What is the trick for fighting 3+ bad guys? I have taken out two but it was long and messy and really close to failure.
I am probably taking advantage of a AI glitch but if I ride my horse through a bandit camp I just wait for 2 or more to give up and lead the other one or two a little further and then attack. Maybe pop a few arrows into them. Soften them up.
how is your main level? Maybe you are not supposed to kill 3 bad guys at once yet!
If i get surrounded ill back up and attack the closest one, but dont expend too much stamina. I have to stop myself from over attacking. Once you run out of stamina they will do extreme damage to you. So, ill attack once or twice and then block and reposition
Eh, if you train with Bernard to high levels, running into a bandit camp and just spamming attack is usually enough.
if you don’t want to go that route, which makes the game a bit on the easy side, consider the situation. Is there a rock you can get atop of that you can shoot from that is difficult for them to get to? Arrows can take out enemies rather quickly. Are you stealthy? Plop some poison in their food, or go for a stealth kill. Is there a horse in the camp? Try stampeding it and seeing what it does. Pay attention to their pathing and patrols.
If you must take out more than one opponent in melee, always keep at least one opponent between yourself and archers. Back away and pay attention to the terrain and trees. You can usually get only a single melee attacker at a time.
This is a video I uploaded onto youtube of me fighting a camp of bandits (and hunting a boar) on my xbox one.
I’m not professional reviewer or anything and I’m still practicing editing, but it’s late game and I’m taking on the last group of bandits that you can hunt as a quest for the custodian at Sasau Monastery.
Trick is to have the gear to match the bandits. If you can, poison their food at night, try to get a stealth kill if you can. Or snipe them with a bow and run. Or wait until they go hunting. They’ll lave their gear in a chest in camp and be easy pickings. Same for when they sleep.
I just charged them after taking down one and injuring another with my bow since I had a sword skill of 20 and some of the best armor in the game.
sneak up on them close enough to sucessfully kill the enemy with the weakest armor using your bow, or if all of them have armor, use a poisoned arrow on whichever one has his back to you or has a shield. Then quickly try and get another guy with a shield or a remaining archer with the bow as they all try to figure out where you are and come running. Oh, and drink a buck’s blood potion prior to this, or a vitality potion if you are playing with light armor. Then it is just a matter of quickly taking down one guy and keeping them in front of you rather than letting one get behind you. If there is an archer left, I tend to try and zigzag, trying to keep the melee enemy between me and him, so his arrows have a chance of hitting his buddy. And always go after the guy without the shield if you have multiple opponents. An enemy with a shield is harder to quickly finish off and will take up your time and stamina will his friend with a polearm or a longsword does a lot more damage to you.
Generally speaking you wanna try pick off one or two from a distance with your bow. Aside from that you 're going to be forced to back peddle a lot when facing multiple opponents. Shifting view (lock) and trying to use objects (bushes, trees, walls etc) to your advantage to block off or single out attackers and buy yourself time.
I’m using a mace and shield atm, and most bandits can be dealt with in one or two blows.
But I’d say early on that distance is your friend. Improve your bow skills to thin the crowd before charging in. Getting encircled with poor equipment and skill level early on is a sure death sentence.
If you’re on higher level & well equipped then it should be no problem with that. Even 6-7 enemies at once.
Well, to summarize what others have said, there are scads of situational variables. What are your stats and skills, what’s your gear, how many of them are there, what gear do they have, is it day or night, on a slope or flat, in dense forest or more open? Before engaging, take a good look from a safe distance and answer as many of these questions as possible. Then select the appropriate tactics, which can be and often is avoiding agro-ing the badguys by taking a detour around them. Only Odin likes dead heroes. Besides, detours often result in stumbling into “Interesting Sites” and other goodies.
But let’s say there are only 3 badguys, only 1 of whom has metal armor, and 1 of those who doesn’t has a bow. This is actually reasonably easy to do brute-force if you’re reasonably skillful and well-equipped, and scout the area beforehand. Walk right into the camp to agro them all, then back-pedal. The archer will hang back so you only have to face 2 at once. Poke whichever one gets closest (switching targets as needed) a couple times every so often as you keep back-pedaling so the other can’t get behind you. Stabs work better than slashes because they take less time to execute, so you don’t have to stop as long. Try to back-pedal uphill so you have the advantage of higher ground. But try to keep going backwards in as straight a line as possible so the melee guys are always between you and the archer. This is another reason to scout the area first, so you can approach from a direction where you can back away straight uphill indefinitely.
Eventually, the armored guy will tire and drop behind the unarmored guy. This gives you a chance to kill the unarmored guy quickly without fear of interruption. Neither one will be in good shape by now due to you having poked them several times each and the archer having shot them in the back several times each. by now, the archer has probably de-agro’d and gone back to camp. Thise leaves you the armored guy to finish off. Then go back to camp and kill the archer.
Move… back up in a circle, keeping one bandit between you and all the other bandits.
I usually end up dying, because I can’t turn around and defend against the dip-shit that is attacking me from behind…
Fore me it’s moving attack then fall back and then attack again.
The O button onthe PS4 will break your focus away from an attacker so you can spin or move away quicker. Don’t know what that command is on other platforms.
Never stand in one place, keep moving always.
Riposte everything to death while back peddling if 3+ enemies. Stand there and riposte everything to death if 1 or 2. Unless it’s a guaranteed hit (i.e. archer has shot a friendly in the back ) I won’t go on the offensive until there are 2 guys left, maybe 3 if they suck. This changes a bit when you’re in shiny full plate with insane sword and you can essentially slice through enemies like butter.
you really have to manage your stamina with this one, as you don’t want to get surrounded and die super fast…
I would suggest trying to kite them, just continually move either straight back or move back and circle one way or the other (this is preferred). Doing this the AI will follow you and when you start moving left or right while moving back they will end up falling in line with each other, leaving the chances of getting hit my more than one person very slim.
Also, think about equipping a shield; if an enemy has a bow they will most likely stay back and rain fire on you, and arrows hurt a lot. Plus a shield can catch hits even if you’re not actively blocking, or so it seems.
I would also suggest that when you get the melee fighters a good ways away from the archers, if there are any, to break focus on the enemies that are close to you and chase down and kill the, usually, light armored archers before they can do damage. Killing people makes you bloody, being bloody will intimidate opponents, especially like bandits and villagers and people who “arent real warriors” or whatever; pulling off combos and master strokes causes some intimidation with your enemy as well I’m pretty sure.
The best advice though is to understand that, until late game when your stats and perks are ridiculous, taking on 3+ armored enemies, even lightly armored, is not very realistic and thus not an easy task…KNOW WHEN TO RETREAT. If you are losing the fight, though you want to do it before you’re really injured and your screen is all red and hard to see, just break focus and run; the more health/stamina you have when you retreat the more likely you are to escape; it seems even an AI with full heavy chain and plate will keep up with you so just run in a straight line and take off.
Somebody on here mentioned horse archery… and I’ve been experimenting with that…
Attract the attention of a bandit camp, gallop away, let three or so follow you, draw the bow as your riding away, turn… allow them to approach. Pick one off… plow through them, draw your bow as your riding, turn, allow them to come to you, pick one off… plow through them… rinse repeat.
This works insanely well… if you time it right, you get two little groups of dead bodies.
When you said “plow” made me wonder if the boar strength perk works well. Lol i never picked it because it seems ridiculous, but you could get plate armor and just charge people to death lol. Theoretically
it doesn’t seem to work at all…if it does it does so little damage you don’t even notice…but I’m pretty sure it just doesn’t do anything
Lol, well that’s probably best
