The 'tutorial' merchant mission...

[junetiel]

Hello, board =D

Thank you for such an awesome mod! I have already had great fun (nearly) completing it once (Empire still holds Senderfall, Fierdsvain holds Javiksholm, and I am waiting for truce with both to expire). However, I decided to retire the current character and start a new one.

I have decided to roleplay a D'shar, and started with an awesome armour I have never before seen (40+ defence right away =O), a two-handed axe, bow and barbed arrows, and two horses. My starting skills include power draw 4 and archery proficiency of 100. I decided to start in Ravenstern this time, and took the merchant mission as usual with 7 sellswords as my party.

I strolled out in my awesome shiny armour, feeling exceedingly confident, and confronted the bandits I was to interrogate. I had my party hold ground somewhere far away while I rode circles around the enemies and dispatched them with ease with a few well-aimed shots. Then, when it was just me and the leader, I smiled sadistically and let loose the arrow, dealing exactly...... 0 damage.

Perplexed, I rode about and shot half a quiver of arrows into the leader, quite a few of which landed in his face. Most had no damaging effect whatsoever, even the head-shots. A couple, for some unexplained reasons, dealt 3 ~ 4 damages. I then called my men and tried to drown him with number. The result was that I was knocked out in 2 hits, while the rest of my men fell to a single hit each.

After being dragged about for the longest time, I tried twice more to challenge the leader in 1-on-1 matches. Shooting arrows into his face while on foot produced mostly 0 damage, with 3 or 4 damage once or twice, and 7 damage (omg!) once (somehow).
Smacking him with a two-handed axe while riding past him with a 77% speed bonus also dealt less than 7 damage. Fighting him in melee on foot is suicide - my axe makes absolutely no impression.

Was the gigantic difference in power between the D'shar (Singalian) bandit leader and the Ravenstern (Mystmountain) bandit leader intentional? I clearly recall that I had no trouble at all with the D'shar merchant mission - without a horse, too! =(

(for comparison, my first character, who started in D'shar with nothing but a travelling cloak, a crossbow, and a melee weapon that he could not use (not high enough strength.. haha), defeated the Singalian leader on foot with the cheapest chipped sword on the market...)

 

[Aure]

Well, the merchant quest has been reworked in a recent update to be harder. The leader has some good armor.

I just tried a game start similar to yours, Started with in Ravenstern, 4 Power Draw, ~95 in archery. I did buy a better bow, a composed short bow and the most dmg i did to him was 9 in the chest. Also got some 0 dmg shots and 0 dmg headshot but i was able to take him down.

So, basically the quest is designed to be harder. My advice is to get better gear first and then try it. Do some fighting in the arena to get some money, buy a better bow and you should not have any trouble with him.

Even more you can ignore that quest for a while because when you go to rescue the lost relative in the bandit lair you will encounter several of those guys. Besides the rewards for this quest aren't that good.

 

[freyuk]

A crossbow is your best friend in the early game

 

[digitalstk]

there really is quite a bit of difference between the different leaders though. I think on my first start, I fought the bandit leaders which were quite easy iirc, and then the Singalian leaders the next time which were much harder. I have not done the Ravenstern one yet, but I would guess the leader would be similar to a bearclaw berserker?

 

[junetiel]

He certainly looks to be a bearclaw berserker.

Just an update:

I grabbed a bent knight's lance and couched the leader down without problem =)

In retrospect, I suppose the difference in armour value is understandable, given that the Singalian leaders are deadly with their bow & arrows, whereas the Mystmountain leader had no means of ranged attack.

 

[bsan89]

I have to agree that some enemies are pretty hard.
Especially to newbie. I look at their stats, lvl 20 with 380 weapon proficiency in all weapon, and skills point that doesnt really
add up how much a lvl 20 should have. Farmers, recruit or w/e who rarely pick up a weapon in their whole lives has some odd stats,
or bandits.

 

[DrSane]

At the end of the day though, this is a mod for a quite easy and unfulfilling native version. People download the mod for immersion flair and some real challenge, i think the creators were just assuming that people had mastered the combat in native and expected something challenging. I'm not talking from position of smugness though, i play on 1/4, 1/2 damage modifiers cause i personally find it too hard with normal damage and getting steamrolled just makes me bash the keyboard .

And since the Jatu are ****ing cruel no matter the difficulty i sometimes have to money cheat just to pay the vaseline merchant for my men.

 

[spartan012]

I just had a look at the stats. The leaders, say the Singalian leaders have much more agility than a temptress. Heretic leaders also have much more health than an Invoker. Snake Cult leaders are faster and stronger than the armsman.

In fact, only the Bearclaw berserkers are of similar stats as the mystmountain leader, while the vanskerry leader is a notch easier than the Vanskerry Jarls.

 

[grygus]

Just came here to post about this guy (the Mystmountain Leader on the Ravenstern Merchant quest.)  He's way too powerful for what is intended to be a Day One opponent.

Let's get skill out of the way: I freely admit that I suck at Mount & Blade, but I play on settings that are so easy that my horribleness is nicely countered.  I've been playing PoP since v2.something and I really only lose when seriously outgeared or badly outnumbered.  I know the former when I see it.

On this game, I started with a two-handed axe, a bow, and some barbed arrows.  Archery skill was in the 90s, two handed skill was very low (30?  maybe less.)  So I went with the bow.  I emptied an entire quiver of arrows into him, hitting most of the time, most shots doing 0-1 damage (though there were some massive 3 damage shots now and then, which made me feel very powerful!)  I then tried the axe.  On my first pass he dodged my swing, hit me, and took about half of my health.  Whoa.  I then tried clipping him with the horse while swinging the two handed axe; a little cheesy maybe but we do what we must.  This also did not work; he was almost as likely to stop the horse in its tracks as fall down when I hit him, charging did only slightly more damage than arrows (around 4-5), and even when it worked perfectly, which it did a few times, I did maybe 10 damage. He was fast and skilled, with good timing; sometimes he would hit my horse before the charge connected.  He needed exactly three hits to cripple my horse, and once I was on the ground it took two additional swings to take me down (I blocked the first but he still swung again before I could counter), and one swing each for all six of my men (three of whom had been promoted once) who had come charging over to help but seemed utterly unable to damage him at all (at least, they were swinging and seemingly connecting but he was not staggering or even pausing in his wanton destruction).

I'm glad that lances work, but not everyone starts with a lance, nor the money to buy one, and honestly with every other faction start this quest line is just an easy couple of hundred denari and some minor loot to get you started.  Why should I have to go grind levels, money, and/or weapons to accomplish this one?  I think such things defeat the purpose of this quest.

If it is intentional, then the other factions are all way too easy; I suspect that this one snuck by testing and is harder than it is supposed to be, though.  It doesn't break anything because you can still start as Ravenstern by simply ignoring this quest, but it still seems worth a fix.

 

[temaire]

I just purchased a Fine Heavy Lance and knocked the guy out with one couched lance hit.

 

[Diablodude]

I think such things defeat the purpose of this quest.

It's not the quest that was changed, it was the lairs themselves. An unfortunate side effect is that it also affects the lairs in the tutorial quest.

Hope that clears things up.

 

[grygus]

I'm not actually talking about the lair, though maybe the problem exists there, as well.  I don't get that far because this guy is part of the little 4-man group you take out in order to get the lair's location.  Note the part about me being mounted and still losing.

*Edit* I went back and tested, and yes he is in the lair, but by the time I got to it I'd had a few fights, made 3rd level, and picked up a Chipped Maul.  He presented no problem.

 

[grygus]

I just purchased a Fine Heavy Lance and knocked the guy out with one couched lance hit.

As I pointed out, the difficulty isn't consistent with the other factions; this only happens if you start with Ravenstern.  So the fact that there is a single solution doesn't address the actual problem of inconsistent design.  If they were all this hard then your post would be excellent advice, but since they aren't it's just a way to ignore the problem.  And that's fine, it's a legitimate workaround, but I think the designers still need to know about the problem (I am still assuming that this is unintentional.)

I will also point out that PoP seems to have as a central design tenet the support of multiple approaches to a problem.  You don't have to use a bow to succeed, you don't need to have a fast horse, you don't need to wear the heaviest armor possible.  Having a quest with only one realistic way of defeating it seems out of place.

 

[Diablodude]

I'm not actually talking about the lair, though maybe the problem exists there, as well.  I don't get that far because this guy is part of the little 4-man group you take out in order to get the lair's location.  Note the part about me being mounted and still losing.

*Edit* I went back and tested, and yes he is in the lair, but by the time I got to it I'd had a few fights, made 3rd level, and picked up a Chipped Maul.  He presented no problem.

Hmm.. It's been awhile since I've played, but I don't remember any difficulty with any of the leaders you're talking about.


- Not to say there isn't any problem. Still, with the focus on Pendor 4, I'm not sure how long it'll take to get patched. It's likely unintentional though.

 

[Brew]

The Bearclaw beserker leader in the lair only has 20 hp so you could break wind in his general direction and the noxious gas would kill him although he respawns a lot(just keep checking where he spawns or watch the console as he chops up your party).

I didn't have a problem with the first one that was part of the 4 guys group(close range headshot) but when I tried to solo the lair I was turned into a pincushion....I miss been stoned to death

 

[azxcvbnm321]

There is nothing wrong with the first part of this quest.  As people have said, you can kill him with a lance, if you don't have a lance, don't accept the quest right away.  I usually can salvage enough money for a lance (a few hundred) in the first few days.  If you have no lance, you can still kill him though it'll take a lot of skill.  Use a long ranged 2-H sword or spear.  Charge with a horse and STAB at him when you are about to make contact with the horse.  He will either be hit or have to block.  Most likely he will choose to block which will allow your horse to do charge damage without him swinging at you.  I haven't tried this specifically, but it should work.  HOLD your trust as you charge.  He should still attempt to block.  When your horse runs him over, he will stumble and his block will be removed.  Now release your trust and stab him.  Repeat.  Of course this is not a surefire way to win since if he does not block and chooses to swing instead, you will hit him but he will likely kill your horse and do a lot of damage to you.  Oh well, welcome to Prophecy of Pendor.


I think the problem is that these leaders cannot be made weaker without affecting the gameplay in the rest of the game.  So while it might be a little too hard at the beginning, all you have to remember is that you don't have to do the quest.  I'm on day 330 and I haven't done the quest yet and I might never do the quest.  There's no reason for the developers to change this aspect because it's not necessary to the enjoyment of the game.  It's purely an optional quest that has no bearing on the rest of the game.

If anything, the developers should try and make POP 4.0 even harder.  Once you get honor troops, you can win pretty easily.  The later part of the game needs to be harder.  My suggestion was to face a 300 Noldor Twilight Knight Army without help from your lords.  Then have to assault a castle stocked with 600 Twilight Knights, Hero Adventurers and Doomguides as your final challenge.  POP is not a mod for the faint hearted.

 

[grygus]

One more attempt to make this clear:  nobody is claiming that the fight is impossible.  All we're doing is reporting that one newbie quest is significantly harder than the rest.  If that's intentional, and a dev posts to say it's intentional, then okay!  Until then, it looks like a mistake.  I would assume that the team wants mistakes reported, because they have in the past.  No idea why some players seem to be against this.

Thank you for your input, azx, though I don't see how purchasing a sword or spear is any different from purchasing a lance, except that they won't be as effective.  As I posted earlier in the thread, horse charges often do not do any damage at all or stagger him, so that's not reliable.  I also had a two-handed axe and it was extremely difficult to damage him with it; perhaps a sword or spear would work better, but I am highly skeptical of either doing a very good job with a level one character's weapon skills.

If you are at all interested, I encourage you to actually try this fight with a level one character that isn't explicitly built to win the fight - yes obviously a knight's son/squire will not even notice as they couch their way to victory, but not everyone plays that build every time.  It takes five minutes to set up:  make a character designed to be an archer, trader, looter, or high charisma leader, choose to start in Ravenstern, stick with your starting gear and any drops you get, and this is your second or third fight.  You might have fun with the challenge.

If the leaders for the other factions aren't so weak that they ruined the game, then I do not see how bringing this one in line with them will have an adverse affect.  This issue has exactly nothing to do with mid-late game; a level 20 NPC is irrelevant by Day 60 in most games.  Nobody is asking for PoP to be easier overall.  It's just an NPC whose power appears to be quite high relative to NPCs in identical roles with other factions.  That's all.

*Edit*  Took a look with a troop editor, to see whether I could find the problem myself.

His personal stats are actually in-line with the other leaders; while he is powerful and carries a 51c damage axe, the main problem might just be his armor; it is rating 50, which is high for that early in the game; like I said before, your Ravenstern Recruits and Militia cannot harm him at all, which seems odd since the whole point of the quest step before this one is to recruit those guys to help with this fight.  None of the other leaders have an armor rating over 40.  I don't know enough about the numbers behind the game to know whether 10 armor makes that big a difference, but that's the only power discrepancy I see in the editor.

Side note:  It looks to me like the lair leaders are separate entries in the troop file, so changing this guy may not affect lairs at all.

 

[azxcvbnm321]

No offense intended in my post Grygus, I'm sure the developers appreciate someone who is so interested in making the mod better that they take the time to post their observations.  I have tried to take on the first quest as a level 1 character, once.  I've never again attempted the quest so soon.  In fact I usually skip the quest until I'm bored enough to try it or forget it totally which I suppose reinforces your point that it's not a beginner's quest.  The actual reward from the merchant is so meager that it's not worth it and hardly worth it if it were easy as the vanilla version.  I guess my only point is that there are many things that can be done to improve POP and this is small enough that the developers should spend their time elsewhere.  Again, no offense, just a difference of opinion.