Hi folks,
first of all, congratulations to a mod about a period of history that is really interesting and good to recreate especially within Warband.
I gave Brytenwalda a try during the time I had to wait for my favourite, 1257 AD, to convert to patch 1.131 and I daresay both mods achieve their different goals with equal love to detail and historical accuracy.
I do only have some small issues regarding overall difficulty and weapon stats. Used to the RCM-based style of 1257 (both M&B and Warband), I wondered why the axes in Brytenwalda have cut damage instead of pierce.
Please, watch the cool youtube channel "Weapons that made" Britain for a very entertaining, but still science-based overview of all the stuff appearing in the stores/on the field.
If I aquire a two-handed Dane axe either from the cold dead hands of a Dena Raider (nearly impossible, see other posters above

) or for loads of scillingas in the store, I want more than just a bonus against shields. I want it to chew right through any unarmoured man and I want it to incapacitate a guy in mail as well.
Also, even if there was not yet discovered/used the power of the couched lance, piercing damage values should still be higher for spears overall and thus also when stabbing from horseback.
I have a story for you which also covers the "early game is to difficult" field. After collecting two companions and five peasant recruits I took the hunt for looters quest in a town in southern England. The first battle I won by using my favoutite tactics against ill-equipped but numerically superior scum which I use since M&B Native:
I ordered my troops to stand ground and stand closer, then rode towards the 12 looters and injured them with my javelins. They got angry and followed me; I led them alongside the "front" (well, seven men is not eally a battle line, let alone a front...) so my guys could get their javelins out as well (the companions had those) and then I took my time and killed them off one by one from horseback with my pitchfork.
Also, I had spotting, tracking and pathfinding at 1 each and still avoided the Dena Pirates successfully. By the time I had 25 men, I attacked their landing while the individual bands were to far away to aid. With my two companoins and some 2nd tier troops of the Angles, I cleared the landing like this: let troops attack together the same duo of pirates, and be the "flanking maneuvre" myself with an axe. Into the back of the pirate. That does not work in the field, though: If I have 25 men and the Dena have 20, they still finish me AND my troops off, although they loose some men to my archers and my riding skills.
Yes, this pitchfork-lancing IS time consuming, but it would be much less so if, for the love of god, a stinking robber with nothing more on his chest than an unwashed shirt would die from blood loss at least if not by the wound itself after I got a good one in with the pitchfork.
I played around with the armour soak and reduction values to get a little more punch into all the weapons
armor_soak_factor_against_cut = 0.8
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce = 0.25
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt = 0.5
armor_reduction_factor_against_cut = 0.25
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce = 0
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt = 0.25
This gave me more satisfying results which are also not too far from reality.
If you, like me, own a mail shirt, put it on with and without gambeson and let someone "give you a good one" with a sword on the ribs or, even better, the collarbone - no wait, don't do that even if you have the equipment because without gambeson you will get broken bones.
I do have some reenactment stuff for real but I know better than to let anyone "give me a good one" on the collarbone intentionally.
The point I am talking about here is blunt force trauma. Even though a shirt of mail will protect you from cuts and stabs, it will only take away miniscule amounts of the force with which the attacks are delivered. A gambeson (do we have any evidence on wether the guys in 6th century had underpadding? I'm not sure on that, probably they had not...).
So, a sword strike gives out the lowest trauma, then comes a sword stab, then the light spears/non couched lances and then perhaps the massive dane axes who transfer all their power into a rather narrow area of impact.
A spear tip is narrower than the Dane axe's blade, but since it is just a stab with one hand that has to be conducted rather weak as to not unhorse the rider, I'd say it is weaker than a two-handed overhead strike with the axe.
That's why I took out reduction completely for pierce dmg since the point of a weapon is so narrow that even mail and a gambeson still lets you feel it. Cut and blunt weapon's effects should be nearly the same after the mail took away the cutting from the blades, then just weapon mass and size of impact area count. These can be represented by the dmg values the weapons get.
At least that is how I interpret armour reduction: what blunt force transfers through your padding into the body after your "hard shell" amour component took it's amount of the cutting/piercing damage out?
I suggest to give the axes piercing dmg and to generally up the values of the spears and other polearms. Sword's dmg values look fine for know, I'd say. Also a good move to give bows and arros piercing dmg. With the right arrowheads, one CAN kill a man in mail (or make him die from infection two weeks later).
Those were my 2 cents, keep up the good work and thank you again for this great mod
tourist