Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Catch-all (EA out now)

It's in playable shape. I'd say 90% of the features are implemented, but what is there is definitely playable and fun.

I'm waiting for a bit. I already have 120 hours in it, and I reached the point where the gameplay features I want to use are always just barely fixed in the beta patch, so I figured I'd take a break and wait until they catch up.

The game has been completely broken for me since the last patch (Thursday)- crashes before it gets to the main menu screen.

I've been playing it heavily. While it still needs a fair amount of work (the main quest isn't fully implemented and the game isn't balanced for non-noble playstyles at all) what is there is great. I've been delving into mods because I'm too impatient to wait for Taleworlds to fix things. Some are just convenience things, like one that lets you auto-recruit for your garrisons and set a training path for them. Others fix broken or incomplete systems like how clans you've convinced to join your kingdom will almost immediately defect, and smithing stamina doesn't regenerate when you're moving on the map. One's a cheat, but xp gain is so incredibly slow for many skills, so I boosted it to be gained at 3 times the normal rate. There's definitely something wrong with xp gain for the player, as my companions gain points in combat skills way faster than I do despite having a lower learning rate. Most modders are doing a fair job keeping up with the weekly beta releases, though there are some that are only working on the stable version. I've only lost one game due to a mod issue (it let you start a quest that would crash if you tried to load a game that was saved while it was still active).

Smithing is completely broken, but in favor of the player. A single crafted javelin can sell for more than twice the available gold even the most prosperous town has, and since crafting xp is based on the value of the item you made (or smelted), they level up the skill incredibly fast. My last few characters have all heavily focused on it and it's almost exclusively funded their kingdoms in their early days. They're also incredibly useful for when convinced lords ask for payment to join your kingdom. They take your kingdom's power and their personal position in their current kingdom into account when setting their price, which means they can ask for over a million gold when you're first starting out, but twenty units of pointy throwing sticks will also be acceptable to them. Once you get a bit larger they ask for less, to the point where you can offer one javelin and it's so overpriced you can make them pay you 50k for the privilege of following such a talented pointy stick maker.

I went back to it again after a series of updates over the last month or so and decided to do a full restart. Two things that immediately jumped out were there's now a quest resolving the issue of your abducted siblings and a ton more NPCs for the factions for you to kill/marry/f*ck. I went back to Battania and despite half of the series' title involving riding a mount, I decided to ditch the horse and fight with my infantry on foot. Good grief, I think I'm level six and just running around the overland map's leveled up my athletics and scouting to the 70s. It's gotten to the point where I'm now outrunning my entire army on a charge.

I shot myself in the foot with leveling up smithing by completely missing the perk that lets you refine Fine Steel. Then I think I hit a bug in which if you're a male and get married, your brother's technically the alternate husband which seems to prevent pregnancy. Oh well, guess I'm waiting on another month or so's worth of patches.

For the smithing issue, just have a companion take that perk. There's a bug that I dont think has been patched yet where you can have characters use refining recipes they don't know by selecting it on the character that does know it first, then switching to the character you want to have use it.
I'll usually have a high intelligence companion take all the refining recipe perks.

Now with sandbox mode. And probably 50 bajillion other things added since the last post in this thread.

Is it done yet?

Nope. Still a ways off. Most of the patches have been bug fixes and balancing. Seiges still need a lot of work.
They did add battle deaths recently, but because they only happen in non-simulated battles, it actually makes it harder to start your own kingdom, since you can lose lords in every war (assuming you join the battles) but ai kingdoms can only lose lords when in a war with you. Without constant recruitment of new clans, you'll quickly have too few lords to be able to field large enough armies to counter the armies of your enemies. For example, in my current game I have a comparable number of clans to the Western Empire, but they have almost twice the number of nobles capable of leading parties than I do because I've lost a bunch during my wars against the Khuzait and Aserai.

And here I thought we had been playing sandbox mode this whole time.

Official release is out!! Any console players tried this yet? I'm very curious about your impressions.

NathanialG wrote:

Official release is out!! Any console players tried this yet? I'm very curious about your impressions.

I might try this out on steamdeck. If it works on that I imagine it will be good on console.

Is it any good now?

I hadn't touched this since January so I missed out when the NPC dialogues got partial VO added. Along with banners being an item.

Rat Boy wrote:

I hadn't touched this since January so I missed out when the NPC dialogues got partial VO added. Along with banners being an item.

Those are both brand new with the full release. Previously they only had the npcs who wants you to reform the Empire voiced.

My last game was on 1.8.0 (the previous version before the full release was 1.9.0), and I'm liking a lot of the additions. I haven't gotten into kingdom management or siege battles yet to see if/how they've improved. A big problem I've had in many different beta versions was that the last Empire kingdom would never fully die. They'd have all their lords & ladies (including the non-combat ones because they no longer had a castle or town to stay in) all running around the same few third party villages with tiny parties that were hell to chase down, but the sheer number of them gave them enough of a kingdom strength that it wouldn't trigger the dissolution of their kingdom.

Picked this up on the Xbox, and am loving it; I played Warband a good bit back in the day, so it's been fun to explore this from the sofa. Man, it's hard (at least, on Bannerlord difficulty), though!

I just want to know how a child of 2 years old earns the reputation of being cruel on their character page. Did they fling dirty diapers at their nursemaids while yelling, "Hey, Female Doggoes! My ass has sh*t all over it again!"

At my son's daycare, which had rooms from infants on up, one kid moved up from the diapered group into the toddler group. Turned out his idea of social problem solving was to kick other kids in the groin, regardless of gender (and yes, I'm assured it hurts everyone). After a week or two of this and having to be constantly isolated, he was banished. His parents were predictably upset and tried to blame the other kids for "teaching him" that...

So how is the 1.0 release?

I put a lot of time into the first M&B and Warband, and just noticed that there's a launch discount on Bannerlord for the next few days.

My feeling is basically this is warband 2.0. If you just want more mount and blade this is great. Better graphics, overall smoother game play, the same fun combat, betterish sieges, etc. The AI still cheats a lot, creating armies out of thing air. The dialogue stuff is still odd and role play light. Conquering the map is basically impossible without cheese. Basically all the same issues as warband.

Course I still put like 80 hours into it. Cause it's fun.

I have encountered an odd little (non-gamebreaking) bug.

I was following my usual path to power (tournaments > mercenary > vassal > independent kingdom) and had recently pledged my temporary fealty to Battania when Caladog (their leader) got himself killed in battle. The other Battanian lords voted me in as his replacement. When I went to the NPC about publicly revealing i had the Dragon Banner as a non-imperial kingdom, the quest wasnt set up to handle the player leading a pre-existing faction, so I got a cutscene of my character (as King) standing next to my character (the vassal bearing the Dragon Banner) and pledging to destroy the last traces of the Empire.
IMAGE(https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/030/329/cover1.jpg)

Stengah wrote:

...I was following my usual path to power (tournaments > mercenary > vassal > independent kingdom)...

By this, do you mean you fight in tournaments to accrue enough renown that you can then approach a lord about becoming a mercenary? And then fight for them long enough that you become a vassal?

I ask because I often struggle with the "big picture"/political aspects of M&B games. The systems and progression opportunities often feel opaque, and I end up wandering around doing random stuff until I encounter someone with a dialogue option that lets me advance (i.e., enter their service). But even then, I tend to lose track of who I am sworn to, what I'm supposed to do as their vassal, etc. So I usually just try to join them in battle when there is a war and hope that they give me a castle one day. I feel like I should be more deliberate about it....

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nfIqymi.jpg)

This isn't how ransoms work.

master0 wrote:

My feeling is basically this is warband 2.0. If you just want more mount and blade this is great. Better graphics, overall smoother game play, the same fun combat, betterish sieges, etc. The AI still cheats a lot, creating armies out of thing air. The dialogue stuff is still odd and role play light. Conquering the map is basically impossible without cheese. Basically all the same issues as warband.

Course I still put like 80 hours into it. Cause it's fun.

That's enough to sell me on it. Thanks!

Now I just need to wrap my head around the skills system, while I raise an army and do all that familiar fun stuff.

Rat Boy wrote:

This isn't how ransoms work.

That famous story by O. Henry comes to mind. Just how annoying is your prisoner?

hubbinsd wrote:
Stengah wrote:

...I was following my usual path to power (tournaments > mercenary > vassal > independent kingdom)...

By this, do you mean you fight in tournaments to accrue enough renown that you can then approach a lord about becoming a mercenary? And then fight for them long enough that you become a vassal?

I ask because I often struggle with the "big picture"/political aspects of M&B games. The systems and progression opportunities often feel opaque, and I end up wandering around doing random stuff until I encounter someone with a dialogue option that lets me advance (i.e., enter their service). But even then, I tend to lose track of who I am sworn to, what I'm supposed to do as their vassal, etc. So I usually just try to join them in battle when there is a war and hope that they give me a castle one day. I feel like I should be more deliberate about it....

I start with tournaments for the money from placing bets on myself and the rewards. It's also a good way to build up combat skills without the risk of being captured, and it makes you travel from town to town so it provides an opportunity to build up your trade skill as well. I don't think there's a renown requirement for being a mercenary or for pledging as a vassal, or if there is I've never run into it. They did recently implement having faction leaders send you a message asking you to become a vassal if you're renown is high though. If you're feeling lost on what to do next, the main questline with the dragon banner guides you towards the endgame pretty well. Mount and Blade doesn't really have a deep political system, it's pretty much just "conquer enemy territory through battle" with everything else designed to support that goal.

Usually a zero gold ransom is a sign that your opponent is low on money. It's basically "be a nice guy and let him go, would you?". Might as well just release him on your own, isn't there a relationship boost for that? Not going to get blood from a stone.

No relationship boost from agreeing to ransom a noble. You ony get that if you let them go when you first capture them. You could get an influence and possible relation boost with a same-faction clan if you donate them to a friendly dungeon instead. Sometimes during a war I'll get to the point where I just keep them all even if they can pay a ransom. Every lord and lady that's sitting in a dungeon is one less to bother me while I'm laying seige to their fiefs.

Yeah, but they eventually escape. There is an ability that makes the chances of that harder I think but I don't know the numbers behind it. I've found that I play it nice for a while and then just executing everyone.