Perks, Perk Trees / Anti-Cowardice Guide

This guide well help you decide which perks are good and which perks are the worst designed things in the entire game.

Intro (PG-13 - swearing, etc.)

Hello I am Sethja

Let me start with a PG-13 warning. I use mean guy words in this guide.

This guide is essentially me guiding you through the bad perks that are in Bannerlord. Not every perk is terrible, but there are many tiers of perks where there is either an obvious choice or no decent choice at all.

DISCLAIMER: Some perks may be out-of-date. I updated it recently but there could be discrepancies.

Taleworlds (TW) really should have done a better job developing these. It feels like interns put little sticky notes in an idea box and they used those for perks.

This guide is relevant only to Bannerlord vanilla singleplayer and focuses on the good, mediocre, and s𝗵𝗶tty perks available in the character skill tree.

Why read my guide? I have extensive and purposeful hours in the original M&B, Warband, and F&S. I have significant hours in Warband multiplayer and its mods and DLCs. I also used to s𝚑𝚒tpost on FSE so I'm essentially an honored veteran.

I am completely open to constructive criticism and my opinions can change if I'm presented with good evidence. I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong by how you play the game. Just give good points and I will gladly change my stance.

Labelling, Preface, Game Settings

If you're here for a TL;DR on what perks to pick, look for the icons before perk names. Here is a label guide:

• ★★ Objectively best choice. Generally good results. Always pick.
  
• ☆ Subjectively best choice. Your choice, but my favorite.
  
• 💩 Perk is terrible and shouldn't be in the game or needs serious rework. Never take this perk. Sometimes both perks are terrible :) you have no choice but to choose something that sucks.
  
• If neither is marked, it's player's choice.

I will give a brief summary (final verdict) of every perk choice.

I am not going to review any of the governor perks. If you want to kit out an NPC for governing, that's on you. This is all about player-character perk building and governor perks do nothing for the player character. However, I will add; there are too many perk tiers where one perk has exclusive governor benefits.

I play on the hardest difficulties minus recruitment which I put one difficulty easier.

I will not be covering the final perk of every perk tree unless I have specific thoughts. Most of them are just continued overpowering to your already super high skill level.

I refer to Taleworlds multiple times in this guide by writing TW.

One Handed (p.1)

Fortunately for us, the first few perk sets aren't so bad. The nice part about the weapon skills is that the base skill is so beneficial (extra speed + damage) you don't outright benefit or lose from the perks. That being said:

1 - Basher & Deflect

Basher

• +50% shield bash damage and stun time
  
• -4% damage to troops in "shield wall" formation

Shield bashing is a meme. It's not reliable for efficiently killing swarms of enemy AI. You should almost never be shield bashing. The -4% damage for troops is lackluster because it locks the tiny damage modifier to a single formation type.

★★ Deflect

• +20% one-handed weapon handling
  
• +30 one-handed skill for troops

Weapon handling is good. You want good handling on all weapons. +30 level for troops is essentially raising them by a tier. It's a great solid perk.

Final verdict: Deflect is much better than Basher. Go Deflect. If you HEAVILY use "shield wall" Basher could possibly be viable, but you shouldn't be that way.

2 - Swift Strike & To Be Blunt

Swift Strike

• +2% swing speed with one-handed weapons.

The base swing speed is 0.93. This increases that swing speed by 0.02. You can guess about how much benefit that gives.

To Be Blunt

• +5% damage on axes and maces.

5% damage is still a pretty low amount but better than a tiny flat swing speed bonus.

Final verdict: If you're an axe or mace user To Be Blunt is clearly better than Swift Strike. If you're like me and only like swords, go Swift Strike.

3 - Cavalry & Shield Bearer

☆ Cavalry

• +5% weapon damage while mounted.
  
• +5% melee damage to cavalry troops in your formation.

I think that one-handed weapons on horseback are s𝚑𝚒t. There are a handful that are long enough to actually hit troops on the ground, but most of them are so flaccid and small (my wife knew a lot about this) you can't hit anything. I like polearms for swiping through enemies if I'm choosing to fight melee on horse.

5% damage isn't a lot, but it's not a bad boost for tier 3.

Shield Bearer

• Wielding (not equipping) a shield no longer encumbers you by 1.5x the shield's weight.
  
• Troops in your formation are 3% faster.

This is a recurring theme through this guide, but movement speed % bonuses are 𝚊𝚜s. The % difference means nothing in both field and siege battles. I don't think the shield perk is horrible but it's underwhelming.

Final verdict: I guess if you love using sword+board you should go Shield Bearer, but Cavalry is a better perk. Not by much though, both of these perks are just above the 💩 line.

4 - Duelist & Trainer

Duelist

• +20% damage one-handed when no shield is equipped.
  
• +200% renown gain (double) in tournaments.

20% damage is a margin that isn't insignificant if you plan on going one-handed without a shield. Most applicable would be if you're one-hand cavalry.

Renown gain is OK. If you specialize in one-handed early it can help you to get your clan level up quicker. But I also think doing tournaments is a massive time waste once you have better renown-farming options.

Trainer

• +2 hit points.
  
• +5% XP per battle to melee troops.

+2 hit points is ass. Your default is 100 hit points. The extra hit points from this will save you from a peasant throwing a rock at you and unironically nothing else.

+5% XP is YMMV. If you are heavy on melee troops it's probably decent.

Final verdict: Both options are user choice. Just don't take Trainer for a health boost.

5 - Arrow Catcher & Shieldwall

💩 Arrow Catcher

• Larger shield protection area (+0.01)
  
• Larger troop shield protection area (+0.01)

The default for this is apparently 0.3 of base body size. So that means this perk is increasing it to 0.31. Wow.

I'll be honest, I have never had a projectile hit me in bannerlord if I have my shield up correctly. Maybe if you are really bad and block left and face your character right you will get hit by s𝚑𝚒t. Just don't do that.

💩 Shieldwall

• -20% damage from blocking the wrong direction with your shield.
  
• Larger troop shield protection area (+0.01) when they are in "Shield Wall" formation

Someone at TW really liked the shield wall concept, huh? Too bad it's not very good 😭. Okay so the -20% damage sounds good on paper but if you just block correctly with a shield you will never get the benefit from this perk. How often have you actually had your shield destroyed? I can think of maybe one or two times I lost my shield, and in both cases having the shield would not have changed the outcome of the fight.

Final verdict: Both perks are 𝚊𝚜s. I suppose I would still take Arrow Catcher.

One Handed (p.2)

6 - Corps-a-Corps & Military Tradition

☆ Corps-a-corps

• +10% XP earned after battles for your infantry.

This isn't bad. Especially if paired with the previous 5% you start to get good returns on multiplied infantry XP.

Military Tradition

• +2 XP per day to infantry troops.

Compared to Corps-a-Corps this is the more "passive" option for XP gain. I think it's underwhelming, especially for tier 6. It's helpful for getting tier 1 troops out of their s𝚑𝚒t combat values. For being so far up the perk list it should be more than 2/day.

Final verdict: Corps-a-corps is better in my eyes because battles are always better for quickly leveling troops than sitting around. However, when merged with every other +# XP perks, Military Tradition could be interesting?

7 - Lead By Example and Stand United

★★ Lead By Example

• +5% XP to all troops in your party.
  
• +5 Starting Battle Morale for troops in your party.

+5% XP to your troops is OK. +5 morale is decent since morale is super important, but keep in mind it's not enough to really change most battles. If you're going to win or lose it's not going to be from that amount of morale.

💩 Stand United

• +8 party morale if outnumbered.

This perk is 𝚊𝚜s. You're getting +3 party morale compared to Lead By Example and only in bad situations, otherwise missing out on 5 morale. Come on.

Final verdict: Stand United is s𝚑𝚒t, 100% Lead By Example.

8 - Fleet of Foot & Steel Core Shields

💩 Fleet of Foot

• +4% movement speed for you.
  
• +4% movement speed for your infantry troops.

Movement speed bonuses are 𝚊𝚜s. Even if you want fast infantry, this will save you mere seconds on the most massive maps. The player's movement speed levels through high agility.

★★ Steel Core Shields

• -10% damage to your shield(s) [why would you equip 2?]
  
• -10% damage to your infantry troops' shields.

Okay, maybe I don't fight the nords enough, but I rarely see my troops' shields break. If they do, I don't care. I never lose my own shield if I'm using one. This perk actually does SOMETHING for combat unlike Fleet of Foot.

Final verdict: Steel Core Shields is better.

9 - Deadly Purpose & Unwavering Defense

Deadly Purpose

• +5% one-handed weapon damage.
  
• +10% melee damage for infantry troops.

The %s look good on first glance but think about the numbers here. If your infantry troops are doing 40/swing (very common when they're facehugging the enemy) this adds just 4 damage. For you, your damage multiplier is better affected by your attributes and one-handed skill. This perk isn't terrible but it's not noticeably effective.

★★ Unwavering Defense

• +5 hit points.
  
• +10 hit points to infantry troops in your party.

Unlike "Trainer" which sucks, +10 hit points is actually decent. +5 hit points to the player character is a "whatever", but giving all of your infantry an extra +10 HP to help tank random arrows or glancing blows can be effective. Consider this; compared to Deadly Purpose, tanking 10 damage is a lot more feasible than dishing out 10 extra damage from +10% damage bonus.

Final verdict: Unwavering Defense is better for the infantry in your party than Deadly Purpose is. Simple as.

10 - Crack in the Armor & Prestige

Crack in the Armor

• Your one-handed attacks ignore 10% of enemy armor.
  
• Infantry troops are 20% cheaper to recruit.

10% armor ignore is passable, especially for slashing one-handed weapons since armor is most effective against slash-weapons. However, 20% cheaper recruiting is bad for this being a tier 10 perk. By the time you have this much one-handed skill you should be running a massive party and holding a s𝚑𝚒tload of denars.

Prestige

• 50% more damage against shields when using one-handed weapons.
  
• +15 party limit.

Party limit is king stuff. Pretty questionable on shield damage. If you want to break shields you'll be better off using a two-handed axe or hammer.

Final verdict: Player choice. 15 party limit is significant, but armor pen is always pretty good.

Two Handed (p.1)

Same as one-handed; two-handed weapon skill is good, so perks can't drag it down.

1 - Strong Grip & Wood Chopper

★★ Strong Grip

• +10% handling on two-handed weapons.
  
• +30 two-handed skill to troops in your formation.

As with one-handed, having extra handling on two-handed weapons is great. +30 two-handed skill to troops is good, essentially raising their tier by 1 with weapons.

Wood Chopper

• +30% two-handed damage vs. shields
  
• +15% two-handed damage vs. shields by troops in your formation

As with one-handed, I'm going to argue that shield destruction is a bad skill compared to flat damage. I don't find my troops destroying shields often and if they do the enemy is so swarmed they would lose whether their shields were there or not. The only best-use for this is if you stack shield-bashing damage across all perk trees.

Final verdict: Strong Grip is objectively the best here unless you want to try to heavily stack bonus % damage to shields across all perks.

2 - Head Basher & On The Edge

☆ Head Basher

• +10% damage with two-handed axes and maces.
  
• +2% damage to infantry troops in your formation.

Similar to the one-handed perks, the damage here for you is only good if you use axes and maces. +2% damage to your troops is essentially non-existent.

On The Edge

• +3% swing speed with two-handed weapons.
  
• +2% swing speed with two-handed weapons to infantry troops in your formation.

Both of these percentage ratios are so tiny you will hardly feel them. Again, consider the base swing speed is increased by a meager 0.03.

Final verdict: Head Basher is good but only if you use the correct weaponry. On the Edge isn't technically 💩-tier because it technically makes your troops better, but it's still pretty bad. At least passable for tier 2.

3 - Baptized In Blood & Show of Strength

☆ Baptized In Blood

• +5 experience (flat) to infantry in your party when you get a two-handed kill.
  
• +5% extra XP to melee troops in your formation for battles.

The flat 5 experience is hardly felt, but similar to the one-handed equivalent perk, 5% extra XP per battle to troops is decent. Stacking it with other perk trees can make it better.

Show of Strength

• +30% knock down against enemies.
  
• -20% recruitment cost to infantry troops.

Knock-down can only be done with weapons that are actually able to knock-down enemies, so this is just a bonus for what is already a % chance. Stacked recruitment cost can be OK, and at just tier 3 a 20% decrease isn't bad.

Final verdict: Baptized in Blood is better through all phases of the game past very early. Show of Strength can save you some recruitment money.

4 - Beast Slayer & Shield Breaker

☆ Beast Slayer

• +50% damage with two-handed weapons against mounts.
  
• +10% damage to mounts for infantry in your formation.

This is a solid perk. Most two-handed weapons will already do good damage against mounts. Having more damage is nice since horses are so f𝚞𝚌king tanky and your infantry will get swarmed by them.

Shield Breaker

• +40% damage to shields with two-handed weapons.
  
• +10% damage to shields for infantry in your formation.

I've mentioned before and will continue mentioning, I think trying to bash through shields is asking for failure in most cases. The 10% given to your formation is negligible. The 40% given to you should be avoided if you're simply hitting around shields like is often doable. If you literally only siege then Shield Breaker is better I suppose.

Final verdict: Beast Slayer all the way unless you want to heavily meme additional shield damage across your formation.

5 - Berserker & Confidence

☆ Berserker

• +20% damage with two-handed weapons when below 50% health.

This skill would be better if the damage scaled when below 50% health. So it goes.

Confidence

• +15% damage with two-handed weapons when above 90% health.

When you're in melee you often get randomly nicked by some random damage that sets you below 90% health. Keep in mind on default health that's just 10 damage.

Final verdict: Both of these perks are annoying to gauge usefulness, but I think Berserker is better. It's much more likely you're going to lose Confidence's bonus by randomly getting hit by an attack.

Two Handed (p.2)

6 - Projectile Deflection (no alternate choice)

💩 Arrow Deflection

• You can deflect projectiles with two-handed swords by blocking.

For one, if you're using a two-handed weapon and getting shot at, you should be wiggling and running into killing range. For two, this skill only works for swords (per the writing).

Final Verdict: A𝚜s. Skill issue perk. Just don't put yourself in a situation to be shot when using a two-handed weapon. Too bad there isn't another perk to pick instead of this one.

7 - Hope & Terror

☆ Hope

• Kills with two-handed weapons have 30% higher AOE morale boost on friendly troops.
  
• +5 party limit.

I can't accurately measure how effective the AOE morale bonus is for friendly troops, but any benefit to morale is decent for battle. But also, oh yeah give me more party limit baby.

Terror

• Kills with two-handed weapons have 20% higher AOE morale hit on enemy troops.
  
• +10 prisoner limit.

I couldn't say exactly how much the 20% higher hit is compared to the boost in "Hope". I also think that party limit is better used than the prisoner limit here.

Final Verdict: The party limit bonus in Hope is nice and presumably the 30% bonus is more beneficial than the 20% from Terror. That being said, take your pick.

8 - Reckless Charge & Thick Hides

Reckless Charge

• +20% speed damage bonus on foot.
  
• +2% move speed and +2% damage to all infantry in your formation.

Speed damage is best mounted, so on foot hardly means s𝚑𝚒t. The tiny baby percentages for your troops is weak for a tier 8 perk.

☆ Thick Hides

• +5 hit points.
  
• +5 hit points to troops in formation.

It'd be nice to get more out of this, but it affects your formation better than Reckless Charge. Underwhelming for working your 𝚊𝚜s off leveling two-handed, but it's giving something.

Final Verdict: Thick Hides is best, Reckless Charge is underperforming.

9 - Blade Master & Vandal

Blade master

• +10% two-handed weapon damage.
  
• +2% attack speed to infantry troops in formation.

If you plan to only use two-handed weapons the extra percentage damage can be better than ignoring armor depending on your weapon and specs. The 2% speed to troops is negligible and terrible for a tier 9 perk.

☆ Vandal

• Attacks (all weapons, presumably?) ignore 25% of armor.
  
• +20% damage to destructible objects for troops in your formation.

Ignoring 25% armor with all weapons makes this a decent synergy tool and does increase damage by a measurable amount. However, +20% damage to objects for troops is awkward and bad. Will that really affect a siege?

Final Verdict: I prefer Vandal to cut through heavy armor troops, but the best two-handed weapons can sometimes get ludicrously high damage counts with percentage boosts.

Polearm (p.1)

Continuing the melee weapons trend, the skill for Polearms makes up for any grievance with perks.

1 - Cavalry & Pikeman

Cavalry

• +2% damage with polearms while mounted.
  
• +2% melee damage for cavalry in your formation.

Negligible damage for both you and your troops. As the first perk (essentially free) that's acceptable.

Pikeman

• +2% damage with polearms (dismounted)
  
• +2% damage to infantry in your formation.

Negligible damage for both you and your troops. As the first perk (essentially free) that's acceptable.

Final verdict: Player choice. The realistic expectation of bonus damage on these is mostly intangible.

2 - Braced & Keep At Bay

★★ Braced

• 15% dismount resistance ignored with polearms that can dismount.
  
• +10% damage against cavalry to infantry troops in your formation.

Dismounting enemies is cash money. If you're not shooting them off their horses this is the next best thing. Infantry troops tend to get chopped up by enemy cavalry, so giving them help is nice.

💩 Keep At Bay

• 25% knock back resistance ignored with polearms that can knock back.

If you're fighting enemies in attempts to push them back with polearms you're doing it wrong -- go for the kills to the head or slash their backs as they fight your infantry.

Final verdict: Additional damage and dismount chance with Braced is better than Keep At Bay.

3 - Clean Thrust & Swift Swing

★★ Clean Thrust

• +10% thrust damage to polearms.
  
• +30 polearms skill to infantry troops in your formation.

Even if you don't use thrust polearms, the polearms skill your troops get is beneficial similar to 1HW and 2HW perks of the same type.

Swift Swing

• +5% swing speed with polearms.
  
• +2% swing speed to infantry in your formation (any weapon).

Handling is more important for polearms, but at least we're done with the 2% stuff. If you don't care about your formation's benefit, the 5% can mean something for you.

Final verdict: Clean Thrust all the way for a better overall party. The 5% swing speed is negligible to a skill tree you're already leveling naturally.

4 - Footwork & Hard Knock

💩 Footwork

• +2% movement speed with polearms.
  
• +2% movement speed to infantry troops in your formation.

This is horrible. The 2% lets you get from one edge of the entire battle map to the other on foot between 2 and 5 seconds faster.

★★ Hard Knock

• +25% knock down potential for polearms that can knock enemies down.
  
• +3 HP to infantry troops in your formation.

Knock down is better than knock back so it gets less hate from me. +3 HP isn't a lot, but across an entire formation can benefit something.

Final verdict: Footwork is sewage. Go Hard Knock.

5 - Lancer & Steed Killer

Lancer

• +20% speed damage bonus with polearms while mounted.
  
• +30% speed damage bonus to troops with polearms in formation.

Speed damage bonus is already big so the 20% boost will multiply for extra damage. Because the speed bonus to your formation is all-encompassing, it's better than the previous perk which only gave it to foot troops.

☆ Steed Killer

• +70% damage against mounts with polearms.
  
• +30% damage against mounts with polearms to infantry troops in your formation.

Extra damage to mounts is great because you already kick their ass both mounted and dismounted. 30% extra damage from infantry is very good for protecting against heavy cavalry which will f𝚞𝚌k up your silly little army.

Final verdict: Steed Killer is preferable for making your troops better. Lancer is if you want to make your own damage scale better on horseback (or if you want a large cavalry army). Your choice, but I like Steed Killer more.

Polearm (p.2)

6 - Guards & Skewer

Guards

• +50% damage with polearms when hitting the head.

Depends on your build. If you're trying to go poleaxe-over-infantry-heads this might be better. I tend to use the flanks and swing sideways, and most polearms will oneshot enemies to the head anyway.

Skewer

• +30% (up from 5%) chance to remain couched after a couch-kill.

I think the idea behind this is getting that perfect crossbow-line annihilation as you couch through all of them with good RNG. I don't like this in preference to Guards because Guards is always active where this is niche to just couching and still relies on RNG.

Final verdict: Whether you intend to use it specifically or not, Guards is more consistent than Skewer. Skewer can potentially give you a lot of kills in rapid timing.

7 - Phalanx & Standard Bearer

Phalanx

• +30 to weapon skills when infantry are in shield wall.
  
• +3% polearm damage to troops in your formation.

+30 to weapon skills is no joke, and from my understanding this affects all melee troops. The only problem is using shield wall formation to get the bonus out of it.

Standard Bearer

• -20% morale loss to friendly troops.

This sounds decently strong but I don't have definitive evidence of how good it is. My pessimist thought is that the real use of this would be for getting a couple extra kills in an already lost battle. That being said, morale bonuses are rare to come by, so this has extra value.

Final verdict: Both are acceptable. Phalanx is much more micro-managey, so if you're a delegated commander go with Standard Bearer.

8 - Drills & Generous Rations

💩💩 Drills

• +1 daily XP to all troops in your formation.

Yup it's really this bad folks. Initially I decided not to tell you why it's bad, but if you need context just look at your troops. Can you tell me which ones would benefit from 1 XP per day? Oh, what's that? You need 500 days for any of them to level up? Hmm... Interesting.

★★ Generous Rations

• +5 HP to troops in your party.
  
• -20% recruitment costs for infantry troops.

If you can stack the -20% with other reducing bonuses it's OK, but this comes pretty late in the list. +5HP to all troops in your party is solid, especially compared to dogs𝚑𝚒t Drills.

Final verdict: If you pick Drills you should uninstall your game. Go Generous Rations.

9 - Sure Footed & Unstoppable Force

★★ Sure Footed

• -40% charge damage taken.
  
• -30% mount charge damage taken by all troops in your formation.

Mount charge does a s𝚑𝚒tload of damage to you if you are on foot. That being said don't get hit bro teehee. Better here is the -30% damage to your troops, which will be hit by horses often once cavalry gets to them.

💩 Unstoppable Force

• Triple damage against shields with couched lance.
  
• +30% speed damage with polearms to cavalry troops in your formation.

I know what you're thinking. "But bro, 30% speed damage"! It's almost always unnecessary for your cavalry troops. Their speed bonus and weaponry will already bring them to killing most troops to the highest tiers. The extra damage you get against shields is almost a joke unless you spend the entire battle couching into anything that can be couched. Couch enemies you can kill, not shields looking your way.

Final verdict: I guess if you manage a 100% cavalry army, best would be Unstoppable Force. Go for Sure Footed, it's better for a more average party to gain benefits.

10 - Counterweight & Sharpen The Tip

★★ Counterweight

• +15% handling to swingable polearms.
  
• +20 polearm skill to infantry troops in your formation.

Handling is the most important skill for the largest polearms for speed. You can make hilarious long polearms in smithing to discover this -- the swinging is essentially slow motion. The additional skill to infantry troops is icing on the cake of an already solid personal skill.

💩 Sharpen The Tip

• +5% polearm thrust damage.
  
• +5% thrust damage to infantry troops in your formation.

Extremely low bonus damage to a bad attack type. If you're thrusting on foot I suggest you stop doing that, and thrusting on horse usually leads to kills because of speed. Infantry troops with stabbing polearms are generally way worse than infantry troops with swinging polearms.

Final verdict: Counterweight is much better because thrusting attacks are bad in general for AI.

Bow (p.1)

Oh yeah baby everyone's (and TW's) favorite ranged combat specialist. Bow as a skill is insane and will allow you to kill entire armies, but some of the perks... well, you'll see.

1 - Bow Control & Dead Aim

Bow Control

• +30% accuracy with bows while moving.
  
• +5% damage to troops in your formation with bows.

On foot this is 𝚊𝚜s. I think the 30% works on horseback, so if you plan on being a full-speed horse archer (usually not necessary) you could go with it. But the 5% troop damage is negligible and on foot the 30% accuracy bonus is worthless if you are correctly using a bow.

★★ Dead Aim

• +30% headshot bonus with bows.
  
• +20 archery skill to bow-equipped troops.

As with the melee weapons, weapon skill is great for party troops because it increases all skills to do with the weapon. Bows are very easy to rapidly headshot with later in the game, so the 30% bonus is solid for heavily armored targets or hitting infantry off walls.

Final verdict: For both the player and the party, Dead Aim is preferable. For the horse-archer solo-only build, Bow Control is acceptable.

2 - Bodkin & Nocking Point

☆ Bodkin

• Bow attacks ignore 10% of enemy armor.
  
• Bow troops ignore 5% of enemy armor.

Pierce is already the most effective damage against armor, so this is less effective than other weapon types, but it will still increase your damage.

💩 Nocking Point

• -50% movement speed penalty during bow reloading.
  
• +3% movement speed to bow troops in your formation.

As with all perks previous and future, tiny movement speed percentages to your troops means nothing. Going to again remind you that even a +10% movement bonus would only save SECONDS moving across the largest battle maps in Bannerlord. In the same way, a movement speed penalty that is already hardly felt isn't useful.

Final verdict: Bodkin gives you solid additional damage. Nocking Point is just terrible.

3 - Quick Adjustments & Rapid Fire

💩 Quick Adjustments

• -50% accuracy loss during rotation.
  
• +5% accuracy to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

If you're shooting correctly with bow, you find your target and charge to fire in sequence. If you're spending long amounts of time aiming, you need to identify targets quicker. Accuracy bonus to your troops is negligible when party archery is generally quantity>quality.

★★ Rapid Fire

• +25% bow reload speed.
  
• +5% reload speed to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

Very solid perk. 25% reload speed on player is good and reload speed makes your bowmen more lethal. Even the most accurate bowmen are better in massive numbers, and in Bannerlord quantity is king for ranged kills.

Final verdict: Rapid Fire all the way. Quick Adjustments is the "skill issue" perk, while Rapid Fire benefits both you and your troops.

4 - Merry Men & Mounted Archery

Merry Men

• +5 party size.

Party size is always king s𝚑𝚒t. But why did TW not give this perk anything directly for the bow?

☆ Mounted Archery

• -30% bow accuracy penalty while on horseback.

Obviously specialized for horse archer build but not 100% necessary with correct positioning in field battles. Definitely makes life easier.

Final verdict: Player choice, but horse archery feels better with Mounted Archery.

5 - Strong Bows & Trainer

★★ Strong Bows

• +8% damage with bows.
  
• +5% damage with bows to Tier 3+ troops in your formation.

8% damage can at least help somewhat with high damage rolls against super-armored enemies. The +5% to your Tier 3+ troops (they're the only ranged troops that will be killing anything anyway) is something.

Trainer

• +6 XP per day to lowest bow-skill hero in party.
  
• +3 XP per day to bow-equipped troops.

For stacking XP purposes this perk is alright compared to the others, but go look at the troop trees and realize how many days you would need to get even a single level in most cases.

Final verdict: Strong Bows is mediocre but acceptable. Trainer is a passive teacher but XP counts required for levels are so high it's not all that good.

Bow (p.2)

6 - Discipline & Hunter Clan

💩 Discipline

• +50% time until bow accuracy is lost.

As previously, bow firing should have a rhythm which means you are never "waiting" to fire on a target. If you get to the default accuracy loss point, you are aiming for too long.

💩 Hunter Clan

• +30% bow damage to mounts.

It takes like 500,000 (I tested this extensively) arrows to kill an armored horse in Bannerlord. Just shoot the rider in every case.

Final verdict: Pick your poison. I guess mount damage is better, but both perks are very disappointing for tier 6.

7 - Eagle Eye & Skirmish Phase Master

Eagle Eye

• +50% zoom using bows.
  
• +10% sight range on campaign map.

I've never practically used anything but the default zoom and I think only achievement hunting would change that. Extra sight on the campaign map is OK but uh... how about that Scouting skill?

Skirmish Phase Master

• -10% damage from projectiles.
  
• -5% damage from projectiles to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

A little less damage from projectiles can be appreciable when you randomly get zinged by stray arrows. However, the 5% reduction to your bow-troops is essentially non-existent. Consider too that enemy projectiles won't be doing a lot of damage to your troops unless they get lucky headshots.

Final verdict: Player choice. Neither of them are 💩-tier bad, but they're both underwhelming especially this far up the perk tree.

8 - Bulls Eye & Renowned Archer

Bulls Eye

• +10% total XP earned to ranged troops after battles.

This is a good amount of extra XP following battles. It's similar to the previous melee weapon trees.

Renowned Archer

• +10% morale to ranged troops at the beginning of battle.
  
• -30% recruit/upgrade cost for ranged troops.

Although by the time you make it this high in the tree you should be commanding armies and overloaded with denars, upgrade costs can still be expensive. The +10% morale is solid, but you generally won't rely on your ranged troops for morale bursts.

Final verdict: Player choice. You either have the option of extra XP or cheaper costs.

9 - Deep Quivers & Horse Master

💩 Deep Quivers

• +3 arrows per quiver.
  
• +1 arrows per quiver to troops in your formation.

Both of these should be sub-perks for other perks. +1 arrows to your troops is virtually always meaningless and +3 for yourself is only truly great if you have three stacks of arrows as a full-time horse-archer... except Horse Master exists.

★★ Horse Master

• You can use any bow on horseback.
  
• +30 bow skill to mounted archers in your formation.

Much better than Deep Quivers and that's all that matters. A better bow means better damage and less arrows needed, while +30 bow skill is significant to bonuses for horse archers.

Final verdict: Unless you intend to (1) never use horse archers and (2) plan on never being mounted in your battles while using a bow, Horse Master is the obvious pick.

10 - Quick Draw & Salvo

Quick Draw

• +25% bow aim speed.

Pretty decent, but at tier 10? Underwhelming at best. Are you going to need this extra aim speed for your already rapid aiming?

💩 Salvo

• Equipped bows do not slow you down.

Is your athletics skill so bad you need this? If you're in a field battle with bad athletics, I suggest being on a horse.

Final verdict: Blue-balls tier ending to the tree, Quick Draw always helps while Salvo doesn't.

Crossbow (p.1)

Ok big thing to look out for on Crossbows is that if you want better ranged troops and you want to ride a horse, go Bow 100% of the time. If you want to boost your athletics and stay dismounted more, crossbow is your guy. Also crossbows are kinda fun so you do you boo.

1 - Marksmen & Piercer

☆ Marksmen

• +25% aiming speed with crossbow.
  
• +10% ranged troop morale at the start of battle.

Extra aiming speed is good and the tier 1 perk of better troop morale is very nice. You can't discredit a perk when it's essentially free.

Piercer

• Crossbow attacks ignore armor below 20.
  
• 20% cheaper to recruit ranged troops.

Ignoring armor below 20 for crossbow is rather niche since that is most often rather low tier troops, who you'll already deal lots of damage to. Cheaper recruiting could be useful early game at tier 1.

Final verdict: Marksmen has better utility throughout all stages of the game while Piercer is better for the early game.

2 - Unhorser & Wind Winder

💩 Unhorser

• +40% damage to mounts when using crossbow.
  
• +20% damage to mounts to crossbow-wielding troops in your formation.

Horses have 50,000,000 effective health against bows and crossbows (I have done extensive research to get this true fact). Do not shoot horses, shoot riders. If the rider has a shield, shoot someone else. Your troops don't benefit from this either since AI aiming against cavalry is all about quantity.

★★ Wind Winder

• +25% crossbow reload speed.
  
• +5% reload speed to ranged units in formation.

This is the kind of quantity that fixes battles. More shootey = more win.

Final verdict: Wind Winder is better for both the player and party members.

3 - Donkey's Swiftness & Sheriff

Donkey's Swiftness

• -30% movement accuracy loss on crossbow.
  
• +30 crossbow skill to crossbow-equipped troops in formation.

Accuracy loss during movement is pretty rough on crossbow since you're likely not mounted. However, +30 crossbow skill is a solid bonus for troops, as are all other +30 bonus perks.

Sheriff

• +50% headshot damage with crossbows.
  
• +10% crossbow damage to foot soldiers for your formation.

Headshot damage is already great but an extra 50% can get you over the top-tier armored troops. The 10% damage to foot soldiers is essentially outdone by Donkey's Swiftness +30 skill, though.

Final verdict: If Donkey's Swiftness had a better main perk it would be the clear choice, but it's a subjective take because headshot damage can really benefit the player. Donkey to improve your troops, Sheriff to be a headshotter.

4 - Peasant Leader & Renowned Marksman

☆ Peasant Leader

• +10% morale to troops tiers 1-3.

It's OK, but you shouldn't expect greatness from tier 1-3 troops. They get their s𝚑𝚒t rocked in 90% of battles.

Renowned Marksman

• +2 XP per day to all ranged troops.

This helps you get your troops out of tier 1 but sucks for everything else.

Final verdict: If you stack loads of daily XP gain Renowned Marksman can help, but otherwise Peasant Leader is always the correct choice.

5 - Fletcher & Puncture

Fletcher

• +4 quiver stack size.
  
• +2 quiver stack size for crossbow-equipped troops in your formation.

Better than the bow equivalent. The extra ammo on friendly troops is still terrible.

★★ Puncture

• Ignore 10% of enemy armor with crossbows.
  
• Formation troops ignore 5% of enemy armor with crossbows.

Crossbows already do a lot of damage (pierce) to armor, but ignoring more armor is going to benefit you and your troops.

Final verdict: Puncture for damage, Fletcher if you plan on heavily stacking quivers. I think Puncture is objectively better in most cases.

Crossbow (p.2)

6 - Deft Hands & Loose and Move

★★ Deft Hands

• Double interrupt threshold for loading your crossbow.
  
• Troop interrupt threshold is doubled.

Interrupt threshold is terrible for the player (don't get shot bozo!) but if you run a very heavy crossbow skirmish line it can support their ability to out-fire other ranged formations.

💩 Loose and Move

• Crossbows do not slow you down when equipped.
  
• +5% ranged troop speed to your formation.

Train athletics to get faster on the ground. The 5% speed, as with every other speed perk, is awful.

Final Verdict: Deft Hands at least does something to support your party, and is more effective if you want a really heavy crossbow formation.

7 - Counter Fire & Mounted Crossbowman

💩 Counter Fire

• -10% damage from projectiles.
  
• -3% damage to crossbow troops in your formation from projectiles.

Fart butt. Poopy 𝚊𝚜s. For 7 tiers up you're going to take 10 less damage from a high damage headshot. The 3% damage to crossbow troops is so niche and will more than likely never soak more than 1 damage.

★★ Mounted Crossbowman

• You can now reload any crossbow on horseback.
  
• +5% XP for ranged troops after battles.

Well, this is the only option at this perk. And it's nice because it cuts off a gameplay mechanic if you avoid it, while making future perk choices in this tree worthless. 5% extra XP is OK.

Final Verdict: Mounted Crossbowman is the only option here. I still think if you want to be mounted go archer, but it's nice to have options, right?

8 - Sniper & Steady

💩 Sniper

• Double zoom on crossbows.

poop

Steady

• -50% accuracy penalty while on horseback.

Alright well if you now fully man your crossbow on a horse, this is good. If you don't it's useless.

Final Verdict: Steady is good if you ride a horse. Sniper is only good if you want to make ludicrously long shots or have bad eyes (no judging here).

9 - Hammer Bolts & Pavise

★★ Hammer Bolts

• Crossbow hits can dismount and ignore 50% dismount resistance.
  
• +10% damage with crossbows to troops in your formation.

Dismounting is a nice benefit if you don't kill a rider through a well-aimed shot. 10% damage mixed with troop armor pen could potentially lead to more deadly crossbow troops, but YMMV.

💩 Pavise

• Your shield on your back can block projectiles 75% of the time.

Don't put yourself in situations where you're going to get flogged by ranged fire, and this perk is useless -- as it should be. If it was 100% it might not be 💩-tier.

Final Verdict: Hammer Bolts does something while Pavise is a "skill issue" perk. Take Hammer Bolts.

10 - Picked Shots & Terror

☆ Picked Shots

• Tier 4+ ranged troops have 50% less upkeep.
  
• +5 HP to ranged troops.

+5HP is pretty lackluster when this is all the way up the perk tree. As well, by this time in the game (battling so much you now have full crossbow skill) you should have enough money to not care about high-tier troop costs. It's a stinkier perk but evades 💩-tier.

Terror

• +20% chance to increase bombardment (siege) casualties by 1 unit.
  
• +25% morale loss to enemy on crossbow kills to troops in your formation.

Wow, that bombardment portion sure is terrible! That being said, the 25% morale loss is decent for crossbow troops. However, you need to heavily invest in crossbows, so YMMV.

Final Verdict: I'm pretty sure Picked Shots is much better here, but it's hard to tell what morale impact Terror has. Go Picked Shots if you think I'm epic (wow, thanks).

Throwing (p.1)

OK so throwing is for Chad Gamers, let's just jump right in:

1 - Quick Draw & Shield Breaker

💩 Quick Draw

• +20% drawing speed with throwing weapons.
  
• +10% drawing speed with throwing weapons to troops in your formation.

Drawing speed is an interesting stat to boost; in what situations are you going to need to rapidly draw or put away throwing weapons from how quickly they already swap?

★★ Shield Breaker

• +40% damage to shields with throwing weapons.
  
• +8% damage to shields with throwing weapons for your troops.

Well, if you're chucking axes at shield walls, this is pretty good. It's much better than the alternate weapon trees' shield breaking perks. We give it a pass because it's tier 1.

Final verdict: You ought get something out of tier 1, so go for Shield Breaker.

2 - Flexible Fighter & Hunter

☆ Flexible Fighter

• +10% melee damage on thrown weapons.
  
• +15 Control skill to infantry troops, +15 Vigor skill to ranged troops.

10% extra melee damage is pretty rough, but boosting your troops' skill values is always worthwhile.

Hunter

• +40% extra damage against horses with throwing weapons.
  
• +8% extra damage to horses for troops in your formation.

This is better than alternate weapon horse-damaging perks, but it's still underwhelming.

Final verdict: However you want to kit out your party will affect your decision, but extra skill to troops of multiple types is great, so Flexible Fighter is my choice.

3 - Mounted Skirmisher & Well Prepared

💩 Mounted Skirmisher

• -20% mounted accuracy penalties for throwing weapons.
  
• +10% throwing damage to mounted troops.

I can't think of a single f𝚞𝚌king time I've had a mounted troop kill a dude with a throwing weapon and I'm a proponent of the "cavalry f𝚞𝚌kfest army" so I have some experience in this regard. I suppose if you are going to have 4 stacks of throwing weapons on you, the -20% accuracy penalty could be nice for high-speed throwing?

Well Prepared

• +1 ammo for throwing weapons.
  
• +1 throwing weapon ammo to troops in your formation.

For a tier 3 perk it's not bad, but still a little underwhelming when you only benefit an extra shot or two unless you go full throwing weapon mode. The perk further down the list with more ammo size can prop this one better.

Final verdict: Well Prepared is the lesser of two evils, but still pretty lackluster.

4 - Knock Off & Running Throw

Knock Off

• Thrown weapons can dismount at 25% chance when "heavy hitting".
  
• +5% throwing weapon damage to troops in your formation.

If you hit a rider and don't kill them, your throwing weapon isn't epic enough. The 5% throwing damage to troops is better than other weapon percentage boosts, but is still underwhelming.

★★ Running Throw

• 0.3% increase to damage by throwing speed.
  
• +30 throwing skill to troops in your formation.

No idea how to calculate that 0.3 to "normal" damage, my assumption is late game it applies well but early game does next to nothing. +30 throwing skill to troops is great, like other troop boosters.

Final verdict: Running Throw makes your party better. Take it.

5 - Saddlebags & Skirmisher

★★ Saddlebags

• +2 ammo on throwing weapons in battle if mounted.
  
• +1 daily XP to infantry troops in your party.

+2 ammo per stack is actually pretty good but I don't get why TW decided you only get it on a horse. I guess because the skill is called "saddlebags". Get s𝚑𝚒t on, cringelord athletics players!

That side XP means nothing but at least it's not the mainstay of the perk.

💩 Skirmisher

• -10% damage from ranged attacks when holding a throwing weapon.
  
• -3% ranged damage to troops in your command.

Alright so if you don't think this perk is doodoo, go into a battle and get shot by an arrow and do the math to see how much 10% less damage would affect you. Is it going to save you from a single hit before dying? On top of that it's only the niche time when you're holding a throwing weapon instead of at all times. -3% damage to troops is awful.

Final verdict: Skirmisher sucks. Go Saddlebags, but always bring a horse. Obviously.

Throwing (p.2)

6 - Focus & Last Hit

💩 Focus

• +25% zoom when using throwing weapons.

Huh? In what case are you throwing so far you need even further zoom?

★★ Last Hit

• +50% extra damage to enemies with less than 50% health with throwing weapons.
  
• +5 morale for the party at the start of battle.

This perk is so much better than Focus it's not funny. Executing damage is solid and is a decent % unlike every other weapon perk in the game. +5 morale is OK.

Final verdict: Focus! Haha just kidding that perk sucks. Go Last Hit.

7 - Head Hunter & Throwing Competitions

☆ Head Hunter

• +50% damage to thrown weapon headshots.
  
• Tier 2+ troops are 20% cheaper to recruit.

Distance throwing can be improved by headshots, so this benefits that. Recruiting troops by the time you get this high in the tree should no longer be an issue.

Throwing Competitions

• -20% cost to infantry upgrades.

I was tempted to 💩-tier this, but upgrades are generally the most expensive part of owning high tier troops. It's OK.

Final verdict: Head Hunter is better for every portion of the game if you don't worry about denars, which is where you should be at all times.

8 - Resourceful & Splinters

Resourceful

• +2 ammo for throwing weapons.
  
• +10% XP to troops with throwing weapons after battles.

If you continue stacking with all the extra ammo perks, you can have a high throwing ammo by the end of the list. The extra experience for troops is alright.

Splinters

• 3x damage to shields with throwing axes.
  
• +50% damage to shields with throwing weapons to troops in your party.

This is the only really solid anti-shield perk. If you took the previous anti-shield perk in the throwing list this one becomes that much better. You will eat shields for breakfast in a funny way.

Final verdict: Player choice. Probably the first throwing weapon perk that is a tough choice, but both options still feel underperforming for being so high up the tree. Splinters is an actually decent shield-destroying perk unlike most others. Resourceful gives you a lot more throwing time in combat and bonus XP is nice.

9 - Long Reach & Perfect Technique

Long Reach

• You can pick up weapons from the ground while mounted (double interaction reach)
  
• +20% morale and renown from winning battles.

Good thing the morale/renown thing is here because holy moly that first portion is bad.

Perfect Technique

• +25% projectile speed on your thrown weapons.
  
• +10% projectile speed on troops' thrown weapons.

Projectile speed creates higher damage and supports better accuracy especially for AI. Normally the 10% changes are underwhelming but in this case it can create a better throwing army.

Final verdict: Renown and morale from Long Reach are kick𝚊𝚜s (until you don't need renown anymore), but if you want to throw s𝚑𝚒t better go for Perfect Technique.

10 - Impale & Weak Spot

Impale

• Javelins now penetrate shields if damage is greater than 30+3x (x=shield armor value)
  
• +10% throwing damage to troops in formation.

If you can consistently kill through shields that's pretty cool, but obviously if you are more of a flanker or don't deal with shielded enemies often, don't get it.

☆ Weak Spot

• Throwing weapons ignore 30% of enemy armor.
  
• Throwing weapons in your formation ignore 10% of enemy armor.

If you don't deal with heavily shielded enemies often, go for this, the damage increase is palpable.

Final verdict: Weak spot is better if you work around shields and is better in general for your troops.

Riding (p.1)

As with weapons, dogs𝚑𝚒t perks cannot bring down the Riding tree because Riding as a skill is so useful. But that's not going to stop me!

1 - Full Speed & Nimble Steed

💩 Full Speed

• +20% horse charge damage.
  
• +10% horse charge damage to troops in your formation.

Generally as the player you shouldn't be going for actively "horse charging" enemies because you're going to get yourself killed if you keep it up. Use weapons. The extra damage to NPCs is OK, but not as effective as riding skill.

★★ Nimble Steed

• +10% horse maneuvering.
  
• +30 riding skill to mounted troops in your formation.

Riding skill for party members is always good. AI isn't very good at maneuvering horses but will benefit in all facets instead of just horse damage.

Final verdict: Nimble Steed is better for both the player and AI in the party.

2 - Veterinary & Well Strapped

★★ Veterinary

• +20% mount hit points.
  
• +10% hit points to troops' mounts in your command.

Mounts as they scale get high HP values, so this is always decent. Troops in command is icing on the cake of a decent tier 2 perk.

💩 Well Strapped

• -50% chance of a lame or dead horse after it dies in battle for you. (from 20% to 10% lame, from 5% to 2.5% death)

Other than Humpsphrey, what mounts are you that worried about replacing? I have never had a serious issue with replacing a mount if it goes lame or dies. This perk also doesn't completely negate horse loss, so you're still at the fate of RNG. SAD!

Final verdict: Veterinary beats Well Strapped which would only be good if you could BOTW customize your mount. Just buy another one! Also, fun fact - did you know that for some reason TW 1:1 swapped the effects of these perks some point after the initial creation of this guide? Weird, no?

3 - Deeper Sacks & Nomadic Traditions

☆ Deeper Sacks (previously Filled To Brim)

• +20% carry capacity of pack animals.
  
• -10% trade penalty for mounts.

Extra carry capacity is always good for staying fast and war mounts can be expensive in excess if you plan on having a lot of cavalry. Solid perk.

Nomadic Traditions

• +30% party speed to mounted infantry (from 1.3 to 1.4)
  
• +10% speed damage bonus to melee cavalry.

The +30% is deceptive because it really only increases a decimal point, but in theory if you have a lot of mounts you can speed up your map movement of an infantry heavy army. Extra speed damage to cavalry is the best mix for speed damage, so it gets a pass.

Final verdict: Player choice, though I prefer Deeper Sacks. I think both perks are fine.

4 - Sagittarius & Sweeping Wind

★★ Sagittarius

• -15% accuracy penalty while mounted.
  
• -15% accuracy penalty for mounted troops.

The difference of this and other accuracy perks is that Sagittarius affects all accuracy, not just rotation and movement. It's solid for the player but is also useful for your mounted archers.

💩 Sweeping Wind

• +5% mount speed.
  
• +2% party speed on the map.

These percentages are so tiny and meaningless. Higher tier mounts already become very fast and your riding skill only helps that -- the 2% map speed is arguably useful, but is so little % that it becomes negligible.

Final verdict: Unless you never use ranged horsemen and never use mounts yourself, Sagittarius is the clear winner.

5 - Relief Force (no choice)

Relief Force

• Joining an ongoing battle with allies grants +10 battle morale to your troops.

Rarely do you get the opportunity to join a battle where your party will make a significant difference, but even rarer will you win that battle due to your morale rating.

In all battles you would have won or lost (by joining), this likely does nothing.

Final verdict: You have no choice but to take Relief Force. Relieve my 𝚊𝚜s from sh𝚒t.

Riding (p.2)

6 - Horse Archer & Mounted Warrior

☆ Horse Archer

• +10% ranged damage while mounted.
  
• +5% ranged damage to mounted archer troops.

Small bonus damage percentages. Take your pick.

Mounted Warrior

• +5% mounted melee damage.
  
• +5% melee damage to mounted troops in your formation.

Small bonus damage percentages. Take your pick.

Final verdict: Both perks are middle-ground compared to other perks. I prefer the ranged damage because generally I am playing heavily ranged on horseback with a melee weapon more as backup. Pick your poison.

7 - Breeder & Shepherd

💩 Breeder

• 1% chance per day of any animal in your inventory reproducing.

You would think the 1% chance would scale with number of mounts, meaning more mounts = more 1% chances, but it works extremely weird. It's basically always 1% chance but scales with number of animals; for example, >75 means you will get two animals, >125, three. It's weird. It at least does something, but the amount is so low and inconsistent you effectively gain very little.

💩 Shepherd (previously Riding Horde)

• -50% herding penalty for having more pack animals than men.

The only time I get the pack animal penalty is if I just got my s𝚑𝚒t rocked and am escaping prison with the 7 horses they gave me in prison. I drop them and run off. I don't see the need for this perk.

Final verdict: Honestly not fully sure. I think Shepherd has its uses, but Breeder can potentially RNG you some war mounts. Pick your poison.

8 - Annoying Buzz & Thunderous Charge

Annoying Buzz

• 20% more battle morale penalty with ranged kills while mounted.
  
• 5% more battle morale penalty from ranged kills for mounted troops.

Self-explanatory percentage bonuses.

Thunderous Charge

• 20% more battle morale penalty with melee kills while mounted.
  
• 5% more battle morale penalty from melee kills for mounted troops.

Self-explanatory percentage bonuses.

Final verdict: Player choice. You're more likely to get use out of Annoying Buzz yourself, but your troops are more likely to get use out of Thunderous Charge.

9 - Cavalry Tactics & Mounted Patrols

★★ Cavalry Tactics

• +30% cavalry troop volunteering rate in towns your clan governs.

This is pretty good if you're trying to run heavy cavalry armies, but the governing specific is a little irritating. It also gives less chance for special troops since they spawn in towns.

Mounted Patrols

• -50% prisoner hero escape chance.

This isn't 💩-tier, I just don't find it very useful. I like keeping hold of prisoners, but if you drop them off into settlements the perk doesn't matter anymore.

Final verdict: Cavalry Tactics is the go-to if you intend on your party composition being cavalry heavy. Which you should.

10 - Dauntless Steed & Tough Steed

☆ Dauntless Steed

• -50% stagger damage threshold while mounted
  
• +5 armor to mounted troops in your formation.

I think stagger damage is the rearing when hit by polearms -- just don't let that happen, but +5 armor isn't terrible for low-tier troops and even for high-tier can negate potential killing blows since hits to horsemen tend to be mostly ineffective due to angle.

Tough Steed

• +20% mount armor.
  
• +10 mount armor for mounted troops.

If you want your mount to be omega invincible go for this, but mounts are already very tanky.

Final verdict: Player choice but I like Dauntless. Mounts already have a high amount of armor, but troop armor count (by value) tends to be lower than you think. Adding extra armor to mounted troops will make them 𝚊𝚜sholes in a good way.

Athletics (p.1)

Athletics is the gamer's true skill tree since you have to run everywhere for the entire singleplayer campaign to actually level it well compared to riding. Some of these perk trees start to get really s𝚑𝚒tty at this point. Can't wait!

Let's preface talking about movement speed for troops, and why it's bad. First, it does not affect speed on the map (to my knowledge). Second, a high percentage bonus (let's say 15% for example) will save you mere seconds moving across the largest possible battle maps in Bannerlord. They are just not good perks.

1 - Morning Exercise & Well Built

💩 Morning Exercise

• +3% movement speed.
  
• +5% foot troop movement speed.

Percentages this low barely affect your effective movement speed in battle and do nothing towards contributing to win/loss. Poopoo.

★★ Well Built

• +5 HP.
  
• +5 HP for foot troops in your formation.

For tier 1, +5 HP isn't bad across your whole foot troop cast.

Final verdict: Well Built has a purpose and Morning Exercise does not.

2 - Form Fitting Armor & Fury

💩 Form Fitting Armor

• -15% armor weight.
  
• +4% movement speed to Tier 3+ foot troops in your formation.

As with previous, these small incremental increases to movement speed are not going to win or lose battles for you. If you plan on going heavy in athletics anyway, the armor weight percentage doesn't make you much faster or slower than you already would be. High athletics will out-do the perk.

★★ Fury

• +10% weapon handling on foot.
  
• +10% weapon handling to foot troops in your formation.

Weapon handling is one of the key skills to contribute to speed damage and swing/recovery speed. It's great for infantry.

Final verdict: Fury has a purpose. Fitting Armor just makes you... slightly faster at insignificant rate.

3 - Having Going & Stamina

★★ Having Going

• +30% persuasion chance.
  
• +5 party size.

Persuasion in Bannerlord is 𝚊𝚜s. It appears TW quickly ran out of things to do with the athletics tree because there's randomly other trees plotted in here, this being one. Getting better chance with it is a bonus. I love party size increase, so +5 party size is nice too.

💩 Stamina

• +50% crafting stamina recovery.
  
• +5 prisoner size limit and -10% prisoner escape chance (from 10% to 9%)

If you don't plan on using smithing this is 100% a useless perk. If you do smithing, it's only slightly better as it increases your stamina recovery with a whopping 2.5 extra points per hour. +5 prisoner size limit is negligible and the escape chance only affects oversize, so has a true 1% difference. Wow.

Final verdict: Stamina is a pick if you are going to smithmax, but Having Going has better overall benefits.

4 - Powerful & Sprint

💩☆ Powerful

• +4% damage with melee weapons.
  
• +2% damage with melee weapons to troops in your formation.

Your personal melee damage should be funneled through the one-handed tree, not the athletics perk tree. The 2% bonus to your troops is nothing. If they swing for 50 damage they will do 1 additional damage. Incredible.

💩 Sprint

• +5% movement speed when you don't have shields or ranged weapons wielded.
  
• +3% movement speed to infantry troops in battle.

Who the f𝚞𝚌k is running around in battle without anything equipped? What a great bonus for travelling around a Town! As with all previous troop movement speed bonuses, this doesn't have a true effect on battle.

Final verdict: I guess go Powerful since it at least adds something.

5 - Braced & Surging Blow

★★ Braced

• -40% charge damage taken.
  
• -30% charge damage taken to foot troops in your formation.

This is actually pretty decent because enemy cav will race through your infantry lines in almost every battle. Troops taking less damage from that is good.

💩 Surging Blow

• +30% speed damage while on foot.
  
• +30% speed damage to foot troops in your formation.

Speed damage is the least effective on foot and most effective when you're racing through lines on a horse. Even though this percentage is good, it's not significant and especially not for your troops.

Final verdict: If the entire map is owned by the Battanians, Surging Blow is good since you won't fight cavalry. Otherwise go Braced.

Athletics (p.2)

6 - A Good Days Rest & Walk It Off

A Good Days Rest

• +10% hit point regen while stationary.
  
• +10 XP to foot troops in your party while waiting in settlements.

+10 XP is surprisingly high compared to other +# XP perks which are low as h𝚎𝚕l. This synergizes well with smithing skill since waiting around doing nothing is 95% of gameplay when you main smithing.

Walk It Off

• +10% hit point regen while moving.
  
• +3 XP to foot troops in your party while traveling.

Gives benefits to movement, which you're doing all the time.

Final verdict: Player choice. I do more traveling than waiting so I prefer Walk It Off, but a Good Days Rest has understandable use.

7 - Durable & Energetic

Durable

• +1 Endurance Attribute.

At least this does something, but still very underwhelming for a tier 7 perk.

💩Energetic

• -20% speed penalty when overburdened.

Okay TW, really, who is this for? Is it for caravan roleplayers? If you have horses in your party you shouldn't have any encumbrance issues, and 20% speed upgrade when moving slow as f𝚞𝚌k isn't enough for this perk to mean anything. It's 7 tiers up!

Final verdict: Durable can actually benefit your character while Energetic is a perk that should never be activated.

8 - Steady & Strong

Steady

• +1 Control.

Yep that's it. TW really knocked it outta the park with this perk.

☆ Strong

• +1 Vigor.
  
• +5% party speed from foot troops.

A bonus to player stats and a bonus to party movement speed is an acceptable perk, but 8 tiers up for just 5% is a low blow from TW.

Final verdict: Strong can get you a small amount of extra map speed, so that's cool. Just take whichever perk you need more attribute in, but I like Strong more.

9 - Strong Arms & Strong Legs

★★ Strong Arms

• +5% damage with throwing weapons.
  
• +20 throwing skill to troops in your formation.

Well, I hope you plan on teching into throwing, because otherwise this perk is useless to you. The skill to troops is decent. Tier 9?

💩💩💩 Strong Legs

• -50% fall damage taken.
  
• Double kick damage.

This is one of the worst perks in the game. This perk is so bad it's funny. Kick damage is already low enough to the point kicking anyone with armor is 1 damage. Why are you even kicking? How much are you taking fall damage that you actually need to lower it? Why are you even taking fall damage? Who made this perk? Was it a joke?

Final verdict: Strong Legs is atrocious. Go Strong Arms.

10 - Ignore Pain & Spartan

★★ Ignore Pain

• +10% armor while on foot.
  
• +5 (flat) armor per equipment piece to foot troops in your formation.

The flat armor amounts are good for foot troops. 10% armor for you is actually pretty impressive with high enough armor.

💩 Spartan

• +50% stagger resistance on foot.
  
• -20% food consumption for your party.

Stagger resistance is already pretty high. To need the benefit of having a slightly higher threshold is useless if you're playing melee correctly with your party. -20% food consumption is a joke. By any perk reaching tier 10, you should be at a stage of the game where food isn't a concern for you anymore. Food should never be a concern for you.

Final verdict: Ignore Pain is an actual upgrade while Spartan is a fake upgrade. Choose correctly.

Smithing (p.1)

Oh boy my favorite skill tree in the whole game (no). It's a shame that Smithing is only good once you have 95394539493 levels of it because the method to upgrade it is tedious as f𝚞𝚌k and you'll be spending a s𝚑𝚒tload of time doing nothing or spamming left click. If you didn't know, the pro-gamer move is to give yourself half the skills and give an NPC who you slave around the resource-creating skills, and puke out nothing but top tier javelins until you can make what you actually want. The ACTUAL pro gamer move is to get a mod that makes smithing better.

1 - Efficient Charcoal & Efficient Iron

★★ Efficient Charcoal

• Hardwood to charcoal recipe goes from 2:1 to 2:3.

You're going to need 5,000,000,000 charcoal by the end of the game if you're levelling up smithing from low levels, so this is a great pickup to save clicks out of your mouse.

💩 Efficient Iron

• Crude iron produce from 1 iron and 2 charcoal goes from 2 to 3.

Crude iron comes off of so many weapons in smelting that you should do that all the time instead of smelting iron down into crude iron and using extra charcoal.

Final verdict: Charcoal good. Crude iron not needed when you'll get s𝚑𝚒tloads from bandit weaponry smelting.

2 - Curious Smelter & Steel Maker

Curious Smelter

• +100% part design learning when smelting.

Steel Maker

• Can now craft steel.

Final verdict: If you have a 2nd NPC to do half of things, give them Steel Maker and put Curious Smelter on yourself. If you're worried about "missing the boat" and have no NPCs, put it on yourself.

3 - Curious Smith & Steel Maker 2

Curious Smith

• +100% learning on part designs when smithing.

Steel Maker 2

• Can now craft fine steel.

Final verdict: Same as previous tier. Give NPC the metal making s𝚑𝚒t and give yourself the learning s𝚑𝚒t.

4 - Experienced Smith & Steel Maker 3

Experienced Smith

• 10% chance to create a 'fine' weapon.
  
• +2 relationship with notables for successful orders.

Steel Maker 3

• Can now craft Thamaskene steel.
  
• +4 relationship with lords and ladies for successful orders.

Final verdict: Same as previous tier. Give NPC the metal making s𝚑𝚒t and give yourself the learning s𝚑𝚒t.

5 - Practical Refiner & Practical Smelter

Practical Refiner

• Half stamina spent on refining.

Practical Smelter

• Half stamina spent on smelting.

Final verdict: Once again ideally you have an NPC friend to split the workload here, but just pick whichever one you do more.

Smithing (p.2)

6 - Controlled Smith & Vigorous Smith

Controlled Smith

• +1 Control.

Vigorous Smith

• +1 Vigor.

Final verdict: Attributes are very difficult to get with normal leveling so this perk tier is OK. Pick whichever suits your build. Bit of a lackluster creativity count on TW's part.

7 - Artisan Smith & Practical Smith

Artisan Smith

• Half trade penalty for selling smithed weapons.

I don't really have money issues at most points in Bannerlord so I think this skill is weak, especially since most "throwaway" smithed weapons are not worth selling in the first place. I think it can be exploited to make serious bank, but usually I just melt the weapons I smith down to continue leveling Smithing.

★★ Practical Smith

• Smithing stamina is halved.

Anything to make the process of smithing easier is good.

Final verdict: Practical Smith makes smithing less torturous.

8 - Master Smith (no choice)

Master Smith

• 10% chance to create 'Masterwork' weapon.

Final verdict: Decent perk considering there is no choice. If you have the 'fine' weapon perk you essentially have a 20% chance to create an above-normal weapon.

9 - Enduring Smith & Fencer Smith

Enduring Smith

• +1 Endurance.

☆ Fencer Smith

• +1 focus point to one-handed and two-handed.

Final verdict: I like Fencer Smith because it allows you to upgrade your infantry through party-upgrade perks. If you need the endurance, go for Enduring Smith.

10 - Sharpened Edge & Sharpened Tip

💩💩💩💩 Sharpened Edge

• +2% swing damage of crafted weapons.

💩💩💩💩 Sharpened Tip

• +2% thrust damage of crafted weapons.

Final verdict: What kind of ending perk is this? For your efforts you get 2% extra damage. Think about this: You make a polearm that deals TWO HUNDRED damage. For your efforts, you gain FOUR additional damage. Sickening.

Scouting (p.1)

Scouting has some interesting concepts in the perk tree and the nice part is that even if a perk is total s𝚑𝚒t, having high scouting level is nice to travel across the map.

1 - Day Traveler & Night Runner

★★ Day Traveler

• +2% movement speed during the day.
  
• +10% increased sight range during day time.

Decent perk bonuses even though 2% hardly means anything.

Night Runner

• +5% movement speed during night time.
  
• +30% sight range during night time.

Good perk bonuses but keep in mind night time is only about 1/4 of a Bannerlord day.

Final verdict: Because night is so short in Bannerlord, Day Traveler is better overall. No matter what you take it will only increase your party speed by 0.1-0.2. Good first tier perks though.

2 - Pathfinder & Water Diviner

Pathfinder

• +2% movement speed on steppes/plains.
  
• 50% chance to get +1 relation with a notable when you enter a town.

Very low percentage bonus but we give it a pass for tier 2.

Water Diviner

• +10% sight range bonus on steppes/plains.
  
• 50% chance to get +1 relation with a notable when you enter a village.

Sight range is better felt than the movement speed and notable relationship is good.

Final verdict: Choice has to be made if you want bonuses for entering villages or towns. Movement speed is always nice.

3 - Desert Born & Forest Kin

Desert Born

• +5% movement speed bonus on deserts/dunes.

If you're in the Asurai area this is great, but otherwise it's effectively useless. Doesn't that suck?

Forest Kin

• -50% speed penalty in forests if your party is >75% infantry.

This is a surprisingly good perk no matter where you are, but favors early game when you don't have much cavalry.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both situational perks that aren't terrible but have specific uses.

4 - Forced March & Unburdened

Forced March

• +2.5% party movement bonus when morale is higher than 75.
  
• +2 XP per day when morale is higher than 75.

2 XP is far too low, but 2.5% party movement bonus is OK. 75 morale is pretty difficult to activate for a while, but definitely has purpose.

💩 Unburdened

• 20% less penalty from being overburdened.
  
• +2 XP per day to troops when overburdened.

You should never want to be overburdened because it sucks. Making it slightly less s𝚑𝚒t is okay, but this perk could be much better.

Final verdict: Forced March is better. Unburdened is bad.

5 - Ranger & Tracker

Ranger

• +20% track spotting distance.
  
• +10% track detection chance.

I don't use tracks as much as I did in Warband, but I can't say whether or not this perk is useful. Tracks can give you some insight to parties but I tend to not use them.

Tracker

• +20% maximum track life.
  
• +2% speed when following a hostile party.

I like this solely for the 2% bonus following a hostile party. Even though it equates to 0.1 extra speed, it allows you to catch a few more parties you'd otherwise not be able to.

Final verdict: I like Tracker but these seem like flavorful player-choice perks. They're both a bit underwhelming.

Scouting (p.2)

6 - Mounted Scouts & Patrols

★★ Mounted Scouts

• If your party is >50% cavalry, gain +10% sight bonus.
  
• +5 party size.

The sight bonus isn't terrible, but up 6 tiers we'd hope for some more creativity. I love that party size s𝚑𝚒t.

💩💩Patrols

• +5 battle morale against bandits.
  
• +10% advantage in simulated battles against bandits.

This perk sucks so much 𝚊𝚜s it's insane. In what world do you need +5 battle morale against bandits? When do you need advantage in sim? Bandits are cannonfodder once you have more than 30 trained troops. Why would you ever need this perk?

Final verdict: Mounted Scouts is actually useful. Patrol is gonorrhea. Pick wisely.

7 - Beast Whisperer & Foragers

★★ Beast Whisperer

• 5% chance of finding a mount daily when moving through steppes/plains.
  
• +10% carry capacity for pack animals.

Compared to the riding 1% perk, the 5% is actually felt as you'll get the occasional additional mount. +10% carry capacity is decent for pack animals.

💩 Foragers

• -10% food consumption when moving through steppes/forests.
  
• -15% disorganized state time.

While disorganized state time bonus is OK, the food consumption is incredibly useless.

Final verdict: Beast Whisperer is best. Mounts are always useful, food consumption should not be your concern.

8 - Rumour Network & Village Network

💩 Rumour Network

• -5% trade penalty within cities of your faction.
  
• +30% hideout detection range.

City/town trade bonus is fine and dandy but this is pretty d𝚊mn far up the perk tree to be just giving you a 5% bonus. As with other perk trees, once you get this high up ONE, you should be raking in denars like a fat ba𝚜t𝚊rd in Praven. Hideout detection range at tier 8? Hello TW? Are you alive? Do you feel?

💩 Village Network

• -10% trade penalty within villages of your faction.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I mean denars are so easy to come by I don't know why you would need this unless you're spamming an iron village or something? Maybe spamming a horse village?

Final verdict: I mean holy s𝚑𝚒t these perks are ineffective for anything significant. While there are some benefits to having these perks, they're 8 tiers up a perk tree. Are you really 8 tiers into scouting and you need the assistance these perks provide? Pick your poison.

9 - Keen Sight & Vantage Point

Keen Sight

• -50% sight difficulty while inside forests.
  
• -50% chance for prisoner lords to escape your party.

By this point in scouting your vision is already really solid. Is the 50% sight difficulty in forests really an issue here? Less chance for lords to escape is OK. Prisoner lords can be used for rapid influence and lord relation through donation.

Vantage Point

• +25% sight range after being stationary for 1 hour.
  
• +10 prisoner size limit.

+25% sight range is no joke but I don't find myself needing that kind of sight distance. +10 prisoner size limit is acceptable but nothing special for tier 9.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both perks are underwhelming for tier 9. I like the less prisoner escape chance since I use lord prisoners to cheese lord/lady relations.

10 - Rearguard & Vanguard

💩 Rearguard

• +20% troop wounded recovery ratio when in an army.
  
• +10% damage during simulation when defending the siege camp.

Slight extra wounded recovery ratio is nice, but why here in scouting? The secondary should be in the Tactics tree, not here.

💩 Vanguard

• +5% damage in simulated battles when on the attack.
  
• +10% damage in simulated battles when sallying out.

So this is straight up a Tactics perk and it's not terrible, but why here in Scouting?

Final verdict: Why are both tier 10 Scouting perks basically just Tactics perks? I would say Vanguard is better, but both receive the 💩 of shame for being confused about what skill tree they should be in.

Tactics (p.1)

Tactics Disclaimer

Disclaimer; over my singleplayer games, I have found and decided that the Tactics tree as a whole isn't necessary. Every simulated battle I play is an auto-win. I never simulate battles that are "close". I would never win a battle because my simulation tips me over the edge. So I'm going in here with negative bias. I intend to flesh out this section by speccing heavy in tactics in my next playthrough, whenever that comes.

1 - Loose Formations & Tight Formations

☆ Loose Formations

• -10% infantryman damage by ranged troops in sims.
  
• -25% morale penalty from using line, loose, circle, scatter formations.

This perk is essentially free and the -25% morale penalty is solid.

Tight Formations

• +10% damage to cav by infantry in sims.
  
• -25% morale penalty from using shield wall, square, skein, or column formations.

If you use tight formations, this is decent in combat.

Final verdict: If you use the "tight formations" heavily, go with that perk. Loose formations is better in my playstyle because I don't use the tight formations and infantrymen perform better.

2 - Decisive Battle & Extended Skirmish

☆ Decisive Battle

• +5% sim damage plains, steppes, deserts.
  
• +5% movement speed to troops in plains, steppes, and deserts.

The percentages are pretty low, but it's much more common to fight on plains when compared to Extended Skirmish.

Extended Skirmish

• +10% sim damage in snowy or forest terrains.
  
• +2% movement speed to troops in plains, steppes, and desert battlefields.

2% movement speed is awful. The 10% sim damage is better than 5% but is only in specific areas. If you choose this, you'd better make sure you always sim battles specifically.

Final verdict: I like Decisive Battle more due to the higher consistency of fighting on flatter terrain.

3 - Horde Leader & Small Unit Tactics

★★ Horde Leader

• +10 party size
  
• Army cohesion drops 5% slower.

Party size is great and army cohesion dropping slower saves influence. Decent perk!

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Small Unit Tactics

• +1 troop during hideout raids.
  
• +5% battle speed to troops in your formation when you have less than 15 Soldiers.

You never need 11 troops for hideout raids. If you have tier 3+ troops, hideout raids are a literal AFK->win. The +5% battle speed is so little speed for such a specific niche (less than 15 troops). Terrible perk.

Final verdict: Horde Leader every single time. Small Unit Tactics is so terrible.

4 - Coaching & Law Keeper

☆ Coaching

• +3% damage bonus in all sims.
  
• +1% damage to troops in your formation.

The 1% damage is actually laughable. Consider a 100 damage headshot doing 101 damage instead. The 3% sim damage could potentially stack well with your tactics level, making it acceptable.

Law Keeper

• +10% damage in sims against bandits.
  
• +4% damage to bandits for troops in your formation.

Instead of your 100 size party losing 1 troop to a 20 stack bandit you will lose 0. Amazing!

Final verdict: So, in my playbook, neither of these are useful, but that's because I don't value Tactics. My thought is Coaching stacks better with the skill it's supporting. You should never have trouble with Bandits, so Coaching always helps where Law Keeper doesn't.

5 - Improviser & Swift Regroup

☆ Improviser

• No morale penalty for disorganized state, sally out, or when being attacked.
  
• -25% fewer men lost when breaking into and out of a settlement under siege.

This is pretty decent. The morale penalty can hurt if numbers are close. However, I've never broken out of a siege and enjoyed my decision, so YMMV.

Swift Regroup

• -15% disorganized state time after breaking sieges and raids.
  
• -50% Soldiers lost when escaping battles.

The secondary perk of this perk is the actual good one. Breaking sieges and raids should only be done when you are positive you can get away from whatever party is coming to rock your s𝚑𝚒t. But escaping battles with less Soldiers lost (by an actually effective 50%) can be useful if you're okay with totally annihilating your "honor" trait.

Final verdict: I like Improviser more since it doesn't require me to piss off my companions and ruin my "honor" trait to lose Soldiers with Swift Regroup. That being said, if you're roleplaying a bandit or something, Swift Regroup could be a fun LARPey pick.

Tactics (p.2)

Tactics Disclaimer

Disclaimer; over my singleplayer games, I have found and decided that the Tactics tree as a whole isn't necessary. Every simulated battle I play is an auto-win. I never simulate battles that are "close". I would never win a battle because my simulation tips me over the edge. So I'm going in here with negative bias. I intend to flesh out this section by speccing heavy in tactics in my next playthrough, whenever that comes.

6 - Call To Arms & On The March

Call To Arms

• +10% movement speed for parties called to your army.
  
• -15% influence required per party called to your army.

Some extra speed to parties is "meh". Initially I thought influence down was good, but really at some point you'll stack influence so heavily you probably don't need this perk - the worst part is, it doesn't support "Tactics" as a tree.

★★ On The March

• -20% fortification bonus in simulations.
  
• +20% fortification bonus in simulations.

The best part of this perk, like others in Tactics, is saving time. If you don't want to spend so long fighting, hit that auto-resolve.

Final verdict: Tactics as a skill is benefited more by On The March than Call To Arms. If you're skilling Tactics anyway, you should really go On The March.

7 - Make Them Pay & Pick Them Off The Walls

💩 Make Them Pay

• +25% damage to defender siege engines.
  
• +20% damage to besieger siege engines.

Generally you are one or two shotting siege engines if you're building the correct way. It's all about hit RNG and less about damage values. This perk is at least acceptable but absolutely not worth seven tiers of unlocks, and from my understanding it only affects the siege minigame part of a siege, not actual battles (let me know if I'm wrong about that).

💩☆ Pick Them Off The Walls

• +25% chance to double casualties (1 to 2) when destroying an enemy defensive siege engine.
  
• +25% chance to double casualties (1 to 2) when destroying an enemy besieger engine.

You kill 1 (ONE) troop when you destroy a siege engine regularly. Maybe this lets you pluck the numbers down, but consider how many engines you'd have to destroy to really make a difference. AND it's not even confirmed - just 25%!

Final verdict: This is tough because I consider both of these perks weak. I think it's down to your playstyle, but I see consistent siege engine damage as better than a 1/4 chance to do very little in a different way.

8 - Elite Reserves & Encirclement

☆ Elite Reserves

• -20% damage to Tier 3+ units.
  
• +5% damage reduction to troops in your formation.

I don't know if the -20% is in-battle or in-sim only, but it's much better compared to other damage percentages in perk trees.

💩 Encirclement

• +5% damage in sims when outnumbering the enemy.
  
• 10% less influence needed to boost army cohesion.

Avoid boosting army cohesion regardless; the 10% change won't help.

Final verdict: Elite Reserves' 20% damage change to your expensive units is much preferred to a little extra damage in what should already be winnable fights for being 8 tiers up the Tactics tree.

9 - Besieged & Pre-Battle Maneuvers

☆ Besieged

• +10% more damage in sims when you are besieged.
  
• +50% influence gain from winning sieges.

The +50% influence gain from winning sieges is solid. The 10% extra damage in sims can help your already titan-level Tactics.

Pre-Battle Maneuvers

• +25% influence gain from winning field engagements.
  
• If your tactics skill is greater than the enemy, gain +1% bonus per 100 levels in tactics.

+25% influence is OK. The "greater tactics" portion reads well in-game but when you see the stat (1% per 100 levels) you realize it's less impactful than what it feels like.

Final verdict: Both perks are OK.

10 - Counter Offensive & Gens d'armes

☆Counter Offensive

• +10% sim damage when attacked in a field battle
  
• +10% sim damage when outnumbered.

If you're already this far up the tactics tree, this only adds to how much ass you're going to click by simulating the battle. A consideration as well would be the outnumbered percentage being flat; if you have one less troop, you're whooping biscuits.

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Gens d'armes

• +2% damage to infantry for cavalry units in your formation.

I think even with tactics stacking this perk sucks. Let me know if anyone has seen otherwise.

Final verdict: I think that these are mediocre for tier 10 perks, but Counter Offensive is the better choice either way.

Roguery (p.1)

I am going to rip a new 𝚊𝚜shole into the Roguery tree. If you like Roguery it is now your time to get angry at me. The only purpose of the Roguery tree is to roleplay as a Bandit -- surprise surprise, doing that sucks. A lot. Do not put ANY points into this tree. Do not spend any time with this tree. Stay away.

1 - No Rest for the Wicked & Sweet Talker

No Rest for the Wicked

• +20% xp gain for bandit units in your party.
  
• +5% faster raiding.

Bandit units suck in most cases and you no longer gain the XP benefit if they convert to regular troops. Slightly faster raiding is OK, it does take a long time.

💩 Sweet Talker

• 20% easier bartering for peace with bandits.

If you need to barter peace with bandits you need to regain control of your life.

Final verdict: Pick your poison. No Rest can at least level terrible bandit troops.

2 - Deep Pockets & Two Faced

💩 Deep Pockets

• Double the amount of betting you can use in tournaments.
  
• -20% wages for bandit troops.

This perk is only useful very early when you're using tournaments to gain money and need extra cash away from your troops.

★★ Two Faced

• 50% better chance of disguise missions.
  
• No morale penalty for bandit prisoners being recruited.

I can only remember ever doing one disguise mission in Bannerlord, but at least the perk helps? Again, if you roleplay a bandit leader and get massive crime rating, this might be useful? Morale penalty hurts for bandit prisoners, so that's decent if you plan on converting lots.

Final verdict: Two Faced is OK.

3 - In Best Light & Know-How

💩 In Best Light

• Notables give 4 volunteers, up from 3, when forced.
  
• Your owned villages recover 20% faster.

Well, as previously mentioned, if you are fully roleplaying a bandit dude, this is OK. But I have never used the "force recruits" action if I'm playing a normal singleplayer game. Village recovery is terrible if you're roleplaying a bandit since you likely won't own anything, but even if you do it's not felt often. Villages recover faster than they did in Warband, so a percentage on top is less felt.

💩 Know-How

• Defeated villagers and caravans give 52.5% (up from 50%) of their inventory.

Oh wow what an increas- 😴

Final verdict: Yeah.

4 - Promises & Slave Trader

💩 Promises

• -50% food consumption in your party from bandit units.
  
• Bandit prisoners can be recruited 30% faster.

If you plan on recruiting bandit prisoners anyway, you can probably afford to wait. Food consumption should never be a problem for you. Bad perk.

Slave Trader

• +20% ransom broker deals for regular troops.
  
• +20% prisoner limit.

You can make decent money through the broker early with ransom deals. The true nice part of this perk is the 20% prisoner increase; a pretty significant percentage.

Final verdict: Slave Trader is something. Denars shouldn't be a problem for you, but at least it's something.

5 - Scarface & White Lies

💩Scarface

• +30% chance of surrender in bandits, villagers, and caravans.

Honestly this isn't the worst perk solely because for some reason tiny parties refuse to surrender in so many cases. However, you can also just sim these battles if you want to rapidly end them. As with others it's probably only best if you're roleplaying a bandit.

💩 White Lies

• 20% faster crime rating decrease.

Great if you roleplay as a bandit. Terrible otherwise. Even as a bandit, this percentage is surprisingly low in felt effect due to how crime rating decay works.

Final verdict: Well roguery is continuing its trend of having mediocre to bad perks. Just pick one, flip a coin, do whatever you want really. This entire tree is 𝚊n𝚊l peepee.

Roguery (p.2)

6 - Partners in Crime & Smuggler Connections

★★ Partners in Crime

• Bandits always offer to join you.
  
• +2% damage dealt to bandit units in your formation.

Having bandit parties instantly join you is pretty neat because it allows you to rapidly build a party. This is a cool perk and is the main interesting one in the entire tree. On the flip side, 2% damage bonus is negligible and pointless.

💩 Smuggler Connections

• +10 armor when wearing civilian armor.
  
• Half trade penalty when you have a criminal rating.

So why are you banking on civilian armor when looking for extra armor value? I honestly don't know how bad the trade penalty is, does it scale?

Final verdict: Partners in Crime is a cool mechanic and much more interesting than Smuggler Connections.

7 - One Of The Family & Salt the Earth

★★ One Of The Family

• +10 Vigor and Control to bandit units in your party.

This perk is interesting. Bandit units are generally terrible but giving them +10 to stats can put them closer to "par" with other units. If you've bothered to go this far up this perk tree I guess this is a must-pick.

💩Salt the Earth

• +20% resources from demanding goods against villages.

Just raid the village bro who cares holy s𝚑𝚒t.

Final verdict: If you're psycho enough to go up this perk tree One Of The Family is a must-take to keep your troops relevant. However, at the end of the day, you want to just convert them to normal troops... so even the tree can't save itself and misses out on its own perk benefit.

8 - Carver & Ransom Broker

💩💩 Carver

• +10% damage with civilian weapons.
  
• +2% damage with one-handed swords to troops in your formation.

Holy s𝚑𝚒t this perk SUCKS. If you're at tier 8 on any perk tree you should no longer be dealing with adversity when having a random fight in a town. +2% damage to troops is nothing -- and all the way at tier 8!

💩 Ransom Broker

• +25% gained from ransoming hero prisoners.
  
• -30% hero prisoner escape chance.

Hero prisoner escape chance is alright, but are we really considering ransoming a great way of getting money back? This perk is too weak for tier 8. Especially with your looting bonuses simply training the bandit skill, are you really in need of more money?

Final verdict: Both perks are flaccid. Roguery is rough, man. Just pick one.

9 - Arms Dealer & Dirty Fighting

💩 Arms Dealer

• 20% better sell price for weapons.

Wow, a tiny tiny tiny tiny baby-tier denar increase at a tier 9 perk! That's grea-😴

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Dirty Fighting

• +50% kick stun time.

Some dude at TW was laughing his 𝚊𝚜s off imagining someone picking this perk.

Final verdict: Arms Dealer at least does something so I guess go with that. 🤮

10 - Dash and Slash & Fleet Footed

💩 Dash and Slash

• +50% speed bonus effect while on foot.
  
• +2% damage to two-handed weapons for troops in your formation.

I guess speed bonus is OK. Not for a level 10 perk tho lol. It does a bit of extra damage for you. What is with all the 2% bonuses in the Roguery tree? Tier 10 for that little damage bonus?

💩 Fleet Footed

• +10% speed while no weapons or shields are equipped.
  
• +30% escape chance against mobile parties.

What a great buff, now I can run around towns at a negligible speed! GREAT!

Final verdict: To wrap up the perk tree TW made even more terrible perks. Surprise surprise. Dash and Slash gives you something, Fleet Footed gives you faster speed when... wandering around towns. Because I guess you're doing that a lot.

11 - Rogue Extraordinaire (final - no option)

💩 Rogue Extraordinaire
I know I mentioned I wouldn't talk about the top-tier perks, but was the best thing for the f𝚞𝚌king Roguery tree really just a multiplier for what the skill already does? If you're at 275 Roguery do you really need EVEN MORE LOOT from random field battles?

Charm (p.1)

Roguery was so terrible I have to type at least one more sentence saying how bad that tree is. Okay, on to Charm. Charm is an OK perk tree. I think the big problem is that putting focus points into charm is so difficult when there's way better s𝚑𝚒t out there.

1 - Self Promoter & Virile

★★ Self Promoter

• +3 renown after winning a tournament.
  
• +1 morale when besieged.

This used to be +5 influence, early game renown is really solid for spending time in a tournament. +1 morale is insignificant, but cool I guess?

Virile

• +30% chance to have children.

The +30% is a little dishonest and this perk is almost 💩-tier. This increases your lady's (or yourself) chance to get pregnant from a default 24% to 31% per day (24*1.3). Because women in-game essentially have a hard-limit to children, unless you are swapping out your wife after 3 children over and over, this perk is weak. But if you are doing the BABYMAX strat I guess it's OK. Completely useless perk if you are playing as a female.

Final verdict: Virile is OK only at tier 1. Self Promoter is an interesting perk for early game strategy to farm influence.

2 - Oratory & Warlord

Oratory

• +1 renown and influence for each issue resolved.
  
• +1 relationship with a random notable in your faction after defeating an enemy lord.

Extra renown is great since it takes long to level your clan up. The random relation is any notable, which is worse than any lord, but is still OK for a tier 2.

Warlord

• +30% influence gain from battles.
  
• +1 relationship with a random Lord in your faction after defeating an enemy lord.

Arguably better if you've got a good method to max renown, especially later game. +1 relationship with lords is better than "notables" from Oratory.

Final verdict: Player's choice based on intentions. If you don't think you'll have renown issues (I always like speeding up the process) go for Warlord, otherwise go Oratory.

3 - Forgivable Grievances & Meaningful Favors

☆ Forgivable Grievances

• 20% chance to avoid critical fail in persuasion.
  
• 5% chance per day while in a settlement to increase relations with an NPC of negative relation.

RNG continues to be RNG in the persuasion system, but a small chance per day to make NPCs actually allow you to do quests for them can be beneficial.

Meaningful Favors

• 10% better chance for double persuasion success.

The RNG nature of persuasion makes this perk less effective than it could be, and the skill bonus from leveling charm outdoes this perk. I wouldn't say it's 💩-tier but it's not great.

Final verdict: While both perks are weak, Forgivable Grievances gives you more opportunity both on the RNG side and not.

4 - In Bloom & Young and Respectful

In Bloom

• +20% relationship gain with the opposite gender.
  
• +2% chance per day to increase relations with a notable of the opposed gender in the settlement.

See Final verdict.

Young and Respectful

• +20% relationship gain with the same gender.
  
• +2% chance per day to increase relations with a notable of the same gender in the settlement.

See Final verdict.

Final verdict: Alright so the 2% chance is 𝚊𝚜s. Go for whichever relationship gain helps you get better relations with men. These perks are decent (+20% is a good amount bonus).

5 - Firebrand & Flexible Ethics

Firebrand

• -25% influence cost to initiate kingdom decisions.
  
• +1 recruitment level from rural notables.

-25% influence cost is decent.

Flexible Ethics

• -30% influence cost when voting for proposals made by other people.
  
• +1 recruitment level from urban notables.

Spending more influence on other peoples' proposals is the easiest path to making them love you, so this is a solid perk if that's your gameplan.

Final verdict: Player choice. If you get to this skill quickly, Flexible Ethics will help you to rapidly increase relations with other characters. If you're already a king, Firebrand is arguably better.

Charm (p.2)

6 - Effort For The People & Slick Negotiation

Effort For The People

• +3 relation with the nearest town owner clan after clearing a hideout.
  
• -25% item barter penalty with lords of the same culture.

Relation with clans is good, but it's mediocre when applied to hideouts. At least it gives extra incentive to spend time clearing them. Bartering is painful so I don't use it often.

💩 Slick Negotiator

• -20% mercenary recruitment cost.
  
• -10% item barter penalty with lords of different cultures.

If you're purchasing mercenaries you shouldn't be worried about investment. The percentage differences here are not effective in virtually all scenarios.

Final verdict: Effort For The People makes hideouts slightly more worth it.

7 - Good Natured & Tribute

★★ Good Natured

• 100% of influence is recovered when a proposal you support fails.
  
• +1 relation with merciful lords.

Full influence recovery is great on failed proposals for relationship gain and influence maintenance.

💩 Tribute

• +20% chance for relationship bonus when paying more than enough in barters.
  
• +1 relation with cruel lords.

The extra chance is just that. It's not a passive bonus, it's a 20% chance to get JUST +1 relationship after a good barter.

Final verdict: Good Natured is awesome, Tribute sucks.

8 - Morale Leader & Natural Leader

💩 Morale Leader

• -1 persuasion success needed for characters in your own culture.

This perk wouldn't be bad if Natural Leader weren't so better.

★★ Natural Leader

• -1 persuasion success needed for characters outside of your own culture.
  
• +20% experience gain on companions.

+20% experience gain on companions is decent, and -1 persuasion success needed on other cultures means A LOT of other characters.

Final verdict: Taleworlds. Common f𝚞𝚌king math here. You get more benefit from getting every culture but your own in bonuses. Because there are more cultures than your own. So why did you give Natural Leader the decent side-perk? Go Natural Leader.

9 - Parade & Public Speaker

★★ Parade

• +5 loyalty per day when you are in your own settlement.
  
• 5% chance per day to gain +1 relation with a lord in the same army.

+5 loyalty per day allows you to "stockpile" loyalty in an otherwise unloyal settlement relatively quick and do clever things. The 5% chance part of this perk is... something. Not terrible, but something.

Public Speaker

• +30% renown gain from battles.

Alright, in the one case you are at tier 9 Charm and have atrocious renown, you're gonna need this. Otherwise, it's useless.

Final verdict: Parade is a clear choice here for having actual use. I don't think Public Speaker is 💩 tier, it's just extremely niche. I don't know how you would get to this point in a perk tree without having decent renown already.

10 - Camaraderie (no option)

Camaraderie

• Double relations with lords when aiding them in battle.
  
• +1 companion limit.

+1 companion limit is great. Double relations is alright for battles. This is a solid perk. Is it worth 10 tiers of Charm? Probably not.

Final verdict: Decent perk for there being no other option.

Leadership (p.1)

Leadership's perk tree is OK. The skill leveling for better morale is acceptable as well. Amazingly, this tree has no 💩-tier perks.

1 - Combat Tips & Raise The Meek

★★ Combat Tips

• +2 xp/day to all troops in party.
  
• Extra recruit slot from same-culture notables.

+2 xp/day is fine for tier 1. It does nothing in most cases since XP values get so high after a few tiers, but as a tier 1 perk it's passable.

Raise The Meek

• +4 xp/day to tier 1-2 troops.

This is a pretty bad perk, but is only tier 1, so it doesn't get the 💩 stamp. This amount of XP is still really low but only affects troops that you shouldn't be buying past the mid-game or should be promoting after a single battle or less.

Final verdict: The amount of XP is insignificantly low both ways, but to stack for all of your troops like some other trees do, Combat Tips is best.

2 - Fervent Attacker & Stout Defender

Fervent Attacker

• +4 morale when attacking.
  
• +50% rate of recruiting tier 1-3 prisoners.

Recruitment rate of lower tier troops will be used more, but is also less useful quality-wise. +4 morale is pretty small, but not poopoo-tier for a tier 2 perk. Generally you won't need extra morale when attacking; you should be ready to win attacking fights.

☆ Stout Defender

• +8 morale when defending.
  
• +50% rate of recruiting tier 4-6 prisoners.

8 morale is decent and can benefit if defending a rough battle. Having faster recruiting for these higher tier prisoners will be more beneficial.

Final verdict: I can see taking Fervent Attacker, but in my eyes having the bonus morale on defending and having higher tier prisoners available faster wins Stout Defender a better ticket.

3 - Authority & Heroic Leader

Authority

• +5 party size.

Party size kicks 𝚊𝚜s always.

Heroic Leader

• 10% more morale penalty when an opponent is killed by your formation.

10% morale penalty is decent for tier 3.

Final verdict: The 10% morale penalty is decent but questionably felt, where it's always easy to feel additional party size. Your choice.

4 - Famous Commander & Loyalty And Honor

Famous Commander

• +50% renown gain from battles.
  
• +200 xp to recruited troops.

Renown gain is possibly the most irritating leveling structures in the game, so an extra 50% is solid. +200 XP is negligible but an OK sub-perk.

Loyalty And Honor

• Troops tier 3+ do not retreat due to low morale.
  
• 30% faster non-bandit prisoner conversion.

This perk used to be only for troops tier 3 or below, but with it now being high tier troops, this can get you a serious change of momentum in a battle if it's close. I've seen high tier khuzait troops literally go 1:10 because of their ludicrous armor.

Final verdict: I honestly think both perks are good and it depends on what your playstyle is. If you dislike renown as a mechanic, go with Famous Commander, otherwise Loyalty and Honor is good.

5 - Leader of the Masses & Presence

Leader of the Masses

• +5 party size for each controlled town.
  
• 5% of experience gained by heroes is gifted to troops.

Party size is nice and can rapidly multiply if you target towns - however, the one-town strat could greatly hurt this perk.

Presence

• +5 security in a town per day while waiting.
  
• No morale penalty for recruiting prisoners of your culture.

The security s𝚑𝚒t is 𝚊𝚜s but no morale penalty on own-culture troops can be solid if you correctly culture yourself for a campaign. However, I don't tend to notice the "recent events" morale hit from recruiting prisoners kills my party morale so bad I would always need this perk.

Final verdict: I can see the use of Presence if compared to Leader of the Masses. Your choice.

Leadership (p.2)

6 - Citizen Militia & Veteran's Respect

Citizen Militia

• +20% morale gain from victories.

This can be good for both morale drop over time and winning smaller engagements, but isn't massively game-changing in longer runs due to it stacking an already positive effect.

Veteran's Respect

• You can now convert bandits into regular troops.

Converting bandits is alright but this is pretty far up the perk. The real kicker of this perk is the ability to convert units and acquire faction elite units, which are hard as hell to come by.

Final verdict: Player's choice, I initially thought Veteran's Respect wasn't so good in my disdain for bandit troops, but the ability to create uncommon units out of them can bring success if you look for it.

7 - Inspiring Leader & Uplifting Spirit

Inspiring Leader

• 20% less influence needed for calling parties.
  
• +5% experience to troops from battles.

Less influence is always a good perk choice, and the +5% experience is acceptable.

Uplifting Spirit

• +10 battle morale during sieges.
  
• +10 party size limit.

Party size is like gateway drugs. Extra battle morale during sieges is actually quite good too on the defense, since the longer you can delay your troops crumbling the more headshots you can get with your overpowered bow build.

Final verdict: Both perks have their reasons for choice. I think Inspiring Leader has an edge on Uplifting Spirit, but party size and battle morale can be greatly beneficial.

8 - Lead by Example & Trusted Commander

Lead by Example

• 50% melee prisoner recruitment rate.
  
• 5.5% experience (up from 5%) shared to cavalry troops.

Melee prisoners are probably the most common to get, so this isn't terrible for recovering your army through prisoner recruitment, but for tier 8 is underwhelming. Why only cavalry for the secondary perk?

Trusted Commander

• 50% ranged prisoner recruitment rate.
  
• +20% simulated experience gain for troops.

The ranged prisoner recruitment is okay but the sim experience gain is lackluster and isn't fitting in the leadership perk tree.

Final verdict: Underwhelming but not doodoo-tier perks, pick your preference.

9 - Great Leader & Make a Difference

Great Leader

• +5 battle morale to troops.
  
• +5 battle morale to troops with the same culture.

This perk is OK but for a tier 9 perk is super underwhelming. Couldn't you go for 10, TW? A 20 battle morale bonus for legionaries would be very interesting to define culture more.

Make a Difference

• 100% higher morale effect for kills by you.
  
• 5.5% experience (up from 5%) shared to ranged troops.

if you are slaying lots of enemies in melee combat this is an acceptable perk. Why only ranged for the secondary perk, TW?

Final verdict: Player choice. I think both are acceptable.

10 - Talent Management & We Pledge our Swords

★★ Talent Management

• +10 party size.
  
• +1 clan party available.

This is great. Clan parties are versatile and useful. +10 party size is good.

We Pledge our Swords

• +1 companion.
  
• Up to +10 morale (max) for each tier 6 troop (+1 morale).

+1 companion is great but this is way outperformed by Talent Management. +10 morale is bad. If it had no morale cap it'd be cooler.

Final verdict: We Pledge our Swords would be a great perk if it wasn't up against Talent Management. Go Talent.

Trade (p.1)

I hate trade as a skill. it's a huge pain to get the first two perk levels of trade so that you can level easier, and even then it wastes SO MUCH time. The perks aren't significant to make an appreciable benefit to you. This entire tree just sucks to level and you hardly feel the effects.

Seriously, if you want a TL;DR of this entire list, just don't spec trade at all. Trade is possibly the worst tree other than Rogue.

Taleworlds please just make it so creating caravans gets you some passive trade XP. Oh wait you won't do that because it would be good, my bad, sorry.

1 - Appraiser & Whole Seller

☆ Appraiser

• 15% decrease sell price penalty for equipment.
  
• Profits are marked.

Whole Seller

• 15% decrease sell price penalty for trade goods.
  
• Profits are marked.

Final verdict: The difficult part here is if you don't go for trade goods you can't level trade efficiently. Towns do not tell you if equipment is cheaper in other settlements. That being said, equipment is 90% of your selling game for a long time, so I like Appraiser more.

2 - Caravan Master & Market Dealer

☆ Caravan Master

• Party can carry 30% more weight.
  
• Item prices are marked.

Party weight gain is nice. As is obvious, item prices being marked is great.

Market Dealer

• -50% cost of bartering for safe passage.
  
• Item prices are marked.

This perk used to make workshop income slightly increase. It is so much better now, but still underwhelming to Caravan Master.

Final verdict: Good work on the update TW, knowing how awful workshops are. I have (very rarely, but have) used the barter mechanic to run away from a party that would cause me to lose mine at least once, so I can see use in that. However, I think Caravan Master wins out on always being useful versus the one, maybe two times you'd use bartering in a campaign.

3 - Local Connection & Traveling Rumors

☆ Local Connection

• Workshops gather rumors.
  
• 15% decrease in sell penalty for animals.

Rumors are crap but workshops are always around whereas caravans might not be. Workshops can allow you to "trademax" by strategically placing them.

Traveling Rumors

• Caravans gather rumors.
  
• 15% decrease in buy penalty from villages.

The village penalty decrease is decent for horse villages but nothing else.

Final verdict: Playstyle matters here since you won't be following your caravans around everywhere. I think Local Connection is better to strategize rumors from planned workshop placement.

4 - Distributed Goods & Toll Gates

💩 Distributed Goods

• Double relationship for artisans from resolved issues.

Unless you are specifically maxing out on quests (both RNG dependent and area dependent) this is not an effective perk.

💩 Toll Gates

• Double relationship for merchants from resolved issues.

Same synopsis as above.

Final verdict: Both perks are lackluster due to not being able to control issues. Pick one at random and it's the same as if you thought it over.

5 - Artisan Community & Great Investor

Artisan Community

• Profitable workshops give +1 renown/day.
  
• +1 recruitment slot with merchant notables.

Workshops are limited in numbers but can keep your companions free. Vanilla workshops suck at making REAL money, but if they make you renown, at least they do something right.

Great Investor

• Profitable caravans give +1 renown/day.
  
• Companion hiring is 30% cheaper.

Companion hiring is useless, but caravans giving renown can increase your renown nicely.

Final verdict: If you would rather send your companions off to do missions for you, go with Artisan Community. Otherwise, Great Investor is better for passive renown gain since there is no caravan cap.

Trade (p.2)

6 - Content Trades & Mercenary Connections

Content Trades

• -50% wages when waiting in settlements.

This is a nice amount of wage reduction, but are you having that much trouble with your party wages?

💩 Mercenary Connections

• +25% workshop production.
  
• -25% mercenary troop wage.

Vanlla workshops suck so 25% sucks. Mercenaries are expensive but it might benefit you if you're meming around with a full mercenary party.

Final verdict: Both perks are 6 tiers up the tree and both are only good for some monetary gain. Pick whichever fits your playstyle, I think Content Trades is better.

7 - Insurance Plans & Rapid Development

Insurance Plans

• Caravans return 5000 gold when destroyed.
  
• 25% less trade penalty for food.

If you run lots of caravans this is great since they will get f𝚞𝚌ked up all the time.

Rapid Development

• Workshops return 5000 gold when captured by an enemy.
  
• 25% less trade penalty for clay, iron, cotton, and silver.

This is a solid investment return for workshops but workshops suck anyway. At least it gives you something back.

Final verdict: Pick based on playstyle; lots of caravans, go Insurance Plans. The trade penalty sub-perks are mostly meaningless at this point if you are playing the game right. Workshops are POOPY!

8 - Granary Accountant & Tradeyard Foreman

💩 Granary Accountant

• 20% food trade good penalty decrease.

💩 Tradeyard Foreman

• 20% pottery, tools, cotton, jewelry trade penalty decrease.

Final verdict: At this point you should be completely fine on denars so having small percentage bonuses turns insignificant. Granary Accountant is better for saving some money on food which you'll always need.

9 - Self Made Man & Sword For Barter

💩 Self Made Man

• -50% barter penalty for items.

If NPCs ever had items worth bartering for, this would be great. They don't.

💩 Sword For Barter

• 20% cheaper mercenary hiring.
  
• 15% lower wage for caravan guard troops.

How many caravan guards are you going to have in your party? Cheaper mercenary hiring is a terrible perk for being 9 tiers up.

Final verdict: Self Made Man is better but both are horrible perks.

10 - Silver Tongue & Spring of Gold

☆ Silver Tongue

• -15% gold required to persuade lords to defect to your faction.

This is decent, but being 10 tiers up the Trade list makes it very, VERY difficult to bother advancing to.

💩 Spring of Gold

• 0.1% interest per day on gold you have, capped at 1000 per day (max gained by owning 1,000,000 gold).

If you've actually spent this long leveling your trade, I certainly hope you have a better method for gaining money outside of stockpiling 1mil and banking on this tiny perk. By the time your perks are this high, you should have better means of making money.

Final verdict: Spring of Gold is an interesting mechanic but gives you pennies for way too much effort and hassle on your part (in leveling trade). I suppose go Silver Tongue to save some on irritating NPC acquisition.

11 - Man of Means & Trickle Down

💩 Man of Means

• Minor faction recruitment into your kingdom is 20% cheaper.
  
• 30% reduced ransom offer for you.

This is OK I guess. It's at tier 11 of the f𝚞𝚌king trade perk tree though. I mean at this point you're probably swimming in like 1000000000000000 f𝚞𝚌king denars so why do you need percentage boosts to random costs?

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Trickle Down

• +1 (yes really just 1) relation with merchant nobles if you buy more than 10,000 denars worth of trade goods in a town.

Can you imagine spending double digit hours REAL TIME to level trade and selecting this perk? I hope you never subject yourself to such a thing.

Final verdict: Why did TW give this perk tree 11 slots over other perk trees and then decide to make the highest choice-tier horrible? I guess pick Man of Means.

Steward (p.1)

Steward as a skill kicks 𝚊𝚜s. Party size is always great. You can easily defend having 5 focus points in steward. Some of the perks are stinkier, but the party size bonus from the skill is enough to make up for any bad perk.

Even if you don't use the party size, nothing else gains party size outside of companion debauchery.

Even though I crap on some perk tiers here, the nice part about Steward is that you essentially get it for free by playing an "average" game. Steward also levels very quickly.

1 - Frugal & Warrior's Diet

★★ Frugal

• -5% party wages.
  
• -15% recruitment costs.

This is a really solid tier 1 perk. Effective through the whole game due to a percentage boost and always has solid effect.

💩 Warrior's Diet (previously Spartan)

• -10% food consumed.
  
• No morale penalty from having a single type of food.

This is a rare 💩-tier tier 1 perk. 10% food consumed is such a small value for how the game calculates food. You should never have only one type of food after the extreme early game if you're playing with a brain.

Final verdict: Frugal is the clear choice.

2 - Drill Sergeant & Seven Veterans

★★ Drill Sergeant

• +2xp/day to all troops.

It's okay. 2 XP is hardly anything, but it's just a level 2 perk. This will help your tier 1 awful troops get out of it a little quicker in the early game but nothing else.

Seven Veterans

• 💩 +4xp/day to tier 4+ troops.

Tier 4+ troops need 9,999,999,999 XP to level up (I have done extensive testing to verify this number). This is likely as unfelt as +2 would be for them, so just go with Drill Sergeant.

Final verdict: The difference of 2 and 4 xp is minimal and neither will help any troops with tiers behind them. Go Drill Sergeant.

3 - Stiff Upper Lip & Sweatshops

💩💩💩 Stiff Upper Lip

• -10% food consumption when in an army.

What a small insignificant bonus. Food is so common and easy to come by.

★★ Sweatshops

• +20% workshop production.
  
• +20% siege engine build time.

Siege engine build time is good because those f𝚞𝚌kers build slow as h𝚎𝚕l. Workshops are terrible as always, so that part sucks, but at least it's some extra money.

Final verdict: Building siege engines faster with Sweatshops is good. Stiff Upper Lip is terrible.

4 - Efficient Campaigner & Paid In Promise

Efficient Campaigner

• Double food item gained from village raids (+1 extra food item).
  
• -25% troop wages when in an army.

Food item gain has massive 😴-energy and does hardly anything. -25% troop wages is decent.

Paid In Promise

• -25% companion wages and recruitment fees.
  
• Discard armors to gain troop XP.

Discarding armors as a mechanic is locked behind this perk, so it's nice to have - still, it's not great. Companion wages are RIDICULOUS for how sometimes mediocre they can be as field troops, so Paid in Promise is solid if you plan on keeping companion fighters.

Final verdict: Paid in Promise has less value if you don't use companions in your party but maintains a mechanic you might use. Efficient Campaigner can be exploited with solo armies, but also you shouldn't have so much trouble with upkeep. Pick your poison.

5 - Giving Hands & Logistician

Giving Hands

• Discard weapons to gain troop XP.

It's OK. I'd rather use weapons for sale or smithing.

Logistician

• +4 morale if mount count is higher than non-cavalry troops.

+4 morale is essentially free if you're keeping your mount count high (always good).

Final verdict: I would say Logistician is better since I don't like discarding weapons, either selling or smelting them down, but you could get an interesting mileage out of both discard-for-XP perks for a veteran army.

Steward (p.2)

Save me from H𝚎ll.

6 - Aid Corps & Relocation

☆ Aid Corps

• No wages paid for wounded troops.

This is OK. Compared to other passive bonus percentages for wages across other perk trees, this one is always useful since you'll have plenty of wounded troops after every battle.

Relocation

• +25% influence gain from donating troops.

I never donate troops since it seems insignificant. I lose good troops and get hardly anything out of it when I could just sit in an army and gain goodie-boy points rapidly.

Final verdict: Player choice, but Aid Corps seems much better. Keep your troops to use in gaining influence rather than pi𝚜sing them away.

7 - Gourmet & Sound Reserves

★★ Gourmet

• Double morale bonus from diverse food.

This is an alright perk and gives a solid morale bonus for something you should already be doing (having multiple foods).

💩 Sound Reserves

• -10% cost of upgrading units.

Upgrading units is expensive but -10% is not enough to make this perk worth it in my eyes. This is tier 7 man.

Final verdict: Gourmet is better unless I'm missing some gimmick with Sound Reserves. Just get more money bro.

8 - Contractors & Forced Labor

Contractors

• Mercenary troops' wages and upgrade costs are decreased by 25%.

Only truly good if you use loads of mercenaries. It can stack well with other mercenary perks but is otherwise useless.

Forced Labor

• Prisoners provide carry capacity.

Often useful since you'll have prisoners a lot, but if you're already under capacity and manage your inventory properly, you'll literally never feel this perk.

Final verdict: Contractors is good if you are choosing to only hire mercenaries, but it's difficult to maintain an entire army of them for a few reasons. Forced Labor always gives you a free benefit, so I usually go with it. YMMV.

9 - Arenicos' Horses & Arenicos' Mules

★★ Arenicos' Horses

• +10% carrying capacity for troops.
  
• -20% mount trade penalty.

Arenicos' Mules

• +20% carrying capacity for pack animals.
  
• -20% pack animal trade penalty.

Final verdict: Mounts are better than pack animals most of the time. You can use them to upgrade cavalry troops and they carry enough you shouldn't end up overburdened. Arenicos' Horses turns out the better perk.

10 - Master of Planning & Master of Warcraft

💩💩💩 Master of Planning

• -40% food consumption if in a siege camp.

Do TW devs test these perks? Are you really having food issues? Ever? Why? How?

★★ Master of Warcraft

• -25% troop wages while in a siege camp.

This one is at least helps you out compared to losing less food. Did you know this was just -15% when I first made this guide? They buffed the better one.

Final verdict: Master of Warcraft is better only because Master of Planning is so bad.

Medicine (p.1)

Similar to Steward, Medicine is a great skill with good bonuses but some of the perks can be lackluster. That being said -- if you get the top perk, Minister of Health, you will kick everything's 𝚊𝚜s. That is a killer perk.

1 - Preventive Medicine & Self Medication

★★ Preventive Medicine

• +5 hit points.
  
• 30% of health points healed after each battle.

30% health points regained after battle is great. It allows you to end up in any level of combat (downed or alive) and be able to continue doing s𝚑𝚒t afterward.

Self Medication

• +30% healing rate.
  
• +2% movement speed.

While 30% healing rate is good, it's totally outclassed by Preventive Medicine. 2% movement speed is 𝚊𝚜s.

Final verdict: Preventive Medicine is great, especially for a tier 1 perk.

2 - Triage Tent & Walk It Off

Triage Tent

• +30% party heal rate when stationary.

Can be useful if in towns a lot. If you're into smithing this is a good perk because you're going to be doing a lot of nothing.

☆ Walk It Off

• +15% party heal rate when moving.
  
• Heroes regain 10 HP after an offensive battle.

10 extra HP is nice after battle when you can get it. For fighter Heroes, it allows them to fight over and over regardless of status. I move more on the map so I feel this is the better perk.

Final verdict: Me like Walk It Off. I can understand taking either.

3 - Doctors Oath & Sledges

★★ Doctors Oath

• Medicine skill applies to enemies, increasing potential prisoners and applying XP to your medicine level.
  
• +5 HP.

Extra prisoners is decent, but what makes this a must-take is the leveling bonus you get from applying your medicine level to defeated enemies. Other than that, +5 HP is OK for tier 3.

💩💩 Sledges

• -50% wounded party speed penalty.
  
• +15 HP to all mounts in your party.

This is more of an issue of game mechanics. Doctors Oath is a must-take while Sledges only gives you unfelt health change to mounts and a percentage change to a small percentage debuff.

Final verdict: Doctors Oath is the must-pick if you want to continue leveling Medicine. Sledges is simply not effective enough to consider taking.

4 - Best Medicine & Good Lodging

Best Medicine

• +15% healing when above 70 morale.
  
• +1 relation per day with a random notable over age 40 while in a town.

☆ Good Lodging

• +20% heal rate when resting in settlements.
  
• +1 relation per day with a random notable over age 40 while in a town.

Final verdict: I consider Good Lodging better due to the higher healing rate and consistency. You are always able to sit in a settlement and gain the benefit.

5 - Siege Medic & Veterinarian

💩 Siege Medic

• Siege bombardment deaths have 50% chance of being wounded instead of killed.
  
• 30% chance that siege engine being destroyed will end in wound and not death.

Siege engine and bombardment deaths are extremely low in count compared to actually fighting sieges. If you need this perk, something is wrong.

★★ Veterinarian

• 30% chance per day to recover a lame horse.
  
• 50% chance to recover a mount from lost cavalry in battle.

You shouldn't care about lame horses and just buy a new one, but recovering horses from your cavalry units can be very useful in the long-term for keeping a cavalry-heavy army.

Final verdict: Veterinarian is the ideal perk for usability.

Medicine (p.2)

6 - Bush Doctor & Pristine Streets

Bush Doctor

• 20% bonus healing in villages.

Who stops and waits in villages when towns are available?

★★ Pristine Streets

• 20% bonus healing in towns.

This is decent.

Final verdict: You might be someone who does spend time in villages more than towns, but I think most players aren't. Towns offer more things to do while you wait to heal and there are no shortage of them.

7 - Health Advice & Perfect Health

Health Advice

• The first time a clan member rolls old age death, they won't.
  
• Wounded troops do not decrease morale in battles.

Morale troubles are nice to hammer out. The death roll portion of this should be a secondary. I hope you aren't banking on living past a certain age in Bannerlord.

☆ Perfect Health

• Food variety increases recovery rate by 5% for each point.

If you have basic food variety this is a solid healing booster.

Final verdict: I prefer Perfect Health but I don't have perfect math to back it up. My thought is if you have very fast healing rate, you don't have to worry about the light morale penalty of a few wounded troops. On the opposite side I see the purpose of Health Advice too. Player choice.

8 - Clean Infrastructure & Physician of People

💩💩💩 Clean Infrastructure

• This perk only has governor benefits, meaning you will get nothing from it.

★★ Physician of People

• Tier 1 & 2 troops have 30% higher chance to recover from fatal wounds.

Tier 1 & 2 troops are terrible and will be killed constantly. So getting a 30% bonus for them to survive is decent to try to get them up to the "useful troop" tiers.

Final verdict: Physician of People is solid for increasing the potency of your party.

9 - Cheat Death & Fortitude Tonic

💩 Cheat Death

• Ignore a single old age death roll. Stacks with Health Advice.
  
• -50% hero death chance in battle.

You only really die in battle if you take massive head damage. Just avoid it bro lol. If you are concerned about character death, turn death mechanics off, don't try to out-perk it.

★★ Fortitude Tonic

• +10 max health of heroes in your party.
  
• +5 HP.

Weak for a tier 9 perk. Very weak. But HP is acceptable for a bonus and if you have a heavy companion party, this is a solid perk.

Final verdict: Fortitude Tonic is a perk you can feel the effects of in-game. Cheat Death is an RNG perk.

10 - Battle Hardened & Helping Hands

Battle Hardened

• 💩+25 XP to wounded units at the end of battle.

This is a flat XP rate of +25XP. That is seriously insignificant unless you want to constantly raise peasant armies and get BTFO'd by every major force on the map.

Helping Hands

• ★★ Every 10 troops in the party increases troop recovery rate by 2%.

If you have a decently sized party this will massively increase your party's recovery speed.

Final verdict: Perhaps if Battle Hardened were 25 PERCENT it would have serious use, but just isn't very effective compared to the troops simply battling. Helping Hands lowers your recovery time to negligible levels and can be easily felt - take it.

Engineering (p.1)

Engineering is... alright, but shouldn't be specced into. You can get through any siege by performing "siege meta" (explained in the below paragraph).

Siege meta is very basic. Build a trebuchet; once complete, immediately "stow" it. Repeat that three times. Build a fourth (your spaces should still be empty). Once it's finished, put the other three trebuchets down right away. You now have four full health trebuchets and the enemy walls shouldn't beat them unless you happen to be attacking a very high engineering enemy lord (rare). Even if you lose your engines, repeating the process will eventually lead to success. If you need a guide, check out "How to SIEGE" by TRGGRD.

1 - Scaffolds & Torsion Engines

Scaffolds

• +10% non-ranged siege engine build speed.
  
• +30% shield hit points.

If you need that extra shield health you are not playing the game right and should lern2block lmao xd. Non-ranged siege engines don't need saving or rebuilding, so it shouldn't be as time heavy as the ranged weapons.

★★ Torsion Engines

• +10% ranged siege engine build speed.
  
• +3 flat crossbow damage.

Most of the time spent building for a siege is to build the ranged weapons, save them, and then deploy them all at once. This will save you more time. Bonus damage on the crossbow is better than shield hitpoints.

Final verdict: Both perks are OK for tier 1, but Torsion Engines as a perk performs much better.

2 - Dungeon Architect & Siegework

💩 Dungeon Architect (previously Prison Architect, wonder why they changed that :^) )

• -25% chance for ranged siege engines to be hit while bombarding.

The reason this is poopoo is that siege meta is to build your items, save them, and then deploy them all at once. You do not need bonus miss chance when you autowin from placing all trebuchets at once.

★★ Siegework

• +10% siege engine hit points.

Due to the meta build order, hit points are acceptable as a bonus. This can also help you when you can't out-shoot enemy siege engines and need your towers to not be one-shot in battle.

Final verdict: Due to meta building for sieges, Siegework is the go-to. You f𝚞𝚌ked it, Taleworlds!

3 - Carpenters & Military Planner

💩Carpenters

• Rams & Siege Towers have 33% more hitpoints.

Because of siege meta, this is useless. If you attack a castle and the enemy has siege engines up, they will destroy your towers prior to them getting to the walls. It happens so often. Sometimes rams die, but rarely. If you play a siege correctly, this will be a useless perk.

💩 Military Planner

• +50% ammunition to ranged troops when besieging.

Have you had troops run out of ammo during a siege? Due to the new AI for picking up ammo, I have never noticed this and if it has happened I do not think a 25% ammunition bonus would have saved or lost the battle for me.

Final verdict: Military Planner is probably better(?), but both perks are rough.

4 - Dreadful Besieger & Wall Breaker

Dreadful Besieger

• +10% hit chance to siege engines.
  
• +5% troop crossbow damage.

This is good if you have a massive crossbow army. Which you probably don't.

★★ Wall Breaker

• +25% wall damage during sieges.
  
• +10% damage to shields for troops.

Walls have 29,533,295,924,324,923,492,394 health. I have extensively tested and elaborated on this with a team of trained scientists. Any extra damage you can get on walls is a bonus because it wastes less of your time.

Final verdict: Wall Breaker is best objectively, but Dreadful Besieger is funny if you want a full crossbow army.

5 - Foreman & Salvager

💩💩 Foreman

• Mangonels and trebuchets gain 10% accuracy.

💩💩 Salvager

• Ballistas gain 20% accuracy.

Final verdict: Slightly better accuracy is fine and dandy but it still feels down to RNG whether your engines will hit or not. Foreman is better because trebuchets are the king engine.

Engineering (p.2)

6 - Siege Engineer & Stonecutters

💩 Siege Engineer

• Can craft "fire versions" of siege engines.

💩 Stonecutters

• Can craft "fire versions" of siege engines.

Final verdict: So fire versions of engines are cool and all, but in practice you don't need fire engines to perform better or not during a siege.

7 - Battlements & Camp Building

💩 Battlements

• +1 pre-build ballista for siege camp.

Siege meta. Build trebuchets and deploy them all at once. Don't need any ballistas.

★★ Camp Building

• Army loses 50% less cohesion during sieging.

Maintaining army cohesion is always good. Sieging takes a lot of time and is the #1 reason for creating an army. This is a solid perk.

Final verdict: Camp Building is the objective choice due to siege meta.

8 - Apprenticeship & Engineering Guilds

💩💩💩💩💩 Apprenticeship

• +5 flat experience to entire party when you build a siege machine.

WOW, 5 flat XP! This was certainly worth EIGHT (8) tiers of dogs𝚑𝚒t Engineering perks!

💩💩💩💩💩 Engineering Guilds

• +1 recruitment slot from artisans.

TW gave up with this perk tree. They couldn't think of anything to give to it so they just gave up and gave you +1 recruitment slot to random NPCs. Thanks TW.

Final verdict: Both of these perks are actually horrible. If you could avoid picking either of them I would recommend that, but since you can't, just randomly pick one.

9 - Improved Tools & Metallurgy

☆ Improved Tools

• +20% faster camp preparation.
  
• Troops in your formation gain +5 flat melee damage.

See final verdict.

Metallurgy

• 80% chance that "tattered, crude, etc" items will be normal instead.
  
• +5 flat armor to your troops.

See final verdict.

Final verdict: 9 tiers down the line, this is underwhelming. That being said, the player has an option here. Getting equipment that isn't broken is really solid for both smithing and selling, but at tier 9? Improved Tools saving you time is probably best. Too little too late.

10 - Architectural Commissions & Clockwork

Architectural Commissions

• 25% faster reload time for mangonels and trebuchets.

This is the better perk due to siege meta. Trebuchets, baby. But guess what? Doesn't matter, you'll win if you use siege meta regardless of reload time.

💩 Clockwork

• 25% faster reload for ballistas.

Siege meta makes this completely useless.

Final verdict: Go Architectural Commissions. Hey wait, why are you 10 tiers into the engineering tree? Terrible.

Closing Remarks

Some perks are pretty kick𝚊𝚜s, but there is a surprising trend of poopoo, doodoo, and peepee tier (i have worked with a team of scientists to devise this rating system) perks. Taleworlds really needs to revamp some of these.

If you have constructive criticism or you want to call me a big peepee head for my Hot Takes, comment below. Just know that you're always wrong and I'm always right no matter what (that's a joke, lads). As mentioned in the intro, I will gladly change my opinions if presented a good counter-argument.

I hope you didn't read this entire thing. If you did, thanks for reading. CTRL+F gaming is probably king here.

[Sethja8]

@SAW
good point to be brought up. it often comes to a "game mechanic pluck" to quickly disengage with some perks as your comment emphasizes

[SAW]

Form Fitting Armor & Fury

I'd often chosen fitting armour because of the weight reduction. I figured that high athletics would offset as apposed to nullify armor weight. however while I was looking at this choice once more I thought of a compelling argument against which is not listed here, and is simpler.

nulify armour weight ought to be pointless on a mount, which makes this a binary choice between movement speed on foot and attack speed on foot.

[Sethja8]

@BasedGodTripp
no clue how i messed that calculation up so bad! thanks for the headsup -- guide updated.

[BasedGodTripp]

Hi, wouldn't Trade 10 - Spring of Gold need 1m for full effect? I think the 0.1% is incorrectly calculated as 10% to get that 10,000 number. If the perk was written to correctly reflect the code, .1% is a tenth of a percent rather than a tenth of the number it is applied to.

[Sethja8]

@Brotato
thanks for the info, i updated that portion. to be honest i can't imagine the 10% does anything you can "feel" in battle and would be curious to see if tests would confirm it.

[Sethja8]

@ANIKI
agree to disagree, i don't usually have money problems and i don't value the smithed weapons over bought or looted weaponry especially with time invested. i can concede attributes are nice to come across but i consider that a symptom of bannerlord's hesitance to give attributes points after so many levels

[Brotato]

The 3rd leadership perk "Heroic Leader" in game say the morale bonus is only when an enemy is killed by your formation no a blanket morale debuff. is it still the preferred?

[DateWithDestiny]

Smithing is actually good, U literally can make legendary weapons with specs and design that u like most it gives U 2 free atributes points which are the most valuable thing in this game and its the best way to make gold in the entire game.

[Sethja8]

@Victim
thanks for the update on that one too. i think when i initially wrote that perk it was off of the wiki, so wording was probably messed up and confused me. will update it.

[Victim]

Also a quick note about your Forced Labor perk entry, the construction speed buff is only for governors, so it's useless for player characters, i'd say this makes these 2 perks pretty even, if you don't care about carry weight cause you got lots of horses you should choose the other perk imo