Battle Brothers Developer Blog #102 – The Webknecht

The new developer blog for Overhype Studios’ Battle Brothers introduces us to an early game enemy coming to the strategic RPG in the upcoming Beasts & Exploration DLC. This enemy, the spider-like Webknecht, will try to poison your mercenaries and catch them in its webs. Check it out:

So far we’ve talked about two new enemies that are part of the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and intended to spice up the mid to late game. We want to bring fresh enemies to all stages of the game, so this week we’ll take a look at a new beast aimed to bring variety mostly to the early game. Let’s crawl!

THE WEBKNECHT

The Webknecht is a large arachnid that lives in sizable colonies in the dark areas of forests throughout the world of Battle Brothers. It’s there that they spin their webs between trees to trap anything from bird to deer and between. Unlike most other beasts, Webknechts don’t usually roam a lot, preferring instead to sit in their territory and wait until something unfortunate gets itself caught in one of their nets. Still, they’re known to choose the vicinity of settlements for their home on occasion and threaten the lives of villagers and their livestock.

The presence of a large enough number of Webknechts is heralded by extensive webs spanning from brush to tree to rock, uniquely transforming any combat environment in a way that leaves no doubt about who lives there. Worse still, amidst the webbings are nests of eggs, and these eggs hatch during combat. You can seek them out, and destroy them with a single strike before they hatch, but otherwise, as combat goes on, there’s always the danger of more and more eight-legged terrors swaming you until you cut down enough to make it ebb.

Webknechts make use of the ‘Weave Web’ skill to weave around their opponents a sticky web, which prevents anyone trapped inside from moving and reduces their ability to attack with full force or defend themselves effectively. Characters can attempt to free themselves of the web during their turn, and each failed attempt increases the chance of subsequent attempts succeeding, but doing so can quickly become tiring, which only works in the arachnids’ favor.

Webknechts aren’t as frenzied in their attacks as, for example, Direwolves are. Instead, they choose to let their opponents tire themselves out by struggling in their webs, and they wait until an opportunity presents itself and their opponent is distracted before they attempt to bite them a single time per turn. They act as a swarm, and so the more oversized spiders surrounding a target and acting in concert, the more effective they become.

The Webknecht’s bites aren’t terribly dangerous to the armored mercenary, but Webknechts are poisonous, and receiving hitpoint damage will apply it. Unlike the poison employed by Goblins, the Webknecht poison does damage to vital organs over several turns and characters can die from it. The Antidote item already in the game works just as well against this kind of poison, however, and is more important now than ever. In fact, it can now be crafted at will if you have the necessary components – but more on that in next week’s dev blog.

And while you’re here, you can read this Rock, Paper, Shotgun article dedicated to the game. An excerpt:

Many of my mercenaries have died under arms, but Meinolf’s death was the only tragedy. While collecting a reward in the town of Birkenstrand, my band were approached by a townsman who insisted the kid was such trouble their best option was to foist him on me. My band, the Stalwart Standard, had a vacancy: the swordsman of the crew had died to a ghoul, so I outfitted this new, youngest member with partially intact and presumably bloody gear. Meinolf cost me just six gold, or one day’s wages, because just a few turns into his first battle he was dead. I sent him to block an enemy brigand on a ridge from moving forward and attacking down at my men, which he did successfully for two rounds before he was clubbed to death. The Stalwart Standard were hiring again.

Battle Brothers is a game about managing a mercenary company in a grim fantasy world. Primarily, that means commanding men like chess pieces in battle on a hex grid against brigands, necromancers, goblins and other beasts, but Battle Brothers is about managing men outside battle too. What town will they go to next? What job should they take? Do they have enough food to survive? Critically, how will you pay them tomorrow? If pay is behind, men are hungry, injured, or their compatriots have died, they’ll be less effective in battle and prone to desert. Battle Brothers excels at linking its tactical layer – fighting monsters on a hex grid – with its strategic layer, managing the company. Both layers work together to realise the game’s fantasy of managing a mercenary company. Battle Brothers isn’t about winning battles and finishing the story, but getting rich and famous.

Your first decision in Battle Brothers is the name of your band and the colours of their standard. It’s almost certain that the handful of men in your party are doomed to die or desert, but the band itself will (hopefully) outlast its founding members. I chose the name Stalwart Standard and their colours – three axes – less because it’s memorable and more because I don’t like to duplicate the identity of whatever character or group I’m controlling in a game across runs. It’s a difficult rule to adhere to in Battle Brothers because my whole band has been completely wiped out many times, which means starting all over again.