Epic/Legendary Hero Hearthlings

Suggestions
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Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but currently even a Lvl 6 Footman or Knight can’t solo some of the tougher enemies like Orc Chieftains and Ogres alone.

Yet I can’t help but yearn for a sense of endgame progression for my Lvl 6 Combat Hearthlings who have been in dozens of battles and vanquished hundreds of foes.

Where are the “Legendary Hero” Hearthlings who stand against hordes of dark forces alone? Where is the gallant Knight who can slay a dragon by herself? Where is the ferocious Footman whose blade can hew an Ogre in twain? Where is the far seeking Archer whose arrow can find its mark across an entire forest?

As Towns grow larger shouldn’t there be certain Legendary/Epic Hearthlings whose legend and fame grow with the Town? Heroes of the highest order who have ascended past the limits of the ordinary Hearthling to do great deeds. Mighty champions who arrive in a Town’s darkest hour to fend off terrible foes.

Where is our Knight Cid?

Basically, what I’m suggesting is a Hero system for Hearthlings who have broken past the boundaries of regular elite soldiers. These Hearthlings, after having slain so many enemies are now capable of killing powerful boss mobs themselves, or fending off entire armies alone at the highest level.

Of course, getting a Hearthling to such a level would require a huge investment of time and resources from the Town itself, and would be a risky investment since the Hero Hearthling would need to see a lot of battle; but I feel that it would solve the current problem of a lack of options when it comes to a military setup.

Currently, a Town’s military must be squad based and work together, which is great for a particular style of playthrough, but completely eliminates other playstyles which might want to focus on perhaps, training one or two Epic Heroes who could serve as the Town’s Guardians.

I’ve found a small bit of what I’m looking for in the Descendants of Numenor mod by @Vargbane In the mod, the Fountain Guard class is an elite Hearthling which further specialises from the Knight, but even then, a Fountain Guard Hearthling at Lvl 6 still can’t solo a boss mob.

Now, I’m not asking for regular Lvl 6 Hearthlings to be able to solo Boss mobs, but what I am asking for is the potential for Hearthlings to be able to eventually grow into fighters that can.

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Have you ever tried making a Villager into farmer, cook, blacksmith, carpenter and then made him into a fighter? I am curious about what stats you end up with.

I’m all in for this. Too many games has a limit to experience.

Point is: to keep progression of a soldier’s abilities even after reaching max level.

Maybe damage increase every 100 hits? Like 0.2 ekstra damage or whatever balance will be relevant at the time of game finish.
Learning secret abilities/offence or defence.
Maybe finding scrolls from enemies with techniques, or having a small chance of learning enemy techniques from the fight itself, as long as both are engaged with each other to test their mettle!
After defeating XX number of enemies, the soldier will achieve new ways of protecting the party and town.

BUT, i have gotten the impression that level 6 is not the max level, but just a limit while Stonehearth is under construction.
And how the new classes will affect the other soldiers fighting abilities. Magma smith, Geomancer, any more?

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Agreed!

Currently I run out of things to do at end-game, so having a progression system for soldiers past Lvl. 6 would be great.

A tier system of sorts for existing classes would be good.

For example: if a Footman reaches Lvl.6, they now have to personally kill 100 enemies to reach Heroic Footman Lvl. 1, which would be a higher tier version of the Footman who retains the same skills and stats as the previous Lvl 6. Footman. Unlike regular Lvl. 6 Footmen, a maxed Heroic Footman should be capable of beating an Orc Chieftain or Ogre solo.

Eventually this could progress further with needing to kill 250 enemies to reach Champion Footman, and then needing maybe 500 kills to reach Legendary Footman. These classes too would be capable of beating high level enemies solo, as a reward for painstakingly and riskily grinding a single Hearthling through the fires of combat and hundreds of foes.

And maybe add a 1000 kill requirement to reach Mythic Footman or something. These long time grinds would certainly help boost replayability and finally give players a reason to not quit after reaching endgame.

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I like this idea. But how about letting classes stack? So you can have the benefits of being a level 6 footman and a level 6 knight. Maybe you could even implement prestige classes based on class combos.

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5

I second this idea.

Knight + Cleric seems like an intuitive recipe for a Paladin prestige class to me.

If they add a Mage anytime soon, that + Archer could be Magic Archer, etc.

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I’d rather see hero NPCs that either visit your town once it offers all the things an RPG adventurer would want and/or have them hireable as mercenaries. This would suit those players who don’t want to focus on military, offering them a way to defeat threats without having soldiers themselves.

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7

That’s a good idea.

Alongside having the ability to develop your own Heroes, trading Towns would feel fun if they could use that extra money and resources to hire them too.

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Farmer and Herbalist = Druid. Nothing says they need to be combat based.

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So along the line of heroes, I actually proposed a carry over hero system a few weeks back. The idea was after you ‘finished’ the ‘story’ aspect of your town you could chose like 4 or 5 hearthlings to save to a in-game cloud so you could import them into other worlds along with any equipment they had.

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That sounds amazing.

In fact, I feel like it’s something that the devs might implement in the future seeing as it feels so intuitive.

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I agree, a special one hearthling at a time elite / hero class would be neat. Every army needs its hero.

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That could be another page in the story too: the messenger could return when a soldier has achieved the maximum skill level and award them the ‘Medal of Cid’ or something similar.

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@MajorFordson That sounds pretty cool. There could be mercenary caravans that come as notifications, like the traders, and had different soldiers for different prices that could be raised or lowered depending on how long they would serve your town. They could also train low-level footmen while they were there.

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I think the NPC angle is by far the more compelling one, the idea that you get a character, which you have to pay handsomely, to protect your town sounds wicked, gives gold a purpose other than buying pets.

So you could really make a trader town - tbh any influx of dudes visiting your town physically with a purpose sounds absolutely amazing, rather than a simple notification.

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