Basics: Camping
Your hird is going to require a few essentials that you just can't do without. First of all, you're going to want to have each of the camping skills maxed out at least once, preferably twice somewhere in your hird. These are healing, witchcraft, guarding, hunting, and preserving.
I also highly recommend you have one hirdman completely dedicated to being a craftsman. He should try to max out the following skill lines: armoursmithing, artisan, crafting, tinker, repairing. If that sounds like a very big, scary investment, it isn't. Your hird can grow to include over 10 members eventually, yet you can only ever take 5 into battle, 6 with the main character included. So having two to three hirdmen onto which you just dumpster camping skills is not bad.
Other than that, scouting and cooking are nice to have but not mandatory.
With the camping aspect of the hird out of the way, we can focus on the meat of the guide and that is combat. For the remainder of the guide, I will give tips only for the 'combat division' of your hird. So for example if you're only going to keep Eydis around for her camping skills, don't go putting points into her shield skill like I advise, hmmkay?
The rest of the guide goes like this: "If you want to use this character in combat, you should take these passives and build him/her like so."
Stats And Their Effects
Stats
Strength
Determines base damage with axes and swords and affects Physical Resistance. Strength is essential for warriors, and will occasionally enable knockouts and other physical feats in dialogue.
Overall you're going to want to pump Strength if you're considering to use swords or axes. It's also a good stat if you want to wield a sword or axe instead of a knife while dual wielding. The base physical resistance aspect is less important; it simply determines how resistant you are to effects such as stun and bleed.
Endurance
Determines Hitpoints, base Damage Reduction (DR), Block Chance with shields, and affects Stamina. Endurance is of the utmost importance to front-line fighters.
Endurance is incredibly important for a number of reasons, but the main thing is that it directly affects how much block % you get per shield skill level, your total hitpoints, and how much you reduce incoming damage. This stat is wholly responsible for how durable your fighters are, and you want durable fighters on higher difficulties. Consider ignoring this stat only on pure ranged characters.
Finesse
Determines base damage with knives and spears, and Critical Chance with all weapons. Finesse is important to ranged characters and fast-handed rogues, and can occasionally be used for surprise attacks in dialogue.
Finesse is not a very important stat unless you plan to use knives or spears. Critical chance is nice to have, but it's not a very consistent way of doing damage and I personally vastly prefer consistency. Max this stat only on dual wielders (with a knife in the main hand) and spear/knife users. Other builds can put a bit in here for the crit chance, or leave the stat at 1.
Perception
Determines Accuracy with range weapons. Perception is crucial to archers, and will often reveal additional information during dialogue.
Important stat for those who use slings and bows. It's also important for the throw skill line, but the throw skill line in itself isn't very important. In my opinion, you either max this stat or don't touch it at all.
Sense
Affects Mental Resistance and Stamina. Sense is fundamental to witches, skalds, and other support characters, and can often be used for persuasion in dialogue.
You need a minimum of 4 Sense to unlock the Galder, Leadership, and Witchcraft skill lines. However, nothing in these skill lines actually scales with Sense itself, so having 4 of it is enough. Healing on the other hand requires 6 Sense to unlock and does scale with the stat total, so it's best to have your healers have as close to maxed out Sense as possible. Other than that, mental resistance is a very important stat for your archers and slingers, since it improves how resilient they are to being demoralized (which halves their accuracy). This actually goes double considering that sense opens up Leadership, and levels of Leadership grant extra physical+mental resistance.
Weapon Types And Their Roles
One-handed
The benefit of one-handed weapons is that you can pair them with a shield, and shields are incredibly useful on higher difficulties. You also have the option of dual wielding.
Sword - strength
The sword is the one-handed weapon to go for if you're looking to do damage and nothing but. They have a skill that performs a pre-emptive strike, a skill that ignores the target's damage reduction, and another skill that's an execute.
Axe - strength
Contrary to what you might think from other games, the axe puts less emphasis on damage in this game. Instead, it's more of a frontliner's utility weapon. The axe comes with two skills designed to deal with an opponent's shield (one that removes it for that turn, and another that does guaranteed damage to the shield) while their final skill allows them to disarm an opponent. This is incredibly powerful, and as such I recommend the axe for pure defending/support characters, or as a backup for primary sword wielders.
Knife - finesse
If your character has a lot more finesse than strength, and you still want them to have a shield (Nefja might be such a character for example), then your best option is most likely a knife. The knife comes with one skill that does double damage against immobilized targets (such as those who were hit with the Stun or Cripple skill), one skill that gives you two half-damage attacks (to targets of your choosing) with a chance to bleed, and one attack skill that gives you a free action. There is not much to be said about Knives. They are a good choice if you want to dual wield and work fine paired with a shield in some stat distributions, but offer little besides damage.
Shield - endurance
While the shield skills themselves are not all that impressive, the main benefit of increasing it is the increased block chance per level, which scales directly with your endurance. This means that a character with 10 points of endurance will get an extra 10% block chance per shield level. If you're going to use a shield, having a good amount of endurance is paramount. Because after all the inverse is also true; a character with only 1 endurance would only gain 1% block chance per shield level.
Two-handed
There are only two types of two-handed melee weapons in the game: the Dane axe and the spear. The strategic advantage to these is that they have 2-3 hexes range, so you can place them behind your tanky shieldbearers and safely hit the enemy attackers. You will also occasionally be able to hit an enemy across an obstacle that other characters would have to walk around.
Dane Axe - strength
The Dane Axe is the two-hander that scales with strength. It is a great weapon at doing raw damage, with a tiny bit of utility and has one of the rare area-of-effect attacks in the game (the final unlocked skill). Overall a weapon with a nice mix of damage, range, and versatility. Still recommended to have these characters have some sort of shield backup.
Spear - finesse
Compared to the Dane Axe, the Spear has more reach thanks to its first skill, and it also has the potential to inflict a lot more damage; scaling with finesse rather than strength means the spear user gets a lot more crits. The remaining spear skills are tools that help spear users and their allies avoid enemy attacks of opportunity. This will occasionally come in handy, but a good player should be avoiding or accounting for those regardless. Much like with the Dane Axe I still recommend having a shield to fall back on. Considering you'll be focused on finesse, a good secondary weapon to pair with that shield is a knife.
Ranged
There are only two ranged weapons in the game, and both scale with perception. Having at least two ranged characters in most engagements is crucial in my opinion, as they can do a ton of damage from a reasonable distance. Bows and slings compliment each other very well, so I actually recommend you have your characters learn both rather than one. You can still teach them Rebuke (offensive skill) and Point Blank (passive) to deal with situations when they get jumped.
Bow - perception
Put simply, the bow is the damage dealer of the two. If all you care about is doing damage damage damage, then pump points into bows. They have a skill that lets them ignore partial cover, one that lets them attack twice, one that lets them ignore the accuracy over distance penalty, one that sets stuff on fire, and another that rains arrows randomly in an area. Yeah, damage.
Sling - perception
Compared to the bow, the sling is the exact opposite. It is probably the purest support weapon in the game. One of its skills grants your allies cover (protecting them from enemy archers who can be a menace on high difficulties), another applies up to three debuffs on enemies in an area, and the final one douses an area in oil (which you can set on fire with your bow skill!).
Final thoughts
I would recommend you incorporate as many of these weapon types into your hird as possible. Over time you will give every member in your hird finely crafted weapons, but before that time comes it sucks if you have to salvage a fine weapon you found, but have no hird member to give it to. It does you no good if you have three sword users and then have to throw away every knife and axe you come across.
Recommended Passives
These passives will be ordered alphabetically. I'll leave it up to you to decide which ones are the most important, but on higher difficulties you definitely want to focus your passives on making your characters survive better.
Backstabber: Reasonably good if paired with the first level of the throwing skill, which essentially makes this passive a free damage boost.
Dodge: This halves the enemy crit chance. Super important.
Evade: Extra ranged damage reduction. Archers are a PITA. Get this.
Fencer: This makes you less vulnerable when flanked. You could just avoid being flanked, but the way battles sometimes start actually makes that unavoidable. Good passive to have.
Fortune-favoured: You don't get to increase your stats after creating a character, only your skills, and this essentially gives you three extra points to finesse. It's pretty good especially on your damage dealers.
Hardened: Extra hitpoints, you should get this on every character you're going to take into combat without question.
Keen-eye: If your character can take this passive, he should. Part of the reason why bowmen are so nuts.
Low-profile: Halves the chance of the AI deciding to target this character. Completely ignore this passive on your beefy guys and prioritize it on your archers and supports.
Night-owl: Extra mental resistance, important for your archers but not really for others.
Night vision: Again you want this on your archers and that's it.
Nimble: Having this means you can equip a higher tier of armor without noticing it. That's pretty sweet.
Opportunist: The AI really tries its best to avoid attacks of opportunity, but I would still get this on your frontline guys.
Quick Feet: Worth considering on dual wielders (explanation in the synergy section).
Strider: Extra movement point. Less important for archers than it is for your melee dudes.
The other passives aren't all terrible, but these are the ones I've found the most important by far.
Skill Synergies
Throw Rock (free action) + Backstabber
By taking the first level of throwing the backstabber passive, you can give yourself a nearly constant damage boost of 20% at no action cost. Has been nerfed once already though, and might be retouched in the future. Other skills that can apply Harried are for example Scattershot and Hailstorm.
Charge + Nimble and/or Strider
Charge has you do a melee attack based on the amount of hexes you move, and these other two skills give you more hexes to move per turn. Hence, it'll increase the max damage on Charge.
Grenade + Fire Arrow (+Inspire)
The level 5 sling skill and level 4 bow skill compliment each other perfectly, setting fire to numerous hexes. Great for smoking enemies out or tipping the tide even further in your favor near a chokepoint. If you have a character in your hird with Inspire (level 3 Leadership), then you could have the ranged character sling the grenade, inspire him, and then have him set it on fire all in one turn before enemies can move out of the area, and without the need for a second archer.
Hailstorm/any AoE + Taunt/Ruse
Taunt and Ruse (level 5 leadership) are great ways to stack enemies together, making them more vulnerable to attacks such as Hailstorm or the aforementioned Grenade/Fire Arrow combo.
One-Two + Quick Feet
One-Two is an immensely powerful dual-wield skill. If the user is being flanked, he'll attack both flankers with an unblockable powerful attack. Shame you don't get flanked very often huh? Well with Quick Feet, you can have your dual-wielder put himself in a flanked position without incurring an attack of opportunity. He can then perform the One-Two on both enemies. Bonus points if you have a character with Leadership to Inspire the dual wielder afterwards!
Prebuilt Hirdman: Ketill
Strength: 3
Endurance: 4
Finesse: 6
Perception: 10
Sense: 6
Ketill's stats make him an excellent user of the bow/sling and okay as a secondary healer or support. He can also wield knives and spears rather decently, but since slings and bows compliment each other so well this is not recommended. He would make for an abysmal shieldbearer.
Ketill's personality means he will gain a lot of morale if you're going for a peaceful playthrough in which you hope to create allies and be a diplomat.
Recommended skill lines: bow, sling, leadership
Prebuilt Hirdman: Nefja
Strength: 3
Endurance: 7
Finesse: 10
Perception: 4
Sense: 5
Nefja's stats make her an excellent user of spears and knives and well above average with shields, while being mediocre to terrible with other weapons. For that reason she's remarkably easy to build: knife and shield as one weapon set and spear as the other. It's recommended to set knife and shield as the primary weapon set so you'll start matches with the shield equipped: a possible lifesaver. At 4 sense she also gets access to Galder, Leadership, and Witchcraft.
Nefja's personality means she will get a lot of morale if you play as an honorable warmonger.
Recommended skill lines: spear, knife, shield
Prebuilt Hirdman: Asleifr
Strength: 8
Endurance: 6
Finesse: 6
Perception: 6
Sense: 3
Asleifr has a poor stat spread to really make him a specialist. If you want to experiment with dual-wielding with a sword or axe in the main hand, or with maxing out the throwing skill, he has a good stat spread for that, but I won't make promises as to the effectiveness of it. He comes prebuilt with a few skill points into the sword and shield lines, so the thriftiest way to spend his skill points is to follow along that. With his low sense he also can't be made into a supporting character. Overall Asleifr is a well balanced character, but I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing if you want to min-max. He makes for an excellent guinea pig though.
His personality will approve of you playing a stuck up warmonger.
Recommended skill lines: anything that scales with strength + ???
Prebuilt Hirdman: Gunnarr
Strength: 10
Endurance: 8
Finesse: 6
Perception: 1
Sense: 4
As far as prebuilt hirdmen go, Gunnarr's stat spread is excellent. He has 10 strength for maximum scaling with the relevant weapons and just enough sense to be able to dip into Galder and Leadership. A mix of 8 endurance and 6 finesse gives a good bit of durability and crit chance, and is enough to open up the possibility of dual wielding. Note that while the first skill unlocked by Galder (Tyr's Favour) is amazing, it's debatable if going further down that skill tree is worth the investment. I wouldn't prioritize it. And with all your archers + perhaps your MC going into leadership, that's not necessary either. But it's nice to have those options to you.
If you play the looting warmonger, Gunnarr will be very pleased with you.
Recommended skill lines: dane axe, axe, dual wield
Prebuilt Hirdman: Røskva
Strength: 1
Endurance: 4
Finesse: 7
Perception: 7
Sense: 10
As I said earlier, the closer you get to 10 sense, the more you should consider maxing healing. Røskva is all around an excellent support character that can hold her own with either a knife and shield or a sling though it'll be a while before you notice it, because you're going to want to max out healing and witchcraft first. Much like Gunnarr, Røskva's stat spread is pretty damn good. I'd have liked to see a bit more endurance but it's definitely workable. Being a very flimsy character with a ton of good skill lines to chase, you probably won't max Røskva out entirely, but don't let that bother you. It's rare you'll go a round with her when you're not doing any healing or witchcrafting anyway.
Røskva's morale will increase with a cunning, looting chieftain.
Recommended skill lines: healing, witchcraft, shield, sling, knife
Prebuilt Hirdman: Eydis
Strength: 6
Endurance: 10
Finesse: 1
Perception: 5
Sense: 7
I personally like turning Eydis into the 'camp mom' with maxed cooking and preserving, but she's definitely a good combatant. At 10 endurance she will be far more competent than Asleifr at holding the front, though she won't put out a ton of damage with only 6 strength. For that reason the axe is a great weapon for her. Having 7 sense means she gets access to Galder, Leadership, and Healing. Personal recommendation: stick to the first skill in Galder and Axe, then spread your points between shield and healing. If you have any spare skill points, getting up to level 3 in leadership is a very nice bonus to her by then already decent supporting qualities.
Eydis will appreciate an honourable, altruistic and cooperative chieftain, qualities that will easily come in a peaceful and diplomatic playthrough.
Recommended skill lines: axe, shield, leadership, healing
Prebuilt Hirdman: Morcant
Strength: 2
Endurance: 5
Finesse: 6
Perception: 7
Sense: 9
At this level of sense, Morcant is an excellent healer. However your priority should be Benediction, as Morcant is the only character who has access to it, and there are a few incredibly powerful effects in there. If you're going for a playthrough that sides with Northumbria, I would advise you give Morcant a try. I recommend you skill him entirely like you would Røskva, substituting witchcraft for benediction.
Morcant's morale will increase if you opt to play peacefully and diplomatically. Attacking Northumbria will make him leave your hird.
Recommended skill lines: benediction, healing, shield, sling, knife, leadership
Prebuilt Hirdman: Aife
Strength: 3
Endurance: 5
Finesse: 8
Perception: 10
Sense: 3
Aife's stat spread lends itself well to a mix of bow and spear, exactly what she is built for when you first recruit her. A few of her stat points could have been allocated a bit better, but at 10 perception and with a bow in her hand she is definitely a force to be reckoned with. If you're going to be siding with the Picts and have need for another archer in your fold, look no further than Aife. Easy on the eyes too. She does not need many skill points nor is she able to get any of the support skill lines, which means you have a lot of freedom in terms of passives to pursue. A downside however is that since she is unable to get Leadership, she won't get the passive mental resistance from it. That means she will be a lot more vulnerable to being demoralized than for example Ketill or a custom archer.
Her morale will increase if you play peacefully and cooperatively with the Picts. Attacking the Picts will cause her to leave the hird.
Recommended skill lines: spear, bow
Custom Builds - For The MC And Hired Hirdmen
IMPORTANT: As of this writing it's good to realize that very often your hird will be ambushed, and as it will be your main character walking in front, he will oftentimes take a huge beating. Recommended to have your main character be a shield user. I will also only list builds that I think are legit and will actually work. So while I think an unarmed character is funny, I'm not going to list a build for it.
The Anchor
Strength: 7 to 10
Endurance: 7 to 10
Finesse: 1
Perception: 1
Sense: 7 to 10
The anchor is a beefy guy designed to easily hold chokepoints, enable his teammates, and disable enemies. For a secondary weapon, consider either a sword or a dane axe. Well balanced and does respectable damage, but will have issues with mobility especially after equipping higher tiers of armor. If you want to focus more on the damage aspect, just focus more points into strength than you otherwise would, and use swords instead of axes.
Recommended skill lines: axe/sword, shield, leadership (level 3), galder (level 1), healing, (dane axe)
The Berserker
Strength: 10
Endurance: 10
Finesse: 7 or 4
Perception: 1
Sense: 1 or 4
A strength based dual-wielding spread for those who want to wield a sword or axe in the main hand. Not wielding a shield means these frontline fighters are a lot more vulnerable than typical, so take care in approaching with them and always have a backup plan. Note that you only need to level the skill of the main-hand weapon and the dual wield skill itself. So if you're going to wield a sword in the main hand and an axe in the off-hand, then you don't actually need to put points into axes. For a secondary weapon set I recommend either taking a shield or a dane axe, it's a toss up between whether you want more defense or more reach. The choice between 7 or 4 finesse comes down to whether or not you want to have access to Galder/Leadership/Witchcraft. These trees have some very powerful skills, and Galder's most useful one comes in at level 1 already, so I definitely recommend taking 4 sense and losing a tiny bit of crit.
Recommended skill lines: sword/axe, dual wield, dane axe/shield
The Rogue
Strength: 1
Endurance: 10
Finesse: 10
Perception: 1 or 7
Sense: 1 or 7
This is the spread for a finesse based dual-wielder. Going with finesse entirely means you open up a few skill points, as the strength build is forced to dump 4 into finesse just to be able to dual wield. As a knife wielder you want those points anyway, so it's a win-win for you. Put the rest of your points into perception if you want to mess around with throwing and/or want to equip a bow. Put them in Sense if you want access to the support skill lines. I'd recommend putting them in perception. For a secondary weapon you'll want either a spear or bow (if you put points in perception)
Recommended skill lines: knife, dual wield, spear/bow, (throwing)
The Cleric
Strength: 1 or 7 to 10
Endurance: 7 to 10
Finesse: 1 or 7 to 10
Perception: 1 or 7 to 10
Sense: 10
The cleric is in many ways similar to the anchor, but will usually hang out more towards the back rather than way up front. I would say having 10 sense and a lot of endurance is set in stone, but other than it's just a matter of what weapon you'd like to use. Go with strength if you like the utility of axes, finesse if you'd like to use spears or knives, and perception if you want to use ranged weapons. Compared to other RPGs you actually have a lot of freedom in what you do with your cleric.
Recommended skill lines: healing, witchcraft, shield, weapon of choice
The Archer
Strength: 1
Endurance: 6
Finesse: 6
Perception: 10
Sense: 6
The archer really only has two stats set in stone: they want maximum perception and minimum strength. Endurance is important for everyone just so enemies don't sneeze you to death. Finesse is probably the least important, but having crit chance is still nice. Sense enables a bunch of skill lines, but more importantly for archers makes them resist being demoralized (which halves their accuracy). Keep strength at 1 and perception at 10, but feel free to swap the rest around as you see fit. If you want your archer to be a secondary healer, then you might want to put him at 10 sense. If you want maximum damage, consider 10 finesse, etcetera.
Recommended skill lines: bow, sling, leadership
Hird Composition
As obvious as it may sound, you're going to want a well balanced group. Out of your six characters (5 from your hird + main character) I recommend the following composition:
1-2 anchors to hold chokepoints and strip away enemy shields
1-2 healers to debuff enemies and keep allies in good shape
2-3 archers to thin out the enemies
0-2 free choice, consider adding in extra dane axes/spears/shields here or a nimble dual wielder
There's a great deal of build freedom in this game so it's tough to say you must play in one certain way. In short it's simply important to have people to hold the front, people to support them from the back (with dane axes/spears/slings/bows) and stuff to keep everyone in good shape (Tyr's Favour and Healing skills).
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=918774881
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