Lack of variety of companion heroes

[Olympeus]

Thanks for your input but a simple "no I'm not having issues" would be enough. I wanted to see if this was an issue with just me or the latest version of BL. Idk why you feel like you needed to come into this post and just drop a load of on it with your ea rant.

Good I'm glad I could help. Here is something else you may find helpful. Find the search box in the top right of the forum page and type "companions".

 

[black_bulldog]

Good I'm glad I could help. Here is something else you may find helpful. Find the search box in the top right of the forum page and type "companions".

Wow that's great to know. ?

 

[Lord Irontoe]

at low levels they level super fast, look at your little brother and sister, they level super fast especially if you use steward and you s can pick 4 or 5 other skills to specialize in, now if your saying getting them to around 150 like say the Swordsman is in all 3 weapon skills then I 100% agree with you, thats why i suggested both, one all set for players wanting quick action and ones for I like to play, 2000-3000 day play throughs, it serves both parties

Yeah, but that's the thing. You put someone like your little sister as steward and you're handicapping your party just to train her up a little bit. She'll never get very high since she doesn't start with any base skills or focus points or attributes even. You'd have to somehow get her to level 20 just to get her 5 attribute points. So there's very little point in using her at all

 

[black_bulldog]

Yeah, but that's the thing. You put someone like your little sister as steward and you're handicapping your party just to train her up a little bit. She'll never get very high since she doesn't start with any base skills or focus points or attributes even. You'd have to somehow get her to level 20 just to get her 5 attribute points. So there's very little point in using her at all

Yeah that's true it would be nice if for instance you could "train someone" as a doctor while still being the party doctor. You assign a person a role but the game chooses whoever has the highest skill value as the default doctor. It would certainly go a long way to bringing in low level characters and leveling them up. I always like to have companions level up in Steward but it's not always possible especially when I'm at max party size with a skill of 100 and they're at 10.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Yeah that's true it would be nice if for instance you could "train someone" as a doctor while still being the party doctor. You assign a person a role but the game chooses whoever has the highest skill value as the default doctor. It would certainly go a long way to bringing in low level characters and leveling them up. I always like to have companions level up in Steward but it's not always possible especially when I'm at max party size with a skill of 100 and they're at 10.

That's a big problem with this "learn by doing" system. Only one person gets to do each thing, so only one person gets the xp for it. They could improve it if each character got a few free skill points every level to spend in any skill, the way you used to get free proficiency points to spend every level in Warband. Or they could share the xp for the party skills among all companions with the one in the official role getting the biggest share of it. The logic being that the other companions are learning some of the basics by helping out the main guy. You help assemble a siege engine, you're gonna learn a few things about how siege engines are built. They'd need to up the xp rates by a lot though, but they should do that anyway.

 

[Flesson19]

Yeah, but that's the thing. You put someone like your little sister as steward and you're handicapping your party just to train her up a little bit. She'll never get very high since she doesn't start with any base skills or focus points or attributes even. You'd have to somehow get her to level 20 just to get her 5 attribute points. So there's very little point in using her at all

I actually have her leveling really easy and super fast in the game, I can get a screen shot but she is like lvl 15 and practically better than any other companion for running a group, with steward, tactics, medicine I am not sure what problem your having but in my playthrough on Youtube my little brother and sister are amazing party leaders and I didnt spend a lot of time working them

 

[KingEroc1st]

have yourself as the steward, you want the passive leveling and it will give huge late game boosts.
if you need a companion for a particular reason like trader or engineer but just can't find one. you can try leveling up a low level companion and only put points in the desired areas. you can power level companions a little bit by smithing/smelting which might give them a quick level allowing you to put a point in trade/engineer
personally i find engineering a tough skill to level but it also doesn't have much effect. you'll get a much faster build boost from imperial cultural trait

 

[black_bulldog]

have yourself as the steward, you want the passive leveling and it will give huge late game boosts.
if you need a companion for a particular reason like trader or engineer but just can't find one. you can try leveling up a low level companion and only put points in the desired areas. you can power level companions a little bit by smithing/smelting which might give them a quick level allowing you to put a point in trade/engineer
personally i find engineering a tough skill to level but it also doesn't have much effect. you'll get a much faster build boost from imperial cultural trait

Actually engineering has a dramatic effect on how fast projects are constructed an engineer with a skill level of 80 can reduce the time by 3/4th. It's stupidly overpowered for building up castles and towns. You are correct that leveling engineering is incredibly slow and unfortunately most engineers have their skill in the red so you've go to do something else to get it to begin to level again. Another issue is that companions don't level up engineering outside of combat even if they're in charge of a town it doesn't go up.

The problem with leveling smithing is that many companions have at most 1 point in smithing or don't have endurance high enough so they can level it very far. That means most companions have to level up by grinding it out in combat or if you're lucky in steward.

I've never seen a companion less than level 11 in 900 hours of game play, that is one of my biggest complaints there just aren't low level companions that you can build however you want.

There needs to be a better leveling curve for skills besides combat and steward and there needs to be a way for companions to continue to level even if not in your party or if they don't see combat. Npcs need to have a real look over again it's half baked and the more you play the more issues you find.