If what has happens to my villages is what the normal mode is set at I fear to even look at hard mode, 3 times now I’ve started my lil villages, I’ve only gotten no more then 15 villagers when this HUGE Goblin and a hoard of little ones destroy my villages, I’ve not had a chance to get more then 3 soldiers and they stand very little chance against what stomps into the village.
So in order to enjoy Stonehearth at all I am unfortunately only able to play peaceful, it isn’t fun to see hours of work being smashed no matter what you do, can’t the “normal” mode be toned down a bit? or at the least adjust the time on the events to not happen so soon.
I used to play most of my saves in hardmode since the beginning. If you simply build up a group roughly 1/3rd to 1/4th of your total citizen number, you’re fine. Make sure you have a cleric soon, make your fighters to knights and add archers.
Build up a wall around your village to stop most monsters from running into your town.
I general arrive at this “formation” (though I have not really reach “late game” yet.
1 knight
2 clerics
4 archers
The knight is almost always backed by 2 clerics and can usually tank until the archers can finish the job. If knight health gets below half, I manually control it to kite enemies while getting healed (and archers still firing). Can usually deal with most encounters in Normal so far (not sure about Hard yet as I am still learning the game).
Just for additional info: my knight/clerics only has default equipment. Archers worked their way up to recurve bow and quivers though. (poyo. it’s an essential resource for archers.)
I do get the “suicidal guy going off attacking hostile far away” problem once in a while even after retreating, I usually just disable his job, or issue a sentry order (the white banner with an area thing).
Another early trick:
I usually have extra wooden swords and wooden shields, and will emergency conscript all workers (since they have no experience to lose anyway) to footman if needed. This has 2 advantages:
they are more survivable (shield)
they CAN BE CONTROLLED <- so I can actually do something to protect them from their own stupidity.
All of those suggestions are fine IF you get that far, I couldn’t, villages are snuffed before even getting enough stuff or skill to promote a smith let alone a cleric.
I had a level 6 lvl 6 Foot Soldier, and a lvl 6 Cleric which survived a long time in hard mode. As I kept using a hit and run strategy. But what I find funny is that they survived better than 2 lvl 6 Foot Soldiers and 1 Cleric. I think this is because the Cleric tends to heal the soldiers 1 at a time, and once one is dead, the other is already half dead, and the cleric doesnt have enough time to heal the other one.
It’s not too difficult if you have a plan right from the get go! I’ve been doing a pretty good job so far with surviving and didn’t need to turtle myself inside a fence until I was able to get a cleric (and even then I didn’t “NEED” it just wanted that extra bit of protection.
There’s also a bit of micro-managment magic to keep things working! I’ve done a lot of Militia management to get the most DPS I can in some battles!
Not sure if you adjust your starting items but I started with the wooden sword and hoe right off the bat! That way I have a defense setup and got a good means to increase my food/net worth quickly! All about that defense and manpower to back it up!
It’s important to pick the right hearthlings for the right jobs early on – for your footmen, use the hearthlings with high Body stats; and for the Clerics go with hearthlings who have high Mind and Spirit (ideally high Body too; but you’ll usually only get 2 of the 3 to be high… a 4/4/4 is good as an all-rounder; but my ideal Cleric is a 3 Mind/5 Spirit/6 Body). You can afford to go with lower Body scores if you plan to train your hearthlings more to get extra health that way; that’s easy enough to do with the Cleric if they have a mid to high Mind.
In Hard, you’ll want to power-level your defenders – get that footman patrolling on day 1, and give your Cleric-to-be a Herbalist setup ASAP. I would say that on Hard, the best starting items are a Practice Sword, an Herbalist’s Staff, and a Weaver’s Spindle. You might think that the Farmer’s Hoe is a better option; but you can survive on berries for a few days and it doesn’t take long to level your Carpenter enough to craft a hoe; but the Weaver can really boost your Footman’s early defence with even the most basic armour.
Make sure to get a wooden shield ASAP too, since those things are invaluable. In fact, make enough to supply your entire population with them – not only will it help level your Carpenter quickly, but it means that if you have to conscript your workers as emergency footmen then they’ll have a decent ability to outright avoid damage thanks to those shields.
As for that Herbalist, keep them constantly making Small Healing Tonics until they reach level one, and then start spamming Energy Tonics. The Energy Tonics give more experience, but more importantly they allow your hearthlings to move faster – which means your civilians can escape more easily, and your soldiers get into position faster.
And yeah, even with all this power-levelling in place, the biggest thing is to protect yourself from attacks so that you’re not caught being attacked from all sides. The easiest option is a simple dry moat, 2 blocks deep; although that looks ugly… unless you were already planning a wall. If that’s the case, you can use a neat trick: dig the dry moat where you want the wall to be, and when you’ve built the wall on top, dig the moat another two blocks deeper (or dig it out even deeper and wider if you want to add walls, floor, even a ceiling…) What you now have is a secret escape tunnel running under your walls, allowing you to move your soldiers between the gates if the enemies get into one of the gatehouses; and also allowing you to evacuate civilians to a bunker somewhere. In a worst-case scenario, the soldiers can stand guard in the tunnel to block the monsters from getting into the bunker.
