When can we expect traveling merchants to show up in the game? In the Ascendency normal game I’m playing now, I have the township quest, the 7 starting hearthlings, and under 550 gold. Is the traveling merchant part of the RNG or is there a set date it will show up in my town?
What can I expect to see the hearthlings do other than eat, talk, and sleep? Can I expect the farmer to continue tending the crops when the town inventory is not full? Is the farmer sitting at the campfire a bug or how the game is meant to play?
How can I get the hearthlings to do jobs I want them to do? For instance, when I want them to mine, they’re filling the storage. When I want them to fill the storage and stop mining, I pause the mining and they go into idle, sit at the campfire, and don’t fill the storage.
Do I have to play this game in speeds over the normal speed? I like playing in the normal speed and don’t want to play it in the fast speed.
With the bad luck I have with the the RNG in this game, I have for my starting hearthling’s jobs, 1 carpenter or potter if playing RC, 1 farmer, 3 soldiers, and 2 clerics. How bad is it for the carpenter to have 3 jobs? In order to get more hearthlings, I need to craft a merchant cart and cloth is harder to come by than clay. So my carpenter needs to become a mason, then a potter to get the merchant cart.
I’m not @sdee (paging based on title too), but I can answer a couple of these questions:
traveling merchants should be showing up after Mer Burlyhands has visited and told everyone else that your town exists; by the time you get the township quest you should definitely have been visited by some. I believe that attracting some more hearthlings may increase the chances of them spawning though – I haven’t checked, but I generally have a couple of extra hearthlings by the time I get my first traders so it may be that there’s a minimum population before they start showing up.
the hearthlings should go on with “regular” jobs like farming and trapping automatically. If the farmer is sitting around the campfire, it means they’re unable to tend any fields or they might not have any to tend. It may be a case that access has been interrupted, or the crop might be changed to “fallow field” (nothing growing), or it may also be that if you’ve changed your farmer from a high-level one to a different hearthling they might not be able to plant the selected crops because of their level being too low. If it’s none of those things, it may well be a bug; there’s a post on how to report bugs and supporting evidence so the team can take a look at them.
to prioritise a certain job, you can un-check other jobs either for certain hearthlings or globally – this is done in the hearthling menu. Another option is to ensure that you “stagger” your jobs so that they get completed at the same rate. For example, if building is more important than mining but you need to mine for raw materials, then creating smaller mining orders means that the hearthlings will have less to mine at once and will thus be more likely to take on a building task.
You can play the game at whatever speed you like, it makes no difference except how long you’re waiting for things to happen.
it’s definitely better to give each hearthling a single job rather than changing their job often. As hearthlings gain levels in any class, it gets harder for them to gain levels in all classes; so by having only your smartest hearthlings work as crafters you’re simply limiting the amount of crafting you can do. While it’s true that hearthlings with high Mind stats level up faster, in the long run it’s probably faster to use another hearthling to speed things along. Of course you’re perfectly able to switch that potter back to a carpenter or mason, but it would be faster to have one of each. If they’re not busy at their job all the time, you can give them crafting orders so they make goods for you to trade (you’re able to sell to the market stall even if no wandering traders are showing up.)
I hope these help with some questions. I’d be really keen to know for sure what the requirements are to start getting traders, though – I’m not sure on that myself but it would be really useful info!
The traveling merchant finally showed up after I changed my carpenter to mason. Which made me think the AI is working against me. The first merchant to show up was the cloth merchant so I bought cloth to make the crafted merchant cart. Then the merchant showed up for the next 4 days in a row, which reinforced my feeling that the AI was working against me.
It was in a different save that I had the issue with the farmer not planting the crops after harvesting them. I had made no changes to the crops or the farmer when it happened. I fixed the issue by adding another 11X11 crop. So the farmer had 4 11X11 crops then he went back to planting.
I guess I’ll work on that job issue to figure out how to make them do what I want. Though I would love to have a lightening strike power so I could zap the hearthlings into working where I want them to.
I asked about the speeds because I think the devs are not seeing a lot of the bugs because the fast speed is giving the AI time to go into the next phase of commands. So they don’t see it because it loops through the commands so fast that the AI fixes itself.
I’d love to be able to give the hearthlings only one job but with the RNG giving bad stats with the new hearthlings entering town and needing a lot of fighters to beat the coming battles, I have to load up jobs on the citizens. I read that thread on the steam boards about that poster’s town being wiped out with 15 hearthlings and the number of troops needed to win the battles. With needing 2 knights, 2 clerics, and 8 archers, that only leaves 8 citizens for town skilled jobs.
Uhm, that’s too much. At least in normal difficult, I only go with 2 of each class, 8 fighter in total. The last campaign battles are hard so an extra third cleric helps a lot if you are not micromanaging them.
I don’t micromanage the fighters. But I do try to cut down the trees because in one game I sent the fighters to fight the lizard type creatures and the trees had hidden three of them. They whipped out my whole army so I reloaded an earlier save and cut down the trees. Then I sent the fighters to fight a zombie and they ran by where the lizard creatures had wiped out my army. The lizard creatures beamed in or were invisible and I lost some footmen that time but not my whole army. That wasn’t part of the campaign that took out my army. So I need a big army for surprises like that.
@sdee, I was wondering if you could tell me when to expect the traveling merchants to start coming to my town. I rely on them to sell stuff to so I can get more hearthlings. Thank you.
Hey @littlecats, @YetiChow’s answer is pretty much exactly what mine would be. Basically, if you’re playing Ascendancy, after Mer Burleyhands comes to visit, a campaign starts that has a % chance of generating a merchant or a trader from a list of merchants/traders. You should start getting them within 1-2 days of talking to Mer. After you hit tier 2, you get a different, larger list of traders.
One thing that might be happening, if you’re not seeing them, is that the current notification window, if up, can hide new notification windows. So if you’ve got say, the daily update up on your screen, and new updates happen before you dismiss it, they can queue behind the top notification. To see all the notifications you have, click the ! button in your UI.
Can I expect the farmer to continue tending the crops when the town inventory is not full?
The farmer’s behavior is: is there a field designated? If so, I should till it. Is there an empty field? If so I should plant. Are there ripe crops? if so, I should collect them. If I don’t do any of these things, I should be hauling. Sleeping, eating, conversations, and firepit time interrupt this. You can change what they are allowed to do in the citizens menu. If they are not behaving like this, it is probably a bug. Send us your save and we can take a look.
How can I get the hearthlings to do jobs I want them to do?
Citizens menu is your friend
Do I have to play this game in speeds over the normal speed? I like playing in the normal speed and don’t want to play it in the fast speed.
Play at whatever speed you like, though most people plan in normal speed, and then watch stuff unfold at higher speeds
With the bad luck I have with the the RNG in this game, I have for my starting hearthling’s jobs, 1 carpenter or potter if playing RC, 1 farmer, 3 soldiers, and 2 clerics. How bad is it for the carpenter to have 3 jobs? In order to get more hearthlings, I need to craft a merchant cart and cloth is harder to come by than clay. So my carpenter needs to become a mason, then a potter to get the merchant cart.
Definitely this. However, it sounds like you’re having a class allocation problem? When I play, I usually make 1 crafter (carpenter or potter) and 1 food creator (1 trapper or farmer) and keep everyone workers until I get my first few buildings up. By then I should be getting a new hearthling each day, so I make 1 footman, and then an herbalist, and then a 2nd farmer and turn my 1st farmer into a cook. When the goblins show up to extort you, then I turn my herbalist into a cleric, and add a 2nd footman so I can promote the first one to knight. Finally, I make an archer. Sometimes, when I’m feeling fancy, I’ll mix this up by making a mason or a weaver instead of a cook. When I play RC, I follow a similar formula, except I buy the talismans instead of making them.
I think a lot of my problems come from not making buildings. I mine into the ground or the mountain to give my hearthlings places to live and work. So my town doesn’t generate money, I have my crafter make stuff to sell. I don’t want to start building until the bugs are fixed, I lose so many hearthlings because it’s harder to keep track of them when they’re building. Minning, I know where they are at all times and what they’re doing.
I was in earlier games leaving the window open for the township quest by not clicking it and using the ! to check messages. I thought it delayed the goblin showing up but then I saw that it doesn’t. So now I don’t click the goblin’s message when he shows up. He shows up so soon that I’m never ready for him.
I wish we had a easy mode for this game in the combat campaign that gave us more time before the goblin shows up.
I read some cheat codes on steam. Can I use them and not make my game crash? I quoted and thanked the poster. If you want to see the steam post, it is here.