Shepherd useless?

Shepards are a mix bag with me so far. On one hand, they’re normally the last class I get, next to the cook. The other hand is that they can be pretty helpful for the cook, and the weavers too. The wool [no idea if it’s a bug or not] can be a replacement for the fibers from the silkweed plants, which is pretty good, and gives the farmers a spare plot for food. [Giving that you didn’t search high and low for wild silkweed plants to bring to camp. And the Puyos really help with giving you eggs for the cook, which makes you have more food coming. If you play your cards right, you’ll have farmers, a hunter, and a pair of shepards supplying your village with all the food you ever need. Just do bother with rabbits. One jerky per killed bunny’s not worth it in my opinion.

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I’d like to see the shepherd do some automatic slaughtering once your animals hit max pasture capacity.

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This. And the shepherd, farmer and trapper have to be rebalanced.

  • Animals need big and therefore hard to defend spaces
  • Trappers are an easier/quicker meat and leather supplier
  • Farmers are an easier/quicker thread and general food supplier

The only positive thing about shepherds is that they don’t have to leave your town defences if you care to wall up all the pasture zones. I don’t know how hard it will be generally to get food after alpha, but at least in relation to the farmer/trapper the shepherd is not really worth it.

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i use the sheperd in every town. first thing i get is some poyo, so my cook can make tasty stuff from the eggs. roasted poyo is also one of my hearthlings favourites so i really can’t deny them that.

This would be a big deal if there were a larger combat element to this game. If that gets developed the Shepherd might get proportionately more worthwhile.

It took 20+ hrs of gameplay as Rayya’s children to unlock the shepherd, and it was very underwhelming.
One sheep’s wool should provide far more thread than a bundle of plant fibers. If one wool provided say 10 thread, that would make it worth the hassle.
Since we’re feeding these animals better than if they were wild, they should also drop more than a single meat. A sheep should feed a family for a couple days.

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It also took me almost a half hour of troubleshooting to figure out why I couldn’t set down a Animal Pasture… Thought it was a mod/patch error… Turns out there’s a minimum pasture size, below which the selected zone won’t set. (10x10). Would suggest there be a tooltip item or error notice to the effect of ‘zone too small’ or ‘minimum pasture size is 10x10’ so folks know why the zone won’t set.

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the main problem I have with the shepherd is the amount of space required to get the max number of animals. what makes this worse is that enemy archers can walk around the edge of your land and kill all of them. this not only hurts the shepherd class, but the cooks and farmers. please I know you guys are not wanting to promote animal cruelty by making the zones smaller but its actually getting the animals killed :glum:

lol the irony

really? am I the only one that never builds the engineer? would rather have another healer or archer. all it does is sit around waiting for the blacksmith who is too busy already

I usually go carpenter trapper farmer farmer herbalist mason weaver cook shepherd blacksmith farmer farmer cook blacksmith with soldiers whenever and then farmer again

Now I’m triggered! :anger:
I have 2 engineers! :smile:
They offer me a total of 16 turrets and 24 traps. Can easily replace all my soldiers as most of the time the enemy would not even break one of them before defeat. I just kept my soldiers around cause enemies could attack me from other sides. But if I tunneled them into a single point, it would be easy mode.
Though I must warn anyone that wants to try this strategy, that enemy archers can shoot your turrets out of their range, so you need to block their line of sight, like positioning them behind a corner, forcing the enemy to get close to it.

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this is probably why I hate them. I dig moats, you see :jubilant:
they just aren’t fun. I have no attachment to turrets they are a dumb game design choice especially because its an engineer using a magical device. disgusting
image
-a hearthling…somewhere…sometime…in the game you played engineer…once…
I guess I could play it if I went for a maze themed build

idk its essentially the same problem really. :forlorn: the game is just too easy for smart hoomuns

Yeah, the engineers are just lacking really.
It was released just before the team shift their strategy to focus more in single, more planned features. The engineer was left behind without much content.

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I would love engineers if they had absolutely no magical ability and only hearthlings that are crap at magic could qualify to even have engineering as an interest, gives them a bit of context

Am I the only one who considers engineers not a “class hastily bolted on to the game” but some Very Cool Guys?
I mean, c’mon, I know they are pretty sketchy now, but so is the whole game. Maybe they can build drawbridges! Rails! Cranes! Watermills!

PS. @genboom

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I always use Shepherd. I never really farm silkweed or flowers(herbs), just gather the wild ones into an area and harvest when stock is low, that way the farmers can focus on more important crops. I keep small areas for both sheep and chickens to get constant supply of wool and eggs, while larger area is made to harvest them for meat and feathers. Once I get sheep I ignore silkweed entirely as the wool replaces it. I get use out of every class, even the engineer, don’t worry about the smaller groups coming into my town as they get shot by turrets before my stationed guards even reach them.

@Grendalsh
There’s already an indication if the pasture zone is too small, the sizing arrows are red if it’s too small, not hard to figure out.

Thank you for that explanation. Considering I completely missed the sizing arrows being red despite trying to lay down the zone a dozen times, I’d say it is hard to figure out. Of course, even if I’d noticed that the sizing arrows were red, I’d have to notice that they’re not red normally to connect that being red meant there was an issue, and then figure out that the issue was that the pasture was too small.

So yeah. not obvious.

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The Basic 2 animals / pasture is pretty low, could easily fit 10 Poyos into a 10x10 pasture.

those things would be great, as long as magic isn’t involved.

Agreed. I, too, believe it’s not exactly very easy to understand.

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I think like you describe some of the shepherd’s animals are meant for particular scenarios, like if silkweave is not available, that are not implemented yet. Does seem strange then that trapper is a requirement, maybe it should be farmer.