Is it even viable to level scout/rogue/surgeon on your main character?

[quietresolve]

While picking the character background, I find that forester/herbalist/hunter etc very appealing to me in terms of role play value. But scout/rogue/surgeon are not only useless (on yourself) but also extremely hard to level up. I mean is focusing on these skills even remotely viable, and what is the point that these exists?
Why do they even put them as the bonus points in your background story? Does selecting forester/herbalist/hunter basically means you were wasting a few focus points?

Thanks!

 

[Bluko88]

While picking the character background, I find that forester/herbalist/hunter etc very appealing to me in terms of role play value. But scout/rogue/surgeon are not only useless (on yourself) but also extremely hard to level up. I mean is focusing on these skills even remotely viable, and what is the point that these exists?
Why do they even put them as the bonus points in your background story? Does selecting forester/herbalist/hunter basically means you were wasting a few focus points?

Thanks!

Well Scout gets progressively easier since as your Sight Range expands you gain more and more XP from all the things you can see. Not that I'd say it's easy to level, because it is painfully slow at the start. Really you gotta try and spot as many Hideouts as you can early on.

Roguery I have no clue how people level up. I've never gotten much past 50 even on characters I tried playing as Rogues. You mostly get Roguery by selling prisoners, but that is extremely slow. Supposedly you can earn it by Raiding, attacking Caravans, etc. but that all has been pretty minimal in my experience. You can also earn via Captivity and having all Bandit troops, but even then pretty minimal.

Medicine is sort of doable although it's very slow to start like Scouting. That said getting past 100 pretty much requires that you like starve your troops or friendly fire all units at the end of the battle.


All of these need their XP gain boosted way up. The problem is, other then Roguery, Scout/Medicine are passive abilities. So making the gains too quick or easy effectively prevents you from leveling other skills. Though my opinion is if you don't want to level something, don't put Skill Points in it.

I get TW doesn't want you to be "Superman" where you're maxed at 300 everything by age 40. But then again your character is quite mortal, so you should be able to level up things quickly if you so choose. In my experience the combat abilities are about the only thing that level up appropriately as you use them. Everything else is too fast or too slow.

Too Fast:
Horse
Steward (this is particularly bad being passive too)
Smith (this may be fixed if Denar values are calculated more sensibly)

Just Right:
One-Handed
Two-Handed
Polearm
Bow
Crossbow

Slow:
Throwing
Athletics
Charm (maybe not that bad, but gaining is weird)
Leadership (mostly cause you only get it via Armies)
Engineering (be nice if more ways to gain as PC)
Tactics

Kill me now:
Scout
Medicine
Roguery
Trade (at first not too bad, but Caravans/Shops should generate XP)

 

[Eugene Shutto]

Trade and scouting isn't that bad, buy olives in Jaculan and sell it Pravend or in Sturgia somewhere. Trade is dead in the Empire towns, so it's good to sell stuff to them. I get 250 trade with no sweat.
Tactic goes better in big battles , like 1000 vs 1000. Also "try to get away" option gives a lot when enemy engages you.
But roguery, duuuude, roguery is soooooo slooow. No matter what you do.

 

[Doktor Barber]

Kill me now:
Scout
Medicine
Roguery
Trade (at first not too bad, but Caravans/Shops should generate XP)

trade is easy to level, just go to Battania its great there and great for just making money too

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

While picking the character background, I find that forester/herbalist/hunter etc very appealing to me in terms of role play value. But scout/rogue/surgeon are not only useless (on yourself) but also extremely hard to level up. I mean is focusing on these skills even remotely viable, and what is the point that these exists?
Why do they even put them as the bonus points in your background story? Does selecting forester/herbalist/hunter basically means you were wasting a few focus points?

Thanks!

Medicine is incredibly slow to level (even doing all you can to level it) and you will likely find a wanderer with 120 medicine long before you can get 120 on you main character. I don't think it's good at all on main character accept the first 2 perks to heal you after battles.

Roguery is okay as a secondary "might as well" skill on main char as it does increase loot and has few 'perks' on it's perks Now with prison breaks you can get some good chunks of skill. It's still really slow to get after like 150 though.

Scouting I have found, in past games, to be viable and useful on the main character IF you're taking it all the way (10 cunning) for uncanny insight, otherwise you're better of just snagging a 140 scouting wanderer when they show up. HOWEVER on recent games of 1.5.8 and 1.5.9 scouting seems much slower for me, not sure if it's just luck of if something is off (possible not as many tracks?) so I don't know if I will be getting uncanny insight on these playthroughs, even with 10 cunning.

 

[ArturMorhghain]

Well Scout gets progressively easier since as your Sight Range expands you gain more and more XP from all the things you can see. Not that I'd say it's easy to level, because it is painfully slow at the start. Really you gotta try and spot as many Hideouts as you can early on.

Roguery I have no clue how people level up. I've never gotten much past 50 even on characters I tried playing as Rogues. You mostly get Roguery by selling prisoners, but that is extremely slow. Supposedly you can earn it by Raiding, attacking Caravans, etc. but that all has been pretty minimal in my experience. You can also earn via Captivity and having all Bandit troops, but even then pretty minimal.

Medicine is sort of doable although it's very slow to start like Scouting. That said getting past 100 pretty much requires that you like starve your troops or friendly fire all units at the end of the battle.


All of these need their XP gain boosted way up. The problem is, other then Roguery, Scout/Medicine are passive abilities. So making the gains too quick or easy effectively prevents you from leveling other skills. Though my opinion is if you don't want to level something, don't put Skill Points in it.

I get TW doesn't want you to be "Superman" where you're maxed at 300 everything by age 40. But then again your character is quite mortal, so you should be able to level up things quickly if you so choose. In my experience the combat abilities are about the only thing that level up appropriately as you use them. Everything else is too fast or too slow.

Too Fast:
Horse
Steward (this is particularly bad being passive too)
Smith (this may be fixed if Denar values are calculated more sensibly)

Just Right:
One-Handed
Two-Handed
Polearm
Bow
Crossbow

Slow:
Throwing
Athletics
Charm (maybe not that bad, but gaining is weird)
Leadership (mostly cause you only get it via Armies)
Engineering (be nice if more ways to gain as PC)
Tactics

Kill me now:
Scout
Medicine
Roguery
Trade (at first not too bad, but Caravans/Shops should generate XP)

They’re thinking through ways to improve medicine’s leveling, apparently.

Yes, I am investigating new ways (some of them peaceful) options to improve the medicine skill. I will try to balance the current experience gains (by increasing) as well.
Also, for some of the other skills, we are analyzing their current situation with @Duh_TaleWorlds, hopefully, this will give more insight into skill experience gains and their effects.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...erks-work-across-an-army.440896/#post-9666036

 

[Apocal]

While picking the character background, I find that forester/herbalist/hunter etc very appealing to me in terms of role play value. But scout/rogue/surgeon are not only useless (on yourself) but also extremely hard to level up. I mean is focusing on these skills even remotely viable, and what is the point that these exists?
Why do they even put them as the bonus points in your background story? Does selecting forester/herbalist/hunter basically means you were wasting a few focus points?

Thanks!

Scouting is probably one of the best skills to have on yourself. And it is incredibly easy to level; literally just travel around the campaign map.

 

[ImperialDane]

Scouting as others point out is fairly easy. Though being on a horse seemingly makes it easier. No idea why, but in my current footman run, scouting is fairly slow compared to on Horse. But on horse, yeah.. pretty easy. And it's pretty good too with some nice bonuses. Seeing faster and being able to move faster in rough terrain is very handy

Roguery is as slow as the passing of an ice age. Even pulling every lever and button it takes forever to level up.. BUT. Even with just a little, the payoffs are huge. I mean compared to the run where i focused on trading. Roguery just gives you so much money from loot. A few good battles and you're easily earning a fortune for a lot less hassle. And i think that may actually be the reason Roguery is so tough to level up. Honestly i just wish it would give you better quality loot rather than more loot.. Whatever the case, i think for Roguery to be better and level up faster it requires a full economic overhaul and just focuse on grabbing better loot rather than more loot to just sell.

Surgeon is actually pretty nice to have, but personally i'd just recommend hiring someone with that skill. Because being able to heal fast and patch up your troops faster is really good. Especially as your party gets larger and you have more troops in need of healing.

 

[Gandamula]

Scouting is probably one of the best skills to have on yourself. And it is incredibly easy to level; literally just travel around the campaign map.

You can do it in a early game, but in mid/late game you should be a quartmester to max your troops size and progression. In a early game I also play as surgeon to raise my health capacity.

 

[Oakenlix]

You can do it in a early game, but in mid/late game you should be a quartmester to max your troops size and progression. In a early game I also play as surgeon to raise my health capacity.

What do you mean? Your character does all non-assigned roles at once, you don't have to choose.

Medicine is nice to have on your main character, because it also very noticeably increases the survival rate of your troops, and you don't have to worry about your surgeon getting killed in a battle.

 

[Apocal]

Your character does all non-assigned roles at once, you don't have to choose.

Yeah, this.

 

[AndrewArt]

With the current system I am always reluctant of wasting focus points. Only because when you gain exp in something and level, you reduce exp gain rate for other skills, and leveling becomes very slow as well so less attributes later on. 1 or 2 focus points without attributes invested is ok though, because the first skills require little experience and so they won't level you up too much. Only if you go besides a certain skill level, when skills require a lot of exp, it can level you up and harm your progression noticeably. But progression is already terrible so there is not much to harm atm.

Doing multiple skills to medium/high levels basically guarantees you to never really reach 300 skill in other skills, at least not so easily. When I make a character first thing I do 100% of the time is to ensure I'm getting my attributes in the right spot for the skills I want to level, and that means only 1-2 attributes. For example, I can make an empire culture character which can from the very beginning get 7 in intellect and none in other attributes. You also get some crossbow points, which I normally wouldn't get, but it does work well enough that it's worth it for this character (you have the engineering first perk from the beginning as well - 3 points in engineering, and it gives you 3 extra crossbow damage. Very cool). Though, it's so strong it gets a little boring one-shotting dudes all the time... but ya, theoretically that sounds great. Steward does level up at a decent pace, and gives you bigger party size which levels up steward even more. But medicine is impossible to level (at the moment), and engineering is hard to level as well so I can't say if it's worth it currently.

Second rule for me is: if a focus point goes into a skill that the first few perks can benefit me, then it's ok. So 1 or 2 points in medicine for the increase in main character healing rate is totally ok for a non-intelligence character. Or 1 point in athletics, for the 5 hp bonus for troops, 1 point in scouting just in case I don't have a scout is fine as well, etc. Like I mentioned, 1 focus point with no attributes won't give you so much exp that it affects you greatly. Also, best thing to do is go to "bannerlord perks" website, look at the perks and decide what you want your character to have in the future.

Still, at the moment I wouldn't bother, because leveling can be so grindy and hopeless that whatever plan you have, you might get bored by the half of it anyway because it just feels unachievable...

 

[Death2Tyrants]

It's disappointing how roguery isn't a "party" skill like surgeon or engineering.

 

[Apocal]

It's disappointing how roguery isn't a "party" skill like surgeon or engineering.

You can actually kinda-sorta get it to work that way by creating an army of your companion's parties. They'll draw loot from successful army battles at the same rate as a battle they won alone and anything above 5000 denars to their name goes into your pocket.

 

[Eugene Shutto]

It's disappointing how roguery isn't a "party" skill like surgeon or engineering.

It looks like party leader personally browsing around corpses and picking some goodies. I imagine how Caladog himself doing that.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Like I mentioned, 1 focus point with no attributes won't give you so much exp that it affects you greatly.

I need a price check on this one, historically the game gives you the same raw exp (to level char)regardless of learning rate (FP/Attribute) is it different now? That'd be a small upgrade if so, but I feel it's just as gains killing as ever.

 

[AndrewArt]

I need a price check on this one, historically the game gives you the same raw exp (to level char)regardless of learning rate (FP/Attribute) is it different now? That'd be a small upgrade if so, but I feel it's just as gains killing as ever.

no no what I meant is that higher level skill points have a much higher exp requirement than the lower skills. So that will contribute more to your level, thus haltering progression more. What I wanted to say is that 1 focus point in something doesn't hurt you as much because the first skills require very little exp, thus contributing little to you leveling up. But if you put more focus points and you can get exp to the higher skills (100+), that will affect you greatly because they do require a lot of exp, in the thousands...

Once learning rate is 0% it shouldn't increase your leveling anymore, correct? so a lower hard cap for the skills you dont want to level will be ok still, in comparison to having 3+ focus points in one skill, where the game allows you go acquire way more exp than desired for a certain skill...

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Once learning rate is 0% it shouldn't increase your leveling anymore, correct?

It shouldn't but IT DOES

 

[Oakenlix]

So that will contribute more to your level, thus haltering progression more.

Is that actually how it works, is it confirmed?
I'm asking because I had no trouble lvling up some skills from scratch even at lvl 30+, provided I had the attribute points to push the learning limit away.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Is that actually how it works, is it confirmed?
I'm asking because I had no trouble lvling up some skills from scratch even at lvl 30+, provided I had the attribute points to push the learning limit away.

The learning rate for all skills drops a little bit each time your character levels up. It won't stop you from leveling the skills or reduce the hard cap, but it's sad to dump FP into a new skill and see the learning rate barely increase and of course most skills after 100 or so become must longer to level anyways so the extra reduction is pretty lame. Also, IME using hard cap'd skill still give you exp toward leveling up, so there's no way to min/max around it
Just the more you do = the slower you start to raise skills.