Pan Jinliang is also a doctor, but she also starts out very weak.

I think the best way to develop the companion careers is grind easier outlaws with a small party so that they have lots of opportunities to get easy kills and go on fire. Once you get a big party and start fighting tougher enemies, they won't get as many chances.

As far as the second career goes, I don't know if you need a level 4 companion in the same career you want, or just any level 4 companion. After day 100, a few more high-level companions appear and they already have level 4 careers.

Fair warning: In order to unlock the second career, you first need to do a mindreading for the bartender of Dongjing, and its a one-on-one fight against Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind with the crush-through-block double axes. And you have to fight him as the bartender, who's just a peasant with low level stats and a crappy sword. Its pretty much impossible. At least with the lord mindreadings, even the weakest lords have pretty decent stats. This guy's just a civilian trying to take on the toughest guy in the entire mod.

To get a second career, YOUR character must have LEVEL 3. The person teaching you a new class must have LEVEL 4 or higher.

There's many NPC lords who have high ranks in jobs, you can just join a faction and recruit one of those guys to get the job you want. It only costs you some HONOR and RENOWN.

I personally grinded up one of the girls to reach level 4 in beauty, because Li Shishi doesn't spawn until day 100 and I believe she's the only character in the game with above level 4 in beauty.

So unless you're willing to wait a long time, the beauty class is the only one that doesn't have an easy alternative. I did the grind.

This can take probably around 100 duels depending on how lucky you get. Some jobs seem to level faster than others.

For what it's worth, my main character is an actor and so she causes allies to become "on fire" when she wins a duel, and I had Yu Lan grinding on looters, sea raiders and anyone else she could kill. I believe it took me less than 100 duels to get her to LEVEL 4.

In YOUR case, [Divine Physician] is maxed out at LEVEL 5 in Doctor, so you can easily obtain the job once you reach level 3 in your current job, which is easily doable with duel spam.

And as far as beating Han Bolon's quest, I posted how I did it on the Nexus forums.

Li Kui isn't wearing any head or chest armor and on the easiest settings, you can take two hits. His side swings are much slower and have a longer animation than his downward chop, which activates nearly instantly.

You can exploit the moment he stops blocking to get in some hits. You're dead if he gets in multiple downward chops. Sometimes you can get away with striking his shield and striking again, but it can easily go wrong for you.

So basically just hold your sword up for a downward chop to get a head shot, then wait until he stops blocking. Also, it REALLY HELPS if you immediately hide behind the counter so he has to go around it to get to you. Your sword's range is only slightly longer than his axe's, but it's just not worth it to go after him.

I think he goes down in 6 to 8 chops, so it's stressful but it won't last forever.

If you walk backwards and forwards in place, this triggers the AI to come after you, and when he stops blocking, you swing. I was able to win this fight consistently this way.

You can also press escape and save while inside of the tavern so you can retry this battle faster.

you have a lot better luck against Li Kui than I do. That guy just owns me evety time no matter what I do.

So you DO need a companion with level 4 in the career you want? Not just any level 4 companion?

Hah! After a lot of practice fighting him I can usually win in 2 attempts. I might record videos of the mind reading quests and post them on youtube so people can see the AI tricks I'm talking about. Text doesn't properly convey these things all the time.

Yes. Whoever you have, HAS to have LEVEL 4 or higher in the career YOU want to obtain.

So someone that's a LEVEL 4 Actor and Beauty can't teach you how to become a Titan.

The game expects you to recruit AI lords and be in a faction.

I believe the requirement to recruit an AI lord is something like 25 HONOR and more RENOWN than they have. Then you lose 300-500 RENOWN and 20 honor points or so to bring him or her into your party.

Absolutely worth it for the really overpowered lords.

I guess that makes sense. Its a good thing the 3 high level companions who appear after 100 days have high levels of some of the better careers.

I actually kind of feel wrong making lords into my companions. It feels like I'm weakening my faction by taking these guys' armies out of play. I don't like taking more than one lord at a time for that reason. I suppose I could sort of balance it by sending one of the regular companions to be a lord, but they're usually not much of a replacement for a decent lord.

I also don't like that you don't get the companion lord's alerts when their fiefs are being attacked. You could wind up with the lord losing all his fiefs because he was off adventuring when he should've been taking care of his business.

I'd be pretty interested in seeing some of your Li Kui fights. That guy's my nemesis. Out of all the dueling enemies, he's always the scariest

* and please tell me you don't have to have 50% health to succeed in that fight

No, Han Bolong doesn't care how much HP he's got left. All that matters is you win.

And yeah, you weaken your country every time you recruit one of your lords. A side effect of turning every single companion into a lord though is that you'll be in a constant state of war. All the other factions will declare war because they feel threatened at how overpowered your faction seems. It's a very reliable way to have constant conflict.

If you keep fighting and taking lords prisoner, you can turn the tide though. As your guys get fiefs and renown, they'll eventually be able to recruit more men and will be able to make a difference.


However, there's a lord in I think the Shu faction whose special ability gives you a much higher chance of persuading lords to join YOUR faction.



Especially when you factor in having done all the mind reading quests. Anyone with high relationship is now a potential target for you absorbing them into your team.

I ran some numbers and found that Shu has the lords with the best special abilities for conquering the world.

If you went around giving guys gifts until they're at 100 relationship, you could probably seduce quite a few lords into joining you without any kind of violence. This mod has so many opportunities like this for people willing to plan ahead.



At least I think it's Shu. It's one of the blue guys. In particular, they've got a guy whose Star Skill makes it so that any lord in your faction will follow your orders ALL the time. There's another guy who lets you exchange troops with lords in your faction, so you can load up on high tier guys and never stop sieging castles and towns because you don't have to go back to replenish men.


And yeah, but I'm still only beating Li Kui consistently because the game's on the lowest settings. A "good" AI will block constantly and won't fall for my mix up game. He'd have very few openings and he'd exploit the fact that his sword crushes through blocks more.

In fact, in general I don't block. His overhead attack crushes through blocks so you're only able to block the side swings, but you're better off just hitting him and stun locking him if he's in the middle of a swing anyways.


It might even be worth marrying the guy as a female character then recruiting him just so you can remove all his gear and make any quest involving him easier. Another benefit of marriage is that you'll be able to rebel and make him your king, so he'll always assign you the fiefs you want and you'll be able to store men in his fiefs without having to pay them.

Yeah, It occured to me later that I shouldn't be recruiting lords from my own faction. I should be recruiting them from other factions and then making them into my companions.

I'll have to try that damn bar fight again but I've come to really dread it. There's an added pain in that my game tends to crash when I repeatedly reload and try to go back into the tavern. Its fine if i reload continuously out on the world map, but for some reason going back into the tavern too many times causes me CTDs, so it's like an extra kick in the teeth from Li Kui.

As much as I hate him, I really do love how badass he is. I had one battle against him in the last version where somehow he got seduced by one of my beauties right at the start of the battle. Our armies were on opposite sides of the field and suddenly enemies are dying left and right. Its Li Kui going berserk on his own men. He makes it all the way over to my side of the field and just takes up position in the infantry line like a regular soldier. I think he got 40 kills in that fight. I loved how the whole incident sort of fit with the lore around his character. And the nice thing about when a lord gets seduced is its not just a temporary effect with the flower particles. He becomes a full ally with the ally marker and everything, and it lasts for the whole battle round.

Originally posted by Lord Irontoe:

He becomes a full ally with the ally marker and everything, and it lasts for the whole battle round.

Wow. I can't think of any good reasons not to play a female character then. The beauty effect triggers 100% of the time against enemy Playboys, so I'll always be able to turn these kinds of enemies against their men.

Personally I like the overpowered enemies because the player needs someone to "check" them. You're so powerful, you level up quickly and easily and you can obtain all kinds of high quality gear. My character can casually 1 shot most troops and only armored knights take 2 or 3 hits to kill.

A lance thrust with +10 riding is a deadly attack that can 1 shot many lords. But then there are a handful of total badasses who can still challenge you even when you're a god.

The only real threats to me in this game are projectiles, couched lances (and thanks to my damage resistance, I can often survive at least two of those) and guys like Hua Rong and Li Kui.

Good luck with the bar fight. I've noticed that alt-tabbing out of the game makes it super unstable. But it's slightly more stable to play the game in windowed mode, so you can try that. Some people's systems eliminate most of the crashes that way.

Okay, so I'm current recording the Han Bolong mission and I have to say that going into the Warband settings and disabling sound and music makes this mod MUCH, MUCH more stable.

With the sound disabled I can do like 10 fights without crashing, but attempting this with the sound on (I want it to see more epic) makes it crash on every third attempt.

But if this goes well I might record the other Mind Reading quests after this.

That's interesting. I wonder if its because the mod uses a lot of MP3 files instead of OGG. I 've heard that the game prefers OGG files over MP3, but I dont know if that can cause CTDs. I wonder how hard it would be to convert the sound files.

I'd hate to have to turn off the music and sounds. I love the soundtrack and all the little sound effects are really fun. Honestly, I'd rather deal with the occasional CTD's than play the game in silence. That one bar fight is really the only place that regularly crashes me. Other than there, its just the random CTD here and there and I've gotten used to that by saving very frequently.

Okay, so I won. Here's a nice video showing my strategy. I fought him twice to show off exactly what I'm doing here. Hopefully this helps people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWYO2dBG3Ks

As far as the sound goes, usually I play with it off and then listen to my own music or audio books while I play.

you made that look easy. It never goes that well for me

I can do that 50% of the time.

His slash attack from the right is actually faster than your swing, so he can nail you and then follow up with another attack and kill you.

Sometimes you're lucky enough to be able to dodge outside of his range, but other times he'll go for an attack where he just destroys you in 2 hits and stun locks you.

I felt like including a bunch of failures wouldn't really improve the video, but the strategy of being REALLY aggressive and watching his animations for when you're safe to attack works well....half the time.

On most of my losses I could have won if I used a pill, but I challenged myself to not use any pills or the Mind Reader trait's 1 free pill per battle ability.

You notice I only ever block side slashes. You're probably going to get hit regardless of what you do when he launches a downward swing, and he's even capable of 1 shotting you like that. I couldn't believe it the first time he 1 shot me with 75 damage.

Did you see the parts where I did 61 and then 50 damage? I head shot him but the fight is pretty chaotic so you can't always land one of those. But it deals more damage and means the fight is shorter.

I may need to just get a little more aggressive and take the fight to him more. He's so intimidating that it always puts me on the defensive which is a bad idea with him since he can crush through blocks so easily.

Well don't get aggressive at the start of the fight. Both times I let him come to me first. Walking up to him plays into his strengths because his axes are so short ranged. He's faster than you and can definitely hit you.

But if you hit him and HE'S the one backing up, then you're free to slam and jam. Just don't throw attacks willy nilly because he's so quick that if you're in recoil stun from hitting his shield, he can hit you before you can recover, especially if he does a horizontal swing.