Let's Learn!: Mount & Blade Warband!: How Skills Work! 

So do the party skills stack? Should I spend points on surgery on 2 characters or does it only count the highest active heroes skill?

You know it's a great game when all of its skills are important. I knew about this game but I'm really discovering it since yesterday, good game even 10 years after.

I got this game because it looked good and was horrible to learn to watched these and man he makes it easier, well done

Great video. I have been playing M&B for years and did not understand the level-up mechanism with such clarity. Thanks man!

After many playthroughs I found having 30 STR and 30 CHA my favourite build, its ridiculously overpowered💪 Your character 10: Iron flesh, power strike, power draw, leadership (Mandatory!!!) Artimmer (10: Tactics, engineering, training) Ymira (10: Surgery, first aid, wound treatment) Borcha (10: Pathfinding, spotting, tracking) The rest of my companions I just keep high ironflesh to keep them alive for longer (and epic gear) and high powerstrike for 1 hit kills with double handed weapons. (Whatever left over points they have goes into training) As much as I love Swadian knights I ultimately ended up with Huscarls only army for simplicity... IMO they are the best "all-round" troop combo for open field combat and sieges. You eventually end up ridiculously powerful with easily 200 overall soldiers with 30 charisma, 10 leadership and the renown that comes with it. Also I used to think siege crossbows were the best for sieges but ultimately descided a strong warbow having power draw of 10 with 2x 34 large bag of khergit arrows (+3 damage) is the best ranged combo to have... If anyone gives this a go... Enjoy my friend!👊

So which skills you want on your character and companions? Here you have my opinion: Ironflesh = 5/5 Mandatory for every character in the game. Once you get knocked out the battle turns into automatic battles which tend to see number of units worth more than quality of units. So if you had 20 Huscarls vs 500 peasants, autobattle ends with 20 huscarls dead and you captured, so very important skill in any situation, I suggest getting it at least to 5, higher if you spend into strength for Power Draw/Power Throw. If you main just melee weapons then focus on Weapon Master and Agility more than Strenght, as melee gets bonus damage for proficiency unlike projectiles which only aim more accurate and shoot faster. Power Strike = 4/5 Very useful early on. Not as much in late-game when you have +400 in melee proficiencies making your melee damage more than enough, but with spare points you can't go really wrong with this and early on significant boost to your damage. Power Throw = ♥/5 Depends if you like throwing weapons. I personally don't as they don't come with enough "ammo" for sieges and battles with lots of horsemen. Power Draw = ♥/5 Depends if you like shooting with a bow. I do and I think it's the best ranged weapon in the vanilla, but it does take a lot of points to max out the damage with Masterwork War Bow which needs 8 power draw. Weapon Master = 5/5 Mandatory if you want your melee weapons to strike fast and do more damage and your ranged weapons to be more accurate. Bread and butter for any character which is at least slightly focused on combat, especially impactful on companions. Shield = 2/5 Spend points if you feel like you need it, but Steel shield or Huscarl shield should last you entire battles, I never found a need for this skill but it's not complete waste as some other skills. Athletics = 3/5 Spend points if you are bored of running slow. In sieges kind of impactful. Your heavy armor will take care about you running slow anyway, but it does make the game go faster and you won't get surrounded by enemies as easily if you lose your horse. I usually spend at least 4 points into it and it makes chasing Guild Master at night faster as well as chasing lords in castles which takes some time to walk. The time you save adds up without you noticing, but it DOES have impact and IS worth it, so I feel like 3/5 is enough. Riding = 2/5 Don't get me wrong, at least 3-4 Riding is necessity. Paired with either Heavy Hunter (Riding 3) or Heavy Charger (Riding 4), your horse never dies from arrows and you get from 0 to 100 real quick thanks to the charge, making these horses perfect for any situation except catching up to faster horses, which I mitigate by shooting horsemen with a bow so for me personally 4 is more than enough. You could go for 5 to have available all horses in the game, like Champion Courser and Stubborn Warhorse/Charger, but I never found need for them. Maybe on companions it could be interesting to see them with Champion Courser and 10 Riding skill with lances. Maybe I focus 1 of my characters on it to see how it works out and let you know. Horse Archery = ♥/5 Depends if you like shooting with a bow. Necessity if you do, at least 3-4 points especially early on with not enough proficiency to shoot accurately. I myself prefer 5 points in it after I get 8 Power Draw and the best bow in the game. Training = 2/5 At least 5 points on ALL companions. More on intelligence focused companions. Not at all necessary for your own character though, even when you are highest level unit in the army, so all your companions do get that extra exp from your trainer skill, it's not really making difference to the rest of the troops, so sure, you can get it to lvl 4-5, but there are WAY better skills to get for your main character. Looting, Tracking, Tactics, Pathfinding, Spotting, Wound Treatment, Surgery, First Aid, Engineer, Trade = 1/5 Not worth investing 30 Agility/Intelligence/Charisma on your character just to get any of these to 10+4. in most cases 10 from your companion is good enough. Rather spend those 12-15 atribute points into other things which can only your character get benefit from, like these: Inventory Management = 3/5 More room in your inventory the more loot you can carry from each battle or more food to boost morale for longer and keep army fed during sieges. That said you could make do with inventory extention which is provided by any town or castle you own, but I recommend spending at least 3-4 points into it. It's just very nice quality of life improvement and makes the gameplay more enjoyable, which is what you play the game for, just don't go overboard with upgrading intelligence just to get this one skill higher. Prisoner Management = 5/5 For Original M&B. In Warband you get to make Enterprises in towns to generate you income. Original M&B doesn't have this feature nor having your own vassals or kingdom, so prisoner trading is one of the best ways to keep your large armies as well as it helps with some quests from lords asking for prisoners and if you capture elite units you can try to persuade them to join you every 24 in-game hours, so pretty amazing skill, mainly for Original M&B, but for Warband and other expansions I would say 4/5. Persuasion = ♥/5 Depends on how you plan on playing. In original M&B pretty useless, but for Warband where you can persuade other lords to join your kingdom etc. definitely useful skill, although unsure how much since I never actually played other versions. Leadership = 5/5 up this as high as you can once you are happy with your characters strength and agility. 10 in Leadership makes your wages reduced by freaking 50% so you get to keep DOUBLE the army you currently have for the same price, including garrisoned units all over Calradia! + you get base morale boost so you don't need as much food variaty and you get +50 to unit limit just to make it 100% worth it. What else to ask for? Maybe extra synergy with Prisoner Management by decreases the chance that a recruited prisoner escapes by 5% per skill lvl, that would be crazy... and it is! Max this out if you plan on taking over Calradia in M&B original as you will need tons of garrisons and paying them 50% less is making this goal possible. Alternatively you can win with other faction, but where is challenge in that. Once you get to certain point you can beat +500 unit armies of any faction if you just counter their strengths.

From my expirience, there are skill that are more useful on different timelines of games. I want to mention, that by the mid-end of the game, you would have lands in the cities that will give you money and some skills may be less important, then they were at the beginning. Also, some skills can compensate some things from other skills. I will leave some of my thoughts: - Trading. Important skill for the beginning when you want to make money. Can compensate Looting cuz you can just buy everything cheaper and get more money from selling. Also, you can buy the best weapon and armor and forget about searching a normal item from the loot. Later, when you will have many workshops, you will get more money and there will be no point in discounts cuz you already will have many moneys. Don't forget that you can earn money by prisoning enemy vassals and getting money for their release. - Leadership. Quite important at the beginning of the game, but now, I think, that the maximum amount of troops can be gained with renown by defeating your enemies, and lowering salaries can be neglated by amount of money you will get from your worlshops. High morale can be reached by buying different food. Imporving Leadership, can compensate Tactics, cuz the more units you have in your Warband, the more advantage you will get on the Battlefield. BUT!!! If you lower your units size to 30, then it's not a big deal to ride a horse with a lance and knock out your enemies one by one. I won battles with just haveng 80 troops while the enemy had 800 troops. I had only my heroes on the battlefield while the enemy armies had much more troops. I had to go through like 10-15 battles to defeat all 800 troops but this just shows that you can be low on troops and make a great impact on your own with your Lance. - Prisoner Management. One more "income skills" like Trading, cuz it helps you to earn money. In the late game, when you have around 80k gold, you have factories everywhere and read all the books, selling prisoners is not that important to get money cuz you don't know where to spend them. In addition to this, new prisoners will lower your warband and make it slower to move. So it's important on the beginning of the game, but will be useless in the end-game. - Persuation. Getting relationships with the lords are good, but my walkthrough was to be a vassal of one of the Faction and lead it to victory. Didn't had any problems with purposing vassals to attack certain castles or towns. - Tracking. It helps sometimes, especially when you need to find Bandit Lairs or see where the enemy warbands left, but I can't say that I pay attention to that, despite I had around 8 spotting on my Deshavi. - Tactics. Less important, than Leadershitp, but can compensate low Leadership skill. I remember that fighting with 80 Swadian Knights vs 120 Rodosk warband, I had 1-3 advantage points, and it allowed me to bring more troops to the battlefield. BUT!!! Again... If your maximum troops on the battlefield are 30-50 (Options), then you can deal with them by yourself. Importance of that skill depends on your options. If you decided to play at 100% difficulty, then it definetely important. If you get 1/4 damage and have 30 troops on the battlefield maximum, then it's not that important. - Looting. It may be alternative to "Trading" cuz you gem ore loot and you can get more money from selling it. Also, there is high probability that you will get something interesting after defeating your enemies. So again... If you have a lot of money, then you can buy the best equipement and there will be no need to loot village in selling loot. Important at the beginning of the game but not at the end. And to be honest, I always increased Charisma attribute to 30 just to have 10 points in each of the Leadership, Persuation, Prison Management skills. But now I feel like it would be enough for like 5-6 skills just for the beginning of the game, while then, you will get workshops and start getting moneys and you will have enough of them to pay salaries to your troops.

its not "useless" to give 2nd character the same party skill if they have "extra" points since those extra points will actually give ½ of the level to the same skill such as looting 1 guy with looting 5 and 1 with looting 2 will result in 5+1 if the looting is 4 itll be looting 5+2 and if 2 ppl with looting 10 itll be 10+5.

Thanks. This helps out a lot. Gives me a few ideas on what I'm gonna change and do next.

You deserve more subscribers

You did these lets learn vids great.

Great video, leveling up Intelligence gives two skill points!

Thanks! Really good job)

got an idea for a video, A real in depth how to accurately shoot a bow, I've searched RU-vid and no one has a real guide, I mean not a minute but in depth explaining from in close to real far away and during sieges, that t me is my biggest problem yet to get down pat, just an idearrr

I know this comment is a little late on after the video release... The reason Rolf doesn't have a party skill is because he is currently wounded and otherwise not available... if he was healthy he would be your party's spotter with a +5... I've been playing this game since it's released I enjoyed your videos as they are very informative good job

Skills max is 10 I think and if you maxed it to archery of 10 in a horse archery skill and you have the most accurate bow in the game you will see good moving shoots with no penalty or lets say while The horse moves you have the same as the horse isn't moving

Max skill = 1/3 of your attributes. That's all you need to know to start making a character

Omg THANK YOU

Does power draw have any effect on crossbows?

How can I improve my riding skill?

👏👏👏 I took the 500 👍

I max out trainer but it never shows up under my skills list on the party screen. It wasn’t on your party screen either. Why is that?

well shit, all these years thinking party skills stacked

I know this video is supper old but i have a question. on trainer it say "each hero with this skill adds some experience to every other member whos skill is lower than theirs" so does this mean if you have multiple trainers, the bottom fresh recruits will level up even quicker than just have one? example: 3 trainers with a 3 in trainer is better than having 1 trainer at level 5?

Wait so how the hell do you have 9 trainer. You’d need 27 intelligence...

how to high riding skill

for ps4, you cant mouse over a skill, which i dont like

why don't you just export your character do some editing skill then import it???

I just started playing and I thought party skill was accumulative. 😭

My Inventory is always full of food not enough room for gear

Trainer stacks

Damage to friends 3/4? ... lame bro - ways to easy ...

A good player would not have his INT on 24, it would be on 12 max... if you were smart you would know that, too bad you're not very good at his game...