Mount And Blade Warband Training Field
Margurite Vizarro
You can use the Training Fields to earn minor experience bonuses and increase Weapon Proficiencies without the risk of capture. Early on this might be useful and if you're a capable player you can get better results because the experience your party gains is based on your performance during a specific training session. For example, you can train horse combat by going around a track which is lined with destructible targets. Hitting only some of the targets means only some party members will get a little bit of experience, but hitting all targets will net you a nice experience bonus for your whole party.
When using a training field, sparring will give the most exp. to melee infantry units, less to melee cavalry, and very little or none to ranged units. Sparring against melee units will give the best exp. gain to all melee units.
Ranged weapon practice gives good exp. to all ranged troops (but never melee units). Hitting every target during ranged weapon practice gives a major exp. boost, so hitting all 10 targets at 10 yards will give more exp. than hitting 9 targets at 20 yards, and so on.
Horseback training gives a good amount of exp. to all cavalry units - however, trying to hit one of the targets with a melee weapon is very hard, because the targets are very small and so it's hard to angle your lance or sword to hit them properly, so if you are skilled in archery or throwing, then that gives much better results, as the training gives exp. to all cavalry regardless of weapon choice, more depending on how many targets you hit.
Other buildings such as the lime kiln, barracks, and training fields can also be invested in, giving your settlement much more to offer your budding demesne and even giving it the opportunity to add to its own defence, should it be assailed.
The Daily Default option allows you to tell your settlement what to do when not doing something else. For example, if you are worried about food reserves, setting your Daily Default to Irrigation means your citizens will busy themselves looking after the growing of food when not doing something else.
Hopefully now you should have an idea of what it takes to manage a successful settlement in Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord. For more information and articles, mount your horse and trot over to our game hub.
The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. This one has been intensely anticipated by myself and thousands of others for eight long years. We had abandoned all hope, but now it's here and it's not even finished yet. So without further ado...
Then you're dropped alone in Calradia, a vast fictional continent fought over by various factions clearly inspired by real-world cultures (Nords, Vikings; Vaegirs, Slavs; Khergits, Mongols etc) and left to fend for yourself. You do what you like. Quests, one thing Kenshi had none of, give you a short-term goal and may raise your reputation with a faction or figure as a means to an end, but you have to think bigger and not everyone enjoys that.
The bulk of the game takes place in a zoomable, rotatable overhead world map, which looks laughably bad at first glance. From here, you point and click where you want your little horse-riding man to go, and the earliest hours will be spent running from ragtag crews of bandits. Otherwise it'll be to villages where you recruit ne'er-do-wells into your merry band so you can whack the bandits.
The issue, as ever, was with the engine. Bannerlord initially began development on a modified version of Warband's and, having taken stock of its limitations, Taleworlds binned the project and started afresh, essentially wasting a couple of years. Difficulties with rendering destructible environments in the multiplayer game was also cited in Turkish media, as well as far-reaching control of the game's design by Taleworlds' owner, Armağan Tavuz.
In fairness, though, Taleworlds probably still counts as an indie developer. Starting out with a staff of two, they haven't ventured beyond the 12-year-old Mount & Blade blueprint, and each one was a janky, bug-ridden mess living in a little bubble far from the multiple hundreds of tech heads that help churn out AAA stuff.
But it's here now, and Bannerlord's first day out became the biggest launch of the year so far on Steam with over 200,000 concurrent players. Taking a peek now, gone 9pm in the evening UK time, there's more than 62,000 forging and dismantling kingdoms across Calradia, making it the 13th most popular game on Valve's distribution platform. It's quite a drop, but we'll examine why presently.
It's immediately clear that the lost time hasn't done Bannerlord many favours. Though I cannot stress enough that it is a stunning upgrade on Warband visually, Bannerlord is doomed to be another M&B game that is behind the curve. Nevertheless, the game map is actually quite pleasant to look at now, and the improvements to shading, lighting, animations and environments are more than adequate. However, as with Warband, the gameplay and immersion trumps such baubles.
This might be because, at this point in development, Bannerlord feels much like a remastered Warband, albeit with changes to kingdoms and setting. What little muscle memory I had retained from its predecessor served me well in Bannerlord whereas I remember struggling for a while with my timing in Warband.
When riding into a skirmish, then, you will often be approaching infantry at speed and able to adapt your attack based on your enemy's position. The awkward feeling when you sail straight past them and completely miss is still commonplace. But when you do one-shot a foe, then another, and another, it's intoxicating. I'd probably be classed a war criminal for the amount of retreating soldiers I've cut down for the thrill of it, but there's no Geneva Convention in Calradia.
Again, how you play Bannerlord is entirely down to you. After besting the training ring, there's a "main mission" involving the rescue of kidnapped family members that gently pushes the player in the right direction, but it's either not fully implemented or bugged. At one stage, your brother tells you to gather this many men and wait for him to contact you. More than half a year has passed and I've heard nothing, despite the in-game encyclopaedia telling me where he's hanging out. A days-long trek across the continent to the city of Chaikand later, and he's nowhere to be seen. Eventually a storyline opens up about restoring an ancient "Dragon Banner", hence "Bannerlord", which enables you to create your own faction and leads you to side with either an imperial or non-imperial power.
I pledged myself as a vassal to a non-imperial power, the Vlandians, and have been happily assisting in their campaign to purge neighbouring kingdoms. A "conspiracy" quest popped up, warning me that an imperial sympathiser I had met was plotting to undo my progress, but it either doesn't seem to be much of a threat in its current state or unfurls over a long period of time. I have the option to prevent the plot, but I don't really know how to, and I'm having too much fun playing to care.
Frame rates can tank as well when there are particularly large battles involving up to a thousand soldiers. There's a slider under settings, however, that can limit the number of warriors on the field at a time. When some are killed, more soldiers spawn. I tried with it at maximum but found I had to keep it around 500. Sieges can suffer the same stutters too and at times it's almost unplayable. Suffice to say that if you have fond memories of playing Warband on your potato, it might be time to upgrade if you're thinking about trying Bannerlord.
These are the worst I've come across, but I'm sure others have discovered far more severe problems. Much of the game, I believe, is placeholder. It's all part of the gamble of paying for an unfinished product and I'm honestly surprised, though glad, that almost 30 hours in my experience has been so stable and enjoyable. Others may not be so lucky.
Hopefully more new features that make Bannerlord feel more unique will become apparent at some point in the next eight years and various optimisations are made to performance over time. However, the vast quality-of-life improvements on Warband and the visual upgrades, for me, make Bannerlord worth the price of entry alone (though it's awfully steep). But it's not an ideal place to jump in for beginners. Being a fan of the flawed series in the first place helps and, like Tyrion Lannister, I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.
*You can play as a woman too, though in Warband, the game warns that you would have a much more difficult time for the sake of "historical authenticity". Many did choose the option for the challenge.
Is there a difference between these? Other than the obvious price and safety difference, of course. Are trainers more effective in a camp than when just waiting in the field for example? Do heroes heal faster in any of them?
Other than the differences you listed (price and safety), you party heals faster when waiting in a fort/town or village with a manor. The amount of experience granted from training is solely determined by the skill of the trainer and nothing else.
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