I fired up this mod the other day, and it looks pretty impressive, although there are a few details that were never finished. A shame that it wasn't completed. Was it ever completely ported to WB (which I don't have)? That was apparently still in progress (beta?) when this thread more or less stopped being updated.
Getting started seems to be a challenge, especially if your combat skills as a player are less than stellar (my reflexes are not what they were 30-40 years ago - my character died twice while trying to equip a sword to complete a "go kill..." task, and never even got a swing in). I spent about 4-5 hours over two evenings trying to find some way of making some coin, and the only bandit parties I spotted were either 17 Sea Raiders, 24 Deserter Knights, 14 Steppe Bandits, etc. A lone and under-equipped rider on a slow horse stands no chance against them (I've been killed from behind more times than I can reasonably count), and I can't seem to get a mission that I can actually do, to earn either cash or the positive relations to recruit a party. I apparently don't have the trading skills to make a profit buying and selling anything. Any advice from someone who's played it, other than "JUST get a 3000 denar sword, some 8000 denar armor, and a 2000 denar horse and kill everything", which is kind of impossible with about 1000-1500 denars and mediocre reflexes. Thanks.
[ In retrospect, aside from the too-frequent complete lockups of the game (which require a hard reboot of your PC), several dialogs which you can't get out of (and require shutting down the game with Task Manager), and the "usual" bug plaguing most mods that consistently and repeatedly crashes your game after some number of hours (which was corrected in several other major mods after this one was abandoned, but not this mod), the most odious and unfortunate "issue" is the persistent "advertisement" by the mod developer that remains in the upper left corner of EVERY Mount & Blade game from then on, appearing in vanilla M&B and every other mod. The only way to remove it is to delete and reinstall Mount & Blade. That's not an accident, it's an intentional affront to the user. Since then, I've discovered the 1257 AD "Middle Europe" mod to the 1257 AD mod, which covers a roughly similar timeframe and region as this. Considering the amount of effort and care that obviously went into this mod, it's a shame to see it end up in this condition. ]
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Later edit:
Fired up this mod again after a year or so of playing other mods (1257 Middle Europe - a variant of the 1257 mod, and The Eagle and the Wolves - a loosely "Arthurian" Britain mod), and have a more experienced view of it now as a player. There are several aspects of the mod that are very good, detailed, and historically accurate. There are also several issues that I have with balance and personal preferences of the mod author. Most critically, Lithuania and Russia are heavily buffed compared to Poland, the Crusaders, and Mongols: I built up a 30+ man party that could easily take on a Polish, Crusader, or Mongol army 50% larger than my own with only trivial to light casualties, but facing a small Lithuanian or Russian patrol even half my own veteran party's size was a guaranteed disaster. In one instance, I took on a group of 15 Russians, and managed to personally lance or bow-shot around 8 of them before taking a javelin hit that inflicted close to 150% of my hitpoints in a single shot. I needed 3 hits to take out one guy, they put me out of the fight with one. The remaining 7 Russians then proceeded to wipe the floor with the rest of my 30+ man party, and only lost another 2 men in the process. One Russian faced off against 4 of my own troops at once, and killed all 4 of them: 4 swings, 4 kills. One sided, a bit?
I'm STILL steamed up about the shameless bit of advertising that the mod author puts in the upper left corner of the screen ("....narod.ru") in red, which is NOT removed by uninstalling the mod; you have to wipe the program completely and reinstall to get rid of it. I like playing either Poles, Crusaders, or Mongols against each other, but as soon as Lithuania or Russia get involved, it's just not fun. They get higher stats, longer and slightly higher damage weapons for their own factions, and other bonuses which are simply not realistic or fun, in my opinion, but make playing Russia relatively "easy mode" (Lithuania isn't playable, and the player character begins with them being hostile, so you can't even visit their towns). It's well worth seeing this mod for all of the excellent work that went into it, but annoying that a few details limit the enjoyment, and the stupid ad means that you've got to jump through hoops to get rid of it afterwards.
I can't wait. GL
