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[feelotraveller]

Yeah I'm glad the looter rock-damage was nerfed.  It basically doubled the size of early bandit parties I am willing/capable of taking on.  Still worth grabbing a (the cheapest) shield at the start though.

The importance of not having companions in bannerlord is the impact of party size on speed and bandit aggressiveness.  I guess not having to pay them is also a bonus.  Besides they just up and die so regularly - particularly early on.  Shrug.

A more adrenaline filled start is to go with a spear and get used to charging.  Quite risky because it only takes one (or two) good hits and you're toast.  Try to pick up one with a swing cut attack for more effectiveness when cutting down routers.

[JimboM12]

thanks to weaponsmith requests, that's how i fund my multi-million denar empire. (i mod out smithing stamina cuz i think it's stupid, and it might be a cheat because im sure that was implemented to stop smithing snowballing but it's more annoying then just limiting. smelting and refining should only take like, 1 stamina but instead smelting 2 hammers takes all my stamina)

ill hire a few throwaway soldiers from the empire, we'll fight looters and eventually take village quests to raid bandit hideouts. i'll take my 20 or so recruits and we'll raid it one bandit or group at a time and get that sweet sweet startup capital and loot. weapons are saved for smelting and clothing/armor is sold off alongside excess trade goods. any captured bandits are ransomed. doing this for a few ingame days gets me a core of good soldiers and denars. then i buy hardwood and begin my real task: smelting enough resources for my real earner. i'll scrap a ton of wood, hit 25 in smithing and take efficient coalmaker, and then buy mass amounts of under 200 denar weapons like smith hammers and wooden mallets. the efficient coal recipe gives out a ton of smith xp. once i have some skill, ill start with requests that pay out a thousand or more. after that money becomes quite easy as i roam from town to town, fulfilling bigger and bigger requests. (i also mod quicker parts discovery for the same reason as above. i think instead of parts being discovered randomly, you should unlock the tiers of parts as your skill progresses but eh)

i also try to do the main quest as i go but im considering how i want to go about becoming the one true emperor. ill probably just work on leveling my clan up and filling all the companion spots. being rich and a master smith helps here as i can mass smith fantastic quality blades for them and buy them the best gear, making them elite heavy infantry and cavalry.

edit: also even the best armor in the game isn't nearly as good as even mid tier armor in warband was. like, even in full plate and chain i still take like 40 damage from a peasant with a pitchfork. im considering using the realistic battle mod or something to buff armor, does anyone currently use armor mods? any i should check out?

[nenjin]

Even though the reality of smithing is kinda dumb, modding out stamina and modding in discovery would to me be like...why even play? My only wish is that they increased stamina regen while traveling so I didn't have to spend time waiting and doing nothing to get it back.

As for armor...I just figured that was how realistic damage went. I think my character is at least 30/30/30/30 at this point, and when I plow into a group of looters, on average I'll have a lot of their attacks bounce. But then I will take a solid 30 damage hit from one of them. Which as a lot to do with momentum speed difference between attacker and victim, where you actually hit them with the weapon (the end of the weapon produces more damage on contact than most other parts in most circumstances), damage multipliers from head shots, etc....

[JimboM12]

the smithing stuff is just a stopgap for now until either taleworlds rebalances it or my favorite tweak mods get updated finally. i moved to 1.6.3 beta for the increased memory performance because i had really bad loading times. the beta patch has noticeably improved loading times for me.

i could always use my companions as smelter piggies but honestly with the stamina regen being what it is, its just annoying.

as for armor, maybe thats years... or at this point maybe a literal decade of mount and blade conditioning me to plate armor making me a walking tank. its just seeing a handful of my heavy soldiers fight a similar handful of looter peasants and somehow one of the peasants with a broken looking club somehow taking one of my heavies out in just 2 strikes just makes me go wut.

[Mephansteras]

I have myself, a random rogue companion, and a proper smith companion all doing some smithing related works. My only issue with stamina right now is that you ONLY regain stamina when resting inside a castle or town. It seems to me that if you spend all day hanging out in a town for some poachers to show up you should have recovered your stamina a bit.
Upside to having multiple people smelting stuff is that we can do a lot more per day. Downside is that we're not gaining skill all that quickly. Even my proper smith NPC only has a 65. I really need to level him up so that he can put another point of focus into it.

But it's not a big deal. Especially since we can make a stupid amount of money smithing up two-handed swords to sell. And even cheapo crude/wrought iron swords sell for 700 at the low end. So we can easily pay for the upkeep of my crazy 100-man cavalry army.

I do wish there was more you can do with workshops. They're fine for some passive income, but they lack even the moderate interaction you get from having fiefs. Even just the old warband trick of dumping off large amounts of cheap raw resources directly into the shop would be nice.

[nenjin]

Yeah, like I said, based on my arena testing, everyone in game is by and large a 1, 2 or 3 shot on realistic. Regardless of armor, weapon quality or HP pool.

Occasionally I'll fight a guy in the arena in full kit who for some reason just always takes about 20ish damage to the head. So I have to hit him between 5 and 6 times. It tends to be when squaring off with sword and shield though, so there's little or no speed bonuses at play. When I run into a fight and swing, I'll get a nice 40 to 60 damage hit with a single handed weapon against mid-tier armor.

So while it does kinda rankle to see a Tier 5 Vlandian Banner Knight get downed in a fight with Looters, I've seen it happen in arena plenty. Where a <culture> Militia wearing clothing somehow manages to bring down a Tier 4 or Tier 5 unit in armor. Both in real time and in simulation. I almost feel like armor is there for incidental damage. The random arrow or crossbow bolt or glancing hit you didn't see, armor makes the difference between a one shot and surviving it. In straight up 1v1 encounters, footwork and blocking and not ever getting hit is worth way more than any amount of armor. Because for me, when I've got more than 2 opponents, the odds of winning are almost nil, doesn't matter how heavy your armor is or how good of a weapon you're wielding.

And I'm generally ok with that, I think. Otherwise I'd play with reduced damage dealt and just laugh off the 10 or so damage they manage to inflict on a clean strike. Too easy!

It seems to me that if you spend all day hanging out in a town for some poachers to show up you should have recovered your stamina a bit.

Stamina regen should just be a function of time IMO, with bonuses included for how you spend that time (waiting versus traveling, waiting in the field vs. waiting in a town.) That would be my ideal.

But it's not a big deal. Especially since we can make a stupid amount of money smithing up two-handed swords to sell. And even cheapo crude/wrought iron swords sell for 700 at the low end. So we can easily pay for the upkeep of my crazy 100-man cavalry army.

I really haven't done any free form smithing for profit. I've got like 500 crude and 400 iron stockpiled in Sargot because the sale price of metal materials is a fucking joke across almost the entirety of Calradia. Even when the price IS good, you sell 1 bar of iron and the price per unit drops by 35% IMMEDIATELY. Kind of annoying. So I think I will crank out a bunch of cheap garbage and eat up that stockpile, it's driving me nuts looking at it.

I do wish there was more you can do with workshops.

The implication is they're supposed to get better or you're supposed to be able to invest in them to improve them. Alas, they haven't changed since EA and I'm hoping they don't just....doodly doo skip over actually finishing the feature.

Even just the old warband trick of dumping off large amounts of cheap raw resources directly into the shop would be nice.

I tried something similar to affect their profitability, by buying out all the wine in a town I have a wine workshop, or sell a bunch of grapes in that town. Neither seems to have a noticeable impact on profitability. I've had workshops with no resource flow manage to produce stuff, and I've had workshops with an ABUNDANCE of raw materials fail to ever actually start production. Workshops in general and the economy related to them need a complete pass in development, IMO. Right now the amount of money they make me (with 5 of them) is a pittance compared post-battle loot, and a marginal amount of cash compared to a good caravan day.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, workshops feel super unfinished right now.

Oh, as for making money turning out garbage I've found that two-handed swords seem to have the highest profit margin. At least with the skill level and unlocks that I've got. Much, much higher than a lot of other stuff. Especially daggers, they seem to break even or even actually lose you money. Or at least that was the case with the few tests I've done on it.

[nenjin]

I managed to craft a 2 hander worth like 33k at one point. My smith is at about 170 skill and I've got lots of T5 parts, so I think I'm going to make a stupid amount of money very soon. Just feels, I dunno.....unearned. I just hoard 10 battles worth of garbage from looters, smelt it all down and turn 1k of raw materials into 33k of finished goods. Seems completely whack to me. But so do a lot of things related to price in Bannerlord. Like how T5 stuff tops out at about 8k selling price, and T6 can jump all the way up to 100k.

(Protip: a spouse recruited from another clan, and your own family and children once they reach 18, tend to ship with REALLY nice weapons and armor. Like my wife, despite having a 0 bow skill, came with a Noble Long Bow that clocked in at a value of $109k denars. If you want a quick path to better equipment without paying for it, just steal it from your own family )

[Urist McScoopbeard]

crafting is all kinda messed up--I craft a 40-sumthin-k two hander at like crafting 50... but the mechanic is... just out of place in the regular gameplay loop.

[Rolan7]

I still think the smithing stamina system would be great improved by being able to see one's stamina on the overmap.  I'm okay with spending the time, but guess-and-checking how long to wait feels silly.  Particularly since it doesn't remember your selections between "trips" to the smithy. 

It would also feel a lot more natural if stamina recovered (much slower) while traveling, yeah.  Kinda weird to go on a week-long campaign and stop by a town only to realize "oh I'm still exhausted I guess".

I agree workshops seem disappointing right now.  I thought I read that they use local prices, but IIRC the report on their performance is pretty basic right now.  It'd be nice to see at what (average) price they bought, price they sold, and volume.  They could keep a store of raw materials like in Warband (which you could deliver into directly again) and a maximum material-price at which they'd purchase extra materials for that storage.  Likewise, a minimum sell-price after which they hold on to their product, for you (or your caravans!) to sell elsewhere.

The size of these warehouses, and the amount of potential volume they could work, would be upgradeable.  This could also make the workshop an extremely valuable target though, so maybe some of those criminal organizations would start doing raids (unless they happened to like you, and/or you garrison the workshop a bit).

Heck, while I'm at it:  Imagine such a workshop, NPC-controlled, making velvet or whatever.  It's highly upgraded, able to process a lot per day, but with accompanying salary costs.  Suddenly, oh no, the price of silk skyrockets and there's a bunch of foreign velvet on the market.  The NPC spirals into debt over a few days or a week of this.  Thankfully the generous player arrives and gives a fair price for their remaining assets 
(Let me own as many workshops as I want, jeez.  It's so much less optimal than smithing, and I want to manipulate the intriguing if unfinished economy systems)

There's something so close to economic warfare already mostly implemented.  It's already pretty easy to buy up a town's food supply.  Kinda unnecessary when they tend to "starve" themselves already due to the weird way massive piles of food only provide a few points of nutrition, which gets outpaced by "prosperity".  AKA population, why don't they just call it population?  Anyway, buying up raw materials is supposed to have an effect on local workshops, which *should* make a big impact on taxation or feeding troops.  In wartime that means smuggling, which is currently really tricky...  It would be nice if high roguery (such as on a companion leading a caravan) allowed them to not get instantly ID'd and destroyed in enemy territory.  Easier for a caravan, but maybe possible for small armies as well for covert-ops.  AKA raiding villages to hurt the towns to hurt the lords.  I think doing it financially is more interesting but ideally both ways should be viable.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, the economy system has a ton of potential that's just not being used too much right now.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yeah, the economy system has a ton of potential that's just not being used too much right now.

True that. My first impulse after getting into the game way back when was like "I should make a banking and economy mod".

[JimboM12]

im starting to think... all our core issues are related to the economy being rather jank. like real life.

[nenjin]

I think it all comes back to the value of post-battle loot.

Not saying the economy isn't whacked in lots of other places. But I remember in M&B and Warband, a certain level of struggle being able to support a large army. The name of the game there was post battle loot too. But it didn't like it was worth as much and there were fewer ways to reduce upkeep cost. I remember at one moment in Warband where I had a really successful battle, upgraded a bunch of troops at once, and went from a positive daily upkeep value to deep into the negatives, just from upgrading like 20 troops to higher tiers. That just doesn't seem to happen in Bannerlord, or if it does, it's super easy to offset.

Not that I particularly want to be scraping to get by as a T5 clan with 100 troops, but due to money, so many things feel like they like context or impact. "Oh no, I'm $2k a day in the hole on upkeep." *sells 14k worth of post battle loot.* "Gee I guess that buys me two weeks of upkeep...." *sells another 14k of post battle loot the very next day.* "Oh guess I'm ok, guess I'll just go buy that T5 armor I've been looking at."

It's true, you don't end up with a stack of $1k denar swords very easily....but what you DO get, is a stack of 15 rusty swords that sell for 150 a piece. Everything gear-related needs to come down in sale price, so the perks that remove those sale penalties don't end up making everything stupidly profitable. Straight up trade goods have several controls on them: availability, carrying capacity, time investment traveling, price fluctuation. All those serve to keep trade goods largely in balance. Equipment? "We don't care if you just sold us 300 rusty pitchforks, we're always in the market for new rusty pitchforks!" Prices on gear should fluctuate just like the price of trade goods. There shouldn't always be the same market for a $10k sword in the same city all the time, or every city. And lastly, in terms of just product availability....gear is endless. There will ALWAYS be more bandits to hunt. They were always be more bandits to hunt at any given moment than you can possibly chase down. There is no end to that resource, so it's easy to exploit.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Well... kind of? But clearly T-dubs is trying to tie adventuring and mercenaries, etc. more in with the lord stuff through the expanded economy. IMO, there's a bit of a lack of emphasis at the strategic/world map level.

What I mean is, it's not just the economy. In a game about being a NOBLE CIRCLE OF ADVENTURERS or a HARDENED BAND OF MERCENARIES... it's a lot easier to just be a merchant or a blacksmith. Which, I mean, I appreciate the expansion of the world and what we can do in it--but it feels a bit like a bit of a chore to be a mercenary captain in a game about being a captain of mercenaries.

The politicking, the interpersonal relationships, the economy--all good things IMO (vassalage... ehhhhh), but there's a bit too much maintenance and management and not enough ME HIT COOL SWORD GUY NOW (and other epic battles). I'd appreciate it if they just toned down the realism a bit and focused more on whats fun to do. Also... a shitton of quests would be nice, but we'll get there one way or the other.