Summary:
There are currently four possible problems which stop the herbalist from efficiently healing hearthlings. They are the following:
Hearthlings (especially footmen) don’t go to bed even when down to a quarter health until they are naturally tired. With two attacks a day it can be frustrating if they could have survived if they had given the herbalist a chance to do its job after the first. (I’ve only lost one foot man after 28 days)
Hearthlings can heal extremely quickly even when they don’t have high willpower making the herbalist completely redundant for the vast majority of attacks. Many of my footmen have healed themselves while just walking back to the settlement.
Herbalist walks very slowly while carrying potions and healing items. Again giving even more time for nature to work (I have seen herbalist just make it to the edge of a bed the moment that the patient recovered naturally).
Footmen or hurt hearthlings pick randomly which bed to go to for healing. Meaning that your lovely hospital (cleverly positioned next to the entrance of the settlement) with all your potions and beds in never gets used and they instead will walk to another random bed on the other side of the settlement.
Or they just sleep on the ground next to the bed…
This is a great post and I love your screenshots. Says so much more than I would have been able to give in feedback too.
I dearly love the new Herbalist skill - and I think in time it will be a great additional and welcomed necessity to keeping your Hearthlings alive! But for now, it’s just a fun side project at best as I have observed the same things you have about how rapidly the Hearthlings naturally heal and also that they don’t always go to a bed when needed.
I also would like to see a way to tell the Herbalist to find and heal Hearthlings even when he/she is asleep. Attacks at night are the worst as I can command my footmen about but not my Herbalist.
Mine DOES go and heal when someone’s in a bed and I did notice them going to beds even during the day - at first. I think the more complicated town gets, the less this is happening. I’m thinking maybe a field-medic station out by the gates is in order for my Herbalist. Looks like that may be what you tried to do in your game!
Great city btw - very complicated defense wall system! Do you find this ‘confuses’ them more? I have stayed away from anything too complicated with that concern in mind.
I tried the field medic location (until I could build a better hospital) but the hearhtlings still weren’t choosing to sleep there.
I actually found that in the early town the herbalist was doing nothing until I had 13-14 hearthlings at which point the enemies were hard enough to do more damage than was healing naturally, but it still wasn’t substantial.
Thanks! These designs confuse me more than the little guys!
This might be a worthy suggestion from our discussion: “Field Medical Station” or “First Aid Station” … ability to designate an area for healing purposes. I’m sure ‘areas’ have been discussed many times. A very Dwarf-Fortress-esque type function where a room or zone can be designated for specific purposes similar to stockpiles.
I have to echo these issues. The problem is that the Herbalist just doesn’t have enough to actually do. Most of the time your people aren’t injured and when they are they heal on their own. Most of the time right now my Herbalist wanders around and doesn’t contribute.
I would suggest making the Herbalist an advanced class of the Farmer, that can still function as a farmer, but also has healing benefits and can brew exotic things (distilled liquor, maybe?).
If you’re going to have a combat medic / cleric type class for adventuring have them promote off of Footmen.
I like Vexed idea, it could even be a flag like the rally banners. I have had the same results with my Herbalist as well. I also do not understand how to effectively use the buff tonics that they can make. Being a slow learner I just recently found out how to actually use them.
