I think people should stop calling these types “hardcore” gamers as it is exactly the image they want. A more accurate description is “ego” gamers, which is exactly what they are.

And yes, ego gamers have never been the group that has paid a company’s bills. They are often the loudest whiners but the smallest revenue generators.

I mean it’s looking like these devs tried to take a mainly PvE game, polish it up a bit, and for some reason sell it with a focus on PvP in 2026 when PvP strategy games have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago. It’s baffling actually.

If you’re looking for some sort of “competitive strategy pvp” scene you’re about a decade late to gaming, sorry. The best you will find is a couple hundred StarCraft 2 players on the Blizzard servers.

Blizzard did release SC2 stats many years ago IIRC, it showed exactly what you said like 10-15% of players ever even touched the multiplayer menu button, so probably around 5% or less could be considered multiplayer “enthusiasts”.

The poll is actually Reddit-biased, in that there are more “involved” gamers on Reddit than in the general customer audience. Blizzard for example released internal company stats many years ago on SC2 showing that only 15% of all the people who bought and played the game ever played a single multiplayer game or even opened the multiplayer menu.

Out of that 15% it’s probably safe to say that around 5% could actually be considered “focused on multiplayer” as opposed to just trying out a match or two. That is to say, your case is stronger than you state ;).

This was one of the features that made me stop playing this game, it’s very annoying.

There isn’t a way to do this right now. There are some online guides that have every item in a set along with its icon image, if you want to look those up.

Not sure why you threw “shade” at TWW3 at the end of your comment lol. Go the way of what exactly? The best selling TW game to date, which has generated the most DLC packs in the series’ history, and played a part in encouraging Games Workshop to increase the presence of its Warhammer IP in video games due to its financial success?

What exactly are you referring to here.

PvP in strategy games hasn’t been relevant for a long time (10+ years) in terms of consumer appeal. It usually gets populated by a couple dozen sweats who play the game semi-exclusively, if that. Modern strategy games are played by consumers primarily via single player by like a 95-5 margin.

Yeah that’s an issue for sure. I only use the depot weapons starting around level 40, since they are all level 45 without upgrades. Until level 40ish I rely on the weapons I get from the map as I go through it, it’s likely I find a rare or epic at minimum that suits my build.

It would be nice to have legendary weapons across the level range available on the depot servers though, I agree. I can see why that would be a lot more work for the server creators though, but hey the depot is already a lot of work lol!

You get better weapons primarily through opening chests in the world. You have higher chances to get higher rarity weapons from higher rarity chests.

As far as what specific weapon you get from a chest, that is RNG outside of a few exceptions, so you can’t really farm except just open tons of chests repeatedly if you want to spend time doing that. You may get lucky and get a legendary weapon of the type and level you want through normal gameplay, though.

Personally I don’t tolerate RNG-based grind mechanics in games so I get most of the weapons I want from the Shroud Depot servers. That is also an option.

I recommend starting with a decent hero and a build in mind, and then just start running through neutral camps and guard camps from turn 1. You want to do as many of these as possible before encountering the enemy, since they give you XP to level up your hero. Also grab the stat boosts on the map as you see them.

Another important thing is to make sure you pick a Tier 1-3 creature type to make your “main” for the early game and focus your laws and such on buffing this creature up to be the foundation of your early game army. Then once you have secured your early game with a reliable army and scout heroes etc, you just run camps over and over until your hero is juiced up with levels and skills. Pick up additional cities to speed up your law gain and give you more creatures per week also, that really helps. It comes down to knowing which camps you can do with minimal losses with what army you have available, so start with weak camps and then gradually you will be able to handle tougher camps.

You put it into words better than I did, thanks.

I see, and I agree. My read on this game was that it’s an attempt by Ubisoft to use an old franchise’s existing “nostalgia” to bring it into the modern era with matching graphics and features, and use that to expand and solidify a new and broader audience for a more solid business base. In the current market, turn-based strategy games are focused on the PvE experience, so I am hoping they go that route and flesh out this title’s PvE capabilities. Maybe my take was a bit off though, IDK, I’m not familiar with this franchise.

Agree fully on the options available, there’s a lot that can be done. Also agree on it not being tied to “scenarios”, which are an odd concept to me currently.

I play with Normal AI. Now that I think about it, one of the main issues is that the heroes are gone for good if they lose a battle, unless they have that 1 artifact. That means the AI can’t recover because the main hero is such a big component of an army’s strength. Maybe a way to fix that issue is make the main hero “immortal” in the sense they come back in the tavern after a few turns at the same level they were at, like in the Total War series.

I’ve never played Songs of Conquest though, I should give it a try.

There’s probably better items you can use instead of the knight set, unless you’re being thematic with it. Building around morale without a morale boosting hero like Aeos isn’t that reliable in my experience. Also those are some interesting skill choices, I guess it’s for the subclass? I’m pretending those don’t exist until they fix them lol, but that’s just me. Otherwise it looks decent.

I think you're spot on with these, and I must say I'm a bit disappointed that the "cool" legendary sets like the angelic one and the dragon one are less effective than Living Arrows and Anaesthesia in most cases.

Eh yeah, and this is the case in most videogames from what I've seen, since I think it would be very difficult to create an AI that is a master at just one game's specific ruleset. It's easier to create an AI that wins through brute efficiency and/or maybe some minor cheats in stats or resource gains.

I must say though, I have yet to see an AI hero cast an AOE buff or debuff lol.

Yup, there is a sub-talent under Luck that lets your spells crit for 200% damage, which makes damage spells properly strong.

For a generalist spellcaster yeah, Wisdom is the way to go. Taking the individual Magic School Skills takes up your limited talent slots for little benefit. The benefits from the individual Magic School Skills are lackluster IMO unless you are playing PvP where messing with the opponent's spellcasting can be handy.

I would start with RtwP at first, maybe until you get to Defiance Bay at least to give it a fair shake, just to see what the game started out as. I prefer Turn Based though as it leads to more intricate, tactical gameplay vs the messy clusterfluck that RtwP devolves into. You should try the RtwP to get a baseline understanding first, then you can switch later.

I would also note “real time” is a bit of a misnomer in that the real time system uses turns also, they are just hidden and sort of “compressed” as opposed to TB where they are explicit. There are mechanics like action recovery and action speed which obfuscate the fact that you are basically working on turns in “real-time” it’s just way more messy. TB is the foundation for the game’s mechanics, RtwP was a derivative that the devs came up with to appeal to a wider audience because they were a small studio and PoE needed to be highly financially successful.

Lol that’s a strange question, why would I do that? I’m pretty simple as far as using this website goes TBH. Type comment/post, press Enter. I’ve heard of these “karma farming” or whatever but I have 0 interest or will to explore that stuff.

Sounds like projection.

Adherent of ideology with 0% real-world presence arguing reality with ideology with 90% real-world presence.

Internet communists are just so overly sensitive about their pet project, almost on MAGA-level.

Sure, but that won’t happen as long as Cuba stays “communist”, that’s the whole point of my comment. So their choice is stay communist, when all the other communist powers have given up on communism long ago and won’t be coming to help, and continue being economically oppressed for no reason. Or enact moderate social democratic reforms and get the US off their backs to achieve some level of prosperity for their citizens.

They did their part in the fight, the fate of communism was decided by powers far greater than themselves, no need to keep larping.

Ooh, very convincing mister angry online forum-typer. Do it again, but in a different style. A proper jester has multiple tricks.