How slow do weapon profs raise if you dont have weapon master skill?

[VincentVolaju]

I know weapon mastery does two things, first it allows you to use your weapon skill points into a specific weapon skill up to a certain amount (100, 140, 180 etc.) It also makes learning the weapon skills naturally faster. So for example if I have weapon mastery 2, then I should gain any weapon skill up to 140 faster than if I had 0 weapon mastery.

My question is .... what kind of difference does that actually make? Is it only like 1 or 2 extra hits / shots on a person, or is it more like 5-10?

My goal is to just get to 250+ in Archery and 1 Handed Weapons. How much longer should I expect it to take to get 250 skills with only 2 weapon mastery, as opposed to say 4 or 5?

[Tuidjy]

It makes a big difference. My combat beast characters with weapon mastery 10 usually end up with 550-620 proficiency. Those with weapon mastery 5 end up below 400.

With weapon proficiency 2? It will take you a long time to get to 250. And you will certainly not get to 250 in the arena, not unless you are willing to grind for hours.

[VincentVolaju]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

It makes a big difference. My combat beast characters with weapon mastery 10 usually end up with 550-620 proficiency. Those with weapon mastery 5 end up below 400.

With weapon proficiency 2? It will take you a long time to get to 250. And you will certainly not get to 250 in the arena, not unless you are willing to grind for hours.

Well, that's disappointing lol. I don't want to raise my Agi any further than 9 or so. (currently 6 and working on Int first)

Another question I had is about the Polearm prof. Does it have any effect when lancing on a mount? Will a higher Polearm skill make me able to couch my lance any faster?

[Tuidjy]

As soon as you start lancing people, your polearm proficiency will shoot up really high. And, yes, it will reduce the time you need before you can couch again.

By the way, aren't you playing Floris? Agility 9 is much too low, and absolutely unnecessary, no matter what your build. Here[i.imgur.com] is a character of my wife (all of mine are combat beasts) As you can see, even though she has nearly maxed Intelligence and Charisma, she did not have to leave her Strength and Agility all that low.

And between you and me, that character is not very well designed. She did not know about the specialist troops that give you skill bonuses, and she thinks that Charisma is more useful than it really is. A Strength 21, Agility 27, Intelligence 27 is perfectly possible in Floris, and will be a lot more useful.

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And do not work on Intelligence first. Get Strength and Agility 15 at the very least before you start working on Intelligence. It will make it much easier.

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When she wakes up, I'll ask her for a screenshot of her character as he was at the end of her play through. He must have been at least a few levels higher by then.

[VincentVolaju]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

As soon as you start lancing people, your polearm proficiency will shoot up really high. And, yes, it will reduce the time you need before you can couch again.

By the way, aren't you playing Floris? Agility 9 is much too low, and absolutely unnecessary, no matter what your build. Here[i.imgur.com] is a character of my wife (all of mine are combat beasts) As you can see, even though she has nearly maxed Intelligence and Charisma, she did not have to leave her Strength and Agility all that low.

And between you and me, that character is not very well designed. She did not know about the specialist troops that give you skill bonuses, and she thinks that Charisma is more useful than it really is. A Strength 21, Agility 27, Intelligence 27 is perfectly possible in Floris, and will be a lot more useful.

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And do not work on Intelligence first. Get Strength and Agility 15 at the very least before you start working on Intelligence. It will make it much easier.

Wow, I didn't know you got that many stat points. Yeah, actually that build would be perfect for me I think, 21 Str, 27 Agi, and 27 Int.

I set up my character to start with 6 Leadership, I figure that will be enough for me not to touch Charisma. The extra prisoners would be nice for money, but I imagine by mid-game I'll own all the land in Praven and maybe Suno as well, so selling bandits for money won't be my main way, only in the early game. I figure by the time I am mid-game, my renown from fights and tournaments will make up for the loss of those 4 points in Leadership.

I think you're right about the Str and Agi to 15 first as well, typically that's what I do. But I was reading on forums people mentioning max Int to 30 first, then do other skills. However, after doing that currently, I def. feel like Str / Agi to 15 first is more beneficial for me at this point in the game, than 30 Int is.

I'm currently level 9 now after taking out a few Looter groups. So far all my points have gone into Int, but I think now I'll swap to getting Str than Agi to 15 first, then go back to Int.

Would you suggest getting Powerstrike, Powerdraw, and Ironflesh to 5 as well? If so, should I do that ASAP, or wait until later in the game when I've gotten all my Int skills up?

Also, which Int skills do you think are most valuable for the players character? I planned on getting Jeremus for the 3 Medic skills, and eventually when I have the money, I was going to get Floris for the Trainer skill. I figured maybe I would go with Persuasion and Engineering?

Although, I'm not sure how useful those actually are considering I've never really attacked a castle or had my own kingdom or even dealt with lords/kings. I just enlisted in armies and faught, never did anything politics related in the game.

If you were to suggest the skills that would benefit the player the most in starting a kingdom and eventually controlling the entire map, which would you say are the most important?

Sorry for the wall of text and 20 questions, I noticed you have like nearly 3,000 hours in the game so I just assumed you would be a good person to ask these kinds of noob questions to =P. Appreciate it!

[Tuidjy]

The Power skills I max out immediately. They help with leveling. You do not need surgery, persuasion, etc. in the early game, do you?

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In general I only max these skills on the player character:
- trainer: Keep my companions, and less importantly, my troops leveling
- persuasion: Recruit valuable lords more effectively
- surgery: Keep lethal blows down to 1/5 instead of 1/4
- engineering: Take ladder castles practically on the run, and tower ones in six hours
- path-finding: You can never have enough speed

The other skills are just fine on a companion, in my opinion. But for the ones above, they are either not party skills (trainer, persuasion) or the +4 bonus makes a real difference.

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But the above is in general. Floris is different, if only because there are specialist troops that compliment your skills. For example, if you recruit a bunch of monks from a city, and upgrade ten to surgeons, you will get +3 to surgery. Get one more skill point from a book, and as long as you keep those guys alive, you can have maxed surgery at Int 18. There are also troops for Scouting, Trade, Prisoner Management, and probably a bunch more that I do not remember. Bishops for leadership, but I cannot remember how you get those.

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Attacking walled fiefs is the meat of the game. I'm a bit worried about your playing Floris Expanded with a non-combat character without experience with that. It may be a hard thing to learn on the fly, against Tier VII troops.

[VincentVolaju]

Yeah I'm sure itll be difficult, but I figure I'll learn as I go.

How come you take Surgery on your player character, rather than putting it on a "medic" companion who has Surgery, First-aid, and Wound treatment?

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by VincentVolaju:

How come you take Surgery on your player character, rather than putting it on a "medic" companion who has Surgery, First-aid, and Wound treatment?

Because a companion can get Surgery 10, which means that there is a 25% + 10 x 4% chance that a casualty lives. That's a bit less than two men out of three surviving.

When the player has Surgery 10, the effective value is 14, which translates into 81% chance of survival, or a bit more than four out of five men surviving. In Floris, where there are Tier VII units that have taken over 1000 denars to upgrade, that's a huge difference.

You do get the +4 bonus for First Aid and Wound Treatment, but the benefits are not that important in the late game. I still have a dedicated medic (usually two in most mods) because when all medics are taking nap after a bop on the head, people start dying. So I prefer to have spares.

Originally posted by VincentVolaju:

I set up my character to start with 6 Leadership, I figure that will be enough for me not to touch Charisma. The extra prisoners would be nice for money, but I imagine by mid-game I'll own all the land in Praven and maybe Suno as well, so selling bandits for money won't be my main way

Don't bother pupming your Prisoner Management at all. Train manhunters, and if you have a dozen or so, you will get a +1 bonus to Prisoner Management. Have a few dozen and you get +3 (I do not remember exactly how many you need for each bonus)

[VincentVolaju]

I started with 3 Prisoner Managment at character select screen but I don't plan on putting anymore points into it. I just wanted it for the beginning of the game to try and quickly get 10-15k to start investing in land, or a decent set of armor to help in the early game. I don't plan on putting any points at all into Cha.

I don't quite understand what you mean by when the player has 10 Surgery, it is effectively 14. How does that work? And is that for all skills? I mean, suppose I max my Power Strike out at 10, will that also suddenly become 14 or something?

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by VincentVolaju:

I don't quite understand what you mean by when the player has 10 Surgery, it is effectively 14. How does that work? And is that for all skills? I mean, suppose I max my Power Strike out at 10, will that also suddenly become 14 or something?

No. It depends on the skill type. Lemme quote something I post from time to time:

Apart from Training, no skill stacks in most mods. There are exceptions, like Leadership in Viking Conquest, but in 99% of the cases, skills are in one of four types:
- leader skills (only useful on the party leader, i.e. you or a lord leading his warband)
- personal skills (only affect the person who has them)
- party skills (affect the whole party, see how the effective value is derived below)
- training (stacks, as long as the targets are lower level than the trainer)

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Deriving the party skill's effective value:
1) Take the highest relevant skill in the party
2) Add a bonus from the player's skill as follows:
- 0 for 0-1
- 1 for 2-4
- 2 for 5-7
- 3 for 8-9
- 4 for 10

So, for example, if Ymira has tactics 7 and you have Tactics 5, the skill is 9, i.e. 7+2

If you have the highest skill, no one else's skill matters. For example, if you have Tactics 8, the effective party skill is 11, i.e. 8+3, and as long as no companion has higher skill than 8, their Tactics do not matter.

As a consequence, the highest level a party skill can reach is 14, which is when the player has 10, and adds a +4 to it.

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So, is there a point in having multiple companions with the same party skill?

Sometimes it is useful:
- A party member can be temporarily unconscious
- A party member can be on a mission
- A party member can get рissed off, and leave