I used to run around in the original Mount & Blade with impunity, but I’ve spent so much time in Warband as a prisoner that the Sea Raiders just shake their head and say “You again?”. I think they are letting me escape because they find it amusing.
The problem is that the swing mechanics feel less generous, I guess. I’m really having a hard time with my trusted 1-handed sword. In Mount & Blade, I could generally tell when I was going to get a hit. With Warband, I really feel like it’s just dumb luck when I connect. Most swings are a whiff. It’s easier with a lance, but I prefer the sword/bow combo from horseback. Bows seem same as they ever were … perhaps generating less damage than I remember.
Oddly, everyone also seems to swing their weapons faster than I do, so even in a 1-on-1 it’s pretty iffy whether I can get a hit. Even the peasants in village training are getting the better of me.
I guess I need to start playing it a bit safer, build up my guys a bit more and let them take some of the punishment instead of riding ahead … but any tips on dealing with the changes to the intrinsic feel of using weapons in this version?
The best hint for hitting someone with a (one handed) weapon on the back of a horse that I read was to let go off the mousebutton (= start the attack) a moment before you think you should let go…
I think the main reason I had trouble connecting with a 1 hander from horseback was that I wound up with the really low “swooping” type of attack, which is great for getting under a shield if you’re really really close, but otherwise just whiffs – I have a lot more luck with the swing that’s closer to horizontal, essentially a sidearm swing right at a foot soldier’s head/neck area. Using mouse gestures to control attack direction, it seems like a very minute difference between the two attacks.
Of course, I’m still playing on “easy” combat setting for damage done to me (reduced by 1/2). I’m still not good enough to enjoy the game on its normal setting.
Also, I’m currently having loads of fun running around with a small band of elite cavalry, rescuing peasant women from bandits, and training them up to become Sword Sisters. Sword Sisters are probably my favorite heavy cavalry unit, as even if their mount is killed, they still contribute to a fight with those crossbows they carry.
Diplomacy is the only must have mod for vanilla. Some people say great things about the combo packs, but they suffer from the standard failings of combo packs everywhere – slapdash compilations of stuff with no overarching philosophy other than “this + kitchen sink”.
The Floris stuff is 90% OSP Items, Diplo, and Caba’drin/Arch3r scripts, poorly put together without any original work included.
OSP Items can be had in modular packs with drop in installation, allowing you to pick and choose what you want instead of dumping all 1.5k of them into your game. Diplo is standalone and works fine on its own. The various scripts are designed to be easily merged into Diplo (WinMerge will simplify the process) and most have Diplo versions maintained on the Diplo modforum.
All in all, you’re way better avoiding the combo packs and just taking five minutes to do it yourself to your taste. The end result will have the additional advantage of actually working.
Do you have a link for Diplomacy? I tried googling it, but there are a ton of message board posts and various versions that may or may not be current.
I assume there is a thread or website out there somewhere with the correct and current version, but I did not readily see it (or at least was not able to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff).
I am likewise newly smitten with M&B. My recommendation for mods is the purely visual ‘Movie Warband’, which is just the graphical upgrades from Floris, with no gameplay, interface or item changes.
I don’t really want to invest time in working stuff out, so the simplicity of this works for me… and it’s compatible with saves from the vanilla version. Backup your M&B folder & try it out. If you don’t like it for some reason, just go back to your backup.
Since this is the top M&B thread, I’m posting this here!
Been playing the Blood and Steel mod for the past couple of days, and have been having a very good time. It’s basically an upgraded version of base Warband, in that it has the same factions and whatnot, but it’s much easier to build up a big army, there are a bunch of new maps and armor/weapons (including gunpowder stuff!), and most of the abilities have been rebalanced.
So, I started out as the Barbarian class, which gives you ridiculous melee stats, but super low in anything resembling support. Also, no equipment except a horse and a two-handed sword. Naturally, I decided to ally myself with the Nords, and built up a pretty decently powerful army, mostly by jumping in on fights with the Vaegir, who we were at war with. We took two of their main cities, and I conscripted 100 of their legionaries, then set off to capture one of their castles. Since my troops were heavily leveled up, I took on the 300-strong castle with a 330-strong force of my own. We lost 60, leaving us with 270, but took the castle. At this point my health was really low, and the castle garrison wasn’t filling up yet, so I decided to wait a while to lick my wounds. Suddenly in the night, a giant wave of Vaegir rolled up and sieged my castle. No allies were in sight, so it was just going to be my 270 troops against, well…
The highlight was getting sick of getting crowded away from the ramp, so I jumped off a parapet and carved my way back up to the top of the wall, killing dozens. Then did it again. And again.
I’m going to chime in with the opposite opinion from this. The main reason: I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of what mods are out there and what’s not.
It’s a big deal figuring what’s “to your taste” when it comes to Warband mods. Packs, such as Floris, are like prix fixe meals, with wine pairings. Some one has gone through the effort of trying the myriad of mods out there and selecting a set that they think plays well together.
Now, I’d agree with Aeon221 that it’s likely that there are some mods included in any pack that you might not like. But, for me, it was a lot easier to try out a mod pack and then decide if there was a couple of features that I wanted to drop or simply ignore.
But, if I had tried to assemble my own “meal” from the wide selection of Warband mods out there, I would have certainly missed some of the stuff that’s in Floris which I enjoy, out of ignorance of their existance.
I realize this was a while ago, but I’d like to throw my weight behind Therlun’s view. The overwhelming majority of battles I played in cRPG before giving it up as a bad job were decided by maybe one or two people per team. Literally no one else mattered. There were guys whose gear or skill or both allowed them to go 1v6 and win without difficulty, and one or two people would have the lion’s share of their team’s kills. It was fucking horrid, frankly. Imagine a WoW PvP arena in which levels 1-85 are all thrown in together. It’s like that.
In an amazingly surreal moment- my roommate discovered the cause of this-well at least in the NA servers(because he got to be a part of this group and his K:D suddenly doubled). There is a group of maybe 40 or 50 guys, in 3 or 4 clans, that go on their own teamspeak server, and they do not attack each other until everyone else is dead, or they are forced to. So out of a group of fifteen people, they will completely ignore the better players and focus down the weak, but the better players will move back and let them kill you. I still played CRPG because I am pretty good at manual blocking so I too can enjoy many kills sometimes, but part of it is also because of their recent patches.
-you can choose to create a character at what is essentially max level right off the bat(but he cannot gain levels or heirloom his gear, until you make a new one)
-with the max level cap, no longer do you get players with over 270 weapon proficency, as retirement is there jut for heirlooming and faster XP.
-yes heirloomed weapons are tougher ,but they are also expensive to maintain- meaning the standard system is to have every second time you run through your characters you use crummy weapons and gear in order to keep enough money to use it.
All in all, I am still waiting for a patch to F&S in order to play this again(or just enough people I know going back to it). But it isnt the grindcentric oh look its goretooth he is going to kill 10 of us in a row kind of game anymore.
EDIT: last time I played, I stopped due to the flavor of the month being throwing weapons(and by flavor I mean every single non archer person has them)- can someone tell me if those are gone?
Yes, throwing weapons were completely nerfed. You basically never see them anymore. The current flavor of the month seems to just be 2-handed or polearms with jacked up agility wearing ~samurai armor~. Seriously, so sick of that armor.
Like you mentioned, the retirement system has been toned way down, so the really hardcore grinders no longer dominate as hard. I mean, they still dominate, but it’s skewed slightly more toward actual skill now.
