First off. I want to say that I’m absolutely loving Stonehearth so far! I have a small question, though.
I’m checking out Alpha 16 and it has absolutely revitalized my interest in the game. I had built a nice village in A15, but since I only needed only three fully-equipped footmen to defend it, it was kinda getting boring. I started over in A16 in hard mode and it was pretty hard at the start, but it is still workable. So, that’s pretty great already.
When I started to get my main party of soldiers going, however, I found out that when I promoted my Herbalist to Cleric, suddenly there was no need for Herbalists, other than to promote new Clerics. There are no upsides to having Herbalists otherwise, since their healing need a Heartling moving into a bed, and bandages and potions in stock, which then need to be crafted by that Herbalist, which then need flowers on so on.
I am I missing something here? Are Herbalists simply worse than Clerics?
One suggestion that I have is to give enemies a chance of adding debuffs (Broken bones/Wounds) with every strike, and making those debuffs drain a bit of HP until they are removed only by the Herbalist.
I also had written up another suggestion involving a type of temporary HP for Heartlings that drained down until a Herbalist treated it, but it was getting pretty convoluted, and the wounds debuff cover it pretty well. Let’s keep it simple for my first post.
i don’t know a whole lot on this subject, but you do need an herbalist to craft the buff potions…
actually i’m pretty sure that’s already the case. i think it was said that zombies inflict a debuff that stops natural healing, and its only curable through herbalist… but i might just be making things up now…
maybe @sdee (or someone else from the team) can shed some light on this for us?
I had forgotten that, but since you need to place the buff potions, it either gets eventually lost in the other placement orders and your Heartlings never get to placing it, or if/when they place it I forget that I have them placed.
It gets away eventually, doesn’t it? I don’t remember it being a big issue, though. But maybe I haven’t noticed it.
The potions could make a big difference in combat but they need a better interface. There needs to just be a potion button on the combat menu, right next to the move buttons.
In these builds it seems like the Herbalist is just a stepping stone to the Cleric, for sure. To be honest, even if a late level Herbalist can make and apply bandages for bigger heals than the Cleric can do, the fact that the Cleric is a combat healer and a soldier unit makes me more inclined to just stack Clerics than level an Herbalist to its full potential.
I don’t know what would be a good incentive for an end-level Herbalist, but I know that I don’t feel like it’s worth it when I can just upgrade to a Cleric like at the moment.
I have a small question, though.
