Issues with a few of the classes. (Herbalist, Cleric, Engineer and Shepherd)

Suggestions
1

Hey everyone!

First off: I love the game. Now thats out of the way I do see some potential here and there and decided I should share them.
Im sorry if my english is way off at points, its not my first (or second) language.

I have a couple of suggestions about a few of the classes that feel under/overwhelming at the moment,
they are as follows:

Herbalist

my issues:
  • Should bring more to the table other than a miniscule amount of healing.
  • He is totally outdone by the cleric

The herbalist should have more options availiable to him/her, my suggestions are:
Making herbs that the cook can use.
Giving tired hearthlings a boost (also crafting of said boost)
I would love if the herbalist could let you restore morale to the town in some way maybe through potions, random buffing of sad hearthlings the herbalist meets or by making flower garlands or other such items that would boost happyness.

Herbalist could also boost our soldiers in ways, make poisons for weapons, give manapotions to clerics and such.

Clerics

my issues:
  • Destroys the need for the herbalist
  • Is way overpowered (once you have one cleric, most fights in normal mode become a breeze)

The Cleric is by far the most OP class in the game.
Fights move from being nailbiting situations where you hope for that vital crit or manage your soldiers just right to tank the foe just right, to a tank and spank where even greater numbers and larger foes become a non threat.

my suggestion is simply to let clerics have a manapool that could be drained by healing.
I would also like to see things like manapotions for the clerics to battle this nerf.
To make this work the cleric would no longer be the one to heal normal hearthlings (that job would again go to the herbalist, like it should be), that way the cleric wouldnt spend all mana healing a couple of farmers right before a big raid.

I would also like to see more spells from the cleric, maybe lifedrain, or a terrify spell wich sends a foe scattering in fear!

Engineer

My issues:
  • One of the hardest classes to attain
  • Has one of the smallest amounts of impact on the game
  • One engeneer does not do the job of defending the town in a meaningfull way
  • Lategame raids deal with the turrets and traps way too easily

I really think theres loads to do with the engineer, its a great idea and concept and should feel like a great step in the progress of your town once you get him or her.
At the moment this is lacking (I almost never bother with getting a engineer at all due to the fact that you need to train a new blacksmith to get him)

Engineers could be a "upgrade" class, one that takes old items and makes them better, Maybe he could make doors reinforced (upgrading right on a building) and other such things. Or he could create helpfull things like automatic picks that make your miners mine twice as fast or automatic hoes that hoe twice as fast (hehehe)

Theres a lot of great suggestions on what to do with the engineer, my current favourite is making him be able to arm sheep (That is just brilliant right? now your pasture also acts like defence!) other ideas is that he could make robots that do simple tasks like hauling or digging (maybe different modes? or modules the engineer could make to give the bot different abilities (farming, tanking healing, woodcutting, mining, hauling, building and so on))

I would love if he would simply walk around with his tools and make things better, maybe mark out a house to ā€œfix upā€ and he would improve what he could. This could be a answer to the problem I have where my towns always include a low-tier part and a heigh-tier part. If all he could was to make the old buildings inline with the new I would be happy to make him! (ie. change wall and roof colors)

Shepherds

my issues:
  • Needs to much micro mannage to be efficient
  • my cooks cant rely on a steady supply of meat or eggs

Please buff shepherds! they take up too much room and provide too little gain.
As is, I only make one to get feathers for my archers, and that is a shame.

Finnaly:

Woah that was a lot, thanks for sticking with me!
I really love the game, the new video put out today was great and I really like how the game progresses!

Cheers! Yeex

5 Likes
2

Love these suggestions. My added thoughts would be;

Herbalist / Clerics:

  • Make clerics battlefield healers only so they keep your guys alive and functioning (the mana idea with mana pots is genius.) but after the battle the units are still hurt and require patching up at the herbalist. So basically cleric = temp battle fix and buff - buffs are powerful but very short duration, combat units only - and the herbalist = permaheal / Longer duration buff pots - but lesser effect buffs.

Engineer:

  • Really needs to be able to drop more traps and turrets per engineer.
  • Can make other traps like pitfall traps, gas traps fire traps etc.
  • Maybe make walls, fences (more items basically) damageable in an attack that engineer needs to fix on an ongoing basis.
  • As part of the above maybe houses deteriorate over time and require maintenance from the engineer.

Shepherds:

  • Animals continue to increase on there own so long as there is food and a bit of TLC from the shepherd. Once the pasture is full animals keep breeding but the overstocked animals automatically get slated for slaughter so there is a continuous supply of meat.
  • Maybe add production recipes like hen houses, egg boxes, rabbit hutches, these would be placed in the pasture area and increase animal growth speed or resource yield.

Trapper:

  • Could use looking at, production rate is abysmal and has little usage except as a jumping point to shepherd.
  • Maybe add an ability to tame animals for other townsfolk as pets. Add ability to use animals as scouts in woods or to randomly find bonus items.
  • Maybe a synergistic effect with engineers enabling additional traps to defend the town.
  • Foraging in the trapping area for additional herbs, seeds or plants etc.

Archer;

  • Gief Armour recipes at tailors for archers. Different sets so one set makes archer fire faster, one set makes run faster, dodge projectiles 50% of the time, maybe a camoflage set that makes invisible until attacks, then stick the archer out from the town as a scout for early warning of attack. etc.
3 Likes
3

Sherperdā€™s farming iā€™ve talked about sherped years ago and still would like the devs to see into it.
basically once you put the field and animals start growing, once it reach area limit, it triggers the culling mechanic set by ourself. so for example: 5 animals pasture, 2 animals culled everytime the limit reached.
of course i would also want a mechanic for turning some livestock into pet while still being seen around the pasture.

1 Like
4

Hopefully the Herbalist will be more needed in future, with more buffing potions and thinks like disease events etc.

Iā€™d like to see the Cleric double as a ā€œsocialā€ class somehow. You could build a pulpit for her in a church and Hearthlings could go get a mood buff by listening to him preach the good word!

Once the shepherd gets auto-harvest it will be better, but even then they seem a bit limited in scope. Itā€™d be nice to have them better at combat, and more enemy encounters happen organically. So sheep would attract the odd wolf or two, which the Shepherd could defeat without involving your military.

1 Like
5

Maybe add production recipes like hen houses, egg boxes, rabbit hutches, these would be placed in the pasture area and increase animal growth speed or resource yield.

Nice Idea! really like this, would also make it look better and more natural.

I also like the archer idea, tho I tend to think the soldier classes are fine as is.

6

also for the trappers tree class, there should be war animal training. where they can tame at max two animals for escorting of defending the pastures.

tamed beasts have level and skill on them where for example: wolves get roar (-armor), critical hit,and etc

and also animal armors for the tamed beasts

7

When it comes to the shepherd, Iā€™d like to see different animals having different ways to care for them, like the sheep getting a bigger grazing area in the summer, and migration under the shepherds lead to and from that place every half year.

9

Blockquote

The Cleric is by far the most OP class in the game.
Fights move from being nailbiting situations where you hope for that vital crit or manage your soldiers just right to tank the foe just right, to a tank and spank where even greater numbers and larger foes become a non threat.

my suggestion is simply to let clerics have a manapool that could be drained by healing.
I would also like to see things like manapotions for the clerics to battle this nerf.
To make this work the cleric would no longer be the one to heal normal hearthlings (that job would again go to the herbalist, like it should be), that way the cleric wouldnt spend all mana healing a couple of farmers right before a big raid.

Blockquote

I would also like to see more spells from the cleric, maybe lifedrain, or a terrify spell wich sends a foe scattering in fear!

I like where you went with this, so the herbalist would make the mana potions? I agree the herbalist is useless once you get a cleric, herbalist is for early game but when you upgrade him to a cleric he is rather useless, I dont notice my warriors needing stamina potions or energy potions, so the cleric needing mana potions would gain a purpose for the herbalist.

10

Seems like part of why the Herbalist feels so weak is that rarely do their other jobs. I canā€™t even recall ever seeing them use bandages. They rarely administer potions to wounded Hearthlings. I have tons of potions in stock, plenty of beds with wounded Hearthlings in them and the Herbalist is off ā€˜restocking itemsā€™ , chatting away with someone, or hauling stuff .

11

also clerics wouldnt heal non-soliders, makin a herbalist a must have for any town! :slight_smile:

12

ā€¦ Did anyone else see this post and immediately imagine a footman riding into battle on a sheepā€¦ one wordā€¦ Awesome!

2 Likes
13

Tā€™would be nice if Shepherds could have a tamed animal follow them for defense. So when they bump into enemies while out looking for animals their companion could fend them off while the Shepherd makes their escape.

14

My two cents on the cleric: It might be fine (might) for the cleric to heal the wounded outside the draft. But when the army calls, I want the cleric to be with my troops. To heal the wounded at home, you have the herbalist, when it comes to hearthlings, animals etc. (This is so the herbalists are busy with the healing of starvation, instead of the clerics.) I also think the herbalist should be the one who sneakily tries to get a downed soldier before during a fight.

As a step further, I like the idea of making clerics heat-of-the-moment healers, maybe the spells inspire hope (in combi with the adrenaline from the fight) which causes a placebo effect that heals or prevents damage. Obviously, this mental healing does not exist outside of battle, and thus there is no escaping the fact that you need to deal with that damage the hard way, via bandages, medicine, rest and time. I donā€™t mind the cleric helping with that, keeping the courage up, (similar to how the cook also farms), but spells shouldnā€™t work then.

15

what i thought was healing is far too op right now and should be specialized by herbalist all the while priests are given more effective buff auras:
for example: for priests aura
united we stand = hp buff per units
protective enhancement = gives armor boosts
light bringer = damage buff
etc. while also give priests some combat weapons (even though the edge of the book does hurt irl) it brings more tactic in battles, while herbalist can create hp and mana pots

1 Like
16

My idea to fix the cleric issue is like in pillars of eternity if you ever played that gameā€¦ in battle when people get hurt and healed the damage done adds to an ā€œinjuryā€ systemā€¦ which caps their max hp and you can only fix injuries by restingā€¦ so clerics could help keep you going for that fight but eventually you would need to rest and get proper healing.

3 Likes
17

These elaborate systems of ā€˜healing but not really healingā€™ arenā€™t really practical due to how often enemies come at you. Right now you can barely keep up with the constant onslaught of enemy waves even with clerics directly healing lost hit points. Often times you arenā€™t even done with one battle and another wave comes at you. Thereā€™s really not enough down time to have all your soldiers go back and rest once you get far enough along in the game. Even when there is a break in the fights your soldiers barely have enough time to go eat and sleep before some goon-squad rolls in again.

18

Talking about healing and health also means talking about how getting and getting rid of damage is balanced. This doensā€™t invalidate your point, but it is something that can be tinkered with to make sure the ideas work.

1 Like
19

A suggestion for an engineer could be to build a conveyer belt. this could go through or around the town and allow items to be dropped into storage from a distance, you can put a conveyer belt or some other transportation device at the entrance to a mine or near a forest for example. So one role for an engineer is not only to provide defences but also to improve in the overall productivity of the town. Maybe they can build an irrigation system for the farms to improve productivity, or maybe they can build self-arming traps for the trapper so they donā€™t have to reset them every time they get something.

Another suggestion, Hearthlings require food to survive, maybe they should also need water, and an engineer could build wells or aqueducts for this.

20

Iā€™d honesly settle for just a wheelbarrow. Carry more than three logs at once lol.

21

+1 for herbalists able to craft spices for the cook.
+1 for the option to automatically ā€œharvestā€ livestock (A simple checkbox would do)