Zero to Hero: Absolute Newbie's Guide to Badassitude

This guide's current publish date is May 2024, against Bannerlord version 1.2.9.

This guide is not meant to be the be-all, end-all source for success in Bannerlord. Bannerlord is a complex game and close to everything you do will have tradeoffs. To truly master the game, you will need try things on your own, experiment, read other guides, and probably talk to people.

However, Bannerlord also has a slew of pitfalls that make it easy to fail for many playthroughs. By "fail", I generally mean "something happens to make you get discouraged and quit." These pitfalls are rarely documented.

The purpose of this guide is to document those pitfalls and point out quicker ways to success.

Aside from player culture, nothing you do in character creation itself is too much of a trap. There are certain skills that many community members consider weaker (such as Scouting), but at the end of the day, you are starting at level 1, and level soft-caps in the late 30s. Even if you make a misstep, it will not be fatal.

Player culture is worth mentioning, however. In general, you want perks from player culture that are difficult to impossible to replicate elsewhere, and will suit you no matter where you are or what you are doing. Things like bonus XP for upgrading troops and better trade ratios (perks for Vlandia and Aserai respectively) are great. Situational speed bonuses (like through snow or forests) are not.

If you want a single suggestion, pick either Vlandia or Aserai until you have a better grasp on the game. However, like many things in this game, it sometimes depends on what you want to do. If your definition of winning the game is to make a frozen hermitage that you dare all comers to challenge you on - well, then maybe Sturgian makes sense.

Much more important is skill perks and skill caps. As you level up skills, you will get perks vaguely related to that skill that can be hugely impactful on your character. The game tells you that stats and focus points make it easier to level skills.

What the game does NOT tell you is that skills are also hard-capped by your stats and focus points. At a certain point, you will simply stop leveling a skill until you put another stat point or focus point in. Furthermore, these caps can be extremely trollish. It is critical to know these caps so you are not cheated out of a perk you want.

Reddit post on skill caps: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannerlord/comments/gill8j/bannerlord_skill_cap_formula_tested_verified/

While the post calls out the biggest troll in the formula, there are many others. Double check your plan before you put 10 hours into a run.

In addition to this, perks are notoriously buggy and many stay broken for months on end before finally being fixed. The solution here is simple: Double check with a known good resource that the perks you want actually do what they say.

A very reliable resource for checking status of perks: https://www.bannerlordperks.com/perk

With one exception, this guide will not be telling you what skills are great and which are bad. Your play style and goal might be different from the writer's, so it's impossible to say that authoritatively. However, it IS possible to point out which skills are easy to level, which are more difficult, and which outright require exploits to do them efficiently.

For more information on gaining XP quickly, check this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannerlord/comments/11eh1b2/xp_slingshots/

• One-handed
  
• Two-handed
  
• Polearm
  
• Bow
  
• Crossbow
  
• Throwing
  
• Riding
  
• Athletics

These are all relatively simple to level - use the associated weapon or movement style. The melee fights available in any town that is not currently hosting a tournament are a great way to get your first 30-40 points in many of these. You will get your butt kicked a lot, but you will automatically heal up to whatever HP you were at when you entered the melee fight. There is no threat and no way to 'lose' melee fights in this way. Even if you get clobbered, you get some XP for next time. And you, the player, gain some comfort with the fighting system, as well.

Tournaments themselves are also a great way to get some points in these. If you do not make bets on yourself, there is no real loss for losing a tournament. You will want to do tournaments for other reasons, as well. This will be revisited in another section.

The ultimate way to level these skills, however, is fighting real combat, preferably solo. Looters and many kinds of bandits are not difficult to kill in arbitrary numbers alone. And, since YOU need the XP, you want no troops with you stealing that XP from you. Solo combat against 20-30 bandits is a time-honored tradition in Bannerlord, and precisely how to do it is a problem for another guide. The reddit post linked above has a good start on it, though.

In general, you will need one melee (Vigor) and one ranged (Control) skill. Furthermore, in general, you will need BOTH Riding and Athletics. Exactly how much is up to you. Review the perks and think about it.

• Scouting
  
• Tactics
  
• Charm
  
• Leadership
  
• Medicine
  
• Engineering

These skills are used on the world map, and tend to be very frustrating to level (though there are exceptions). Think carefully about the perks in each skill and debate long and hard before going over a moderate (100-150) skill level. These skills tend to be slow to develop, or can only be developed under special circumstances.

In general, you will want a decent amount of Charm, Medicine, and Leadership. Charm goes up by gaining relationship with people. This means that any perk that increases relationships (such as those in Smithing or Scouting) will also give Charm XP. Keep an eye out for easy-to-resolve quests (such as "get me some tools") for quick Charm XP as well.

Leadership and Medicine both require a large party to handle efficiently, which makes them mutually exclusive with leveling fighting skills. Leadership goes up simply by keeping a large party together. Medicine goes up by healing wounds. You can combine these two by collecting a large party of low-level peasants, selling all of your food, and letting your party starve for a day. This will wound your party. Buy more food, and rest in a town. This will heal your party, and give you Medicine XP.

Scouting, Tactics, and Engineering are all useful in their own way, but are both difficult and slow to level. Check the XP Slingshots link at the top of this section for more details if needed.

• Smithing
  
• Trade
  
• Roguery
  
• Steward

These skills are used to make and keep money, which is a gigantic part of Bannerlord. Money will solve huge numbers of problems in this game, and with certain perks, it can solve even more problems.

Naturally, all of these skills are god-awful to level.

In general, you will want a LOT of Smithing, and decent amounts of both Trade and Steward. Roguery is also very useful, but less so than the others.

Unfortunately, Smithing takes the cake for the most player-hostile design in a modern video game. As such, it will get its own sub-heading after this.

Trade, if done 'legitimately', will genuinely take much of your character's lifetime to get to high levels. Therefore, I openly advocate exploiting the economic system by doing the following:

• Get at least 200 of iron, steel, and fine steel apiece. The more you can get, the better. 1k of each would not go amiss. You will get these by doing Smithing (subsection below).
  
• Hang out near a town until you spot a caravan coming in.
  
• Sell all iron and steel materials except the most expensive (in this case, fine steel) to the caravan. Don't worry about them not having enough money.
  
• Enter town and sell the most expensive material. This will artificially depress the price of iron and steel.
  
• Go back to the caravan and buy back your materials at the lower price.
  
• Return to town and buy back your most expensive material, causing the price to rise again.
  
• Return to the caravan, and sell your materials for a massive profit, generating a ton of trade XP.
  
• Return to step 2.

You will ultimately gain money doing this loop, but not much.

Steward is leveled by having a large group that you keep supplied with ALL the edible items in the game. The edible items are:

• Fish
  
• Grain
  
• Cheese
  
• Grapes
  
• Olives
  
• Beer
  
• Dates
  
• Meat
  
• Butter

You gain much more for having all of these vs missing 1 or 2. However, because this requires a large party, you will have difficulty leveling combat skills while doing this.

Roguery, if you decide you want it, is a nightmare to level legitimately, but very easy to exploit. Simply obtain a very, very expensive item, at least 25k denars - Smithing can again help you here. Wait for a group of peasants to leave a village, and sell them the item. Do not worry about them not having money for it. Then, immediately rob and kill the peasants. Getting a huge profit from the robbery will get you lots of Roguery points.

Smithing is, without a doubt, the single most useful skill in the game. The weapons you can make with it are absolute top tier tools of death for your own use. Those tools of death are also hugely expensive, and the fastest way to make money. It is hugely useful for gaining reputation with NPCs. It is a giant help with Charm and Roguery XP. Even better, it shares a stat with Riding and Athletics - two more vital skills. Many skills can claim to be vital to your combat. Many skills can claim to be vital to your money management. ONLY Smithing can claim to make or break both.

Naturally, it is an absolute minefield of wasted time and broken dreams. This section is here to help you pilot that minefield most effectively. It still won't be pleasant. But it will be as painless as possible.

Smithing isn't just a single grind, it is 13 grinds in one. In addition to your basic smithing skill, there are 12 weapon types. All of them have unlockable parts. You start knowing very few, very basic parts, and you will only get high quality parts by unlocking absolutely everything before those high quality parts.

Smithing has a hidden XP meter that, when filled, unlocks another part for you. If you are forging something, the part unlocked is random, but will always unlock at least something. If you are smelting a weapon, the part unlocked is random, up to one tier above the weapon you have forged (so a tier 0 weapon may unlock a tier 1 part, but never a tier 2). This makes it possible to 'waste' part unlocks by smelting junk weapons.

Furthermore, the amount of XP you get is never shown to you, and XP requirements get very steep as you unlock more and more parts, quickly outstripping the XP you get for simply making difficult weapons. While you may gain early smithing points and parts quickly, by middle tier skill and parts, you may be crafting a dozen or more weapons to get a single part unlock or point in smithing.

In addition, each character has Crafting Stamina that is not used anywhere else in the game and hard limits how many actions you can take toward improving your Smithing. Every interaction in the smithy consumes Crafting Stamina, and the ONLY way to restore it is to rest, usually in a town.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can use to solve this problem. The game, of course, never tells you either of these things:
1) Certain weapon classes are worth more XP than others. Two-handed swords and Two-handed maces, in particular, are worth multiple times more XP than a dagger or throwing knife.
2) Filling Orders from NPCs gives a huge multiplier to your gained XP, both for Smithing and part unlock.
3) Companions can also take smithing actions, and they have their own Crafting Stamina bar

So, the key to making Smithing useful is to use your Crafting Stamina only on high-value actions like filling an Order. All low-value stuff should be delegated to an NPC.

Smithing uses a "crafting stamina" resource that is harshly limited and only restored by explicitly resting in a town. Fortunately, every character has their own smithing stamina bar. Therefore, you can recruit an assistant to help with the unproductive work.

Your goal is to find an NPC that already has at least 25 points in Smithing.

Open the Encyclopedia (N by default), and click the Heroes pane. Use the checkboxes on the left to filter by "Wanderer". Put "Smith" in the search tab in the upper right. If nothing comes up, close the Encyclopedia and check in another few days. If you get a hit, and see "XXX the Smith", click on their name and look in the upper right for a "Last seen in YYY" report. Drop everything you are doing and go find this person immediately.

On top of this, every time you enter a town, check the tavern to "meet" local wanderers. Check their stats in the Encyclopedia after you do. If you find a wanderer with at least 25 points in Smithing, drop what you are doing and find a way to recruit them.

Select the 'efficient charcoal maker' perk on your assistant.

Buy your assistant one riding horse, and one pack horse. You will need all the weight and more.

Scan the map for villages that produce Hardwood (it looks like a log). Go to the town near that village and buy about 20 hardwood.

Enter the town smithy, and click your assistant's portrait in the lower left. Then, click the "Refine" tab on the top. Your 'efficient charcoal maker' perk will allow you to turn 2 hardwood into 3 charcoal. Turn all your hardwood into charcoal.

Chase down bandit parties and eliminate them, however it makes you happy to do so. Collect all of their weapons.

Head to the nearest town and smelt all of the scrap you have. This is primarily your assistant's job, but if you have spare crafting stamina, feel free to help them out.

Click the "Forge" tab and then click the "Orders" button in the upper right. Take your best shot at whatever orders you can fill. Don't worry about doing a bad job, don't worry about making the client unhappy, don't worry about anything. If you CAN do them well, great, definitely put in that effort. But don't stress about it. Just do all of the orders the game allows you to do, as best you can do them. If needed, you can refine lower-quality types of metal into higher-quality types using your assistant. Rest as needed to get crafting stamina back.

Exactly what it says on the tin. Go to the next town, eliminating bandit parties as you are able to. Smelt the scrap, refine the metal, and fill Orders.

Unfortunately, even the PERK CHOICES in Smithing also have some pitfalls that you need to be aware of in advance.

1) Smelting gives 20% of the XP you would get from forging the same weapon. Therefore, the perk "curious smelter" is almost objectively worthless from a pure numbers perspective.
2) Gaining relations with Notables gives much less Charm XP than gaining relations with Nobles. Therefore, Steel Maker 3 is substantially better than Experienced Smith for the purpose of gaining Charm XP.
3) The bonuses from Controlled Smith, Vigorous Smith, Enduring Smith, and Fencing Smith are all still subject to stat and focus point maximums. Any excess spending will not be refunded.

Thankfully, if you have made any choices with your perks that you regret, you can talk to the arena master in any town to reset your perk choices in exchange for money.

Whether you are playing the Bannerlord official campaign (such as it is), or skipping it to go straight into sandbox mode, the campaign map has a number of mechanics that are poorly explained but very important.

Renown is, in essence the "XP" gauge for your clan, with each level being a new tier. Higher clan tiers are extremely impactful, and Renown itself increases your maximum party size in a way that even Leadership cannot. Suffice it to say, you want to be at maximum clan tier as soon as possible, and even beyond that, Renown is ALWAYS good.

However, Renown gets harder to accumulate and keep as you get more of it. For every 200 Renown you have, you gain 1 less Renown for winning battles. Also, you lose 1 Renown at the end of an in-game week. So if you have 500 Renown, and a battle would normally give you 2 Renown for winning it, you will instead receive nothing. Also, at the end of the week, you will instead have 498 Renown. Considering you need 900 Renown to have the highest clan tier, there is no way you can avoid this mechanic.

However, the tournament circuit provides a solution. Renown from winning tournaments never goes down, even though you will eventually skill up and armor up to the point where you can win them almost trivially. Furthermore, you gain 1 Renown daily for having the most tournament wins of any character in the game. This passive gain alone is enough to offset the decay from having 1400 Renown, and you will actively gain Renown for existing until this point.

Therefore, it is difficult to overstate the value of tournaments, and the value of becoming tournament champion as quickly as possible. In addition to the gear and money you will collect, you will amass a huge amount of Renown, and unlock a perk that makes sure you will KEEP it. ANYTHING that impedes your progress in winning tournaments should therefore be avoided until you are at the clan tier you want.

This includes joining factions. Relatively early (150 Renown if you are male, 200 Renown if you are female), you will start getting offers from various rulers to sign onto their faction as a mercenary or even as a vassal. Turn down ALL of these offers until you are tournament champion. Otherwise, your liege going to war will block you from following the tournament circuit and impede your personal growth. There is no amount of money your liege can pay you, nor any fief they can grant you, that is as important as getting to Clan Rank 4 and staying there forever.

NPCs gather tournament wins slowly, so getting a 5 win edge over your closest competitor will be enough to keep you in your position for a very long time.

You can put off the early missions to rescue your brother and fellow clan members indefinitely.

Your children are influenced by your own skill levels when growing up, so becoming a multi-talented deity before marrying is a very good move - so long as you are not waiting so long that you become infertile as a woman. Female fertility drops off at roughly age 35.

You must keep your spouse in your party with you as a companion to have a chance at pregnancy, or be resting in the same settlement as them. Having an adventuring spouse will therefore drastically increase your chances at having children.

Once you start recruiting soldiers, you will invariably start to notice that certain jobs cannot be done all by yourself. Personally, you will be able to marshal between 115-150 soldiers, but town garrisons are typically around 300 soldiers. This does not include the local militia, who might be another 200 more. Enemy armies can break 1000 troops. You will need to scale up, at some point.

Parties may be spun off by your personally recruited companions, which will allow you to scale up in that way. However, that raises a ton of other awkward questions of cost, time, suitability, and more. The game will provide you no guidance and no help whatsoever in figuring out when, where, and how to use these parties.

Parties should be considered extended storage for your personal army. Left to their own devices, Parties will roam around the map, hunt bandits and other enemies, and generally create a safe zone around themselves. However, when you are part of a faction, you can order your clan Parties to follow you at no cost. You can NOT do this if you are unaffiliated.

Caravans are created by talking to Notables in towns. You pay denars to outfit a traveling caravan, which will roam the map, attempting to buy goods low and sell them high. Their profit margins are influenced heavily by the companion you lend to lead the caravan; you should generally expect any caravan leader with under 50 Trade to lose money.

Caravans, in general, should not be expected to make you rich. That said, the Companion you put in charge of the caravan will gain typical amounts of experience for leading a group of 30 people, which makes them a decent way to get a level or two on a Companion that is otherwise promising.

On the note of Companions, be aware that under some rulesets, it is possible for them to die as part of your party, thereby wasting any investment you have in them - this includes the time it took for you to find them in the first place. For this reason, there IS an objectively correct way to gear and use your Companions in battle: Companions should, in general, be told to retreat immediately. Good Companions are hard to find, and no matter how you gear and equip your helpers, they are always at risk. If they must be kept in the fight, they should be equipped as a horse archer, with the heaviest armor you can afford to give them.

The other - and primary, in my opinion - major use for Companions is as a proxy for completing quests. Quest completion means Charm XP and relationship increases. Relationships are very important in Calradia, so being able to simply give a companion a few soldiers to resolve a problem is helpful.

You cannot create your own kingdom until you have reassembled the Dragon Banner of Calradia. This is a short questline given to you at the start of the game. It doesn't matter what you tell the jokers you meet as part of that questline, it only matters that you have the banner.

As mentioned above, relationships are very important in Calradia. Do not turn your nose up at becoming a vassal; simply by playing within the rules of a kingdom, you can become friends not just with your fellow vassals, but also your enemies. Freeing a lord after defeating them increases your relationship with them. In the long term, leaving the service of a king with many friends makes you much more likely to attract that talent when you go rogue and attack a kingdom in trouble to found your own nation.

Hopefully this will help some readers avoid wandering around in confusion or abandoning runs due to a bad decision they made 10 hours ago before they knew better. I will happily incorporate extra sections based on user stories and comments. I realize the campaign map is advice is relatively sparse right now, but that is because the campaign map is constantly in so much flux that it's hard for it to screw you over too much. Still, if there is something I've missed on the road to Badassitude, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Unless it's to debate the strength of various builds. Please take that elsewhere. As stated, this guide is about demystifying junk that the game does a bad job of documenting. Nothing more.