Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord

[Corsair14]

I picked this up over the weekend, anyone else playing it?
I am still hunting looters and sea raiders on my main character and am thinking of doing more. I still haven't managed to win an arena fight yet. Its very enjoyable though even though I have a hard time hitting the broad side of a mountain with a spear. I am still picking up a lot of odds and ends as I play, I just discovered you can assign a companion to a specific role and later(as in this morning) found you can assign yourself a role in the clan. I really need to find a medic. I haven't figured out yet how to gain a fief, get married, run a smithy(or even do smithing). My skills are very slow to gain. I love all the armors but haven't found a place to buy any decent armor, wearing some sort of leather lamellar right now. Hoping smithing at a later point will allow for armor creation.

No clue how to find or use mods since there is no workshop I can see, but I haven't checked nexus yet. I imagine mods would be short lived since I expect patches pretty often to update the game since its in early access.

[Mobius Twist]

Is the path to success the same as in the previous game? Surgery and Tactics to max, let your guys level up and bulldoze everyone else with superior gear and numbers while you stay out of the fight? Or is your health and conscious status less of an issue? How's the combat auto-resolve? It was downright useless in the first game.

[JadedDM]

I was going to look into it as soon as it was out of early access.

[Rynjin]

My experience with the game so far is that fighting people on your own is for chumps (especially since the controls are so clunky, even more especially if you're used to other medieval combat games like Chivalry and Mordhau) and every NPC that offers you a quest is actively trying to get you killed. I had a village tell me "a few bandits" were shaking them down and I decided to help them out. The "few bandits" was a group of 40+ imperial deserters, with a mix of light infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry that decimated my max sized army of...21 scrubs.

The path to success so far seems to be turning to life as a fishmonger.

[PopeLinus1]

The youtuber Jon, of Many a True Nerd fame, has done several videos and live streams of him playing the game in a very entertaining way, namely though the despicable ventures of capitalism.

[NeoVid]

I've been watching The Spiffing Brit's videos on the game, which are even more hilarious than usual. He's fairly certain he's the only player yet to get the Trade skill over 200, since the playtesters clearly never found out what a Trade skill that high lets you do: Make other characters pay you to take their territories from them.

[Gnoman]

Is the path to success the same as in the previous game? Surgery and Tactics to max, let your guys level up and bulldoze everyone else with superior gear and numbers while you stay out of the fight? Or is your health and conscious status less of an issue? How's the combat auto-resolve? It was downright useless in the first game.

Unlike Warband and Fire and Sword, combat no longer instantly ends as soon as the player is down - you entire army just charges once you're not there to control them. This makes fighting with the player so much less risky.

[Inarius]

Is the path to success the same as in the previous game? Surgery and Tactics to max, let your guys level up and bulldoze everyone else with superior gear and numbers while you stay out of the fight? Or is your health and conscious status less of an issue? How's the combat auto-resolve? It was downright useless in the first game.

Auto resolve is still iffy, its not nearly as bad as in the first game but you'll still take the occasional odd casualty here and there that you wouldn't take if you simply went into the map, told all of your minions to charge and went to get a snack. Stats also work differently but in general the non combat ones provide the best bonuses for the player to maximize the strengths of their troops.

[Corsair14]

While 9 times out of ten small scale auto-resolve works fine, I had a weird auto-resolve the other day against a simple 4 man looter unit and had a Vet Imperial legionary killed. I had to look at the screen closely to make sure I was reading it right.

My problem is I keep learning new things about the game and thus start new characters. I did load up the tournament mod that gives everyone the same armor, so no more walking out with a T-shirt vs a dude in heavy armor with spears.

My current playthrough is a Battanian who is going to concentrate on two handed and throwing weapons. I actually have a couple of cool companions. I am really enjoying the variation of weapons. I need to find a falx and then I really will have my SCA persona in videogame form.

Next I think I will do an Empire guy and immediately head east to grab some khanate recruits to give me a core of horse archers then head back west.

To level up recruits my current strategy is to put the raw recruits and tier 2 infantry into their own unit and have them forward of my heavy line while my archers and horse archers are off to the sides. I lose a few recruits here and there but they get the majority of exp to get to tier 3. I will say I find myself hunting looters and small groups of the higher tier bandits for multiple hours to make ends meet. The smithing trick is nice but apparently has been nerfed since I saw the youtube video about it since it doesn't make near the amount of money the commentators were talking about.

Is there a stable mod that lets you loot from your own allies that die? Its silly to me my minions have better gear than I do. Granted I know that means I will gear up quickly, but that's still better

Also, was there a nerf to the encyclopedia that only shows a limited number of companions? I noticed that if I hit the wanderer selection I get a small number of people pop up but as I travel the list grows. Again youtubers talk about it being the end all be all, but I think it has been changed, maybe to encourage more exploration? It doesn't bother me, just means I have to check out every tavern I come across.

Is there a means to have captured troops to covert to recruitable faster than simply hiking around the world for hours at a time? I did the much maligned deserter quest and while I got taken out, my boys managed to win and captured 2 tier 5 dudes, 2 tier 4 and some lesser troops. That was literally 2 hours ago in real time. Is it just a function of time with low tier switching quickly?