Joining the Dark Knights?

[Kaibur]

Personally I see them as that end-game challenge. There to provide a final battle, since after the invasion's over, the rest of the mod seems dull and bland, a kind of 'been there, done that, bought the t-shirt...'

 

[Wellenbrecher]

What exactly would you get from joining them anyways? There are no villages to recruit Dark Knights peasants, no towns to get Dark Knight nobles.
All you get is a bunch of Lords with superior troops (quantity and quality), stealing your kills, renown and loot  
There's nothing in for you.
When you fight'em on the other hand, you can capture them and thus get your hands on some of their troops. As a vassal... nay... boring ****e if you ask me.

Actually merc is making them uncapturable. So there goes that reasoning.

And it's going to be better that way.
But you still get the loot and the 'fun' (well not fun for everyone, but you get were I'm going here) while there's nothing special to get when joining them.
I was just trying to understand why anyone actually would want to join them.

Edit: When the troops are 'uncapturable', this should be true for the Lords as well. Because otherwise you could recruit them, give them a fief, take the fief away and take the DKs stationed there for your own army.

 

[Gogol Khan]

Personally, I quite fancy joining the DKs. At least once, for the fun of it.

As it is, by rescuing their troops that were held captive elsewhere, I amassed a "DK-like" army i.e. I've got around 15 Blackguard Lords and a good number of other, lesser troops (around 50 to 60 Dark Knight-Masters, a few Shadow nights and some Blackguards. Some 60 Dark Rangers, sharpshooters etc). They do get xps and progress but getting them beyond DK-Masters/Shadow Nights is like pulling rotten teeths out of a drangon's mouth... Pretty hard! I have yet to get anyone of them graduating to Lord Blackguard!

And everytime a Dark Champion, a Blackguard, let alone a Blackguard Lord dies, I cry tears of blood... That being said, I got caught with my 9 companions and 10-12 Lord Blackguards by a 300 or 400 strong army... and we won! ****ing awesome machines of wholesale death that they are...

Obviously, all my companions and I are equipped in Dark stuff... except for gauntlets and headgear. You can't get Black gauntlets, it seems and the Black helmets aren't the best helmets around...

NB: A funny thing happened. I looted from I can't remember whom some Plated gauntlets giving a +20 rather than the standard max +12 for Lordly Plated gauntlets. And those extra points make some significant difference in battle. I only fear arrows and troops above mid-ranks. The rest doesn't stand much chance of even hurting me...

So... joining the DKs? Yeah, it'd be cool to be able to do so, just for fun... but you can get nearly all the benefits by pillaging and freeing them...

 

[Gogol Khan]

NB: I am still in .55 version. I don't understand yet how to install the 0.58 one...

 

[Wellenbrecher]

No need to double post. There is this neat "Modify" Button next to your post.

As for the patch:

Spoiler

So it starts again:
Do you have M&B 1.011, you sure you downloaded .550 and .584 and put the latter into the former, with "yes to overwrite"?

And the one from a french site is the SiegePack, it's worth it.
I'll do a step by step thingy for you:

1..550
This should put a Native Expansion folder into your Modules folder.

2..584
Even though the link says it's .582, it's the patch for .584. All those files belong into your NE folder.

3.At this point you should download the Siege Pack, but it seems Lord Samuel has taken it down or the bandwith is exceeded. I still have it on my HDD, so if there's a problem with re-uploading I may help and I'll send him a PM.

4.This contains a nicer texture for the Sallete Helmet and another helmet. Just follow the instructions.

tl;dr version:
Put the files of the .584 zip* into your NE folder, yes to overwrite. Done.
Start of a new game required.

*I think it's called NativeExpansion*some numbers*.rar, but you get what I mean, right?

 

[Gogol Khan]

*I think it's called NativeExpansion*some numbers*.rar, but you get what I mean, right?

Thanks again for the "How to" guide And, yeah, i am IT dumb but i understand "zip" and "rar"...