I always like the idea of Venetor and that there was a hidden city you could unlock with a quest chain, but it felt like Hakkon 2. That its getting retconned is understandable imo and I'm excited for whats in store. Anydangways, I have a few suggestions after many hours of playing:
1. Gonnacondense this into 1 suggestion... cut the 'High Dragon Priestess' from Khivachis' name. It's kinda long and akward looking when you mouse over yourself and all your companions have 1 word name's but miss gets-her-own-giant-title Khivachis. I also think the idea of quest lock companions was brilliant, especially for high level super powerful companions like her. Tamaris and Aracanus (companions over lv 50) should probably be more difficult to acquire and not just loafing about in some dingy tavern. Additionally, some explanation for why she has a bear and not a dragon might be in order as it is odd for the dragon priestess to join you and she rides a bear. Maybe some passing explanation like, "My dragon was stolen from me and the thief is out there some where, can I accompany you while I look for them?"
2. Weapon speeds. All a bit of a let down. Having played PoP with a sapphire weapon (~140spd), everything in Perisno just so much slower. Even in Pop you could get weapons with 120spd that weren't legendary. This is a larger issue with itemization in a lot of Warband mods. Most people gravitate towards 1h-sword/shield+bow or 2h+bow+2 quivers because its far and beyond the best choice 100% of the time. Weapon speed is the first most important weapon stat before damage and length. The fastest weapons in Perisno are 2h-swords and the hybrid 2h/1h-sword and the best of those only go as high as 108-110 with a few (very few) that can reach 115 or 118 with the Balanced mod. Axes are inferior to a failing degree. The fastest axes don't even crest 100 speed. The 'bonus to shields" is meaningless if you can't even get in a hit. I assume the reason for the low axe speed is because of the shield bonus?
With maces the slower speed makes sense because 'can crush through blocks' is a powerful mod on those weapons. Even with the axe shield bonus, units with good shields and shield stat still need many many many hits to break the shield diminishing the axe's shield bonus. What is even more strange is how a giant 2h-axe is faster than a tiny lil-iddy-biddy 1-hand axe. Seems illogical why something lighter and smaller is also slower. I noticed this with swords and the few daggers in Perisno. A mammoth sized 2h-sword is faster than the assassin dagger or the ancient dagger and the tiny 1h-short swords. Why? There can't be fast paced exciting combat with such slow weapons. You can't combo/string hits with such slow weapons. You're choice of weapons is limited to the 2h-swords because everything else is 20 speed slower and thus much worse. There's about 3 decent options for 1h-swords. It also looks very odd the slow swinging animation for slow weapon attacks.
Lastly, Legendary Weapons can't be legendary if they're slow. I never use them and never seek them out. Too unwieldy, long, and slow. Why use one of those and die when you can get a Balanced Golden Gladius and live? That gladius shows up often in Venetor merchant and is easily acquired. So are Naphali short/long swords. The Legendary weapons are harder to get and worse to use. If I prefer to use normal weapons over Legendary ones, then which weapons are truly the 'legendary' ones.
3. Buff ammo amount for throwing weapons. This is another Warband issue that mods don't address. Everyone again goes with what works best. The path of least resistance. In Warband and most Warband mods, that means a bow and fast sword. A large bag of Falconian Arrows is 50 arrows. 2 large bags is 100 arrrows. A large bag of Assassin Knifes is 13 and a Large Bag of Kunai is 14.100 arrows > 36 knives. Its even worse for the other throwing weapons like the javalins, axes, and spears. To the great detriment of the player should they choose to use those. And throwing axes travel in slow motion when you throw them making them unreliable and a liability to use over the drastically better bow option. Landing a headshot with a thrown axe is a magical moment in Warband. Remeber that Desperado movie where Danny Trejo was the knife throwy guy and had knives for days? Gosh that must be nice. Carrying more than 10 knives. With 100 arrows, you can afford to miss a few shorts. Not a big deal. With throwing weapons, may as well toss them in the bin and get yourself a reliable ranged weapon. This is something individuals can fix with an item editor, but with the massive amount of weapons in Perisno to edit and the resulting issues from trash/mediocre troops suddenly becoming too formidable from their new speed increase should be left to the professionals. Its your mod to balance and you probably have a greater understanding of that as a whole for Perisno than I do. As it is though, there are not options. Sword+Bow is the way to go. Same for PoP. Same for nearly all mods and native. Unless you purposely force yourself to use something else far weaker.
4. Remove the item refining lock out from Gordga Hammerhead in Dwallor. I genuinely believe that money should be the only limiting factor for this service. I'm guessing the 30hr limit was for a sense of realism but all it gives me is a sense of frustration. That and you can change the lore for realism by assuming a master dwarven blacksmith has a team of apprentices and assistants working for him and he performs the final finishing touches. Given the size of the map, how long it takes to traverse it, all the others things you could be busy doing, and the incredible amount of money you need for some item upgrades (some over half a million aurum), the 30 hour lock out really doesn't fit well. It would also be kinda nice if raising your town rep in Dwallor provided a discount. Realism has its place, but some times it isn't worth forcing realism at the expense of gameplay.
5. Allow more 'unique' items to appear in the Mystic Merchant's stock. The Black Bear, Dark Wyvern, Dread Wolf, weapons (grenades), and armors flagged to not appear in shops. Just make them as rare as the game will permit. Like "holy smoke was that a unicorn?!" rare. The Royal Enchantment helmet is unobtainable without freelancing with Geldarin officers and those guys are idiots that rush into battles they can't win making raising high enough in rank to get that helmet an enormous pain in the butt if not impossible. You can join Rhino's party and just stare at the screen for a few months as nothing happens and get one that way maybe. The Assassin's Ghost Helm is unobtainable and unrefinable. The issue with the Dread Wolf is the 90 rep you need in a game that makes it very difficult to raise rep to begin with. I'd wager I have 8k hours in Warband and not once have I ever reached 100 rep with any officer or ruler. Perisno seems to reward double the rep which is lovely, sure. But, when you constantly get told 'No, not at this time' when you ask to help, you have zero ways to reliably raise someone rep without constantly following them and fighting in battles with them over and over and over. I'd guess I'm probably around 1k hours in just Perisno and have never been able to get the Dread Wolf. Not too big an issue, there are better mounts that are faster and come with pathfinding+foraging perks. I think the bar is too high for the Dread Wolf. The quest to change the Geldarin officer's personality that also requires 90 rep is another one. A massive investment of time and effort and for what? A good-natured officer? One side of the scale is very far down. Anyways, when your character background can be from a mysterious land outside of Perisno, the door is open to your character backstory and having more items to use to play that role increases your options. Always a good thing. I noticed a couple armors in the cheatmenu that look like they are for female lords but no one uses them and you can't get them. Given how limited female armor is, why these armors in particular are off limits is quite odd. They look like different variants of Trisna's Armor.
6. More unique spawns. It seems like the same 5 guys all the time and I rarely even see them because they get taken out by the faction they spawn in pretty quickly. I've gotten some freebie legendaries just joining a slaughter of an unique spawn. I'm not sure how PoP did it but their unique spawns are formidable and often a persistent nuisance everyone tends to avoid. The lords in Perisno however ain't got time for these unique spawns are gang up on them or rush to help each other if they get attacked. Better AI? I'd guess the PoP devs do something with how auto calc works and give enough of a certain troop unit that it weighs unfavorabley to npc lords and they run away instead of engage? Not sure honestly.
7. Along with my rep gripes, I think some tweaking to release prisoners for faction rep would be a nice addition. Sometimes you release prisoners and get a +1 to their faction. The problem is you have to release 20-80+ for a single +1 and they start at -50. Joining them in battle makes everyone hate you and its hard to repair that damage. Having outlaws and other hostile factions stop attacking you has always held a lot of appeal for me and the idea that your patrols and caravans are safe from those attacks is definitely cool. But its too hard to do and takes too long. It would be nice if there were better options for this. Like a few select npcs you can release prisoners to that raises faction rep based on number given. Unlocks outlaw base with outlaw merchant. Ankar merchant access. Stuff like that. Quests. Seems like there should be other ways to show you aren't a threat or against a hostile faction without slaughtering caravans, making enemies with faction lords, are killing farmers. You can stop 2 of those if you raise them above 0. It's just always been such a tedious grind to achieve and its better to just fight them for free troops and money.
8. This last one may sound weird. I like to kit out my companions based on their background and getting them stuff from their respective faction. I find it makes them easier to identify on the battlefield. Kara with Tolarian gear. Marcus with Maccavia gear. I noticed some factions are represented more than once though and some factions not at all. As far as I can tell, and maybe I didn't read well enough, there are no companions that have a Falconian background. There are 2 Maccavia companions, 2 Drahara, 3 Drachen if you count Khivachis, 2 Viking guys. Having more diversity might be kinda nice? A Falki companion because they're have some well done armor and horses. An ex Ghazir companion maybe. An Ukundu with a tiger mount. A Lymbardian. I don't think there are any from Hakkon or Third Legion which is a shame since Immortal Armor can appear at the Mystic Merchant. I know this is a personal preference thing but I thought I'd share anyways.
That's it! Love the mod and I think you guys have done some incredible work. In all honesty, Perisno has taken top spot for favorite Warband mod and I never thought anyone would take it from you know who. Truly fantastic. I played it a lot maybe 1-2 years ago and I'm delighted to see it still being worked on. Thanks for all the hours of fun.
