M&B Update, Version 7.50

[Incendiary Lemon]

Being the lazy old me, I haven't maintained a proper changelog, but I'll just write down the changes from the top of my mind, and I am sure you folks will discover those changes I have missed (and the new surprises in the game -hint -hint) in no time!

Here we go:

* Face generator has received an overhaul
* New Launch window
* A proper configuration window instead of the editing the configuration text.
* Automatic render buffer resizing. That means no more "out of static vertex buffer" error for mods (unless you really run out of physical video memory of course.
* Number of Party stacks is not limited anymore.
* Mouse smoothing. (A million thanks to the kind souls who suggested that!)
* Unarmed combat!
* Lots of NPC voices and voice effects!
* Some new sound effects
* Anisotropic texture filtering for sharper looking textures.
* All merchants and taverns have been furnished

The FaceGen really is much improved. Two examples

Example a
Example b

Mirrors and Details

[worm]

Jesus christ. Does it have a story line yet?

[DennyA]

So is it worth $18?

Also, how's the gore/death? My son loves knights/swordfighting, so I'd be tempted to pick it up for him to watch. But it needs to be the kinds of American santized violence that will desensitize him without scaring him. :)

[worm]

The violence isn't bad at all. I'd totally suggest it. Give him the stinkin shareware and see if he wants to get his character ridicously powerful I'd say.

[Brian Rucker]

Unarmed combat? Woah...and there was a pistol in the last update. Modders are going to be going even more nuts...

[HRose]

I suck at this game.

I still play mainly in the arena and I still have little to no clue about what I'm supposed to do outside. In the battles I'm hugely outnumbered and the nooblers I recruit always die in the first minutes, so I have to deal with 10+ enemies on my own.

Someone has quick clues to figure out the main game?

[Lunch of Kong]

Yeah. put the difficult slider to easy so that you never face more than a handful of enemies at any one time.

Get a lance. Get a horse. Lance all the enemies and never get down from your horse. You can kill them all by doing jousting passes on them.

Don't bother getting your own posse until you're more familiar with the mechanics of combat.

[instant0]

Aha, finally I found out what M&B was :-)

Looks nice from the screenshots, maybe I should try it out.
I hope it does not install anything nasty on my computer?

What is this activation/hardware lock from the sales FAQ?
Is it call-home-on-launch-ware or something that gets installed in addition to the game?

[Dhruin]

Been a little while since I fired it up but if I recall, the lowest-ranked enemies are "Sea Pirates" and you should find little bands of 3-5 near the starting city. Start with those and work your way up. If you run into a group of 20x Dark Knights, you'll get your ass handed to you.

As for what you're "supposed to do" - it's an open-ended beta without a storyline yet. Go beat up some basic enemies and work your way up the food chain, gaining power and loot. Or install "The Last Days" mod, which adds some quests and gives a little more structure.

[roguefrog]

Downloading

I bought this a while back for $10.

[Brian Rucker]

Essentially, make money, recruit more men and get tougher. Think of it as a kind of Pirates! strategic game. You can talk to a merchant for missions or to buy trade goods. You can join a side in the wars and pick up missions from the lords of your kingdom (in the castles within the cities). I believe as of the last patch you can actually conquer walled cities and use them as bases (holding areas for trained troops).

Really the fun of the game at this point comes down to personal combat. If you like the way it works the strategic game is just an excuse to engage in a lot of it. Not really much more than that. Though some of the modders have tried to make more of a wargame out of it.

As for getting started, just do as much fighting by yourself as you can. If you stick to picking on River Pirates you'll be alright. Just stay on your horse and whack them as you pass by. If you have some skill in prisoner handling you'd be best off using a club or mace to knock them out for resale to the slaver in the initial city. Give your troops orders to wait, on high ground, and buy up your Training skill or buy it for one of the special NPCs you can pick up. That lets troops gain experience automatically over time. To leep them alive you need surgery. The higher your skill the better a chance of a kill becoming a mere incapacitation and cuts down, once you're good at it, on alot of the recruiting and training hassles.

Once your guys are a bit tougher and you have built up skills you can experiment a bit more in how to actually employ them in battle. The last patch had new commands so you could issue different orders for different classes of troops. Say, cavalry or archer or footman.

I'm sure there are folks who've played way more than I have but this should be enough to help you get started.

Note, there's a big difference between river pirates and hill or forest bandits. And sea raiders are to be avoided until you're fairly tough. Those throwing axes will put a hurting on you and yours.

[roguefrog]

Sea Raiders are pretty nasty for not being mounted. I remember finishing a battle with a dozen weapons impaled in my shield.

[Dhruin]

Oops, I meant River Pirates. :)

[HRose]

As for what you're "supposed to do" - it's an open-ended beta without a storyline yet. Go beat up some basic enemies and work your way up the food chain, gaining power and loot. Or install "The Last Days" mod, which adds some quests and gives a little more structure.

In fact that mod is the problem.

After some initial skirmish I keep getting chased by hundreds of guys while I have on my side ten noobs that get slain in a matter of seconds.

I never thought about using a lance, that should make things much easier.

[worm]

Woah...and there was a pistol in the last update.

Where?

I've just be not enjoying starting from scratch again.

[Lunch of Kong]

remember, you don't press the attack button to make a lance attack. After you get past a certain gallop speed on your horse, you'll automatically lower your lance. This is the "couched lance" stance.

What you do is a "run-through" on the enemy. You don't run over the enemy, but rather run past him just slightly to the left so that your lance tip meets his eyeball.

[Lunch of Kong]

Where?

There is now an item storage chest in the Zendar tavern. You'll find the pistol and some shot in there.

[Saber Cherry]

Amazing, those heads look five times better than Oblivion heads. All they need now are demon gates and a broken leveling system, and the world can forget about Oblivion.

[worm]

:( Why do people say such wrong things?

[Peter Frazier]

Great to see another update- I'd highly recommend people to wait for the Last Days mod to update as well and then try that.
Also- the lance is your friend. Get the longest one that you can and then pick on the edges of the mob. Never charge straight in.

[HRose]

Wow, just wow. This new version is amazing.

There are subtle changes but that make the game much better.

The new faces on every NPC, the new sound emotes in the battles with the river pirates yelling and taunting and new sounds and tweaks to the horse riding.

Btw, it seems the lance thing got rebalanced and now it oscillates more, making harder to aim precisely. Before it was way to easy to slaughter people by just charging.

[JamesL]

Great to see another update- I'd highly recommend people to wait for the Last Days mod to update as well and then try that.
Also- the lance is your friend. Get the longest one that you can and then pick on the edges of the mob. Never charge straight in.

Until you realize that a charger will do upwards of 20-30 damage per person and you can laugh manically while you wipe out an entire bandit party with the sheer power of your horse.

But, until then, yeah.

[HRose]

Ok.

The patch is wonderful and yesterday I played for five hours straight. I discovered the crossbow. The first time I played I lost the horse in the first match and then discovered that to use the crossbow I had to stay completely still to reload. And for a long time. So I just decided that it was stupid and moved to a normal bow.

Yesterday I discovered that I can reload the crossbow while on my horse and... ohh, it became so much fun. After the five hours I developed an affinity with the weapon and I could get an HEADSHOT! on nearly 50% of my shoots on mobile targets and from a decent distance. Sooo fun!

Then I upgraded that corssbow and here you need to give me a clue. The new crossbow doesn't reload anymore while on the horse. There is no description field that gives me an idea of which crossbow I can load while on a horse and which not. I bought a couple and I just couldn't find another usable.

So gimme a clue, where I can get a crossbow that I can use? And how I can figure out the difference?

[Raife]

So gimme a clue, where I can get a crossbow that I can use? And how I can figure out the difference?

Only Light and Hunting Crossbows can be loaded on horseback. I'm not sure if this is noted anywhere in the game, but it was added in one of the patches. Prior to that change, you couldn't load any of them while mounted.

Fantastic game.

[Lunch of Kong]

Until you realize that a charger will do upwards of 20-30 damage per person

Unless those persons are carrying longspears and turn you into shishkebab if you try to run them over. :-)

[JD]

So is it worth $18?

To me - absolutely yes. I bought it some time last year when it was somewhat cheaper. But way back there were a lot less features and content in the game. And yet I played it for 30+ hours because mounted combat is really great and improving your party and your character over time is very motivating.

-Julian

[Kalle]

The only mod updated for .750 so far is the Story mod. It includes the Arena mod for those of us, myself included, who can't bear to play without it.

[Kalle]

I just tried the Story mod, and it's bugged for the moment. Unless you're willing to do some file editing manually I'd suggest you hold off until v1.2

[NatCox]

Man, Mount & Blade has got to be the best $10 I ever spent on a game :)

[Peter Frazier]

I agree that it's the best gaming value for money that I've ever had.
If only the vanilla game had a point to it...

edit: Storymod has been patched now. Another recommended mod.