Do assigned companions (quests or caravans or anything else there might be) still count against the party companion limit?
I imagine they must, otherwise you could spin up a trading empire at Renown Rank 1 by just recruiting, funding and sending off endless amounts of companions. Although I guess the # of parties you can have out is also limited by renown.
Also, another question: Do no nobles give quests any more? I've stopped checking because I haven't found anyone who do. But sometimes when you're at war with someone you can ask them "I hear you have a problem I can solve maybe?" and then they'll say "no duh you can't help me we're at war bruh". So which is it?
They do. I found one random lord that was like "Hey, I have this troublesome mercenary company. Can I give them to you to pawn off on another lord?" Pretty sad when mercs can bully a lord to the point they don't feel they can just fire them. Anyways, it's the only lord quest I've found but I almost never stop off at castles. Just like how there isn't any variety in companions, I think a lot of the quests aren't hooked up yet.
You never actually have to recruit anyone (although it might be better if you do).
The advantage to not hiring anyone right away and trashing looters, whether that's with a bow or in melee, is a) you get a ton of combat skill ups because you're doing all the work and b) you have zero upkeep so everything is profit. I think I did the first 30 or so days of my game solo, hunting for companions and trading before I finally bought any troops. It is kinda boring, and fights take quite a long time to do safely. (Depending on how good you are, I suppose.) That said, companions don't really interfere with solo play. Recruit em, give em a horse, give em a ranged weapon and order them to follow you during combat, and they'll both stay with you and use their ranged weapon as opportunities come up. It's basically like having a second hitpoint bar since they will always be trailing behind you taking ranged hits. If they go down, no big whoop, they'll just have shitty hitpoints for a while, as long as you didn't turn on Death. The strat can work with very small groups of actual bandits, but by and large it's only viable for looter groups or enemies without a lot of strong ranged attacks and shields. Still, I think I saved up like 5k easy during the early game doing that.
I think Horses need some kind of upkeep to them.
I both agree and disagree. It does feel weird to have a herd of like 60 horses that require nothing. On the other hand, large herds of horses are so fundamental to gameplay now I don't really want another upkeep lever against it. It's fine once you're swimming in cash and everything is trivial, but upkeep costs for herds would make early game trading harder as you need herds to be a viable trader in the first place.
I'm at that point where I always get to in Mount & Blade where I need to make a real decision. I've flogged the smelting/bandit hunting/trading/troop gathering part of the game to death at this point. Yeah I could grind for more cash to completely outfit my guys in end game gear but that doesn't sound satisfying. (I'm sitting on like 45k right now.) I probably should start some caravans but I like having all my companions, even thought most of them are boring as shit. (There are seriously no Social or Intelligence-type companions in the game anywhere, just the incredibly rare guy that actually has Tactics as a skill.) So it's time to either merc it up or become a vassal. (I suppose I could also find the last couple lords I need to finish the first part of the main quest too...) Problem is, Battania is a mess and they're the ones I want to support. If I sign up as a merc, the Vlandian army is going to squash me probably. If I sign up as a vassal I'll probably get thrown in to a fight with a superior force. Ah well, guess you have to take your licks at some point.....
Also: leadership. What a pain in the ass. It's designed for the vassal-level of gameplay where you actively setup and direct armies. That's where most of the skill ups come from.
The skill ups from "Maintaining High Morale" however really suck if you're not doing vassal gameplay. Basically, it seems that when you're over 68 morale or so there's a "chance" you might get a leadership skill up, and it amounts to literally 1 point of XP against leadership skill. In order to push morale well above 70, you have to be killing groups of size 30+ multiple times a day to get 2.5 or so morale added to the party. And since morale is literally just a ledger of morale increases that fall off after a day, you effectively have to kill multiple 30+ groups of enemies daily to keep pushing your morale up. Which is hard unless you're merc'in or a vassal and stuck in the middle of constant fighting. When you're NOT, you're reduced to hunting large bandit and looter groups, which the game does seem to increase the frequency and size of as your army grows....but when you're trying to level up leadership, it's simply not enough.
The next time I start a new game I'm going to invest in leadership for that very first perk, since that's mostly what I want out of the skill. But I'm one like day 200 at this point, and I've gone from 5 leadership to a whopping _9_ despite trying my best to maintain high morale. The best I can manage is to peak at around 72 for a day before all the morale gained from fights drops off.
It'd be nice if you could actually level up leadership to some useful level w/o having to go the merc/vassal route first.
Also I've seen myself getting Tactics skill ups in the middle of battles. Seems like issuing orders in the middle of a battle grants tactics XP, it's not just whether you "Send Troops" to fight for you.
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Topic: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (Read 105244 times)