What's the deal with Prophecy of Pendor? Why is the start so rough?

[Defiant]

It's not really a matter of skill or difficulty when there are faster enemies that will hunt you down and just one of their troops can one shot an entire army of your recruits. I watched one Mystmountain guy take out 21 of my troops, whenever I would ride by him trying to attack he would parry 100% of the time. Then there are the heretics and other factions that constantly hunt you, even factions that sound like they would be good guys want to kill you. All their troops are leagues better than what I have access to; and apart from all of that I managed to run and hide from nearly everything long enough to build up some troops, and now I just can't afford to pay them and I'm going into debt lol... I don't get it, where's the balance? I get 100 denars for killing armies that take out 50% of my troops, how the ♥♥♥♥ do you recover from that? Recruiting mercenaries from taverns seems to be the only viable route to start off.

I was starting to finally feel like I got a hang of things, and now I'm just bankrupt and basically have to start over again, and I don't really think I'm going to bother with PoP at this point because this isn't even a learning curve/difficulty that I can even appreciate, making it so one unit can take out 20-30 of yours isn't hard, it's just stupid, especially when you are fighting/running from them right from the start.

I'm trying to do what some suggested and just be a merchant, but I'm not even making enough to support my troops at this point, and I dont' play Warband to run back and forth from city to city dodging troops that would utterly annihilate me just to make 100 denars.

[Armor/GMan]

The mod isn't for your everyday Mount and Blade player, the mod is supposed to be difficult, thats why people love it.

[Tuidjy]

In any Warband mod, it is best to run with just companions for quite a while, before hiring your first troops. In Pendor, it is not just best, it is a must.

Keep a small party, keep a lot of horses in your inventory so that you can trade, and be very selective about whom you attack. Unless you are really good at combat, do not mess with elite troops.

And finally, remember that Pendor is not for the faint of heart. Unless you can sleepwalk through Native at 135% difficulty, you have no business even playing Pendor. And even if you are really good, there will be still enemies whom you should avoid until you are high level and well equipped. I have beaten Pendor a few times, and every time I had a level 45+ character at the end. There were still enemies whom I would not attack at 1 on 1 odds without a good reason. Not that I could not have won, but the cost would have been prohibitive.

The thing is, though, that while the start is hard, the end is sweet. Few mods let you get such insane equipment, overpowered custom troops, and humongous income.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Green Gainticorn:

The mod isn't for your everyday Mount and Blade player, the mod is supposed to be difficult, thats why people love it.

Totally, and I feel like it could be interesting, but I'm just hung up on how random the troops are, and how the "difficulty" is more or less just learning who to run from etc.

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

In any Warband mod, it is best to run with just companions for quite a while, before hiring your first troops. In Pendor, it is not just best, it is a must.

Keep a small party, keep a lot of horses in your inventory so that you can trade, and be very selective about whom you attack. Unless you are really good at combat, do not mess with elite troops.

And finally, remember that Pendor is not for the faint of heart. Unless you can sleepwalk through Native at 135% difficulty, you have no business even playing Pendor. And even if you are really good, there will be still enemies whom you should avoid until you are high level and well equipped. I have beaten Pendor a few times, and every time I had a level 45+ character at the end. There were still enemies whom I would not attack at 1 on 1 odds without a good reason. Not that I could not have won, but the cost would have been prohibitive.

The thing is, though, that while the start is hard, the end is sweet. Few mods let you get such insane equipment, overpowered custom troops, and humongous income.

I don't get the running with just companions comment, they cost a fortune in PoP from what I've seen. I got to the point where I had this one Elvish looking guy on my team, he cost 6000 up front and was more than 300/week salary. He's probably one of the reasons I went bankrupt lol.

I haven't seen many other followers, the ones I've seen cost at minimum 3000 gold.

So am I supposed to just play trader/merchant for 100 days game time before I start fighting, lol? Again that doesn't seem difficult to me, just seems tedious.

I'm not the most experienced player, I've played about 60 hours I'd guess and it was one play through of Native, so I could know more, but I'd say that for my first play through I was pretty successful. Not playing at 135% difficulty either though, so there's that.

It's hard to play native knowing there are so many cool mods though, because while I enjoy the core game, it is sort of shallow, and again just knowing there are mods that change and add to the game is a bit of a buzzkill.

Would Floris Extended maybe be a better choice for me for now? I liked the custom map for PoP though and all the new factions and stuff, just feel like everything is out to get me lol.

[eye81]

i didnt think it was that that hard. i mean a few of the unique spawns are absolute chaos and will slaughter you ven on the easiest difficulty but early game as long as you stay away from elite troops you can level up yourself and a sizeable army pretty easily. I definitely recomend the ravenstern troops and bandits for early game

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by Never:

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

In any Warband mod, it is best to run with just companions for quite a while, before hiring your first troops. In Pendor, it is not just best, it is a must.

I don't get the running with just companions comment, they cost a fortune in PoP from what I've seen. I got to the point where I had this one Elvish looking guy on my team, he cost 6000 up front and was more than 300/week salary. He's probably one of the reasons I went bankrupt lol.

I haven't seen many other followers, the ones I've seen cost at minimum 3000 gold.

So am I supposed to just play trader/merchant for 100 days game time before I start fighting, lol? Again that doesn't seem difficult to me, just seems tedious.

No one says that you will be only trading. The point of using only companions is that you will be super mobile, and that you will be leveling up quickly, getting to know the mod, and improving your relations with minor factions.

Right now, you have no idea what you are doing. You do not know which troops are completely impossible for you to handle, thus, as soon as you build an army, you will lose it to an enemy you do not recognize as a threat. With a small, mobile group, you can avoid battles you cannot win, and join when two groups are fighting, for a chance to see who is what, and improve relations.

Also, while some companions are very high level, others are low level, and have incredible potential. That elf guy? Two of your companions will have better stats for horse archery once they level up a bit.

So, if you want to play the mod, you should either read up on it, which I find boring and cheaty, or you should build a mean and lean party, and explore. Listen to rumors, join battles, if only as a spectator, browse the stores to get an idea of the equipment, and watch troops in action.

A player who knows the mod does not have to waste even one game day before he gathers some cash in the arena for a good ranged weapon, hires a few adventurers, and goes hunting for soft and valuable targets. But you do not know which targets are soft, and which enemies can be hard as rock.

If you want to play Pendor, you will have to learn a lot. That's the way the mod is.

-----

As for Floris Expanded, it is a good first step toward getting ready to tackle Pendor. It will introduce you to high level troops who can put an arrow through your helm's visor from across the map. Nothing close to an elven (Noldor) noble or a demon spawn in Pendor, but still, a rude awakening after Native.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Originally posted by Never:

I don't get the running with just companions comment, they cost a fortune in PoP from what I've seen. I got to the point where I had this one Elvish looking guy on my team, he cost 6000 up front and was more than 300/week salary. He's probably one of the reasons I went bankrupt lol.

I haven't seen many other followers, the ones I've seen cost at minimum 3000 gold.

So am I supposed to just play trader/merchant for 100 days game time before I start fighting, lol? Again that doesn't seem difficult to me, just seems tedious.

No one says that you will be only trading. The point of using only companions is that you will be super mobile, and that you will be leveling up quickly, getting to know the mod, and improving your relations with minor factions.

Right now, you have no idea what you are doing. You do not know which troops are completely impossible for you to handle, thus, as soon as you build an army, you will lose it to an enemy you do not recognize as a threat. With a small, mobile group, you can avoid battles you cannot win, and join when two groups are fighting, for a chance to see who is what, and improve relations.

Also, while some companions are very high level, others are low level, and have incredible potential. That elf guy? Two of your companions will have better stats for horse archery once they level up a bit.

So, if you want to play the mod, you should either read up on it, which I find boring and cheaty, or you should build a mean and lean party, and explore. Listen to rumors, join battles, if only as a spectator, browse the stores to get an idea of the equipment, and watch troops in action.

A player who knows the mod does not have to waste even one game day before he gathers some cash in the arena for a good ranged weapon, hires a few adventurers, and goes hunting for soft and valuable targets. But you do not know which targets are soft, and which enemies can be hard as rock.

If you want to play Pendor, you will have to learn a lot. That's the way the mod is.

-----

As for Floris Expanded, it is a good first step toward getting ready to tackle Pendor. It will introduce you to high level troops who can put an arrow through your helm's visor from across the map. Nothing close to an elven (Noldor) noble or a demon spawn in Pendor, but still, a rude awakening after Native.

My bit about trading first was in regards to hiring companions, most of the time I get money for finishing quests, but it's hard to finish quests solo, and I was more or less trying to say that I can't just hire companions with no money etc etc. I'd have to do a buttload of trading before I could afford a companion.

I don't even think I had access to arenas either, I went to the arena asked where matches were being held, went to that place, no tournament being held, talk to the NPC in that city where it is supposed to be taking place and it says it's supposed to be taking place there, so I wait around thinking it won't start until tomorrow, never starts, so I talk to the arena guy again and he simply doesn't list that city anymore. No more tournament. I'm thinking there's a base amount of renown required to enter the tournament?

I started a game on Floris and I'm missing Pendor already, lol, but ya, not sure what to do. I don't mind learning, I like learning, but ya I was just getting one shot constantly, and if I forgot to save... Super frustrating.

[ULTRA]

Solution: High strength

[Taiji]

Pendor is awesome. Best free single player mod I've found.

The arena pays well, like 2k for winning. Tournaments require 150 renown. Just do arena to get some levels and cash.

You can notice some issues with the AI in the arena. Like falling for feints almost all the time. And 2h sword or staff guys will usually block if you chamber a move but only until they get to a certain range. So you can chamber a strike and walk up to them and release it the moment they stop blocking. Hope that's not too much of a spoiler :P

You can wander around trying to find the cheap companions. Stuff won't catch you if you're by yourself. I picked up Julia, Ansen and Leslie, cos they have no issues with each other... Yeah OK, I cheated and read this: http://pop3.wikia.com/wiki/Companions

Then I went and fought whoever noldor is fighting... by making them follow me and then dragging them onto enemies they can handle. If you're beginning to think I'm a pretty lame player... You're right - Imagine my horror when I realised at around day 200 that I had forgotten to turn damage down on my troops!

[ULTRA]

Yea, the arena is pretty much just Native but you can bet up to 500 denars each round, so you can get a 19,900 denar reward. The AI is the same as in Native as far as I can tell. Julia, Ansen, and Leslie are also free in addition to having no problems with each other (which is important because like some mods, the other companions cost a billion denars).

If you have a lot of strength and win a couple of those tournaments big time, you can actually get your defense up even higher than you might in Native. Max in Native is what, 61-74-61? Somewhere around there. I believe you can add about 10-20 to that in Pendor.

[.//magnus]

lolnoob

gitgud

[76109108007942031]

Let me put it this way: I play it with AI set to poor and damage set to the lowest it can go and I still get my butt handed to me. It's like the Dark Souls of Warband, heck I'd say it's harder than Dark Souls.

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Nihil:

lolnoob

gitgud

Originally posted by Taiji:

Pendor is awesome. Best free single player mod I've found.

The arena pays well, like 2k for winning. Tournaments require 150 renown. Just do arena to get some levels and cash.

You can notice some issues with the AI in the arena. Like falling for feints almost all the time. And 2h sword or staff guys will usually block if you chamber a move but only until they get to a certain range. So you can chamber a strike and walk up to them and release it the moment they stop blocking. Hope that's not too much of a spoiler :P

You can wander around trying to find the cheap companions. Stuff won't catch you if you're by yourself. I picked up Julia, Ansen and Leslie, cos they have no issues with each other... Yeah OK, I cheated and read this: http://pop3.wikia.com/wiki/Companions

Then I went and fought whoever noldor is fighting... by making them follow me and then dragging them onto enemies they can handle. If you're beginning to think I'm a pretty lame player... You're right - Imagine my horror when I realised at around day 200 that I had forgotten to turn damage down on my troops!

I'm just playing Floris for now, trying to get better at the game before I leap into PoP again. It'll happen though. Thanks for the companion link, the other one I found led to a dead website.

Originally posted by Nihil:

lolnoob

gitgud

yeh pretty much

[Defiant]

Originally posted by Taiji:

Pendor is awesome. Best free single player mod I've found.

The arena pays well, like 2k for winning. Tournaments require 150 renown. Just do arena to get some levels and cash.

You can notice some issues with the AI in the arena. Like falling for feints almost all the time. And 2h sword or staff guys will usually block if you chamber a move but only until they get to a certain range. So you can chamber a strike and walk up to them and release it the moment they stop blocking. Hope that's not too much of a spoiler :P

You can wander around trying to find the cheap companions. Stuff won't catch you if you're by yourself. I picked up Julia, Ansen and Leslie, cos they have no issues with each other... Yeah OK, I cheated and read this: http://pop3.wikia.com/wiki/Companions

Then I went and fought whoever noldor is fighting... by making them follow me and then dragging them onto enemies they can handle. If you're beginning to think I'm a pretty lame player... You're right - Imagine my horror when I realised at around day 200 that I had forgotten to turn damage down on my troops!

How did you go about earning renown until the tournaments? Killing small groups of bandits etc?

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by Never:

How did you go about earning renown until the tournaments? Killing small groups of bandits etc?

Nope. Large ones, as long as they are weak on ranged weapons. There are also some bandits with very underpowered bows, who cannot really do much to a character who has used arena (not tournament) money to equip himself well.

[Defiant]

OK so I'm at about day 25 now, have four dye weavery producers bought, a few companions with me and ya things are going a lot better this play through. I haven't tried the actual arenas I'll check that out.