This has recently gone live on steam - hopefully it'll get here soon, as it appears to fix a ton of stuff.

Yeah there is a huge list of fixes and some balance tweaks. Someone from LA told me it should be up on GOG this week. I'm guessing tomorrow, probably.

It's live now, go update

Woohoo! Though only in Galaxy it appears (therefore I finally started using it).

Cheers to the devs for getting this out. I hear they haven't stopped working on further patches, which is good as now that most bugs have been quashed they can (hopefully) make some balancing changes.

I doubt the game will ever get to be as challenging as Conquistadors (that game could punish you at the worst possible times!), but it would be great if it got close. At the very least it shouldn't be this easy to level people up, likewise we shouldn't be able to craft top-level gear using a mercenary we just hired. Having said that, the fact that I'm about to play through this for the third time now says something, especially since the first two were pretty bug-filled playthroughs...

Come on GOG, it's nearly three days since this patch went live, and it's already live via Galaxy, AND it's the weekend. Where is it for the rest of us? Talk about preferential treatment! [I know... there are almost certainly no blues reading this but I needed to rant].

Yup, you let them herd you in. I will never give in to the GALAXY. EVER! Never and ever. Seriously I hope that is not true, cause punishing your customers to herd them into something is not good PR. Ask Microsoft.

It's not only bad PR, (especially for long-time loyal customers), but it's incredibly petty minded and all it says about GOG is that they don't have faith in their ability to promote their own product.

I am sick to death of companies pissing on established customers in favour of new ones. They all do it, and GOG seems no different -- I thought they were.

I was going to write a comment saying you're going a bit far, but since the download from the website is STILL 1.0.2... Yeah I don't blame you.

On the other hand GOG updates through Galaxy are only a day or so behind Steam now, so at least that part's improved... Not that I was that impressed I had to install Galaxy just to download a patch...

It'll probably be even better still in a month or two. Apparently they're working on 1.0.4 already, but no details what it contains yet. Hopefully they fix some of the mechanics up so it's no longer possible to craft the best weapons and armour in the game before leaving Denmark.

Two-handed axes could do also do with a bit of a buff - they either need to be way stronger since two-handed builds are way superior in most cases in terms of damage and abilities, plus you still get to keep the individual weapon capabilities with two-handed as well.

Archers could be nerfed slightly. At the very least I don't get how a bow has equivalent damage AND armor piercing to a dane axe. Or how archers from that period are such killing machines, when from what I understand they would only be really effective against lightly armored foes, only harassing the others (so I like the "harried" trait - just the damage and accuracy is a bit crazy).

I agree that the game has quite a few balance issues.

Bows are mostly OP because of their abilities though. 1 free action for an accuracy boost and removing cover is ridiculous, as is the 2 attacks per turn one. Those 2 are way stronger than any ability from other weapons.
Bows are supposedly balanced through the accuracy mechanic, but that only introduces some randomness, plus dedicated archers can still land their attacks from across the map pretty reliably.

Anyway, I'm not happy about the patching situation either. I was really having fun with the game until a broken quest put me off, and apparently they fixed the problem with 1.0.3.

Yes the bugs have definitely been pretty numerous. At least they're fixing them pretty damn fast - hopefully they'll learn from the experience and improve their testing for future games.

Archers are definitely OP, even though shields effectively negate them since you just need an axe-man to shield hook before firing.

I preferred the ranged combat from Conquistadors. Ranged attacks in Conquistadors didn't increase as you leveled up (unlike melee), so only the equipment affected the damage. Instead experience/level only affected accuracy, and even maxed out they weren't this crazily accurate.

For one thing aimed shot only halved range penalties in Conquistadors - here it totally negates it! Meaning of course that "demoralize" can be totally negated. Also I remember quick shot not being anywhere near as accurate as in this game. Combined with the fact that a maxed out archer wouldn't beat a maxed out melee character, it seemed to make more sense, with the exception of shields (I really like the shield mechanics in Vikings).

This was despite the fact that "low cover" in Conquistadors could still be fired over/into - but you would suffer a massive accuracy penalty instead. Whereas in Vikings you can't even fire into low cover, unless you use the other archer OP action, the "Ranging Shot" which magically negates low cover entirely for anyone the shot AND adds a 25% accuracy bonus to targets on top of that.

I suspect they beefed up archery in Vikings because a lot of people complained about ranged accuracy in Conquistadors. Which is a shame because if you added the Viking shield mechanic to it, the Conquistadors ranged was better IMO. Not to mention that it doesn't make sense for bows to have equivalent damage AND armor piercing to a dane axe.

Do your history and look up "Longbow". They easily pierced chainmail. The only defense was plate mail.

That's true, but longbows were an English/Welsh weapon that was invented much later than the late 8th century when this game takes place.

Early Vikings would more likely use hunting bows, which should do decent damage but have pretty low armor penetration.

I know that, but I was just making a point about squid's comment re. bows not being able to do equivalent damage. A bow, any bow, in the right hands is a fearsome weapon. Don't underestimate them.

Sure, but they're fearsome weapons partly because in real life, any injury can be crippling or even mortal and bows can inflict lots of damage before fighters can engage a bowman. In games, with the hp system and characters who can take several blows to the face without dying, bows should do less damage than melee weapons, if only for balance reasons since range is a pretty big advantage.

Tbh, I don't care that much about balance in single player games, but it's still not a good idea to make a weapon much better than others. As the game stands now, there's little reason to use anything other than bows and 1-handed axes (to take out shield users).