The triumphant sound of reaching a new level in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is always one of the game’s best moments. This isn’t just because of the momentary satisfaction of a job well done we all seek as gamers. But, because we know that there will be valuable focus points waiting on the character screen (default: C key).
Bannerlord follows the same general leveling system as its predecessor, Warband, in that you raise your overall experience bar by raising the values of your skills. Like all RPGs, the process frequently happens in the lower levels and becomes increasingly rare as you pass level 20. In the following article, we’ll cover the leveling system in Bannerlord. Also, a bit more in-depth, and explain the best ways to move your overall experience bar quickly using certain skills.
So here’s how to level up in Bannerlord.
Focus Points and Learning Limits
Focus points in Bannerlord are used to increase your ‘Learning Rate’ and ‘Learning Limits’. The rate decides how much experience you gain for each action; the limit decides how high skill can go before you can’t learn anymore and the experience gained becomes stagnant. These numbers can be elevated by using ‘Focus Points’, which are attained as you level up in Bannerlord.
They can also be elevated by raising the 5 primary skills–Vigor, Control, Endurance, Social, and Intelligence, which raises the Learning Limits and Learning Rates. The key is to avoid allowing your most-used skills (below) to reach their learning limits without adding more focus points.
When this happens, all your efforts and time could be going toward skills that are going up at a snail’s pace.
Focus on Skills You Always Use
The first thing to leveling is to focus on skills that your character will use every day. This might require picking a specific type of combat skill and sticking with it rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.
For example, dividing your time between one-handed fighting, two-handed fighting, and polearms might make your character more versatile, but it’s better to focus on specific melee fighting styles between the long and close range until you’ve reached around level 18.
Fighting this way isn’t strategically sound, but it will level your character faster. Think of it this way: every moment you spend eliminating enemies with a throwing weapon is a moment you’re not using a bow.
If you’ve already invested focus points in the bow and none in throwing weapons. This is essentially a waste of time.
Also bear in mind that skills go up in tournaments. So, you can ride from town to town using different weapon types without wasting the effort you’d spend in battles.
Engaging in training routines between big fights is also useful, like finding a small bandit party of 10-20 troops. And, telling your troops to hold fire and stay back while you engage them alone.
The goal here is to take out as many as you can with the weapon type you’re training. But keep your troops close enough if you have to retreat. If you’re skilled, you can take out 8 enemies before you have to run. And you’ll walk away from each fight with a few more levels of that skill, and a few more points in the main experience bar.
Focus on Non-Combat Skills
The same logic applies to non-combat skills, particularly in deciding whether your character is an on-foot type or a horseback type.
This is because moving on foot levels your character in Athletics. Included both in the field and combat, the same rules apply to horseback riding.
Splitting your time between horseback and traveling on foot will make both of these skills go up slower, which will make your main level go up slower. In that regard, some of the “stationary” skills are no-brainers in terms of where you want to spend your early focus points:
- Charm – You’ll always be negotiating and meeting people in some form. This skill has the potential to go up very fast. Releasing your foes after battle instead of capturing them will raise this skill quickly, boosting your main level.
- Steward – Installing your character as the party’s quartermaster is another no-brainer if you want to level up in Bannerlord fast. The Steward skill constantly rises as a result, which constantly adds to your main experience bar. Also, you’ll be pleased you made this choice when your character has a near 200 rating 5-6 years into your campaign, and you can field 50 extra troops.
- Leadership – This is another skill that naturally goes up on its own if you’re playing the right way. It is based on maintaining good morale in a full party (think 57 of 57 troops instead of 30 of 57). You’ll find it goes up each time you recruit soldiers or move them in and out of garrisons as well, and its perks are very useful.
Smithing – The exploits for money have been largely debuffed for Smithing after 1.8 BETA, but it’s still a good way to raise your levels if you have enough Focus Points allocated. You can sit at the smithy for a while and smelt cheap weapons you’ve taken from bandits and watch the number go up. Smithing expensive weapons can raise your low-level character even faster, but this is more costly.
If you’d like a lucrative way of making money, check out our workshop list for each town in Bannerlord.
