The Ultimate Bannerlord Beginner's Guide!

bannerlord has finally arrived all those months of waiting patiently have paid off and you've got your first campaign running but then this happened or this or even this if you're not in this video I'm going to share with you my best advice and tips for getting started in Ben alert so you can get past the Steep learning curve and start dominating Cal radio we have a couple choices to make from the main menu that can make a big difference with how our campaign plays out campaign mode or sandbox mode campaign mode is a bit more restrictive with how we can build our main character with six background options to pick from no options to change our age and the starting location will always be at the training field outside of poros on the plus side we get access to more family members a brother that's of age to use very early on and two more siblings that need a few years to mature but will become very useful soon and finally campaign mode has a set main quest line to follow that can help give a sense of direction for a game with as many options as Banner Lord it can be overwhelming trying to figure out what to do and the main quest can help with that on the flip side we have sandbox mode that has five starting options to pick from and gives us the points for the sixth option to spend as we wish there's an option to select how old we want our character to start with older options giving more attribute and focus points to spend the downside is making an older character means we have less time to use this character as father time will eventually catch up and will die of old age there is one way around this and one of my favorite ways to play we can disable birth and death take advantage of all the extra points and not have to worry about dying from old age we also get to spawn in the culture we pick so betanians spawn here because it's spawn here and so on if you have no clue how to build a character campaign mode is probably best if you want less restrictions and a really strong main character try sandbox mode with death disabled and 50 years old you'll be like Thanos next on the list picking a culture there are six options to pick from and it can be difficult to know what's important unless you've played several cam campaigns already I've narrowed the list down to three that are great for beginners and experienced alike starting with acerite if you plan on doing a trade Focus campaign the asteroid can give some amazing bonuses thirty percent reduced price on Caravans led by companions is huge they typically cost 15 000 Dinars each but for the SRI that cost is reduced to ten thousand five hundred this is important for two reasons you can start running Caravans sooner because the discount and more importantly it reduces your risk exposure if a caravan gets captured by Bandits your investment is lost typically they will survive for a few years at least but on the off chance they get captured sooner you're not out the whole fifteen thousand asteroid also pay less trade penalty which will add up to more profits over the long run they also ignore the desert movement speed penalty which is nice to have but it's much less important than the other two bonuses if you're looking for a bit more combat and Adventure volendia can be a great starting pick the first bonus gets plus five percent more renowned which may not seem like my much but can make a difference we'll cover Renown again later but it's very important for many aspects of banner Lord like joining a kingdom or growing the size of our party and Clan the next bonus grants more income when you join another kingdom as a mercenary once we reach Clan Tier 1 we have the option to join another kingdom as a mercenary and they'll have to pay us for fighting battles with them clearing Bandits or many other things having an extra 15 income from that mercenary contract is huge it's not uncommon to earn 50 000 per month or more through a mercenary contract so this bonus would add another 7 500 on top of that and finally for my personal favorite and what most people consider the best culture to play as betania the main bonus we're interested in is the 50 less speed penalty for moving in forests this bonus can be as high as 0.75 which is insane most scouting perks give us 0.1 movement speed increase so by picking batania and moving through forests we essentially gain seven free scouting perk bonuses and on top of that once we start taking towns we can get a massive plus one militia bonus per day which will help on defense however the movement speed bonus alone would be well worth it if that was the only bonus we got a final note on culture before we move on just because we start as a specific culture doesn't mean we have to stay there we can hire any troop we want there's no bonus or malice for having specific troop types in our party we can join any Kingdom we want once we get to that point culture makes no difference there the only other thing besides starting bonuses that culture effects is the Loyalty of thiefs that we own it can often be a good idea to join a kingdom that borders our culture so that when thiefs are taken we can own matching culture thiefs and avoid the mass of -3 loyalty debuff from wrong culture thiefs this next section could be a 10 hour video alone no joke character builds are incredibly dense and diverse in bannerlord but for this guide we'll stick to the very Basics that you need to know such that you don't paint yourself into corner so to speak the first thing to keep in mind is to pick a playstyle that you would personally enjoy even if it's not the most efficient it's easy to go down the min max Rabbit Hole you'll have tons of time to get there soon enough so maybe don't rush it with that said it's generally better to specialize in two attributes rather than spreading your points all over the place the best perks are unlocked at level 275 for most skills but without enough attribute points it will be impossible to get there for example we start with two points into each attribute which means if we put Max Focus points into any given skill the highest perk we can attain is level 200. if we want to reach 275 we need a bare minimum of seven attribute points but oftentimes it's best to get 10 to Max it out the problem attribute points are scarce and we must allocate them with great thought one of my favorite attributes to focus on for all experience levels is intelligence Stewart and Medicine are two of the best skills in the game and are increasingly more powerful the higher skill we can go Stewart's skill will increase our party size and decrease our troop wages meaning we can field a significantly larger Army for less money medicine is used to keep our troops alive after battle each time one of our troops goes down on the battlefield there is an RNG role for death or injury the higher medicine skill the more likely we are to have injuries instead of deaths which will not only save us money from having to recruit Replacements but also save us time once we get into big Wars later in the game the worst thing we can do is stop taking more land because we've got to stop and go home to recruit more troops we won't cover all attributes here but one final point is to avoid putting attributes into Vigor and control unless you're role-playing a Savage combat expert those precious points would be better spent in the other four areas combat skills are generally quite slow to level up and you can't use more than one at a time so maxing one-handed two-handed or pole arm or Bow crossbow and throwing in a single campaign would be nearly impossible on the other hand putting points into social can help reach level 275 charm leadership and trade all at the same time I do recommend picking one melee skill and one range skill put three to five Focus points into each and putting the rest elsewhere so we've got our culture and starting build sorted out but we may still be missing a few things for a complete party here we can see four main party roles that need to be filled scouting Stewart medicine and Engineering if our main character build doesn't include leveling up these areas then we can hire a companion or marry a noble to help fulfill these roles take the previous tip of leveling up intelligence our main character would handle the steward surgeon and Engineering rules but we would lack a scout we can travel from town to town and visiting the tavern for a suitable companion for this role by clicking on their portrait we can find their strengths and look to hire one that has some scouting skill once hired we need to go to the clan Tab and assign them as the Scout anything we do not manually assign to others will default to our main character so be sure to assign roles to avoid missing out on those bonuses however companions are much more useful than just filling party roles we don't have time to cover all of these here but to list a few they can be dedicated captains that give bonuses to the Troops they lead they can lead their own Clan parties to help clear Bandits or add more troops to our own army they can govern thiefs we own and Grant bonuses or even become an ambassador for our clan raising relations with other notables and Nobles in the locations we drop them off at one final note about companions be very careful with them in combat if death is enabled I can't tell you how devastating it can be to lose a surgeon or Steward after spending 10 or more years leveling them up it can happen in massive army versus army battles or the simplest 400 vs 10 looter battles so try to keep them safe and off the front lines unless their role is to lead as a captain so we know how to build an effective party and how to fill the gaps with companions but how do we actually find them without visiting every single town in Cal radio by pressing n n brings up the encyclopedia which is a veritable Treasure Trove of information let's start on the heroes tab this section on the left allows us to add filters to the search and narrow down for exactly what we're looking for under the occupation tab we click on Wanderers this is the list for all companions that spawn for this campaign scrolling down we want to look for one with some scouting skill once we find one we can click on their name and pull up their info and location if you want to hire them we need to travel to the town they're located in by clicking on the town and enabling tracking will get a pop-up on the campaign map showing us the way while we're in the encyclopedia let's talk about finding a suitable spouse let's say we want to marry into the Empire so we can have a governor that matches the culture of the fief we're going to be taking soon we can filter by females that are alive unless you're into necrophilia I guess then by Empire culture under the occupation tab filter by Nobles and finally not married now we can find all the single ladies that fit our criteria and if birth and death is enabled it can help to filter by age since younger means more chances of having more chill children I have two databases on the Discord that could be of help here one for all possible companions in the game and the other cataloging all single Nobles at the start of the game for example finding a good scout is easy if you know which names to search for as you can see here one thing to keep in mind companions are generated at random at the starter campaigns and only usually have about 34 in total so not every type of campaign will spawn each time and be aware that some names are used twice but have skills that are tied to the specific culture for example the hills can spawn as vlandian or Empire but if we need to scout the vlandian variant would be more useful since they have higher scouting skill one final note on using the encyclopedia the locations displayed on Noble pages are not always updated if we're looking for someone but their location says last seen here many days ago then we need to refresh the page this can be done by simply entering any Town Village or castle and exiting I guess they had GPS back in the day as well this trick is extremely helpful when trying to complete the main quest naretsi's Folly as the Nobles move around a lot so be sure to get updated locations all along the way so you don't waste time moving on to Renown this little stat is incredibly important but can also be very slow to grind out on the clan tab in the upper right corner we see our current Renown and progress towards the next level by increasing our client's Renown we can unlock new diplomatic options like becoming a mercenary or vassal for another kingdom the option to start our own kingdom increase our main party size by 25 units per level increasing the number of companions we can hire by plus one per level increasing the number of Clan parties we can start increasing the size of companion lead Parties by 15 and finally increasing the number of workshops we can own to show how important Renown is we start the game at Clan tier zero with a party size of 20 companion limit of 3 and workshop limit of one if we were to instantly jump to Clan tier 6 we would then have a party size of 170 being able to hire nine companions total and own seven Workshops the difference is massive in the early game Renown can be earned through many ways but only two of them are worth mentioning here combat and tournaments tournaments are the easiest to understand every time we win first place in a tournament we gain plus three Renown and the tournament prize we don't even have to wager any money to do it so it's a free chance to win however it's not easy to find tournaments and travel the map looking for them defeating Bandits and clearing Bandit hideouts can be even faster and there's never a shortage of Bandits on the map two things to keep in mind the more troops we fight the more renowned we will earn and the more balance of power is in the enemy's favor the more renowned we'll earn so fighting tough battles can be worth it from time to time next let's talk about a very confusing topic for most new players campaign map movement speed we start the game as a solo member party on a crappy Horse by pressing this little arrow we can expand the info in the bottom right screen to get more info on our movement speed currently we move at 7.0 with a base rate of 4.9 and plus 2 for Calvary if we were to remove our Mount from the inventory screen the Cavalry line would go away and we would move at 5.0 let's re-mount the Steed and travel through the forests as soon as we touch the edge we immediately get a speed debuff of 1.5 which is massive if our main character is betanian we see the plus .75 culture bonus I spoke about before it's really powerful some other terrain based movement speed debuffs are affording which we get for crossing Bridges and rivers and reduces movement speed by 1.5 in the southern part of the map we see a desert debuff of 0.5 which can be negated with an asteroid culture main character moving through the snow also reduces speed by 0.5 as we increase our party size our movement speed will start to dip if we have 10 foot troops the movement speed Slows To 5.1 we can change these troops to Calvary and it only dips down to 6.9 it's not usually a good idea to run Cavalry only parties but we can avoid some of the movement speed penalty for foot troops by adding writable mounts into our inventory going back to the previous example 10 Infantry move at 5.1 but if we were to add 10 writable mounts that number increases to 6.0 and we see a new line item for footman on horses to get the max movement speed bonus we need to have one writable mount for every one foot troop we have beware there are two categories of horses rideable and pack animals looking at the info card we can see this symbol designating that they are pack animals and this symbol designating that they are writable be careful when taking animals into the party though if we have too many we'll get a hurting penalty for example having 30 animals in the same party would reduce our movement speed by 1.2 to get rid of the herding penalty we need to look at a simple equation we're allowed to have two animals for every one human in the party so in this case our party of 11 one main character and 11 troops can have a total of 22 animals without suffering hurting penalty there's only one more caveat here any Cavalry unit must count their current writing amount as one animal our main character is mounted so we reduce the number by 1 and and voila the penalty is gone another source of movement speed penalty comes from being overburdened on the inventory screen at the top right we can see our current weight and the max weight capacity if our weight goes over the limit we increasingly slow down with the minimum movement speed being 1. we can increase our carry capacity by increasing the troops we have in the party or by increasing the number of pack animals in our inventory there are certain events that cause our party to be disorganized such as combat or leaving an army the penalty is severe almost two in this case and lasts for six hours or a quarter of a day we need to keep this in mind when engaging enemies as being slowed down this much for that length of time will make our party incredibly vulnerable to being captured and finally let's cover some movement speed perks most of them are Under The Scouting skills but here's the full list most skills add point one each but by taking enough of them they really add up and make a difference now we've touched briefly on party size a couple times already we know that Renown increases party size with each Clan chair but there are several other ways to increase it further the Stewart skill grants plus one party size for every four levels if we had 10 attribute points into intelligence and fight Focus points that skill would max out at 3 30 which means we could add an extra 82 troops to the total through Stuart there are 10 perks and many different skills that also increase party size for example one-handed level 250 can increase party size by 15 flat level 275 leadership increases party size by plus one for every level Above 250. So at 330 we could add an extra 80 troops in total there are a few other ways to increase party size like through Kingdom policies but that's going beyond the scope of this video One crucial thing to keep in mind regarding perks they will have a tag that tells us who can use the perk for example the one-handed perk Prestige will only be active if the party leader has the perk if our scouting companion has it leveled it won't change our party size because they cannot lead our main party only our main character can be the party leader if our scouting companion has it leveled up it won't change our party size because they cannot lead our main party only our main character can if we were to select them to lead their own party however the perk would then activate and they would get plus 15 party size let's take a moment to talk about the best and most frustrating part of banner Lord the combat system this section could easily be split into six or more 30-minute Standalone guides so we're only covering the absolute Basics here starting with melee combat on foot between one-handed two-handed and pole arm one-handed is by far the safest and easiest to use while attack damage is nice to have swing speed is arguably more important for two reasons attacks that land generally interrupt the enemy swing and faster attacks are more likely to land than slower ones when you're in combat as a melee combatant on foot it's very important to stay with your Shield wall and don't get tunnel vision the best opportunity for getting kills happens on the flanks as the enemy engages in combat break off to get a better angle throw a few attacks and and then Retreat back to the line when the enemy starts to respond to you if you prefer to fight mounted I recommend a thrusting pole arm and a shield mounted melee combat is much easier to survive provided we keep moving try to avoid direct contact with enemies and look for easy targets that aren't looking our Direction I like to wait until both infantry lines have engaged each other and all hell breaks loose and then roam the enemy's backlines or running down their fling troops if we have a Target picked out but the enemy turns toward us as we approach we shouldn't hesitate to abort the attack there will be dozens of targets each battle so don't rush it if ranged Combat on foot is more your style I recommend starting with bow and arrow or crossbow throwing is much harder to hit due to the projectile Arc and limited ammunition early game ranged combat can be challenging because of the low skill and gear it's difficult to aim this forces us to take shots from a closer distance so positioning is important always stay near the shield wall for protection and aim for headshots when practical prior ties easier shots over hitting important targets getting hits is key to increasing skill level which will make aiming easier it's a positive feedback loop avoid shooting at Shield troops from the front since their Shields extend further than the visual representation think sci-fi force fields finally let's talk about mounted archery hitting a Target while at a full Gallop in the early game is quite difficult but it's still possible however I do recommend treating horse archers as a mobile platform that shoots while stationary the XP earned is the same and it's significantly easier to hit anything this way so try to level up riding in Bow skill before invoking your inner Mongolian warrior I saved the best for last how to grow our bank account this topic is probably the hardest part to manage in the early game for beginners I oftentimes see people upgrading their troops to the highest tier possible without having a reliable way to pay for them and end up going bankrupt the advice I can give is to always save a certain amount of days worth of wages I generally like to save about 2 20 days or close to a month which will give me plenty of time to recover from a bad streak where money is hard to come by if our party's daily wages cost 200 Dinars per day then we need to maintain a dinar balance of four thousand let's go over the seven different ways we can earn money in the early game starting with competing in tournaments this is a tricky one for beginners that haven't quite gotten the hang of the combat system but the best part is we can compete without any risk there's an option to wage your cash each round and if we win we get to keep all the earnings but we don't have to wager anything so there's no risk we don't even take damage when we get down if we win the tournament the price can oftentimes be sold for one to ten thousand dinars or even more in some cases next I recommend completing any Quest that requires combat I find these quests to give the best rewards for the amount of time spent working on them escort Merchant Caravan need help with Riggins Caravan Ambush train the troops poachers and extortion by deserters are all great quests to do train the troops for exam sample pays 2400 Dinars plus whatever money we make from killing the bandits to train them which brings us to the next method combat each Bandit party we clear out will have both Loot and prisoners that we can sell and it all adds up if we can take a quest that pays us to do this it's like double dipping and I highly recommend it the real money starts to roll in once we fight other Noble parties easily netting tens of thousands of Dinars for even small battles this segues nicely into the next method becoming a mercenary at Clan Tier 1 we're eligible to join a kingdom as a mercenary which can be done by approaching any Noble for that specific Kingdom be sure to check the encyclopedia first before you waste your time traveling to them a kingdom must be at war with another kingdom to accept a mercenary contract from the player be careful though minor Clans do not count as being at War since we're already completing combat quests and fighting Bandits becoming a mercenary is just icing on the cake for stuff we're already doing it's not uncommon to have a contract worth 150 to 200 in ours per influence and even small Bandit parties will give up to five influence or an extra 750 to a thousand dinars if you're looking for a more relaxed way to grow wealth then trade might be a better fit before we start trading we need to have some money saved up a few troops and some pack animals I recommend having at least 5 000 Dinars and 20 tier 2 or tier 3 troops don't bother upgrading them beyond that as they are strictly to ward off Bandits and we don't want High troop wages eating into our profits we travel to the nearest town to begin our trade run click on the filter to the far right for trade goods and look for items for sale with a green number hovering the mouse over this good will show its price relative to the average global price I typically try to buy anything valued at 50 percent or below the average global market price next we travel to another town and check the selling price we want to sell anything that isn't green with red being the higher profit margin since red indicates pricing above the average global price however it's better to move more volume than it is to hold on to trade goods and waiting for the that killer trade so selling at yellow is totally acceptable remember we bought these Goods at 50 below the average so selling them at yellow which is the average price will still net a healthy margin with a little trade scale we can reach trade perk 25 to help us determine good buying prices and trade level 50 to help us determine good selling prices the next logical step for any aspiring Trader is to expand into companion-led Caravans not only is this a solid financial decision but it's also a great way to level up companions there isn't much to it we hire a companion from The Tavern and speak to any notable in that town ask to start a trade Caravan and select our companion if we can find a companion with specific skills like trade or scouting even better there is an option to pay for more expensive troops but in my experience it's generally not worth the extra expense so stick with the basic option and if you're starting to stack up tons of cash and not sure what to do with it you can start buying workshops once again workshops are a difficult topic that fall outside the scope of this guide but I can recommend flisson19's channel for more info on that link is in the description however the best Next Step you can take as a beginner is becoming competent at melee combat so click this video right here for my complete melee combat guide thanks as always to the many channel members and patreon supporters who support this channel financially and make guides like this possible the average market value or more

Channel: Strat Gaming Guides

Views: 658,435

Keywords: Strat Gaming, Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord, Beginner's Guide, Full Release, Patch 2.0

Id: G8YUIB3-jYk

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2022