I recently got Mount and Blade: Warband after playing the demo for quite some time and I really loved the demo. I love the mix of action-RPG and strategy/conquest game in Mount and Blade and the large battles can be pretty fun. However, something I could not anticipate from the demo is now plaguing me. After about level 4 or 5, the game got boring extremely quickly. For whatever reason, my party's speed isn't enough to catch up to anyone (bandits move FAR faster than I do and it's even seemingly impossible/difficult to catch up to farmers/runaway serfs or war parties), I fail nearly all quests because I can't find someone (directions are too vague), can't catch someone, can't figure out how to heard cattle, and/or can't defeat who I must defeat.

My army's size is currently at 64 and I do have some variety of troops (obviously not the best as I'm still only about level 8), but I can't take out war parties of even about 37 from opposing kingdoms, I can't catch up to the bandits I want to kill for loot/quests, I can't find any bandit lairs as I used to in the demo, and I can't make enough money to even pay and feed my army, let alone purchase some new items or hire new soldiers. When I go to collect taxes, instead of being able to use my army and my equipment to quell a revolt, I only get to go in with two other guys and staves instead of my sword, shield, armor, and horse. I can't outrun anyone or successfully complete missions. Raising my reputation with leaders to get anywhere is far too difficult. I tried going for Arena tournaments, but after fighting tooth and nail in a lengthy, difficult tournament and winning, I was disheartened to receive a meager 200 denars as my reward and betting on myself is something I just cannot do. Either my party's slowed down, for whatever reason, or bandits have sped up to the point at which I cannot catch them and I don't know what to do.

I'm lucky to break even and pay off my soldiers, but they don't actually seem to do anything beneficial for me as I don't get to use them, but I don't want to just disband troops with experience/that I payed good money to recruit. I find myself just wandering across the desert of the Sarranid region and going from settlement to settlement just hoping to find something to do, but I can't. Now, I'm a patient person. A lack of patience isn't my problem. I've played strategy games, but Civilization was definitely more well-paced than this game. I've played Morrowind and Morrowind's directions were definitely better and quest targets easier to find. I've played Arena and Daggerfall, so I'm used to quest/gameworld repetition. However, I literally cannot play this game, all too well. I'm struggling simply to find some actual gameplay or to be so fortunate as to be able to catch a group of bandits. I've even tried going to new regions, but I can't do anything. My main problems are finding targets and catching targets and I could use some help.

For anyone willing to assist me, what could I be doing wrong? Did anyone else find these problems with the game? What could I do to improve my experience? The game doesn't have a manual and I don't know what I could possibly do.

Sounds like you just need help with the game.

Get money off looting ( pick 1 faction to loot so you don't have too many enemies, nords are good since cavs can take them out easy) or trading ( looting is easier but the villagers will hate you) .

To speed up it depends on what you have in your inventory i think and how many troops you have, so catching other warbands with the same amount of troops should work.. its ctrl + click on map for a cheat

not sure about loosing 60 to 37 though might be a problem with your troops

and if you have about 60 troops you should join the most suited faction and betray them later to become king...

You're not playing it right - http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount%26Blade

Don't live beyond your means - the tables of contents will give you a weekly breakdown of your outgoing and incoming expenses. You can trade items for a bit money too. As for directions, you will need to invest some points (either yourself or a party member) in Tracking. You need to learn to let go of soldiers than you don't need.

EDIT: You will also need to train up your manual blocking skills if you want to play multiplayer. The training fields in Single Player is a good start - after that, learn to chamber incoming attacks, make use of the kick occasionally and learn the speed and reach of the weapons. Gamgee had a lot to complain about in multiplayer - so you're not the only one that's having trouble. The game has a fairly expansive combat system, it took me about 3 months to get a positive kill/death ratio.

At first, dont bother with building an army. Get a small group of troops and do quests for the lords to get reputation up. Do the bandit lairs, deliver messages etc. Don't take anything to hard. Also try trading, buy Iron in Curaw where it is cheap and sell in other cities for profit. Wine in Veluca can be cheap and sells, salts and spices from the Sarranid areas etc. Once you get enough money go to a city and talk to the guild master. You can set up an enterprise that will bring you in money weekly.

Eventually when you have a couple set up (I usually only set them up in towns of the faction I am planning on joining, you can cheese out and get them everywhere) talk to lords of the faction you like and sign on as a merc. When you get called to war, right click on the lord you are supposed to follow and click acompany. Follow him along, and when his group attacks somewhere let them join the battle, then join in so you have some allies.

Dont buy gear in the begging, use what you get from bandits and battles. Wait till you have some money saved.

To heard cattle you need to raze a village and they pop up, or buy some from a village. You have to zig zag behind them to herd them. Its a pain.

I would HIGHLY reccomend the diplomacy mod, it makes running a kingdom and interacting with lords much smoother.



edit: just ask if you want to know something more specific and I'll try and help out. These are just some ideas to get started.

The game has flaws because you're bad at it? Really, it just sounds like you need some help.

Your army is slow because you have 64 guys. More guys generally means a slower army overall. Also, a higher ratio of inftantry to horseman means a slower party. Also, a small elite unit of cavalry will win over a bunch of weak infantry any day of the week. Your group will also be slowed down if you carry lots of heavy stuff in your inventory.

At a low level, you accepted vassalage. Should have waited for a while so that you could build up your money and your strength.

The best way to get money is through trade routes. This keeps everyone happy with you, and makes you rich as hell. One especially profitable thing to do is buy iron from Curaw and sell it elsewhere. I had a few trade circles worked out, but I can't remember the names right now (it went like Praven Ale-> Nord Town Flax and Fish-> Curaw Iron -> back to Swadia to sell iron). There are more, too, like Spice/Date/Iron trade in the East (Khergits and Sarranid). You can use your profits to invest in Oil Presses in various towns (the business that cost the more will generally turn the most profit in this game) so that when you decide to join a war, you'll have secondary income sources. The nice thing about trade routes is they lead you to other countries, so if you have some delivery quest (letter or ale) you can make some profit by grabbing trade good and selling it.

To fix your army, fire all your weak troops. Train some heavy cavalry (go down the melee infantry path for Swadian or Sarranid troops until they can become horseman) to act as a sort of "personal guard". This way, you can use your infantry to pin the enemy down in battles, and smash them with your shock cavalry from behind. Or, if the enemy force is weak, you can disregard the first part and just smash them with your heavy cavalry so that you suffer minimal losses. To train your troops, you can go to a training field and begin a sparring session (everyone will gain exp, but the units you spar with will gain extra).

I told you how to fix your money problems and your military problems. As for the quests, the ones that mention specific towns or villages are pretty exact. The ones where a lord is the target, you have to talk to the other lords or ladies of their realm (go to castles) and ask where to find that particular lord. Herding cattle is simple. They move away from you, but typically at a slower speed than you, so you have to sort of zig-zag behind them and creep up at about the same speed they are at. Finding bandit lairs is more about finding areas near that town with lots of bandits. Then just explore the area very thoroughly and the lair should be there. In my experience, the bandit lair quests kind of svck, though (reward to work ratio is really bad). Another bad quest is villages that want cattle. Cattle are kind of costly. It's better to train village troops or to buy them some grain.

Honestly, the reason you're suffering is probably due to the game's hands-on approach to learning it (like, you can't know about training fields and stuff) as well as the lesser economic aspects of TES games you've had experience with. If you only follow a single piece of this advice, let it be the trade routes. Your money problems will be gone.

I can't get over how slow everything is. It just pisses me off, a real battle in real life wouldn't be that slow. Shoots for reality and misses... is probably the perfect phrase to describe it. I can't ever get the hang of the melee combat either. The controls are just clunky... god awful. It's inexcusable in a game.

The melee combat is great. Maybe you're just not very good at it?

lol Gamgee.

Don't blame your inadequacies on the developers.

If you're finding it slow, there's an option to speed up the battle speed.

As for the controls and combat, they're pretty much fantastic. I don't understand how you can be a fan of Bethesda's game and turn around and say that M&B has inexcusable combat (well, I guess you could be TOO used to Bethesda's games, but I doubt that's it). Seriously, the multi-directional striking and parrying is great, and the mounted combat is unrivaled.

If Skyrim had combat like Warband's, i'd be so happy.

But it won't because it'll be a 360 to PC port.

Ugh, don't let that anywhere near a game ever until it responds when I want it to. I feel like I'm being penalized as I agonizingly have to watch the slow wind ups to attacks. Seriously though a battle in real life would never be that slow, I don't have a problem with the game picking this. It just bugs me it's always said to be so realistic and they can't even get speed or water physics right. Big surprise I hated the [censored] out of Oblivion's combat system too. Why? TOOO SLOOOOW!!!! Why can't people ever speed these kinds of games up, pirates vs vikings vs knights has a far more responsive control. It plays almost identically to warband but on a smaller scale, it also isn't so slow. I'll admit I'm good as an archer, but even then this game is just so slow. I don't have a problem with others liking that, but I have a very serious problem playing that.

It sounds like you begun in the wrong end. I wouldn't swear an oath to any lord yet, since it will force you to avoid hostile territory during wartime. Follow the tips to increase your party speed, focus on trading, practicing against weaker criminals, doing the smaller quests and over all just improving your character's and your own skills. Find the training grounds and make sure you can beat all the opponents. Get yourself a steady income, learn to handle your troops properly, combat or otherwise, THEN you can start focusing on politics and war between the factions. You may be able to get a positive reputation with a lord or two by doing smaller quests, but the best reputation improver is the battlefield when you serve a faction. Your fellow lords will remember with joy how you took cities and butchered hostile armies, you'll achieve greater renown when dominating your way through a military campaign and you can stack up on honor by releasing captured enemy lords. But before you do this, you must be prepared properly.

I've been playing the game a lot for the past week, I'm currently level 22 and I have about 190 soldiers (100 of them are in my castle)

Good game.. wish it had more stuff to do thought

oh and I play as Swadia since they have the strongest cavalry in the game. Seriously, yesterday I was attached by 860 Nords and I have 210 soldiers (and only 80 of them were mine, the rest were from some other Swadian count). I won that battle with only 23 casualties.

Why? Because Cavalry > Everything else

it's almost worth the ridiculous amounts of money I have to pay those guys each week. It's about 5000 denars per week. and that's after I subtract the rents I get from my castle and village. <_<

I play on easy, because it's so damn hard.

There's an easy mode?



As to what everyone else has said, thank you. I didn't even know some of the controls you are talking about existed. To be more specific about the quests I'm having trouble with, though, I'm referring to almost all of them, to be honest. I doubt I'll ever get cattle-steering right and I hate trying, so I won't. However, my major problem with quests are finding a war party I'm supposed to join for an upcoming battle (got vague directions, couldn't find Emir Muhnir's party in time for the attack on Narra), finding moving bandits that supposedly robbed travellers, and catching said bandits (again, the speed issue). I know what to do for speed, now, but what about the tracking people part? Which color (for the tracks) means what? Is there a way to increase the distance at which I can see other people on the world map?


P.S. I agree on Gamgee about the controls, except I believe Bethesda's are more responsive. I'm used to the controls, but I completely understand what he's referring to.

No you're right, a real battle wouldn't be that slow. It'd be much slower. How long do you think a battle takes? Battles took hours and hours to fight. They'd last all day, and often be broke up into parts. The game does a very good job of melee combat, I think you have a unrealistic view of warfare.

QFT

There are options in the menu, where you can reduce the amount of damage you get and the damage your troops get to 1/2 or 1/4.

Of course if you decide to retire your character, your final score is also based on how long you've been playing on the different difficulty levels.

Not really an easy mode, but you can tweak the difficulty settings in the options menu. Like how much damage you and your party members take and whether you have to aim your parrying yourself or let the parry direction be decided automatically.

Directions are clear enough, if you combine them with a good tracking, spotting and pathfinding skill. With higher tracking skills the tracks become more informative, for example you'll be able to see how large a party is. Your target may not be at the location first indicated, because all lords move around doing their own thing. Ask for new directions to other lords you encounter on the way and you should be fine. Also, having an army of only horseman increases your party speed a lot, which is one of the reasons I like the Kerghit so much. As for the controls, you can tweak those as well in the options menu. You can choose to aim your attacks with the movement keys or mouse movement. I think they're fantastic, its certainly one of, if not the best melee combat systems I've seen in a game.

You are right that the game is flawed, but not in the nature of the flaws. The only flaw is lack of narrative in the quests and more interesting dialogue, though that would probably be hard to implement in such an open ended game. All the things you and Gamgee mentioned aren't the game's fault, you're both just really bad at it. Which is understandable, its quite an unforgiving game. You'll improve if you stick with it a little longer. Having companions with high party skills helps a lot I find. I always use Nizar, Matheld, Borcha, Marnid, Katrin and Bunduk, since with that configuration there's no fighting and everyone has a friend, which is beneficial to your party morale. With a good army and the use of proper tactics in the field (instead of just charging ahead), you'll find that battles can be over before you know it. Except sieges, but they're supposed to take a while.

The game is pretty unforgiving... but it's also very rewarding when you pull something dangerous off, like when you win a siege on an enemy castle.

There is only one scenario when charging ahead is a good strategy... when you have a lot of Swadian Knights in full health and good morale. You can just yell "CHARGE!", sit back and watch the enemy get slaughtered.

Seriously, I sometimes go into battle with my knights, tell them to charge and then I just pull up the battle statistics screen and watch the red blips disappear from the map as my soldiers destroy the enemy. Sometimes I even go into battle and then I just go to the kitchen to get a cup of tea or something, I'm 100% confident that my army will win with minimal casualties.


EDIT: I'm playing on normal (normal damage, normal AI, etc)

Is Warband the finished version of the original Mount & Blade? I bought it years ago when it was still in Beta and only about $12; will my serial number still work with Warband?

No, Mount & Blade had a full release to version 1.01 some time ago. Warband is a standalone expansion that redoes the graphics and adds a new faction (M&B 1.5 essentially.)

Ah, ok, thanks for that. I might pick it up, I've seen it around for pretty cheap.

Even then it's still better if you make them move towards the enemy in formation and charge when you're close, so they hit the lines in one massive unstoppable block. Though it isn't really necessary, an army of Swadian Knights is almost unstoppable no matter what you do with it . Not cheap to maintain though.