PTW
I tried the 1.6e beta and the crafting economy is a bit better. It's more difficult to reach higher smithing since you are limited to the orders, and the high skill orders are not selectable. I think that's a positive though since smithing was easy to powerlevel with. There are still massive value orders for high skill smiths, paying over 100k frequently for a two handed weapon (because two handed maces are limited to the two hammer heads, if you unlock the better one the orders for it are sometimes 11k)
Yeah I built my coming-back-after almost-a-year character largely around smithing (and
stealthhorse-archery) and I was very pleasantly surprised when I figured out how to make lucrative, then suddenly bank-busting items.
Obviously I picked all the perks that allow refining materials, along with the perk that halves the stamina loss for refining. Steelsmithing costs the ability to learn 2X parts via smithing, which is the main way I learn parks, but steel is super uncommon. I'm learning a lot more (and earning a lot more) by knowing the dwarven riddle of steel.
That is, from what I've seen, learning is based on total difficulty and not materials. I often use baser components with the same difficulty as steel ones. But I still can't imagine being dependent on scavenged steel, particularly if I ever want to work with Fine Steel and
Damascus Thamaskene steel. Access to materials really hampers the learning and the profit.
In-game time is money, though. I've got a foreign-culture town as my fief (the Imperial Lageta, as Battanian) and the freakin Vandians kept trying to take it. Not to mention what happens when we inevitably break truce with the Western Empire over our tribute (82%), and they try to take back their imperial lands.
But I've been trying to prepare for that. not like you can rely on the AI brigades, though they're worth working with. No, I've been packing my town with the most expensive units I can train up, then running off to train off more. I'm hemorrhaging like a thousand dinars a day but that's nothing, I have 151 smithing and plenty of available materials. 25-29k from a zweihander is pretty great, even if it takes a day or two (guesstimating) to refine the materials from dirt-cheap ore. Again, hooray for the half-price refining perk.
It takes some fiddling with sliders to match an order as close as you can though, and until you unlock parts most orders are impossible to do for the full denari. I think a "closest match" button would be helpful, that plugs in pieces that could satisfy the order with some slider movement or tells you the pieces are close but you don't know how to make the order correctly. Maybe have a perk that will change it to "exact match" where the part size sliders are all in the green for that order.
It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to do anything more than click the order, than forge. I wasn't sure why I kept getting dinged on orders at my skill. I saw the message that I hadn't unlocked certain parts, and took it to mean that the parts were preselected. 151 skill and I literally can't make any throwing axe... Presumably if I made more axes I'd unlock a head for throwing axes too.
It would also be great if there was a button to have your other characters autorefine materials (assuming charcoal and metal/ore in inventory) up to what is necessary for a given crafting recipe. Such as needing fine steel, click button and have other characters refine the crude iron up the various tiers to the amount required.
BUG: When doing an order you also have to go back to free build to change the character for refining. You can't swap to a character with skill too low until you leave the order by going to free build, and this includes the refine tab.
So I read this before I started typing, but it blow my mind. All this time I assumed that smithing was just a leader skill (which doesn't make sense of course, but gameplay!) I had no idea I could use my companions.
Honestly, that changes a lot. Taking the perk for learning-by-smelting sounds a lot better when my companions can make all my raw materials. But here I am, I suppose, until I have to switch to my heir in several thousand real life hours of gameplay.
I'm not bitter, I prefer using my companions for other things anyway. This is just bonus stamina I can use for (basic) refining, making my existing strategy even better.
I made a character with high social this time. I had no luck with marriage until I had a critical success proposing to a generated noble from a rebel faction. I noted with horror the generated noble had terrible statistics.
Mm, I haven't gotten married yet. Despite having a full town as fief, my character has plenty of time to build up more renown. I haven't even married my brother off just yet. Still, from what I hear, the player's clan will will adopt spouses and their fiefs? Seems like a good reason to wait for a good deal, even though grown children are supposedly able to lead caravans (or parties I guess heh).
I tried my first sieges (I was trying out being a mercenary; turns out it earns a lot of denars; haven't had a fief yet) and the siege weapons are sweet. I also very much enjoyed throwing big stones off the wall as a defender; I saved a castle that way by tossing stones at the swarm of infantry by the ladder.
Is being a mercenary particularly lucrative? Influence gets burned into cash (I think this was true when I played a year ago) and it never seemed all that profitable compared to simple commodity-trading. Much less smithing, of course.
However the ladders are sort of broken; the attacking army stops climbing one and switches to the other. Rarely are both ladders being climbed at once. I notice the ladders sometimes are pushed off the wall after the attackers switch to the other. Maybe it's a placeholder for toppling a ladder with climbers on it? The infantry also just swarm at the bottom of the ladders. If they could spread out a bit they would take less casualties from siege weapons and also the player wouldn't have an easy time mashing them with thrown boulders from the wall, as you can't miss and the boulder does splash damage (if it doesn't kill the player from hitting a crenellation and doing splash damage)
I liked the ram though, that works well unless it takes a hit from a catapult. Sometimes infantry can't path close enough to a door at the gate to start whacking it though I can't remember what siege map it was on.
The siege tower seems more effective than ladders but less than the ram. It's not the grinder for the attacker the ladders are, but it's not a massive rush like breaking down the gates is either.
I was a merc for the Battanians and mostly joined armies. I noticed they spend a lot of time going back and forth to the same city when they are reinforcing, I think maybe the recruits refreshed in the city they just left and they loop back to get them.
Army battles are sweet though. I had one where I commanded the archers and I put them on the right flank as the infantry fought. The Battanian infantry broke first but the 60 remaining archers won it in a final charge as the opposing infantry straggled at them (Battania noble tree are archers) to win the battle between two 900+ armies.
I made the mistake of building up my companions in the usual bandit hunting early on. I have one remaining out of my original trained companions: Dermot the Ragged. I have no idea why he's been lucky. I didn't even give him good armor, just some raggedy looking Battanian armor. It turns out realistic companion death results in frequent companion death when outside of simulated battle while army battles are most fun outside of simulation, so now I just put some cheap gear on them and put rusty metal armor I loot on them as I find it, since my first companions had the shiniest of armors, still died, and I lost the expensive armors. On a fun note, one of my companions died of old age while he was leading one of my parties. I don't even know what happened to his troops and gear.
It's a really fun game, I recommend it.
Oh hey, you went Battanian too! Nice, forest people unite o7
... Okay, I just went back to the Warband map to try to map the Battanians to the centuries-later map of Calradia, and uh:
https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/File:WarbandWorldMap.pngI'm sure I've missed a ton of discourse about this, but like
what the fug?
Edit: Also, when I say "learning" in regards to smithing being a function of difficulty, I actually mean both skill gain *and* the chance of learning new parts. I smelted countless basic swords (skyrim-style) before I started pushing my limits and was suddenly gaining levels 1 by 2, along with learning tons more components.
And very rough testing suggests to me that it's the Difficulty, not the material value.
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Topic: Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (Read 105302 times)