Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[ERYFKRAD]

Why is it 10% cheaper in the UK compared to Germany.

Battanian discount

 

[LESS T_T]

Oh: https://steamdb.info/app/261550/graphs/

165,878 players right now

It's not a weekend, this is not even today's peak, it's still going up. And already surpassed Doom Eternal's peak (104K).

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Apparently crafting seems to be included in the current version, it's just that you need higher skills and proper money to create something worthwhile.

Cool. What can you make? Can you spend your own skills on combat and get your companions to make stuff for you?

wtf is even the point of this game? (yes i know the point is $$$ duh) it's the same as the other mount and blade with SLIGHTLY upgraded graphics?

OG M+B works just fine and the game's actually released with mods and shit

all this hype for a copy paste job with new lighting

Yeah, that's pretty much what sequels do. Would you be happier with a Mount & Blade: Immortal for your phone? I for one would be very happy to play a M&B with updated graphics. Let's be honest here: OG M&B looks like a PS2 game, and not an especially impressive one.

Winning tournaments is easier than winning regular practice fights since you get to use your own gear.

AI enemies are definitely deadlier than their Warband counterparts, and can handle melee combat much better.

Still have to try out those board games you can find in each tavern. I believe there is a specific board game for each faction.

Current gameplay time: 3 hours. No crashes so far.

I disliked tournaments in vanilla M&B because victory depended entirely on which equipment you get. Clash of Kings was the first mod I played that let you bring your own equipment to the tournament and I liked that so much more.

I never thought that Warband enemies were especially bad at melee. The only thing that they were really bad at was infantry getting rounded up like cattle when I play a mounted archer. That, and pathfinding during a castle assault wasn't always reliable.

Report back on those minigames when you get a chance. I'm not going to be getting this immediately, but I'd still like to hear what's in it.

Everyone needs SSDs. It's the current year and even the upcoming consoles will have them by default.

You don't really need an SSD. If you want 8 TB for document and media storage, a magnetic HDD is the way to go. Also, if you're recording a screen capture or otherwise just doing sequential writing, a traditional magnetic HDD does that just fine. SSD aren't that much faster, and even then, in most of my day-to-day activity, disk speed isn't the performance bottleneck.

Can you steal their stuff after you knock them? In warband you could just take what they were using but they put bows away when you melee them.

I would sometimes take arrows from my dead allies when defending a castle, and end up shooting hundreds of arrows by the end. Sometimes in the early game I would go defend a castle under siege just so I could defend it and get a million XP shooting dudes off of ladders. Didn't matter if we lost and I got captured. The XP is totally worth it. Maybe I would pick up a shield somewhere if mine got too beat up, but I don't remember that being so important.

While we're on the topic of dropping weapons, lances were OP in the original and it would make sense for both game balance and realism to drop or break your lance after the first charge. It would also be cool to ride your horse around and grab a lance conveniently sticking out of a dead guy. I remember seeing that in a movie, but I can't remember what it was now.

And as much as I disliked not being able to carry around a halberd in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and I think they could have handled it better, the way they did it kind of makes sense: With a regular-size weapon, you can put it in your belt or on your back when it's not in use. A halberd or other polearm you either have to carry in your hands or drop it.

 

[Black Angel]

Oh: https://steamdb.info/app/261550/graphs/

165,878 players right now

It's not a weekend, this is not even today's peak, it's still going up. And already surpassed Doom Eternal's peak (104K).

Must be because of Corona-chan

 

[Mortmal]

Oh: https://steamdb.info/app/261550/graphs/

165,878 players right now

It's not a weekend, this is not even today's peak, it's still going up. And already surpassed Doom Eternal's peak (104K).

Of course it is, its a real game, a real pc game even in normal situations people would rush it, now with quarantine anything has guaranteed sales. Been playing since a few hours only got one crash, its an upgraded mount and blade, they deliver exactly what was expected.

 

[Quatlo]

I don't know, I'm not a fan of the new combat AI. Enemy seems to spam attacks and blocks non-stop so in a slightly bigger fight it turns into even bigger moshpit than it was in warband.

 

[Snorkack]

wtf did I just buy an early access game?!

 

[Hellion]

AWWW YEAHHH

 

[Turuko]

First glance the smithy is a rabbit hole right?

 

[IDtenT]

Okay, this is way more difficult than Warband.

Polearms are actually usefull on horseback now and swords not so much.

 

[Turuko]

Did i read that right, factions can debase their currencies?

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/mount-and-blade-2-bannerlord-feels-like-a-refined-warband/

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord feels like a refined Warband
The early game is familiar, but there's a hint of more significant changes.

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is finally a tangible thing that you can play right this very second, seven years after TaleWorlds first announced it. It's strange, finally returning to Calradia more than a decade after the launch of Warband, but it's also been very easy to slip back into familiar rhythms—chasing down bandits, rubbing shoulders with nobles and trying to win big in the arena.

I've been doing a lot of all three today, and while I started out with a rough idea of what I wanted to see, I've predictably been waylaid by side adventures and escapades. Though we've still got around a year to wait for the full game, this Early Access version already has its hooks in me, so I won't be doing much else this week. Expect some more in depth impressions soon, then, but in the meantime here's what I've made of my first day of riding around.

Even the tutorial evokes the previous game, but before that you've got to make a character. It's a rather involved questionnaire process that builds a background for you, starting with who your parents where, through childhood and up to your first adult job. What you choose gives you bonuses to your skills and attributes, so you can start out as a burly warrior with a penchant for two-handed weapons or, at the other end of the spectrum, a smooth-talking trader.

Regardless of where you say you're from—I'm a burly northern lad—it looks like you end up having to leave, losing most of your family, and stuck in another land. After the combat tutorial, which you can spend as much time mucking around with as you want, there's a brief campaign tutorial that teaches you the absolute basics and gives you some objectives to work towards—but then the sandbox properly opens up and you can do whatever the heck you want.

Killer moves
I made the mistake of immediately putting my recently refreshed combat know-how to the test in the arena, but you might put down your weapons and start a trading caravan, spending your days pondering logistics, browsing inventory and raking in the gold while I get beaten senseless yet again.

Like its predecessor, Bannerlord's combat has you determine the direction of your attack with your mouse, letting you sneak your sword through their defences. You can absolutely flail around and cheese it by kiting enemies, but to get ahead in Bannerlord you'll want to practise timing your blocks and attacks and reading your opponents. When you're sandwiched between 100 warriors, sure, go wild, but in one-on-one duels precision is key.

Clearly I needed to spend more time stretching before diving into the arena, as I was knocked out in the semi-finals. My real mistake was betting most of my cash on what I thought was going to be an easy win. I was already broke. Luckily, there's no dearth of ways to make a buck in Bannerlord. There's a dynamic economy that I've yet to really delve into, you can try your hand at refining and crafting your own goods, or you can get paid to hit stuff. A life of banditry, mercenary work or swearing allegiance to an empire can help you fill your pockets.

A couple of primary quests offer a bit of direction, though not much. There's a story about an artefact and building up your clan, designed to get you out wandering the world, meeting interesting people and getting into trouble. Then there are the random side quests doled out by nobles, traders, criminals and whoever needs a hand. It took me a while to find anyone willing to do more than introduce themselves, however. Bannerlord's towns and villages have plenty of NPCs, but none of them feel particularly lively yet. If you want to know if there's anyone worth chatting to, you can scope the place out from the menu before entering the location, so at least you can quickly move onto the next place.

I say quickly, but how brisk your pace is really depends on a few factors. You need to worry about the weight of your cargo, for instance, as well as how your army or caravan is getting around. A lot of people on foot won't be moving very quickly, nor will they be able to carry much. Horses will speed things up considerably, but the larger your army is, the slower it will move. And the terrain has a big impact, of course, so the fastest route to your destination might not be the most direct one.

On the road again
There's a lot of travel in Bannerlord, and like all road trips you really need to keep an eye on the snack situation. In my rush to leave the town where I suffered a humiliating defeat in the arena far behind me, I forgot to check on how much grain my little band of warriors had—none—and was a bit surprised when they started starving, reducing their health and morale. A quick trip to the shops solved that problem, but then the stealing started.

See, I was trying to do a favour for a lord. It's a good idea to keep important people happy when you're trying to climb up the social ladder and maybe even end up run a kingdom yourself. You can nurture a relationship with a massive list of named characters, and they all have relationships with other NPCs, letting you exploit grudges or make a new circle of chums. This guy wanted me to deal with some mercenaries who were causing him some trouble. He didn't want me to fight them; he wanted me to take them off his hands and sell their contract to another noble. Unfortunately, I wasn't having much luck shifting them.

My sales pitch was off. Tempting another noble into buying their contract means scoring two successes during the negotiation, influenced by the the relationship score and certain skills. Bannerlord provides quite a bit of clarity about your chances, so you can make an educated decision, but ultimately there's always a bit of luck involved. These failed negotiations were also bleeding me dry, as I was spending quite a lot of gold to bribe the guards into letting me into the various keeps where I was selling these unwanted mercs. Being a nobody made these meetings expensive. And worse, the mercs had started stealing our supplies, pinching rations and ensuring the rest of the armies morale plummeted.

I eventually managed to trick someone into buying their contract, but I've seen the same quest crop up several times since. The payout's good, so maybe I'll risk it again. It's not clear how many side quests have been implemented so far, but I've spotted several of them quite a few times already. They've sent me to different locations and changed my relationship with different factions, however, and with most quests there's always that chance for some emergent surprises.

Shady business

Maybe you'll be heading to a city to sell some goods that you've been hired to trade on the down-low but instead find it besieged, inspiring you to take sides and get involved. Once it's over, maybe you'll decide that, no, you've protected these goods for too long to give them up, breaking the contract and keeping them for yourself. Maybe you only clicked that option by mistake because you were distracted by something on Slack and now have to live with the consequences—primarily getting branded as a criminal.

Things are much better that I've moved to the other side of the map where nobody knows of my petty crimes. I've started to make a name for myself as a killer of bandits, but my hirelings do most of the work for me. The nice thing about being a boss is sending everyone else into battle while you sit on a hill and yell at them. It's better that way. Safer. That's more of a priority than ever, since I'm playing with permadeath turned on.

Despite being optional, as well as turned off by default, permadeath is one of Bannerlord's biggest fundamental changes. Because characters can die, you're working towards creating an enduring, successful dynasty, rather than focusing just on an individual. It's not that far removed from Crusader Kings 2, at least in premise. I've yet to settle down and raise a family, and I'm definitely not important enough to even think about my legacy, so I'm content to keep chasing poorly-armed bandits.

At this early point, it feels a lot like playing a very refined Warband. That's a good place to start, but I'm eager to leave the familiar behind and start dabbling in what seem like Bannerlord's most ambitious systems. Like its predecessor, though, it can be hard to know what to focus on. There are a lot of compelling distractions, and a very large map to explore.

 

[Bohrain]

I don't know, I'm not a fan of the new combat AI. Enemy seems to spam attacks and blocks non-stop so in a slightly bigger fight it turns into even bigger moshpit than it was in warband.

It's set on the schmartest difficulty by default. Had to crank it down, especially since I always use the autodirectional block. Hope they'll patch that as an option since I don't see a point in fighting melee without a shield right now.

 

[Haba]

Wow, this day actually came.

Another sign that the end times are upon us?

 

[AgentFransis]

Release Day Hotfix
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - Callum

• Fixed a crash caused by a missing animation used in hideout missions.
  
• Fixed a crash which happens when you resize to Exclusive Full Screen with an integrated GPU
  
• Fixed a crash while exiting the banner editor
  
• Fixed a crash while parsing texts
  
• Fixed a crash that sometimes happens when a TDM match ends
  
• Fixed problems with Chinese localization

Went to start the game for the first time and already it wanted to update.

 

[Alienman]

Been playing for a couple of hours now, and so far I have to say I'm pleased. It's like Warband, but as mentioned in the thread very refined. I'm playing on realism mode with almost all UI turned off, except crosshair I think. The combat is brutal. Going without shield is hard since autoblock is totally gone now. It feels wonderful to manage to block an incoming flurry of blows, until well you get a sledgehammer to the neck. It's unfair but hey, this is medieval times. Noticed a lot of quests can be solved with skill checks which is nice. So now you can talk your way out of trouble and complete quests that way without needing to chop off heads.

Some stuff that I have noticed that I hope gets improved is towns can be 100% run from menus. The towns look really pretty but it seems almost pointless to actually walk around in them, except for roleplaying (larping). I read something about bandits inside, but I hope they add something more to give incentives to actually go in. A real annoyance though is the hit-markers for melee and ranged. I was really surprised to find out you can't turn this crap off. I find it very distracting, and well, pointless. Maybe there is a ini-option or something, have to look.

Lastly, the game runs really well. I have a 1060 gpu and an old I7 CPU, and it runs better than Warband. Tried custom battles with 500 soldiers and it was pure bliss. Think I dropped 10-15 FPS, from 75 when it was the most intense. I have everything on high and unlimited corpses by the way. Man, think in a year or two what mods we are going to have. I hope porting of mods is easy too. Can't wait to try the LOTR mod in this new engine.

 

[Aemar]

Apparently crafting seems to be included in the current version, it's just that you need higher skills and proper money to create something worthwhile.

Cool. What can you make? Can you spend your own skills on combat and get your companions to make stuff for you?

I don't think so, you'll still have to invest your own points into crafting in order to forge stuff.

Winning tournaments is easier than winning regular practice fights since you get to use your own gear.

AI enemies are definitely deadlier than their Warband counterparts, and can handle melee combat much better.

Still have to try out those board games you can find in each tavern. I believe there is a specific board game for each faction.

Current gameplay time: 3 hours. No crashes so far.

I disliked tournaments in vanilla M&B because victory depended entirely on which equipment you get. Clash of Kings was the first mod I played that let you bring your own equipment to the tournament and I liked that so much more.

I never thought that Warband enemies were especially bad at melee. The only thing that they were really bad at was infantry getting rounded up like cattle when I play a mounted archer. That, and pathfinding during a castle assault wasn't always reliable.

Report back on those minigames when you get a chance. I'm not going to be getting this immediately, but I'd still like to hear what's in it.

You can still get random weapons that you're not proficient in at the moment, so you'll have to improvise and look around for discarded stuff but at least you'll stand a chance if you have decent armour. By the way, the duels against heavily armoured upper units of the Empire are epic.

Melee is harder in Bannerlord. It takes quite come skill to defeat even 5-6 looters while fighting on foot, especially if you're at the beginning of the game where you don't have much money. They're not exactly cannon fodder anymore.

Only tried out the Empire and the Vlandian tavern board games. The latter is pure garbage.

6 hours in, still no crashes to desktop.

 

[Snorkack]

Lol Snorkack so bad can't even beat tutorial trainer

Game is great! Needs turnbased mode tho

 

[Alienman]

I don't think so, you'll still have to invest your own points into crafting in order to forge stuff.

I'm not sure how it works, but I could pick a companion in the crafting menu. It's the left bottom. Just click your own portrait, so I think and hope you can specialize someone else to craft for you. The reason I don't know if it works is that my companion had zero skill in it

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Practice fight is garbage. Archers can kill you before you can run towards them if you don't have shield, YOU DONT GAIN SKILLS FOR FIGHTING and you get like 5 gold even if you kill a bunch of dudes (I think my record was 5 guys).

 

[Aemar]

I don't think so, you'll still have to invest your own points into crafting in order to forge stuff.

I'm not sure how it works, but I could pick a companion in the crafting menu. It's the left bottom. Just click your own portrait, so I think and hope you can specialize someone else to craft for you. The reason I don't know if it works is that my companion had zero skill in it

The reason I'm not sure how it works is because I didn't bother to craft anything seeing that you have to invest quite some skill points in order to be able to forge something.

 

[Alienman]

Yeah, but you get a lot of skills just melting down old weapons. Gonna try to reach 40 so I can build myself a little sword.

 

[Alienman]

Practice fight is garbage. Archers can kill you before you can run towards them if you don't have shield, YOU DONT GAIN SKILLS FOR FIGHTING and you get like 5 gold even if you kill a bunch of dudes (I think my record was 5 guys).

It's good training though now that you have to block manually.

 

[ADL]

Everyone needs SSDs. It's the current year and even the upcoming consoles will have them by default.

You don't really need an SSD. If you want 8 TB for document and media storage, a magnetic HDD is the way to go. Also, if you're recording a screen capture or otherwise just doing sequential writing, a traditional magnetic HDD does that just fine. SSD aren't that much faster, and even then, in most of my day-to-day activity, disk speed isn't the performance bottleneck.

Modern game development practices proves otherwise. A lot of the games that I run have 5-10x longer load times if not placed on a SSD and they also experience slowdown from asset streaming, especially open world games. Don't be surprised if PC gaming suddenly becomes an incredibly miserable experience come this time next year on mechanical drives.

A nice 2TB SSD to use as your OS drive plus game storage is an absolute recommendation these days and it's only gonna get worse for mechanical drives from here on out.

 

[AgentFransis]

Yeah, but you get a lot of skills just melting down old weapons. Gonna try to reach 40 so I can build myself a little sword.

Sound very Skyrim.

Real men get their weapons from the still-warm corpses of their enemies.