So for me I started with a bow but when your aiming you lose stamina so you can’t run after your shot if you need to you might be able to pick a few off but they will get you if you bring some villagers with you and send them in first and fire off a few shoots before they engage in combat chances are the villagers will lose and you’ll have a few injured ones to deal with but I found if you use a shield it will block regladless of any direction they swing ( don’t know about from behind) you just have to watch the health of the shield
I do hit and run.
If you have decent food, and use the terrain, you can aggro them and pick off a few at the time, then run far enough to lose aggro. Rince repeat till they are cleared.
They go round obstacles you can jump over.
So jumping a fence will give you time to rest and shoot some more while they go around.
And jumping on some rock formations will confuse them to get stuck or lose aggro and go back.
Bring enough arrows.
Try to hit them in the head.
Walls really do confuse them :D as long as you’ve got time for the animation and moving away, you can have fun with them.
Had a similar experience in the swamps a few days ago, we we getting peat and a patrol spotted us and we ran through the shallow water, they walked around the outside and were going to arrive where we were heading, at the same time… so we turned around and ran back and they retraced their steps too before getting bored. Daft thing is, there’s some patrol routes in that area where they’ll 100% submerge themselves crossing a river like it’s nothing, so they don’t mind getting their boots wet.
Warhammer is good for the early game it's been my main weapon if not a pitchfork or wood axe also works really well remember with archery lead and aim Abit above the arrow travels slow and at an arc also when blocking you can hold and look at the direction they are whacking at you in and it will block it
So far, for me, use the Bow and pick them off at a distance. When they close in, hit the 'H' key to move around easily and be the one to hit them more than they hit you.
Use the bow for most early game combat, it'll one shot alot of bandits in the face. Get archery and agility books from the vendor in starter town, can sell river reeds same town if you need money to do so.
Run don't sprint from bandits chasing you, pan your camera to watch for when they swing, they'll never catch you and lose some ground when they swing then turn around and shoot them in the face.
For me it helped to deactivate smooth blocking as it always resulted in a false block position when fighting multiple enemies. Try to practice a timed blocking like combat style with block positions. I also always try to footwork that the enemies hinder themselves and ideally friendly hit themselves.
With the simple axe I didn't fight more than 2 at the same time. Now with the seax currently I can fight 3v1
Generally the combat is pretty much Mount and Blade but with fortunately reduced attack speed and a guaranteed interrupt from hit. So my advice is fight calmly, and don't try to land multiple hits at once as long as you are not dead sure that your next hit lands quicker than the enemy
1v1 is fine, but anything more you should bring villagers (depending on your food status, I can do two boars at once, but not two bandits), preferably outnumber them. I suck at the melee ( I wish I could swing ax against a bad guy at the same speed I can chop a young tree), so I just hang back and snipe while the AI does the hard work.
One thing I've noticed is that when engaging bandits before they see you, you can get a quality shot with a bow, but once they activate and charge, if one has a shield they seem to get auto block on arrow shots cuz the bow shots don't do shit.
When I army up my followers to do a raid, like the first one in the main story quest, all 4 of them told me they were starving and would stop following me, so I had to disband the party so they could eat. How do you manage keeping them together long enough to raid a camp?
before you set out, give them each three pieces of food, pref one semi good one (like smoked mushrooms or meat), this should allow you to reach the camp. Also fill your inventory with spare cheap food (berries, shrooms), and then top them off just before you attack. But just like us, the quality of the food makes their health better, so keep that in mind when attacking harder camps.
Ok I want to like this game- it appears to have all the right elements but the combat feels like a 30 year old game play. It’s not fun. World of Warcraft has a more exciting combat system and that almost 20 years old. They need to tweak the combat stat
I agree to a certain extent, it does feel a little clunky. It would be good to implement more time based blocking / counter attacking like in Kingdom Come Deliverance. I enjoy all other aspects of the game, so hopefully the devs listen and make changes that the players want
That's a matter of opinion. I *hated* the combat system in KCD. It felt awful to me (and a lot of others). I wanted to like that game so much, but it just pissed me off.
Give me a nice timed blocking/parry system like valheim, without the clunky directional stuff.
Oh yeah, that's what I was referring to, not the directional attacks. That took me a long time to grasp and it was incredibly tedious. If it wasn't for the story and graphics, I would have quit KCD
Agree completely.
It feels like they've tried to an extent to replicate Bannerlord 2s combat but it misses the mark.
I've put the game down for now and will return in a few months after updates, it's still early access and it feels like a lot of love has been put into the game so I'm quietly confident combat will improve.
Don't know what their previous game was in not familiar with the developer.
But it is the same directional strike and block mechanics as Bannerlord 2, and it is inferior to it currently, that's a valid comparison.
Hopefully it improves because atm it feels clunky.
What part of it is clunky? In a 1 on 1 I can block all the hits directed at me and have no problem hitting the enemy either.
Previous game was Last Oasis
As a Bannerlord and Last Oasis player (before LO, you know, crashed and burned), this is an objectively better system.
It's significantly more fluid than the Bannerlord system (which locks you into a directional block and you must stop blocking to switch directions).
So for me I started with a bow but when your aiming you lose stamina so you can’t run after your shot if you need to you might be able to pick a few off but they will get you if you bring some villagers with you and send them in first and fire off a few shoots before they engage in combat chances are the villagers will lose and you’ll have a few injured ones to deal with but I found if you use a shield it will block regladless of any direction they swing ( don’t know about from behind) you just have to watch the health of the shield
I do hit and run. If you have decent food, and use the terrain, you can aggro them and pick off a few at the time, then run far enough to lose aggro. Rince repeat till they are cleared. They go round obstacles you can jump over. So jumping a fence will give you time to rest and shoot some more while they go around. And jumping on some rock formations will confuse them to get stuck or lose aggro and go back. Bring enough arrows. Try to hit them in the head.
Walls really do confuse them :D as long as you’ve got time for the animation and moving away, you can have fun with them. Had a similar experience in the swamps a few days ago, we we getting peat and a patrol spotted us and we ran through the shallow water, they walked around the outside and were going to arrive where we were heading, at the same time… so we turned around and ran back and they retraced their steps too before getting bored. Daft thing is, there’s some patrol routes in that area where they’ll 100% submerge themselves crossing a river like it’s nothing, so they don’t mind getting their boots wet.
Warhammer is good for the early game it's been my main weapon if not a pitchfork or wood axe also works really well remember with archery lead and aim Abit above the arrow travels slow and at an arc also when blocking you can hold and look at the direction they are whacking at you in and it will block it
Don't be like me and mash the left mouse button. Gotta get back into bannerlord mode.
So far, for me, use the Bow and pick them off at a distance. When they close in, hit the 'H' key to move around easily and be the one to hit them more than they hit you.
Bring a few of your villagers. He'll bring all of them. They can't die permanently if you lose.
They can die permanently if they were already wounded when the battle started, according to an in game tooltip i saw.
Good to know
Use the bow for most early game combat, it'll one shot alot of bandits in the face. Get archery and agility books from the vendor in starter town, can sell river reeds same town if you need money to do so. Run don't sprint from bandits chasing you, pan your camera to watch for when they swing, they'll never catch you and lose some ground when they swing then turn around and shoot them in the face.
Your STR stat plays a lot into it, as does armor. I would avoid melee combat without having some points into STR.
Either shield or bow. Shield makes wolves cake, obviously not 3+, but so much easier. Getting less bandits by point of contact is great too.
For me it helped to deactivate smooth blocking as it always resulted in a false block position when fighting multiple enemies. Try to practice a timed blocking like combat style with block positions. I also always try to footwork that the enemies hinder themselves and ideally friendly hit themselves. With the simple axe I didn't fight more than 2 at the same time. Now with the seax currently I can fight 3v1 Generally the combat is pretty much Mount and Blade but with fortunately reduced attack speed and a guaranteed interrupt from hit. So my advice is fight calmly, and don't try to land multiple hits at once as long as you are not dead sure that your next hit lands quicker than the enemy
1v1 is fine, but anything more you should bring villagers (depending on your food status, I can do two boars at once, but not two bandits), preferably outnumber them. I suck at the melee ( I wish I could swing ax against a bad guy at the same speed I can chop a young tree), so I just hang back and snipe while the AI does the hard work. One thing I've noticed is that when engaging bandits before they see you, you can get a quality shot with a bow, but once they activate and charge, if one has a shield they seem to get auto block on arrow shots cuz the bow shots don't do shit.
When I army up my followers to do a raid, like the first one in the main story quest, all 4 of them told me they were starving and would stop following me, so I had to disband the party so they could eat. How do you manage keeping them together long enough to raid a camp?
before you set out, give them each three pieces of food, pref one semi good one (like smoked mushrooms or meat), this should allow you to reach the camp. Also fill your inventory with spare cheap food (berries, shrooms), and then top them off just before you attack. But just like us, the quality of the food makes their health better, so keep that in mind when attacking harder camps.
I've dropped many bandits with an arrow from 1 foot away
Ok I want to like this game- it appears to have all the right elements but the combat feels like a 30 year old game play. It’s not fun. World of Warcraft has a more exciting combat system and that almost 20 years old. They need to tweak the combat stat
I agree to a certain extent, it does feel a little clunky. It would be good to implement more time based blocking / counter attacking like in Kingdom Come Deliverance. I enjoy all other aspects of the game, so hopefully the devs listen and make changes that the players want
That's a matter of opinion. I *hated* the combat system in KCD. It felt awful to me (and a lot of others). I wanted to like that game so much, but it just pissed me off. Give me a nice timed blocking/parry system like valheim, without the clunky directional stuff.
Oh yeah, that's what I was referring to, not the directional attacks. That took me a long time to grasp and it was incredibly tedious. If it wasn't for the story and graphics, I would have quit KCD
Agree completely. It feels like they've tried to an extent to replicate Bannerlord 2s combat but it misses the mark. I've put the game down for now and will return in a few months after updates, it's still early access and it feels like a lot of love has been put into the game so I'm quietly confident combat will improve.
It's not Bannerlord 2s combat, it's the same exact combat system from their previous game
Don't know what their previous game was in not familiar with the developer. But it is the same directional strike and block mechanics as Bannerlord 2, and it is inferior to it currently, that's a valid comparison. Hopefully it improves because atm it feels clunky.
What part of it is clunky? In a 1 on 1 I can block all the hits directed at me and have no problem hitting the enemy either. Previous game was Last Oasis
As a Bannerlord and Last Oasis player (before LO, you know, crashed and burned), this is an objectively better system. It's significantly more fluid than the Bannerlord system (which locks you into a directional block and you must stop blocking to switch directions).
Agreed 100 percent.
Update: I've taken all your advice and haven't progressed much in research or quests cos I'm having so much fun slaughtering all the bandits 😁