So players get pilgrim’s shillings and can spend them for boons/miracles/weapon upgrades. If I play with 3 bots can I spend the shillings for them or are the bots stuck with the same grey weapon they begin with and no personal buffs for the entirety of the expedition? Or does the bot’s power scale with my mine?
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Nope, I am pretty sure that one of the several available videos (or Hedge) by now confirmed that bots don’t upgrade along the human players.
Come to think of, from watching some Stream it seems that Bots don’t even start with any talents in the Chaos Wastes. So, they are … weak to begin with and stay weak and get comparatively weaker the longer the run goes. The clear intention (unfazed from future incoming flak and begging/complaining) for the mode is to be played with other random people.
Also Pilgrim’s coins. Not elemental to the discussion though 
I really wish Fatshark would not design modes primarily for pre-made teams. The lack of efficient matchmaking was the major problem with the weaves and the lack of a deed lobby is a reason why deeds aren’t more popular.
Would it really be so hard to make anvils and randomized weapon drops pingable so that we could order bots to use them and then have the coins automatically deducted? And put a tab for each bot at the shrine interface so that the host can buy boons and miracles for them from the bot’s funds - we have this system in the keep so that we can equip bots how we like and pick their talents, it should be easy to re-skin this for a shrine.
Really, the more closely the bots can be treated like human players, the better the longevity of this game mode.
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Chaos Wastes is not for pre-made teams though. From what we have seen and heard, it has a normal quickplay function and players can join during the run. It can be played with randoms without issues (as long as enough people play bla bla).
I don’t think it is hard to program this. Pilgrim’s coins are picked up for the whole party anyway (so if you pick up a 30 coins stash, every player get these coins to his “account”) but each player can spend independently. The easiest way would be to give bots simply the same upgrades the player purchases because they automatically have the same amount of coins than the player. But as said before, it seems bots start even without the keep talents. So this is a purposeful decision to leave the bots this weak. I guess in lower difficulties bots can be carried and help against the occasional disabler (probably up to Champion). The higher difficulties become nigh unbeatable without more human players though.
This is in line with the general bot design that they are as good as the general player (meaning Veteran to Champion level). I am pretty sure that there won’t be compromises to this.
Yeah, I realize that the Wastes are designed for quickplay and that’s great as long as this mode remains popular. How long that will be, nobody knows. The Weekly Event is designed for quickplay too but I end up playing it alone every week because nobody likes it. I’ve played hundreds of legend deeds and twitch games with bots because of the lack of lobbies for these modes; and, I have to say that my success rate with bots is far higher than with random humans in quickplay - I realize that this will not be the case in the wastes because of the limitations of the bot AI. But, some days, I just prefer to play with bots. It’d be nice if I could do this in the Wastes and not be automatically at a disadvantage (regarding the purchase of boons/miracles/weapon upgrades) because there are not 4 players present. This is especially important for players that live in remote regions or play at times of the day when the quickplay lobbies are not densely populated.
At least this would minimize some of the disadvantage. I would still prefer to customize my bot pick-ups and talent increases (boons) like I can in Adventure mode.
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From what we’ve seen in the reveals, the upcoming expeditions are a lot closer to the usual adventure rules, at least in terms of how enemies spawn and how they scale. The reason why few people play weekly events or deeds is because a lot of the times they tend to lean on the side of tedious or overly grindy rather than fun. Hopefully it won’t be the case here. That being said, if you do play expeditions with bots, you can also spend the coins that would belong to them, hence a team of fewer than 4 players can compensate a bit for the presence of bots. I think this was confirmed by Hedge in a thread around here, maybe the ones about Chaos Wastes in the announcements board.
I think coins are not shared or lost when playing with bots, so if a coinbox has 90 coins in it, all humans get a split. All 90 for yourself if you’re on your own, 45 if there’s 2 of you etc.
Gives the lone+bot player a bit of an increase in buffs as they get all the buffs and coins. Still makes bots weaker the further you go, but as an individual you’ll be stronger.
And if you’re playing with bots you’re likely used to hard carrying anyhow.
That’s good to know. I’d just like to be able to upgrade my bots directly, their weapons and boons, rather than having to spend the coin on myself or party-wide miracles because the bots look pretty pathetic, even on legend:
If the bots are forced to use grey melee and ranged weapons throughout an expedition then they are gonna be woefully short of reaching the ‘usual’ breakpoints for elites and specials that they do in the adventure mode at the equivalent difficulty.
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As a definite solo player, I am also very worried about this.
Still confused by the inconsistency of information. I asked youtubers who got access to СW, someone says that bots have talents, like in a regular Adventure. Someone says no.
There was also a talk about general buffs for the whole group that can help bots.
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That should be incredibly easy to verify. Watch the video / stream. And if the bots are getting THP by fighting then the THP talents are active. If not … do the math.
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This could easily be fixed by giving the bots the properties they have on their gear in the keep (just like in normal adventure mode), or giving them some extra damage reduction or something. Plenty of times I play solo, either because of connectivity issues, or me just not wanting to deal with randoms running off and instantly dying after pulling a patrol and running over a monster trigger…
Bots not having that extra stamina regen/block cost reduction just means they take so much unnecessary damage, not to mention breakpoints…
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