Rebalance starting items

In the current setup, when starting a new game, we are given 150 gold to spend on the following items:

  • Trapper’s Knife - 150 gold
  • Farmer’s Hoe - 50 gold
  • Wooden Sword - 50 gold
  • Weaver’s Spindle - 50 gold
  • Herbalist’s Staff - 50 gold
  • Basket of Corn - 10 gold
  • Pumpkin Basket - 10 gold

Out of these seven items, the only choice that makes sense economically is the Trapper’s Knife for 150 gold, because the other options can either be made within 5-10 minutes into the game by the carpenter, or is actually generated by the Trapper (food). Whereas, making the Trapper’s Knife requires an experienced Blacksmith, which requires an experienced Mason (to make the blacksmith’s hammer), and the mason’s chisel is also needed to be made by the carpenter; not to mention the actual material costs of each mentioned item (which is not that high)

The point is, that there is a huge imbalance here, and there is not much of a choice here to be made, because the obvious best choice is the knife, that is unless the player’s goal is specifically to avoid using a trapper for any reason.


What I suggest:

  • Change the player’s starting gold to 300.
  • Change the Trapper’s Knife value to 200
  • Change wooden sword, farmer’s hoe, herbalist’s staff, weaver’s spindle value to 25 gold each
  • Add another option to purchase a Vault (256 slot chest) for 200 gold (creating an alternative to the knife)
  • Add the option to “purchase” an additional Hearthling for 300 gold
  • Add Bronze Sword for 75 gold
  • Add Bronze Shield for 75 gold
  • Add Bronze Breastplate for 75 gold
  • Add Upgraded Worker Outfit for 50 gold
  • Add Comfy Bed for 40 gold
  • Change food value to 5 gold or replace with cooked food

With the above suggestions, choosing starting items would become more of a “choice” rather than “pick best item and go”. Of course, the above suggestions are only examples and can be altered for better, as I just wanted to make a point here.

6 Likes

Issue is that the way the trees are set up you need leather to make a lot of items, so that means you need to take the knife early. I think an interesting choice would be between knife and carpenters saw but that would require careful implementation.

2 Likes

I completely agree with the idea that this needs a rework. Also, as you can currently only buy one Basket of Corn and one Pumpkin Basket, it actually makes no sense to buy these, since this leaves 30 gold unspent no matter how you do it. So being able to buy any number of corn/pumpkin for 10 gold each might actually make this a real choice.

3 Likes

Also, if you start with Rayya`s childrens. You don’t have a carpenter and it takes a long time just to have the carpenter who can make those.

Maybe have the price based on the starting race, and also display what your race already has (like the hoe and chisel for Rayya`s)

3 Likes

Just remember that increasing the gold is not a good idea alone, even if you also increase the price of the items. Cause all gold not used there, is imported to your starter camp. So I could effectively start with 300 gold, making easy to get a new hearthling and even buy a lot of thing at random traders.

5 Likes

That is true. Perhaps it could be circumvented by either making it mandatory to spend all starting gold (or perhaps unspent gold would be lost), or the net worth values for new hearthlings could be adjusted to fit for the new starting value; or perhaps the value of the starting gold/items could be ignored altogether by the system (though, that would look silly).

Though, in my experience, I found that 300 gold really only looks high early in the game, and as time passes forward I begin to find it rather difficult to find things to spend my 50k gold on, which is another issue of that I’m positive would get resolved as new items are added to the game.

2 Likes

They just need to lower the prices of the other items and increase the variety adding a few more.
A knife is an end game item without that trade. So a trapper and everything from the shepard is end game.

A good and easy balance is adding much more food, (maybe one from each food item), lower the price of the tools, and add the saw as high level item with 150 gold like the knife, so Rayya’s also have an end game item to buy.

This way every play style is represented and possible.
If I want to start with an end game item, I can, but I will not be able to buy anything else, and will have no gold to spend on early trades in-game.
Or maybe I want to start with a lot of food and gold, to get some easy hearthlings at the start and good trades.
Or I want to buy the tools cause my kingdom have a hard start without tools.

This is how I imagine it as a good balance for the actual game, maybe with later game changes (new items, classes, technology tree and play styles) this changes I proposed will not be as good.
Of course, as mentioned, this are easy fixes (without much thinking) for now, as the game changes, these trades should change and adapt to it too.

2 Likes

As @ceetheman said - don’t forget about Rayya’s Children here…while it takes just as long to get the trapper’s knife, getting the wooden tools is even harder…if the departure screen is going to be reworked we might want to look at it in 2 separate ways, instead of trying to get one bill to fit both kingdoms.

3 Likes

To be honest, for a moment I have forgotten completely about Rayya’s Children, and did not consider they start with the potter and not the carpenter.

Which in turn brings up another concern, which is that in a normal game mode, the Rayya’s Children have no option for early defense, unless they buy at least one wooden sword, otherwise it becomes a gamble, hoping for a trader that sells wooden sword, or if the player is experienced enough to be able to train a blacksmith in time before the enemies toughen up.

In my opinion every faction should start with a wooden sword, or alternatively, every starting profession should be able to craft a tool for a defensive class: For exemple, the carpenter crafts wooden sword for footmen, while the potter crafts slings for slingers (just an example).

2 Likes

Currently the potter is just an inferior copy of the carpenter in regards of “usefulness”, if you drop aesthetic elements and just go for balance (based on alpha 14):

  1. Through the carpenter you have early access to the farmer (easy endless food), soldier (protection) and weaver.
  2. All profession items that can be crafted by the potter (herbalist, mason) can also be crafted by the carpenter on the same level or earlier.
  3. Through early access to the farmer and his ability to create saplings, the carpenter gains an endless supply of crafting materials.
  4. The carpenter uses wood, a resource which you can farm without destroying the surroundings and inside the protection of your city.
  5. The carpenter can craft all utility items (beds, chairs, storage) that the potter can craft.

I guess there is not much use to ask for balance in alpha, yet. These are just the things I noticed so far, but I’m sure we will get some new items and features for both potter and carpenter to make them more interesting to the other faction.

3 Likes

Making raw “Hide” much more instrumental in many tools would be a good step. In real life hide and tendon were vital elements in many societies for use as bindings and strings. Essential for making tools and weapons. Would be good to see some compromise that would gate more carpenter upgrades so the player had to either get a Trapper or Weaver to be able to make more tools, using animal tendon or cloth binding for tool/weapon pommels, reinforcement of the tool head etc…

It’s increasing the complexity of the game, but without a gate like that the carpenter can simply churn out so many tools within the first minute of the game…

3 Likes