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[EuchreJack]

Bannerlord IS a straight upgrade. What people are complaining about are the lessons Taleworlds didn't learn and the things they didn't adopt from the modding scene.

For the record, Taleworlds did take several things from the modding scene, polish them, and add them to Bannerlord.  The whole smithing stuff originated in one of my favorite mods, for example.

[Kanil]

I mean, I haven't played Bannerlord since the first week or so, so I don't know if the system is less cancerous now... but the whole smithing mechanic is a great example of something I think actually makes the game worse than Warband. It's not fun to have to cart back every damn piece of trash you find from a battle and then manually break it down for smithing XP to get the shiny weapons.

[Duuvian]

Smithing is really easy now. In fact you can powerlevel with it easily up to level 15 or more, I dunno.

The only constraint on it is the smithing endurance that limits how many things you can do, or if you don't have companions with the refining perks.

Crafting javelins is the easiest way. The harpoon head is best, but I did menavlion head javelins as I had that unlocked. You gain like 30 to 60 points in smithing from crafting the first one at 0 smithing, and it only takes low tier metals and wood to do it. When you smelt them, you also gain a lot of smithing xp though not as much as forging. It returns metal the tier under what is required to make them, so less refining is necessary.

These javelins also sell for over 100k denars because of their huge damage, as the heavier heads increase their damage due to heavier item weight. I think smithing xp is related to item value, thus you get massive xp for them.

I think the crafted weapon pricing and skill gain is set this way for early access as you can make really awesome weapons quickly and powerlevel all your characters. I put their companion's first skillpoints in smithing to raise the cap, after that it's free attribute points and skill points for what they actually are doing. It can also be completely ignored if you don't want to cheese easy denars and xp. It does make it harder to level in other ways as higher levels require more xp, and smithing gets you at least 15 or so by itself.

As for smelting loot, it's not profitable but it can get you some metal for refining into expensive crafted items. It also unlocks weapon pieces sometimes, I think less often than smithing an item of the same value.

I have one (or two if I want to specialize in piercing instead of slashing because might as well) person take the smithing perks and all the companions take the refining perks, with one having the refine iron ore perk instead of charcoal, as charcoal is more useful.

Spoiler: Large screenshots (click to show/hide)

I also made a large cartoony mallet for capturing prisoners and anthropomorphic mice.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Calradian Polo

[Urist McScoopbeard]

That mallet is hilarious!

Also, idk modded warband is still v familiar to me, it's clunky, but like... it works most of the time? Crashes happen, but very rarely does a modded mechanic not work. That said I still play it regularly so, ymmv I guess.

[Kanil]

It can also be completely ignored if you don't want to cheese easy denars and xp. It does make it harder to level in other ways as higher levels require more xp, and smithing gets you at least 15 or so by itself.

Assuming I've understood your post correctly, this is the problem I have with Bannerlord in general.

I don't want to have to grind out smithing to level up my characters, I want to go around beating people with swords. Warband rewarded you for fighting stuff, because fighting stuff was the fun thing to do in the game. Bannerlord rewards you for grinding out smithing and other things that are... not as fun as beating people with swords.

I kinda feel that's never going to change, and in this regard, Warband will always be the superior game. That probably, eventually, won't be enough to outweigh all the things Bannerlord does better, but...

[nenjin]

Bannerlord doesn't reward you for riding around hitting people? Wot? The other 6+ skills related to combat that go up from doing combat isn't rewarding?

[Paul]

You can level up plenty from fighting in this game. The only reason smithing is so rewarding is it's broken and unbalanced. Without the broken recipes that produce super valuable things from cheap materials and give you crazy amounts of XP, smithing is an awful grind.

[scriver]

I mean I'm not even sure what all the focus points and shit do. I wish they'd just have something more like the old system.

[nenjin]

I agree they made it somewhat overly complicated for what they were trying to achieve.

But here's how it works:

Skill caps for each skill are based on the "stat" they reference. So like, Smithing is under Endurance. How high your Smithing skill can go is capped by what your Endurance currently is.

Focus points both increase how fast you acquire skill points for performing a skill AND raise the skill cap ceiling.

So let's say you're maxing out Endurance. So your skill cap for Blacksmithing is quite high. Then you add focus points on top of it, the cap goes up further and it skills up faster.

It becomes very clear on skills you are using constantly, like Riding. Put a few focus points into Riding and you'll max out your riding skill far, far faster than other skills.

The intent of focus points is to help skills you don't have the stats for still level up to a reasonable degree in a reasonable amount of time. Or for ensuring the things that you're actually making your primary stats/skills go up very quickly.

[scriver]

Yeah but they could have just made level ups give you attribute points instead of focus points

[Mephansteras]

Their system is a little finer grain than that. The Attribute/Skill/Focus system lets you skill up in different areas at different rates while limiting the ability to powerlevel too many things.

That said, I'm not sure it functionally works any better than a level-up system does. Or even a fallout style system with focused skills that level up faster than everything else.

At least as of a month or two ago when I played last I found it to be overly complicated for what it actually does for the player.

[Kanil]

Bannerlord doesn't reward you for riding around hitting people? Wot? The other 6+ skills related to combat that go up from doing combat isn't rewarding?

Let me try again. Say you get into a fight, it's fun, whatever. Afterwards, you can loot some weapons. You can either leave them there for nothing, bring them back to town and sell them for a paltry sum, or bring them back to town and break them down for smithing materials and use those to get XP and level up your characters.

One of these options is a lot more tedious and unenjoyable than the other two, but is the "best" way to play the game. You can either do the tedious thing, or you can choose to weaken your characters.

The game encourages you to do things you don't want to, in order to level up your characters.


Edit: And I will say, smithing was a much, much faster/more rewarding way to level up your characters on release than fighting actually was. I don't know if that's still the case, I sure as hell hope it isn't.

[nenjin]

Or you sell all that stuff and buy a shop, start a caravan. I start smithing mid game when I can buy lots of fuel and have enough party members to smelt down a lot of stuff. From just smelting I didn't notice a huge boost in level gain, and didn't really bother grinding out crafting. So it's kinda a non-issue to me. But I get the idea that an optional system that's super efficient but cheesy and unfun can stick in one's craw, and ruin whatever else the game offers by knowing it's out there. At least in Bannerlord's case, I'm not bothered by it.

[scriver]

It's not like you'll ever have enough crafting energy to melt more than three weapons per character either (and waiting in cities is for suckers, you could be out catching more parties in the meanwhile).

It doesn't feel very noble to have most of your income rely on caravans and businesses though. Taxes seem completely insignificant.

[Duuvian]

I haven't made a Kingdom or joined one, just running around hunting small bandit groups and looters to skill up companions in fighting first so I don't know about taxes yet.

You can still level up and stuff from fighting. Smithing isn't necessary at all, it just is a way to powerlevel and get the best gear if you want. It could probably use some balancing before EA ends but I'd just completely ignore it if I want to start fighting at level 1 with starter equipment or do a trader type game where the smithing would break the player's side of the economy.

I have heard on the steam discussion forums that paying clans to join your Kingdom is in the millions of denars though right now but that's the only thing that I can think of where smithing would be almost necessary unless there are bigger incomes to find once you are a noble, and not just a jump ahead to level 15 or 20 character + companions with great smithed weapons and the best armor denars can buy.

I do wish smithing fatigue or whatnot was regained (slower) while travelling. If you smith stuff and then chase around bandits for days, you still have to rest to do any more smithing, which forces you to sit and wait rather than hunting bandits or doing quests.

It would also be great to have a warehouse or stockpile and order my caravan to collect a resource, in smithing's case hardwood or charcoal or both. Oh, and a charcoal maker I could supply with hardwood for charcoal. Having all the companions take charcoal making provides enough for provide a supply, but then I'm waiting for their stamina to recover instead of chasing bandits around...