some things in here but the few random files I’ve look at have been increases to xp. The evil little Kobold archer specifically has 150 less HP, and a decrease in muscle which should mean slightly less damage.
Looking at the campaign settings for when you should start seeing certain random encounters, after day 25 and hearthling count is between 15 and 23 you’ll get the “insane” raids. Not the best name as they aren’t that bad. Kobolds, Golem family, Entlings and Ogre’s come out as trash mob encounters. For the Kobold’s specifically, that’s 2-3 of them and 2-3 wolves.
If you’re curious to see what will come at you and when, you could try having a peak within stonehearth\data\gm\campaigns. Goblin_war and orc_war are the main campaigns and ambient threats are all the random encounters. The folder \stonehearth\data\gm\campaigns\ambient_threats\arcs\trigger\ambient_threats\encounters\trash_mobs\raid_difficulty is where Kobolds and other random spawns are pulled from.
I’m not sure if this is true, i know the crafters that are promote from other classes get an exp boost to help negate this situation. Though might not be the case for combat classes, i hadnt noticed a difference before the patch
It was mentioned in another stream that there are 2 level lists for each villager, one for total level and one for class level. The total level one is the one that determines level up. So if you wait till level 6 to promote then the first level of the new class is effectively level 7 for the villager so takes more xp than the level up to level 6 did. It is the same for if you switch to another class. So basically for every level in any class that a villagers gets you have to account for that when you switch classes. So if you get a guy to level 3 farming decide you need him to be a potter instead by the time you promote him to potter from mason he is a level 6 villager and it will take lots of xp to level up the potter class.
Hi all,
So yes, combat XP did change.
What happened was we fixed a bug where XP wasn’t getting distributed between all the hearthlings in combat, so everyone got the full amount of XP from every mob. Now they get a divided amount. However, maybe that bug was on to something as it seems like XP is now too low. We’ll have to think about whether to put the bug back or to increase XP from all monsters. Apologies!
Thanks
-Yang
So for now I just cut the amount of XP in half to level in the base_human lua file. Sadly it means my crafters are leveling up way too fast, but the soldier classes feel a lot better now. It’s still not as good as before since when I send out a party of 4-6 they are getting an inversely lower proportion of XP compared to before - but dividing the XP perfectly explains what I’m seeing now.
Perhaps the XP split shouldn’t be an “even share” but a curve that applies a diminishing returns multiplier to the XP gain based on the number of party members involved. I.e. If there’s 1 party member they get the normal XP. If there’s two, they each get 75% of the XP, if there’s 3 they each get 60% of the normal XP value, if there’s 4 they each get 50%, if there’s 5 they each get 40%, etc. An even distribution can really kill a settlement that has a lot of soldiers.
