The game runs smoothly now with 15+ hearthlings… but expect some UI lag and some crashes. Building and placing things became rather tedious. Not sure if the lag was from the UI crashes or just a side product of higher population.
You’ll want 3 foot soldiers. Not off the bat, but sooner the better. Make sure they have higher than 1 spirit… One of mine had a habit of running around during fights. There was a very noticeable increase of monsters in this patch. It becomes even more noticeable as the game progresses. Getting a blacksmith up & running is going to be a priority also.
herbalists require more silkweed. Plan appropriately. You only need one 11x5 plot of herbs as the yields are very high compared to other crops. I personally found the Herbalist kinda useless. My footmen, once decked out in good weapons & armor, rarely took damage. And early on while it did take longer to recover, it wasn’t that big a deal.
Keep an eye on your workers. Wolf packs & other nasties like to spawn almost everywhere. Had several instances where something spawned in my caves and there was no audio alert that I was under attack.
I must not be doing something right. I had three footmen, each with sword / maul or better weapons and at least basic armor with one of the three in the basic (edit: bronze?) armor as I just got my blacksmith up to that level to make whatever the most basic metal armor was… Anyways they were doing great against goblins, regular wolves, a stone golem thingie and the lizard monster … but then there came two goblin wolves and they killed all three of my footmen in nothing flat then proceeded to rampage the town and kill everyone else. I only had about 16 hearthlings at that point and really thought I was doing pretty good with three footmen. Guess not. The difficulty ramping up quickly in Alpha 14 is a bit more than I’m ready for I think.
@Vexed
I’m ptretty sure when the goblins and wolves show up
You have to get rid of the goblins before they come with the wolvs (they aren’t hostile until the goblins manage to turn them into theirs) or the system changed i dunno
Yes I’ve noticed if you attack the camps first, you can free the wolves - I like that strategy! In the case of my failure though, I did not see or find a camp of them. On reloading a prior save to the incident I did find it … far away and oddly run by one of those little golems, not by goblins, how odd! They were Goblin attack wolves though and I still don’t understand how they were so much more powerful than other creatures (even the large zombies and lizards). On a second playthrough of the same save, I did manage to survive losing only one footman instead of all three. Definitely need to be ramping up your town defenses very quickly in this latest version of the game!
Thanks @8BitCrab! I took a long hiatus because I didn’t want to get too burnt out on the game while it’s still in mid-development. It’s such a fun game I wanted to be sure I waited until there was enough new content to try a proper playthrough.
Things are still pretty unstable in 14 for me (and others I’ve noticed in reading). After about day 20 and 20 or so hearthlings the game really starts to clog up and get frustrating. I’m seeing that UI lag is common so I’m not too concerned about it - they’re undoubtedly working hard to resolve that.
The game is getting a LOT more interesting now. I like the challenge of attackers forcing me to plan out good defenses but currently the notifications (too much music going on and off I get confused!) and group movement attack vs defense mechanisms are still making it a bit too difficult. I’ve given fieedback in the thread pinned about that topic so hopefully they continue to balance it out!
I love the new herbalist skill, and cook is also new to me since I have not played in awhile. The new creatures and monsters are also fantastic. I’m starting to see a real ‘town’ come together insted of just a small band of survivors. Can’t wait to see how big we can eventually go!
The difficulty ramping up quickly in Alpha 14 is a bit more than I’m ready for I think.
