It is pretty simple. If you want fine items or faster exp, you need high mind.
Body for survivability (more attack, defense) or faster movement.
Spirit for courage while fighting, healing powers (self healing or healing others) or befriending animals (shepherd)
That is all fair and well, but I’m more interested in a hard set of data points. I could just come up with them myself, but I thought it would be better to get the collective opinion of the community.
Ja sure, it’s no secret. There are two main reasons I’m interested in the data.
Firstly, I would like to put together a 3D graph that plots each of the different classes, just as a way to visually see where they fit in relation to each other.
The second reason is in connection to the conversation on Hearthling happiness based on their career path in this thread with @Brackhar and others. It got me thinking that there must be a way to build a model that can give a Hearthling a career path course based on their bases stats. So that you don’t run into a situation where a Hearthling wants to be a farmer, based on the career desire, but their stats make them more suited to be a Knight.
Thus, once I have collected enough data on the base stat recommendations for the classes, my hope is to put together a model that will calculate what career is best for them based on their stats, but also give them some flexibility. Thus, based on where the Hearthling is placed within the 3D graph, it will be able to calculate the top 3 (closest) and bottom 3 (furthest) jobs based on distance in reference to their stats. The plan is to also throw a random variable in there to make it a little more interesting. That way there isn’t just one job that is best for every Hearthling, giving you a little more flexibility.
All in all, I don’t know if the dev team will even be interested in something like this, but I thought it would be fun to put together.
For things like Potter and Carpenter that I use the same stats on I try too make the roles gender specific, Potter-Female and Carpenter-Male. The cook has the same stats as a farmer because you can’t be a cook with out being a farmer, it is the same with the Trapper/Shepherd and Blacksmith/Engineer. But like the Potter and Carpenter, the Farmer-Male and the Cook-Female, and the Trapper-Male and Shepherd-Female (both Blacksmith and Engineer I try to have Male). Getting Hearthlings with these specific stats or gender is almost impossible with the current stat generation techniques though. I like to start the game with the Farmer (2-6-2), Herbalist (4-4-4), and Footmen (3-6-6) but I usually end up sitting there rolling the whole set for about 20 minutes just to get the Footmen and then have to settle for less than ideal stats for the rest of the positions.
For me, any crafter class has to have a base stat of at least 4 mind to be assigned to the job. I just assign whoever has the highest at the time I need them, and ignore all other stats unless I’m looking to build up my military.
Farmers are a special case. I’ll choose someone with high mind as my first farmer, and upgrade him/her to a cook asap. Then every farmer afterward can have any combination of stats, since all Hearthlings seem to be equal when it comes to farming.
For my military, I pick Hearthlings with 4 or higher body. Usually I only pick those with 5 or 6, but if I’m desperate for footmen, I’ll get someone with a 4. I don’t usually pay attention to spirit, because all my Hearthlings seem to act just as brave as the next, attacking whatever hostiles come close enough until their health dips below 1/4. The only time I pay attention to spirit is when choosing a cleric. I choose as high spirit and body as I can with clerics. I prefer them to have a decent m8nd as well, for the brief period they spend as herbalists, but it isn’t as important.
Shepherds and trappers… well, I just choose whoever for those jobs.
4 mind or higher is okay for most crafters, but except for making them gain exp faster the Cook, Mason, Weaver, Blacksmith, and Engineer don’t really get anything out of having a high mind and can really have any stat combo you want. The Carpenter and Potter both should have 5 or 6 Mind because they are currently the only ones that can make fine products, and a high Mind increases the % chance a Fine product will be made. Even the Herbalist only gets a higher mind level because they seem to grow levels the slowest.
It is true any Hearthling can be a farmer, but the higher the body stat the faster they move which means they harvest and plant faster.
Military gets 4 or higher body (preferably 6) so that they have high HP. Spirit military wise determines when a Hearthling will run, if the Hearthling has a 1 for spirit he will run away at ~35 or 40% health, but if he has 6 spirit usually they don’t run away until ~15 or 20% health.
With Shepherds and Trappers Spirit changes the frequency of successful trapping and what you get from the traps or the # of animals held in a certain area size for the Shepherd, the lower the Spirit the fewer they can hold. A Trapper with 1 spirit might catch something ~30% of the time and only get a pelt or meat, but one with 6 spirit might catch something 60% of the time and get both a pelt and meat off each catch. A Shepherd with 1 spirit can hold 1 animal in a 8x8 area, while a Shepherd with 6 spirit can hold 4.
Yeah, I honestly didn’t realize the various stats had so many applications that I was unaware of. But I think I’ll still pick my military based on body alone. The auto-healing just isn’t significant enough to worry about for me. Either I’m going long enough between random encounters that my footmen are fully healed between each one, or I’ve already gotten an herbalist set up and grinding his/her way to become a cleric.
Of course, I play exclusively in normal difficulty as well. I’m sure if I tried hard mode I’d need to worry about stats a bit more, but I’m still not sure I’m ready for that.
What grinds my gears is that I’ll have 5-Spirit footmen who will attack, step back, attack, step back, repeat…taking extra damage because of “stepping back” instead of standing the heck still like a 6-spirit would…so I don’t get many if any unless I re-roll for them before starting a game.
I basically relegate anyone who doesn’t have a 6Body + 5/6 Spirit to worker duty since anything less is a risk I’m not happy taking…and I’ll typically ever only lose Z E R O hearthlings due to it, unless the game decides to break spawn rules and spawn mobs ON or NEAR (literally within 10-20ft) heathlings who are out and about.
Sounds about right, that is why I posted a challenge to the modding community to make a mod that will allow you to reroll each Hearthling individually because I am getting tired of sitting there and rerolling the whole group for 20 minutes just so I can get the best stats for a Footman, Farmer, and my initial crafter.
Mind is the least important stat for fighting units. It effects how much experience you gain per action. Since leveling is quite fast at the end, you will easily get high level Knights/Archer even with 1 mind.
Body is extremely important for Archers/Knights. More Attack and more Health. Knights also tank like 90% of the incoming damage, so the extra health is even more important and since you dont want your archers getting one-shotted, they also should have some. I prefer 6 body for knights and at least 4 for archers.
Spirit raises morale and increases heal. So it’s extremely important for clerics. Since fighting units have a high moral right from the start, they dont benefit much from the morale from spirit points. So it’s ok if my Knights/Archers have 1 spirit, but my cleric must have 6.
That is a lie, I had a fight once recently with 3 level 4 Footmen the enemies where numerous enough that they all got really low on health. One Footman had 3 spirit at about 1/3 health left he started doing the run away attack that the scared guys do, One Footman had 5 spirit at about 1/4 or just under 1/4 health he started doing the same thing, the last Footman had 6 spirit he was almost dead before he started exhibiting that behavior. So unless you always have a large army such that your troops never fall below 1/2 health spirit will effect you in every fight you do.
I would never use footmen to begin with. They die to fast and get to much damage. It’s better to have multiple knights who get counter healed by clerics. My knights rarely drop below 50% health, so having 1 spirit doesnt change anything for me. ^^
