Mount And Blade Viking Conquest Character Creation Games
If you approach an enemy castle or town you will see that you have the option to lay siege. You will also be able to see the number of troops defending the stronghold. It is tough to take a castle or town so don’t attack unless you have a decent force.
Different castles and towns have different methods of assault; either by ladders or by siege engine. When you lay siege to a town or castle you will first have to build the necessary the siege equipment and how long this will take depends on the engineering skill within your party.
With the ladders or siege engine prepared you can lead your men in an assault. With ladders, the battle will start with the ladders in place and you and your men can simply charge up them and attack. With siege engines you will have to push the large wooden structure up to the city walls until the bridge crashes down and then you can swarm in.
The difficulty comes from the narrow attack corridor which allows enemy troops to defend the position quite easily. You are peppered with arrow and bolt fire all the way as you approach the walls and fighting your way through the chaotic rabble of enemy soldiers can be a tough prospect.
If you do manage to slay the enemy troops then with castles assaults there is often a small secondary battle with troops inside the castle. With towns you will have to fight a secondary battle in the streets before the final assault inside the castle.
Being Awarded a Castle or Town
With the castle or town conquered you can ask your King to grant the lands to you. He will make a decision based on a number of factors including how many lands you already hold and how many lands other lords in your faction hold. The level of your renown will also have an impact and you will be more likely to win the lands if you led the assault. The final consideration is your personal relationship with the King. The more he likes you the more likely he will grant you the castle or town.
This post is part of the series: Mount & Blade Guide
Learn how to build a successful character, earn renown, complete missions and more in Mount & Blade.
Archived
This is a Guide to the Mount & Blade Viking Conquest (VC) mod. I'm assuming that anyone playing VC already has a basic knowledge of Native.
Character Creation:
In a general sense, character creation in VC follows the same general rules in Native. There are two key differences, however. Firstly, while your starting attributes are much higher, you only gain a new attribute point every five levels. You get your first point at level 6 and will get an additional point at levels 11, 16, 21, and so on. Secondly, you can raise a skill up to half of the value of the relevant attribute rather than the one-third in Native. You will also gain two skill points per level instead of the single point you would receive in Native.
This means that your starting attributes matter much more than they do in Native while your starting skills won't make any difference past a certain level. As such I recommend using this guide to optimize your character.
The most important attribute in VC is charisma. You don't need an absurdly high charisma to be successful but having a reasonable amount will greatly improve your quality of life. You will need to have a big army in this game and that requires persuasion to build and leadership to maintain. I personally would never go under 12.
Strength and agility are more of a toss up. Having a strong combat character is both useful in that you can heavily influence the outcome of a battle and generally makes the game more fun. Strength is better for combat overall but VC differs from Native in that agility builds can also be quite useful. Weapon speed has a higher impact on damage in VC than it does in Native. As a result athletics and weapons mastery will have a very noticeable impact on your damage output, particularly with pierce weapons. It isn't as high as strength, but also allows you to get some top-tier party skills really high. Namely looting and path-finding. I'd say strength is slightly better but it's not your only option. Getting 9 riding and zooming around on a horse is quite fun.
Intelligence is the worst stat but it's still more viable than in Native.
Star wars 4x. It's weighted a little less heavily in character creation meaning that you can get a couple more 'free' points of intelligence than you can of the other stats. Companions still are your best option for all the intelligence based party skills.
At level 13 in VC you will gain a trait which will is essentially an extra ability in battle that you can activate be pressing 'T.' Which trait you get depends on which skill of the four trait determining skills is the highest and they are as follows:
Power Strike: Berserker, you temporarily gain more power strike and athletics after which you will be temporarily exhausted and only inflict half damage.
Ironflesh: Strong, you gain the ability to start a shield taunt in battle. Additionally, your men become harder to wound in battle.
Athletics: Tough, you gain the ability to start a shield taunt in battle. Additionally, your men become faster in battle.
Inspiring: Leadership, you can shout a warcry in battle. Your men fight more fiercely (I'm not sure if this improves moral are makes then do more damage).
Which one is best really comes down to personal preference. I'm inclined to dislike berserker as I think the bonus is overkill so it's a net loss to use it because the drawback is so annoying. Keep in mind that wearing heavy equipment (i.e. mail, helmets, etc.) will reduce athletics and power strike and does have an effect on which trait you get. For example if you had 7 power strike and 8 athletics and wanted tough but you were wearing a scale lorica which reduces athletics more than it does power strike you might end up with berserker instead. This can be avoided by taking off stat reducing gear right before you reach level 13.f
Getting Started:
The goal at the beginning of the game is to only rise through the social hierarchy but to build a solid foundation for your future kingdom. This foundation must be made of money. VC is much more expensive than Native and you will need money to do literally anything and lots of it. The only way to fund your future conquests is with productive enterprises. Breweries in particular serve as the best economic cornerstone. However, you're going to need a 8000 peningas to open one, not to mention the money you'll need for a ship to move around the map and get a party together. As such, your first step will be to get some cannon fodder together to mug some bandits and take their stuff so you can make some money.
I see a lot of people asking how to recruit early in VC so here is a complete list in order of best to worst:
Old Sea Captain: One of these can be found in every port city intuitively right next to the port. You can recruit sailors (tier 2 skirmisher) from him for 40 peningas a piece. Sailors are trash but they're your best and cheapest early option and enough of them will do the job against even mid-tier troops.
Farmstead: These are neutral locations that are spread around the map. You can enter them and talk to the reeve to recruit a random number of farmers (tier 1 skirmisher) for 100 peningas. Farmers are even more trash than sailors but these are a steal price wise and you don't have many options.
Villages: Unlike in Native you have to pay to play to recruit from villages. Depending on the disposition of the village elder this will cost you 400-600 peningas up front. You then have to pay for each individual troop, which will all be tier 1 skirmishers. Only use this if you're desperate.
Freeing and Recruiting Prisoners: This works just like in Native except you have to pay prisoners to recruit them.. and they still might run off. However, you can use the troop quarters feature unique to VC to quarantine them overnight to make sure they stay. Freeing prisoners is cheap AND you can get great troops. The only problem is that it is unreliable (very few parties will have prisoners early in the game) and you already need to have some troops to win the battle.
After you get 150 renown and 5 relation with a lord you can recruit in his castle or town. You will recruit tier 2 spearmen unless you have a high enough relationship with it in which case you can recruit tier 3 infantry or spearmen. You can also recruit troops in mead halls (aka taverns) with 150 renown but it is expensive and most of the troops you can recruit are total trash. I would only consider Svere warriors. Veterans and spearmen are okay if you really need them.
Keep in mind that in VC moral requires more micromanagement than in Native. Don't let your army get too big or they will start to desert. I don't let my army get over 130 unless I am going to be winning a lot of battles because they become to hard to keep happy. Also, your religion (christian or pagan) affects your troops moral. Christian troops won't like an disreputable pagan commander and vice-versa. For reference:
Pagan Troops:
Norse faction troops
Vikingr
Berserkers
Old Captains
Sea Captains
Svear Warriors
Finnish Archers
Christian Troops
Neutral Troops:
Once you have enough men to win fights just hunt bandits and sell their stuff. Get a shield and a one handed weapon for yourself ASAP as they will help you win early fights. If you win a battle against opponents wearing mail I highly recommend taking the 'take first claim on all the loot option' moral penalties be damned as you have a high chance score really good gear early on.
Investing Your Capital:
Once you have a nice stack of peningas saved up you have a few options to start making real money. It all depends on your current situation. You may want to just keep grinding and buy a productive enterprise and keep grinding. However, trading is extremely powerful in VC if you know what to do. The first thing you need to do is make you way to Friese. If you have trash troops you don't care about just disband them. It is much cheaper to travel alone. If you have some decent dudes you can stash them in troop quarters until you need them. Travel across land as much as you can as paying for passage is expensive. Once you get to Friese your trade route should be as follows:
(the number next to each good like so: Wine(800) is a rough estimate as to its average value. Try to sell it close to this number or higher. If you can't get a good deal you might want to peddle it somewhere else)
Buy Jewelry(1000), Wine(800), and Salt(300) in Dorestad.
Travel to Ribe and sell some of what you bought in Dorestad. Don't sell so much that you significantly devalue your product however.
Travel to Tunsberg. Sell some more of what you bought in Dorestad. Buy Tar(450).
Check in the villages around Norway for Iron(500)
Travel around the western coast of England/Scotland. Stop in every village and check for Wool(800). This is how to make BIG money.
Keep an eye out of any random good deals such as Honey(250)
Stop at any towns along the way to sell and of the leftovers from Dorestad as well as what you bought in Norway/Tunsberg if it's at an acceptable price. It's fine to save the Iron and Tar but you should offload everything you bought in Dorestad.
Return to Dorestad and sell ALL the Wool you bought and any leftover Tar and Iron. I normally buy Wool at about 20 (from villages) and sell it at around 800 which gives and insane profit. Best of all Wool doesn't change in value as easily as more expensive goods like Jewelry, it just has an insanely inflated price in Dorestad.
As soon as you can I would buy a ship so you don't have to pay so much for travel. Just continue to do this trade route and open as many productive enterprises as you can. Once you have a stable network you are ready to become a vassal!
17 comments
Open the exported character file (which will be on your characters name description in the previous step) and there you will see all the details of your character. Here is a sample:- charfile_version = 1
- name = john
- xp = 1034
- money = 1500
- attribute_points = 0
- skill_points = 0
- weapon_points = 0
- strength = 9
- agility = 8
- intelligence = 10
- charisma = 9
- trade = 1
- leadership = 1
- prisoner_management = 1
- reserved_skill_1 = 0
- reserved_skill_2 = 0
- reserved_skill_3 = 0
- reserved_skill_4 = 0
- persuasion = 1
- engineer = 1
- first_aid = 1
- surgery = 1
- wound_treatment = 1
- inventory_management = 1
- spotting = 2
- path-finding = 1
- tactics = 1
- tracking = 1
- trainer = 1
- reserved_skill_5 = 0
- reserved_skill_6 = 0
- reserved_skill_7 = 0
- reserved_skill_8 = 0
- looting = 1
- horse_archery = 1
- riding = 1
- athletics = 1
- shield = 1
- weapon_master = 1
- reserved_skill_9 = 0
- reserved_skill_10 = 0
- reserved_skill_11 = 0
- reserved_skill_12 = 0
- reserved_skill_13 = 0
- power_draw = 1
- power_throw = 1
- power_strike = 1
- ironflesh = 1
- reserved_skill_14 = 0
- reserved_skill_15 = 0
- reserved_skill_16 = 0
- reserved_skill_17 = 0
- reserved_skill_18 = 0
- one_handed_weapons = 50
- two_handed_weapons = 61
- polearms = 56
- archery = 47
- crossbows = 46
- throwing = 39
- firearms = 0
- face_key_1 = 7f042009
- face_key_2 = 36db6db6dbadb6db
Being a big fan of M&B Warband I bought the new DLC, sold on the premise and knowing the dedication of the team who made it. And frankly, I'm pretty disappointed.
Within a day some guy picked the mod apart and found out that there are a lot of mistakes in the code and it's poorly optimized.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,319843.0.html
To quote a bit of his post; 'Small objects do not need a collsion [sic] mesh at all. I saw a couple of sausages that had a 1000 Polygon collision mesh. Why? Do you need to walk on them? do you need to hit them with your sword? Most likely not.'
After playing for about 2 hours I've been crashed to desktop nine times now. Five of those because my party was clipping on a piece of terrain on the map, three when starting a battle and once when loading into a town. I also noticed that the performance is a lot worse, when fast forwarding through travel the FPS sinks to about 3 making it a lot harder to spot and avoid danger.
I think they should have released this as Beta or early access, what do you guys think?
In Mount&Blade, you are given the opportunity to create for yourself a history, a past that occurred before your player starts adventuring in Calradia. Your character is a foreigner to Calradia, though this background has little influence on gameplay, mainly only affecting how certain lords regard you in the early game.
These factors, like the reason for adventuring, affect your starting skills and attributes, as well as equipment and renown value. These values, however, won't make anything impossible, so their impact to later adventuring is significantly diminished. The only choices with any noticeable impact on your chances of success are gender and nobility, both of which relate to how willingly nobles accept your presence in the game. Gender can affect how much renown you need for fiefs and kingdoms, whereas nobility only affects their early opinion of you. A male commoner, for example, may find some lords accusing him of being 'another vulture, come to grow fat off of the land,' or claiming that they have no time for common soldiers of fortune. Even these opinions have little effect in the long run; it should be noted, however, that lords expressing these opinions will have a negative relationship with you right from the start.
Once you have chosen your background and proficiency, you will see the character creation screen. First you have to decide whether you want to be allowed to quit without saving. Enabling this will allow you to quit and reload your game to undo a disastrous battle or otherwise experiment with things. You can distribute skills and attributes, as well as weapon proficiencies. You can customize your character more when you gain more skill points during gameplay. You will always gain an additional attribute point when you level up and some books will add permanent skill or attribute points to the player character.
After choosing your history, you will then progress to a screen to create your character's face. Along with age and facial hair, there are advanced options for minute facial features like eye depth and face width. These options have sliders bars, allowing you to adjust the characters face to great detail. Age can make one's hair nearly white and adds wrinkles. There is a randomize button as well in case one cannot decide what aesthetics they want for their adventurer. Features can be changed at anytime during game by clicking on your avatar on the Character Screen.
Base character
| Attributes | Proficiencies | Skills | Gender |
|---|
- STR: 5
- AGI: 5
- INT: 4
- CHA: 5
| - One-handed weapons: 23
- Two-handed weapons: 15
- Polearms: 20
- Archery: 15
- Crossbows: 15
- Throwing: 19
| | - Male: STR +1, CHA +1
- Female: AGI +1, INT +1
|
Your father was..
| Father | Attributes | Skills | Proficiencies | Equipment |
|---|
Noble
(base) | INT +1, CHA +1 | Riding +1, Leadership +1 | 1H +2, Pole +7 | Battered Old Round Shield, +100 Denars, +50 Renown, Banner |
Noble
(male) | CHA +1 | Power Strike +1, Weapon Master +1, Tactics +1 | 2H +15, Pole +14 | +50 Renown, +3 Honor |
Noble
(female) | INT +1 | Riding +1, Wound Treatment +1, First Aid +1 | 1H +12 |
| Merchant | INT +2, CHA +1 | Riding +1, Inventory Management +1, Leadership +1, Trade +2 | 2H +15, Pole +7 | +250 Denars, +20 Renown |
| Warrior | STR +1, AGI +1, CHA +1 | Ironflesh +1, Power Strike +1, Weapon Master +1, Trainer +1, Leadership +1 | 1H+2, 2H +23, Pole +33, Throwing +15 | Battered Plain Kite Shield, +50 Denars, +10 Renown |
| Hunter | STR +1, AGI +2 | Power Draw +1, Athletics +1, Tracking +1, Path-finding +1, Spotting +1 | 2H +15, Pole +7, Archery +49 | +30 Denars |
Nomad
(base) | STR +1, AGI +1, INT +1 | Riding +2, Path-Finding +1 | 1H +2, Pole +7, Archery +32, Throwing +7 | Battered Plain Cavalry Shield, +15 Denars +10 Renown |
Nomad
(male) | Power Draw +1, Horse Archery +1 | Archery +17, Throwing +8 | +10 Renown |
Nomad
(female) | Wound Treatment +1, First Aid +1 | 1H +3 | +5 Denars +10 Renown |
| Thief | AGI +3 | Power Throw +1, Athletics +2, Looting +1, Inventory Management +1 | 1H +14, Pole +7, Throwing +31 | Throwing Knives, +25 Denars |
Early Life
| Early Life | Attributes | Skills | Proficiencies | Other |
|---|
| Page | STR +1, CHA +1 | Power Strike +1, Persuasion +1 | 1H +8, Pole +3 |
| Apprentice | STR +1, INT +1 | Engineer +1, Trade +1 |
| Assistant | INT +1, CHA +1 | Inventory Management +1, Trade +1 |
| Urchin | AGI +1, INT +1 | Looting +1, Spotting +1 | 1H +8, Throwing +7 |
| Steppe Child | STR +1, AGI +1 | Power Throw +1, Horse Archery +1 | Archery +24 | +5 Renown |
Adulthood
| Occupation | Attributes | Skills | Proficiencies | Equipment |
|---|
Squire
(male) | STR +1, AGI +1 | Power Strike +1, Weapon Master +1, Riding +1, Leadership +1 | 1H +23, 2H +38, Pole +22, Archery +16, Crossbows +16, Throwing +14 | Ragged Leather Jerkin, Tattered Leather Boots, Swaybacked Saddle Horse, Rusty Sword, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, +20 Denars |
Lady in Waiting
(female) | INT +1, CHA +1 | Riding +1, Wound Treatment +1, Persuasion +2 | 1H +8, Crossbows +24 | Sturdy Woolen Hood, Sturdy Woolen Dress, Spirited Courser, Dagger, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, +100 Denars |
| Troubadour | CHA +2 | Weapon Master +1, Path-finding +1, Persuasion +1, Leadership +1 | 1H +19, Crossbows +16 | Sturdy Tabard, Ragged Leather Boots, Swaybacked Saddle Horse, Rusty Sword, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, +80 Denars |
| Student | INT +2 | Weapon Master +1, Wound Treatment +1, Surgery +1, Persuasion +1 | 1H +15, Crossbows +32 | Sturdy Linen Tunic, Woolen Hose, Swaybacked Saddle Horse, Rusty Sword, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, Book (random), +80 Denars |
| Peddler | INT +1, CHA +1 | Riding +1, Path-finding +1, Inventory Management +1, Trade +1 | Pole +11 | Fur Hat, Leather Jacket, Ragged Leather Boots, Leather Gloves, Saddle Horse, Staff, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, Linen, Pottery, 2x Wool, Sumpter Horse, +90 Denars |
| Smith | STR +1, INT +1 | Weapon Master +1, Tactics +1, Engineer +1, Trade +1 | 1H +11 | Coarse Tunic, Ragged Leather Boots, Saddle Horse, Balanced Sword, Hunting Crossbow, Bolts, Smoked Fish, Tools, +100 Denars |
| Poacher | STR +1, AGI +1 | Power Draw +1, Athletics +1, Tracking +1, Spotting +1 | Pole +7, Archery +57 | Rawhide Coat, Hide Boots, Heavy Sumpter Horse, Chipped Axe, Hunting Bow, Barbed Arrows, 2x Dried Meat, 2x Furs, +10 Denars |
Reason for adventuring
| Reason | Attributes | Skills |
|---|
| Revenge | STR +2 | Power Strike +1 |
| Loss | CHA +2 | Ironflesh +1 |
| Wanderlust | AGI +2 | Path-finding +1 |
| Forced out | STR +1, INT +1 | Weapon Master +1 |
| Money | AGI +1, INT +1 | Looting +1 |
