Mount & Blade II Bannerlord Perks Guide: Which perks are good?

This guide well help you decide which perks are good and which perks are the worst designed things in the entire game.

Bannerlord – Perks, Perk Trees/Anti-Cowardice Guide

Hello I am Sethja, This guide is essentially me complaining about the bad perks that are in Bannerlord. Not every perk is terrible, but there are too many tiers of perks where there is either an obvious choice or no decent choice at all.

Taleworlds (TW) really should have done a better job developing these. It feels like interns put little sticky notes in an idea box and they used those for perks. Do you even testrun your own game?

This guide is relevant only to Bannerlord vanilla singleplayer and focuses on the good, mediocre, and s𝗵𝗶tty perks available in the character skill tree.

Why read my guide? I have extensive and purposeful hours in the original M&B, Warband, and F&S. I have significant hours in Warband multiplayer and its mods and DLCs. I also used to s𝚑𝚒tpost on FSE so I’m essentially an honored veteran.

I am completely open to constructive criticism and my opinions can change if I’m presented with good evidence.

Labelling, Preface, Game Settings

If you’re here for a TL;DR on what perks to pick, look for the icons before perk names. Here is a label guide:

• ★★ Objectively best choice. Always pick.
• ☆ Subjectively best choice. Your choice, but my favorite.
• 💩 Perk is terrible and shouldn’t be in the game or needs serious rework. Never take this perk. Sometimes both perks are terrible 🙂 you have no choice but to choose something that sucks.
• If neither is marked, it’s player’s choice.

I will give a brief summary (final verdict) of why I think perks are good or terrible.

I am not going to review any of the governor perks. If you want to kit out an NPC for governing, that’s on you. This is all about player-character perk building and governor perks do nothing for the player character. I will put this comment in; there are too many perk tiers where one perk has exclusive governor benefits.

I play on the hardest difficulties minus recruitment which I put one difficulty easier.

I will not be covering the final perk of every perk tree unless I have specific thoughts. Most of them are just continued overpowering to your already super high skill level.

I refer to Taleworlds multiple times in this guide by writing TW.

One Handed (p.1)

Fortunately for us, the first few perk sets aren’t total s𝚑𝚒t. The nice part about the weapon skills is that the base skill is so beneficial (extra speed + damage) you don’t feel as bad about some of the perks being total 𝚊𝚜s. That being said:

1 – Basher & Deflect

Basher

• +50% shield bash damage and stun time
• -4% damage to troops in “shield wall” formation

Shield bashing is a meme. It’s not reliable for efficiently killing swarms of enemy AI. You should almost never be shield bashing. The -4% damage for troops is bad because it locks the tiny damage modifier to a single formation type.

★★ Deflect

• +20% one-handed weapon handling
• +30 one-handed level for troops

Weapon handling is good. One-handed strategy is spamming swings, so you want good handling on all weapons. +30 level for troops is essentially raising them by a tier. It’s awesome. Mix it with legionaries.

Final verdict: Deflect is way better than Basher. Go Deflect. If you HEAVILY use “shield wall” Basher can be viable, but you shouldn’t be that way.

2 – Swift Strike & To Be Blunt

Swift Strike

• +2% swing speed with one-handed weapons.

The base swing speed is 0.93. This increases that swing speed by 0.02. You can guess about how much benefit that gives.

To Be Blunt

• +5% damage on axes and maces.

5% damage is still a pretty low amount but better than a tiny flat swing speed bonus.

Final verdict: If you’re an axe or mace user To Be Blunt is way better than Swift Strike. If you’re like me and only like swords, go Swift Strike.

3 – Cavalry & Shield Bearer

☆ Cavalry

• +5% weapon damage while mounted.
• +5% melee damage to cavalry troops in your formation.

I think that one-handed weapons on horseback are s𝚑𝚒t. There are a handful that are long enough to actually hit troops on the ground, but most of them are so flaccid and small (my wife knew a lot about this) you can’t hit anything. I like the long𝚊𝚜s polearms for that task which make it really easy to swipe through enemies.

5% damage isn’t great but across cavalry troops it’s OK.

Shield Bearer

• Wielding (not equipping) a shield no longer encumbers you by 1.5x the shield’s weight.
• Troops in your formation are 3% faster.

This is gonna be a recurring theme through this guide, but movement speed % bonuses are 𝚊𝚜s. The % difference means nothing in both field and siege battles. I don’t think the shield perk is horrible but it’s very underwhelming.

Final verdict: I guess if you love using sword+board you should go Shield Bearer, but Cavalry is a better perk. Not by much though, both of these perks are JUST ABOVE the 💩 line.

4 – Duelist & Trainer

Duelist

• +20% damage one-handed when no shield equipped.
• +200% renown gain (double) in tournaments.

20% damage is a margin that isn’t insignificant if you plan on going one-handed without a shield. Most applicable would be if you’re one-hand cavalry. Good luck finding a one-handed weapon long enough to not hit right next to you.

Renown gain is OK. If you specialize in one-handed early it can help you to get your clan level up quicker. But I also think doing tournaments is a massive time waste once you have the ability to just go kill s𝚑𝚒t.

Trainer

• +2 hit points.
• +5% XP per battle to melee troops.

+2 hit points is ass. Your default is 100 hit points. The extra hit points from this will save you from a peasant throwing a rock at you and unironically nothing else.

+5% XP is YMMV. If you are heavy on melee troops it’s probably good, but generally if you’re overly heavy on melee troops you’re going to die to everything.

Final verdict: Both options are user choice. Just don’t take Trainer for the health points.

5 – Arrow Catcher & Shieldwall

💩 Arrow Catcher

• Larger shield protection area (+0.01)
• Larger troop shield protection area (+0.01)

The default for this is apparently 0.3 of base body size. So that means the perk is increasing it to 0.31. Wow.

I’ll be honest, I have never had a projectile hit me in bannerlord if I have my shield up correctly. Maybe if you are really bad and block left and face your character right you will get hit by s𝚑𝚒t. Just don’t do that.

💩 Shieldwall

• -20% damage from blocking the wrong direction with your shield.
• Larger troop shield protection area (+0.01) when they are in “Shield Wall” formation

Someone at TW really liked the shield wall concept, huh? Too bad it’s not very good :sob:. Okay so the -20% damage sounds good on paper but if you just block correctly with a shield you will never get the benefit from this perk. How often have you actually had your shield destroyed? I’ve had it be destroyed one time in a tournament in all of my hours of singleplayer Bannerlord.

Final verdict: Both perks are 𝚊𝚜s. Arrow Catcher is the better of two disaster perks.

One Handed (p.2)

6 – Corps-a-Corps & Military Tradition

☆ Corps-a-corps

• +10% XP earned after battles for your infantry.

This isn’t bad. Especially if paired with the previous 5% you start to get good returns on multiplied infantry XP.

Military Tradition

• +2 XP per day to infantry troops.

Compared to Corps-a-Corps this is the more “passive” option for XP gain. I think it’s underwhelming but passable. It’s helpful for getting tier 1 troops out of their s𝚑𝚒t combat values. For being so far up the perk list it should be more than 2/day.

Final verdict: Corps-a-corps is better in my eyes because battles are always better for quickly leveling troops than sitting around. However, when merged with other +# XP perks, Military Tradition can be an interesting perk.

7 – Lead By Example and Stand United

★★ Lead By Example

• +5% XP to all troops in your party.
• +5 Starting Battle Morale for troops in your party.

+5% XP to your troops is good, but a little underwhelming for how high up one-handed this perk is. +5 morale is decent since morale is super important, but keep in mind it’s not enough to really change most battles. If you’re going to win or lose it’s not going to be from that amount of morale.

💩 Stand United

• +8 party morale if outnumbered.

This perk is 𝚊𝚜s. You’re getting +3 party morale compared to Lead By Example and only in bad situations, otherwise missing out on 5 morale. What the f𝚞𝚌k is that?

Final verdict: Stand United is s𝚑𝚒t, 100% Lead By Example.

8 – Fleet of Foot & Steel Core Shields

Fleet of Foot

• +4% movement speed for you.
• +4% movement speed for your infantry troops.

Movement speed bonuses are 𝚊𝚜s. I’ve been over this. Generally your infantry doesn’t need to move fast. If it does something is wrong with how you’re approaching battles. The player’s movement speed levels through high agility. This perk isn’t 💩-tier but it just breaks the line.

Steel Core Shields

• -10% damage to your shield(s) [why would you equip 2?]
• -10% damage to your infantry troops’ shields.

Okay, maybe I don’t fight the nords enough, but I rarely see my troops’ shields break. If they do I don’t care. I never break my own shield in a fight. This perk actually does SOMETHING for combat unlike Fleet of Foot, but it’s bad.

Final verdict: Wow these perks are so close to being 💩 it’s not even funny. Just go with what you want, really.

9 – Deadly Purpose & Unwavering Defense

Deadly Purpose

• +5% one-handed weapon damage.
• +10% melee damage for infantry troops.

The %s look good on first glance but think about the numbers here. If your infantry troops are doing 40/swing (very common when they’re facehugging the enemy) this adds just 4 damage. For you, your damage multiplier is better affected by your attributes and one-handed skill. This perk isn’t terrible but it’s not noticeably effective.

★★ Unwavering Defense

• +5 hit points.
• +10 hit points to infantry troops in your party.

Unlike “Trainer” which sucks, +10 hit points is actually decent. +5 hit points to the player character is a “whatever”, but giving all of your infantry an extra +10 HP to help tank random arrows or glancing blows can be effective. Consider this; compared to Deadly Purpose, tanking 10 damage is a lot more feasible than dishing out 10 extra damage from +10% damage bonus.

Final verdict: Unwavering Defense is better for the infantry in your party than Deadly Purpose is. Simple as.

10 – Crack in the Armor & Prestige

💩 Crack in the Armor

• Your one-handed attacks ignore 10% of enemy armor.
• Infantry troops are 20% cheaper to recruit.

10% armor ignore is mediocre but passable for slashing one-handed weapons since armor is most effective against slash-weapons. However, 20% cheaper recruiting is terrible for this being a “tier 10” perk. By the time you have this much one-handed skill you should be running a massive party and holding a s𝚑𝚒tload of denars out your 𝚊𝚜s. It shouldn’t mean anything to you that you can now recruit s𝚑𝚒tty imperial peasants for 20% less.

★★ Prestige

• 50% more damage against shields when using one-handed weapons.
• +15 party limit.

Another guide recurring theme has arrived! Party limit is f𝚞𝚌king king. Whenever you can increase your party limit it’s difficult to take the opposite perk. Party limit +15 is fantastic. However, let’s talk about shield damage: who cares. If you want to break shields you’ll use a two-handed axe or hammer. If you’re using a one-handed and have trouble dealing with enemies who hold shields, just get better at the game.

Final verdict: +15 party limit is great.

Two Handed (p.1)

Same as one-handed, the two-handed weapon skill is so good that the perks can’t drag it down to irritating levels.

1 – Strong Grip & Wood Chopper

★★ Strong Grip

• +10% handling on two-handed weapons.
• +30 two-handed skill to troops in your formation.

As with one-handed, having extra handling on two-handed weapons is vital to making them awesome. The +30 two-handed skill to troops is also good, essentially upping their tier by 1 with weapons.

Wood Chopper

• +30% two-handed damage vs. shields
• +15% two-handed damage vs. shields by troops in your formation

As with one-handed, I’m going to argue that shield destruction is a bad skill compared to flat damage. I don’t find my troops destroying shields often and if they do the enemy is so swarmed they would lose whether their shields were there or not. The only best-use for this is if you stack shield-bashing damage across all perk trees.

Final verdict: Strong Grip is objectively the best here unless you want to try to heavily stack bonus % damage to shields across all perks.

2 – Head Basher & On The Edge

☆ Head Basher

• +10% damage with two-handed axes and maces.
• +2% damage to infantry troops in your formation.

Similar to the one-handed perks, the damage here for you is only good if you use axes and maces. +2% damage to your troops is essentially non-existent.

On The Edge

• +3% swing speed with two-handed weapons.
• +2% swing speed with two-handed weapons to infantry troops in your formation.

Both of these percentage ratios are so tiny you will hardly feel them.

Final verdict: Head Basher is good but only if you use the correct weaponry. On the Edge isn’t technically 💩-tier because it technically makes your troops better, but it’s still 𝚊𝚜s.

3 – Baptized In Blood & Show of Strength

☆ Baptized In Blood

• +5 experience (flat) to infantry in your party when you get a two-handed kill.
• +5% extra XP to melee troops in your formation for battles.

The flat 5 experience is hardly felt, but similar to the one-handed equivalent perk, 5% extra XP per battle to troops is decent. Stacking it with other perk trees can make it better.

Show of Strength

• +15% knock down against enemies.
• -20% recruitment cost to infantry troops.

Knock-down can only be done with weapons that are actually able to knock-down enemies, so the extra ability to do so is 𝚊𝚜s. Unlike the one-handed tree recruitment cost %, the two-handed is low on the perk list making this an OK perk.

Final verdict: Baptized in Blood is definitely better through all phases of the game past very early.

4 – Beast Slayer & Shield Breaker

★★ Beast Slayer

• +50% damage with two-handed weapons against mounts.
• +10% damage to mounts for infantry in your formation.

This is a very solid perk. Most two-handed weapons will already do solid damage against mounts but having more is good since horses are so f𝚞𝚌king tanky and your infantry will get swarmed by them.

Shield Breaker

• +40% damage to shields with two-handed weapons.
• +10% damage to shields for infantry in your formation.

I’ve mentioned before and will continue mentioning, I think trying to bash through shields is asking for failure in most cases. The 10% given to your formation is bad. The 40% given to you should be useless because you should be swinging around your own troops to hit enemies.

Final verdict: Beast Slayer all the way unless you want to heavily meme additional shield damage across your formation.

5 – Berserker & Confidence

☆ Berserker

• +20% damage with two-handed weapons when below 50% health.

If this was a different RPG this would probably be a skill that deals increased damage based on how much missing health you have, but instead it’s below 50%.

Confidence

• +15% damage with two-handed weapons when above 90% health.

When you’re in melee you often get randomly nicked by some random damage that sets you below 90% health. Keep in mind on default health that’s just 10 damage.

Final verdict: Both of these perks are annoying to gauge usefulness, but I think Berserker is better. If your difficulty is below realistic Confidence might be viable, but I think Berserker is more viable.

Two Handed (p.2)

6 – Arrow Deflection (no alternate choice)

💩 Arrow Deflection

• You can deflect arrows with two-handed swords.

For one, if you’re using a two-handed weapon and getting shot at, you should be wiggling and running into killing range. For two, this skill only works for swords (per the writing). I have not used this because if I’m using a two-handed I don’t block against ranged attacks and learn to dodge by wiggling.

Final Verdict: A𝚜s. Skill issue perk. Just don’t put yourself in a situation to be shot by arrows when using a two-handed weapon.

7 – Hope & Terror

★★ Hope

• Kills with two-handed weapons have 30% higher AOE morale boost on friendly troops.
• +5 party limit.

Oh yeah give me more party limit baby. This is a good skill just because of +5 party limit. I can’t accurately measure how effective the AOE morale bonus is for friendly troops, but that party limit is like crack.

Terror

• Kills with two-handed weapons have 20% higher AOE morale hit on enemy troops.
• +10 prisoner limit.

Prisoner limit is like the less hot version of your girlfriend’s mom. Not good. Not sure about you guys, but I don’t like enemies running away, it’s easier for me (generally) to just keep swinging my two-handed and killing more.

Final Verdict: If Hope didn’t have +5 party limit it would be a subjective choice. Both options are OK but party limit is king.

8 – Reckless Charge & Thick Hides

💩 Reckless Charge

• +20% speed damage bonus on foot.
• +2% move speed and +2% damage to all infantry in your formation.

Speed damage is best mounted, so on foot hardly means s𝚑𝚒t. The tiny baby percentages for your troops is also hardly felt and overall this is a weak tier 8 perk.

☆ Thick Hides

• +5 hit points.
• +5 hit points to troops in formation.

This perk would be fine if it were tier 4, but it’s all the way up at tier 8. Very underwhelming for working your 𝚊𝚜s off killing 60 enemy troops with a two-handed weapon every battle for 20 hours of gameplay.

Final Verdict: Thick Hides is best only because Reckless Charge is terrible. If Thick Hides had +10 bonuses instead of +5 it would be a solid perk.

9 – Blade Master & Vandal

Blade master

• +10% two-handed weapon damage.
• +2% attack speed to infantry troops in formation.

If you plan to only use two-handed weapons the extra percentage damage can be better than ignoring armor depending on your weapon and specs. The 2% speed to troops is negligible and terrible for a tier 9 perk.

Vandal

• Attacks (all weapons) ignore 25% of armor.
• +20% damage to destructible objects for troops in your formation.

Ignoring 25% armor with all weapons makes this a decent synergy tool and does increase damage by a measurable amount. However, +20% damage to objects for troops is terrible. You don’t want your troops bashing down a gatehouse, you want siege weapons doing that.

Final Verdict: Player choice. Both perks have terrible sub-perks but each main effect is at least passable.

Polearm (p.1)

Continuing the melee weapons trend, the skill for Polearms makes up for some perks being lackluster. There is nothing disgustingly terrible about this perk tree.

1 – Cavalry & Pikeman

Cavalry

• +2% damage with polearms while mounted.
• +2% melee damage for cavalry in your formation.

Negligible damage for both you and your troops! The only reason this isn’t 💩-tier is because it’s the first perk and is essentially free.

☆ Pikeman

• +2% damage with polearms (mounted or dismounted)
• +2% damage to infantry in your formation.

Negligible damage for both you and your troops! The only reason this isn’t 💩-tier is because it’s the first perk and is essentially free.

Final verdict: Because Pikeman gives you bonus damage both on-and-off horse, I think it’s better. But pick your poison here, both of these are s𝚑𝚒t.

2 – Braced & Keep At Bay

★★ Braced

• 15% dismount resistance ignored with polearms that can dismount.
• +10% damage against cavalry to infantry troops in your formation.

Dismounting enemies is cash money. If you’re not shooting them off their horses this is the next best thing. Infantry troops tend to get chopped up by enemy cavalry, so giving them any help is nice too.

💩 Keep At Bay

• 25% knock back resistance ignored with polearms that can knock back.

If you’re fighting enemies in attempts to push them back with polearms you’re doing it wrong — go for the kills to the head or slash their backs as they fight your infantry.

Final verdict: Additional damage and dismount chance with Braced is much better than Keep At Bay.

3 – Clean Thrust & Swift Swing

★★ Clean Thrust

• +10% thrust damage to polearms.
• +30 polearms skill to infantry troops in your formation.

Even if you don’t use thrust polearms, the polearms skill your troops get is beneficial similar to 1HW and 2HW perks of the same type.

💩 Swift Swing

• +5% swing speed with polearms.
• +2% swing speed to infantry in your formation (any weapon).

These percentages are so small they’re essentially not there. Handling is more important for polearms on swing speed than a percentage boost of 5%.

Final verdict: Clean Thrust all the way. Swift Swing is poopy 𝚊𝚜s.

4 – Footwork & Hard Knock

💩 Footwork

• +2% movement speed with polearms.
• +2% movement speed to infantry troops in your formation.

oh god it’s IT’S SO BAD, IT’S TERRIBLE. This is horrible. The 2% essentially just lets you get from one edge of the entire battle map to the other on foot about 5 seconds faster. Awful.

★★ Hard Knock

• +15% knock down potential for polearms that can knock enemies down.
• +3 HP to infantry troops in your formation.

Knock down is better than knock back so it gets less hate from me. +3HP isn’t good at all but when we’re up against the s𝚑𝚒tty 𝚊𝚜s Footwork it’s not hard to win the perk competition.

Final verdict: Footwork is putrid sewage. Go Hard Knock.

5 – Lancer & Stead Killer

Lancer

• +20% speed damage bonus with polearms while mounted.
• +20% speed damage bonus to troops in formation.

Speed damage bonus is already massive so the 20% boost is both good and equally overkill in many cases. Because the speed bonus to your formation is all-encompassing, it’s much better than the previous perk which only gave it to foot troops.

☆ Stead Killer

• +70% damage against mounts with polearms.
• +30% damage against mounts with polearms to infantry troops in your formation.

Extra damage to mounts is great because you already kick their ass both mounted and dismounted. 30% extra damage from infantry is very good for protecting against heavy cavalry which will f𝚞𝚌k up the legionary army you spent 30 minutes assembling.

Final verdict: Stead Killer is preferable for making your troops better. Lancer is if you want to make your own damage scale better on horseback. Though I think Stead Killer is much better, Lancer is OK.

Polearm (p.2)

6 – Guards & Skewer

☆ Guards

• +50% damage with polearms when hitting the head.

Depends on your build. If you’re trying to go poleaxe-over-my-infantry-heads this might be better. I tend to use the flanks and swing sideways, and most polearms will oneshot enemies to the head anyway.

Skewer

• +30% (up from 5%) chance to remain couched after a couch-kill.

I think the idea behind this is getting that perfect crossbow-line annihilation as you couch through all of them with good RNG. I don’t like this in preference to Guards because Guards is always active where this is niche to just couching.

Final verdict: Whether you intend to use it specifically or not, Guards is always benefiting you more than Skewer.

7 – Phalanx & Standard Bearer

Phalanx

• +30 to weapon skills when infantry are in shield wall.
• +3% polearm damage to troops in your formation.

+30 to weapon skills is no joke, from my understanding this affects all melee troops. The crutch comes in using shield wall effectively.

Standard Bearer

• -20% morale loss to friendly troops

This sounds decently strong but I don’t have definitive evidence of how good it is. My pessimist thought is that the real use of this would be for getting a couple extra kills in an already lost battle. That being said, morale bonuses are rare to come by, so this has extra value.

Final verdict: Both are decent. Phalanx is much more micro-managey, so if you’re a delegated commander go with Standard Bearer.

8 – Drills & Generous Rations

💩💩 Drills

• +1 daily XP to all troops in your formation.

Yup it’s really this bad folks. I shouldn’t have to tell you why it’s terrible, so I won’t.

★★ Generous Rations

• +5 HP to troops in your party (not formation).
• -20% recruitment costs for infantry troops.

If you can stack the -20% with other reducing bonuses it’s OK, but this comes pretty late in the list. +5HP to all troops in your party however is very solid, especially compared to dogs𝚑𝚒t Drills.

Final verdict: If you pick Drills you have a brain problem.

9 – Sure Footed & Unstoppable Force

★★ Sure Footed

• -50% mount charge damage taken.
• -30% mount charge damage taken by all troops in your formation.

Mount charge does a s𝚑𝚒tload of damage to you if you are on foot, so if you’re going with an agility build this is great. Better is the -30% damage to your troops, which will be hit by horses often once cavalry gets to them.

💩 Unstoppable Force

• Triple damage against shields with couched lance.
• +30% speed damage to cavalry troops in your formation.

I know what you’re thinking. “But bro, 30% speed damage”! It’s almost always unnecessary for your cavalry troops unless you are a full heavy cavalry army (virtually never). Their speed bonus and weaponry will already bring them to killing most troops to the highest tiers. The extra damage you get against shields is almost a joke unless you spend the entire battle couching into anything that can be couched.

Final verdict: Skill issue would pick Unstoppable Force. Go for Sure Footed, it benefits your party better.

10 – Counterweight & Sharpen The Tip

★★ Counterweight

• +15% handling to swingable polearms.
• +20 polearm skill to infantry troops in your formation.

Handling is the most important skill for the largest polearms for speed. You can make hilarious long polearms in smithing to discover this — the swinging is essentially slow motion. The additional skill to infantry troops is icing on the cake of an already solid personal skill.

💩 Sharpen The Tip

• +5% polearm thrust damage.
• +5% thrust damage to infantry troops in your formation.

Extremely low bonus damage to a bad attack type. If you’re thrusting on foot I suggest you stop doing that, and thrusting on horse usually leads to kills because of speed. Infantry troops with stabbing polearms are generally way worse than infantry troops with swinging polearms.

Final verdict: Counterweight is much better because thrusting attacks are bad in general for AI.

Bow (p.1)

Oh yeah baby everyone’s (and TW’s) favorite ranged combat specialist. Bow as a skill is insane and will allow you to kill entire armies, but some of the perks… well, you’ll see.

1 – Bow Control & Dead Aim

Bow Control

• +30% accuracy with bows while moving.
• +5% damage to troops in your formation with bows.

On foot this is 𝚊𝚜s. I think the 30% works on horseback, so if you plan on being a full-speed horse archer (usually not necessary) you could go with it. But the 5% troop damage is negligible and on foot the 30% accuracy bonus is worthless if you are correctly using a bow.

★★ Dead Aim

• +30% headshot bonus with bows.
• +20 archery skill to bow-equipped troops.

As with the melee weapons, weapon skill is great for party troops because it increases all skills to do with the weapon. Bows are very easy to rapidly headshot with later in the game, so the 30% bonus is solid for heavily armored targets or hitting infantry off walls.

Final verdict: For both the player and the party, Dead Aim is preferable. For the horse-archer solo-only build, Bow Control is acceptable.

2 – Bodkin & Rangers Swiftness

☆ Bodkin

• Bow attacks ignore 10% of enemy armor.
• Bow troops ignore 5% of enemy armor.

Pierce is already the most effective damage against armor, so this is less effective than other weapon types, but it will still increase your damage.

💩 Rangers Swiftness

• -50% movement speed penalty during bow reloading.
• +3% movement speed to bow troops in your formation.

While the movement speed is nice for reloading, you should either be on horseback or behind cover during sieges when reloading and the extra speed you get for stepping a foot left or right isn’t felt in gameplay. As with all perks previous and future, tiny movement speed percentages to your troops means nothing.

Final verdict: Bodkin at least gives you additional damage. Rangers Swiftness is just terrible.

3 – Quick Adjustments & Rapid Fire

💩 Quick Adjustments

• -50% accuracy loss during rotation.
• +5% accuracy to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

If you’re shooting correctly with bow, you find your target and charge to fire in sequence. If you’re spending long amounts of time aiming, you need to identify targets quicker and better. Accuracy bonus to your troops is negligible when archery skill is most important for them.

★★ Rapid Fire

• +25% bow reload speed.
• +5% reload speed to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

Very solid perk. 25% reload speed on player is great and reload speed makes your bowmen more lethal. Even the most accurate bowmen are better in massive numbers, and in Bannerlord quantity is king for ranged kills.

Final verdict: Rapid Fire all the way. Quick Adjustments is the “skill issue” perk, while Rapid Fire benefits both you and your troops.

4 – Merry Men & Mounted Archery

Merry Men

• +5 party size.

Party size is always king s𝚑𝚒t.

☆ Mounted Archery

• -30% bow accuracy penalty while on horseback.

Obviously specialized for horse archer build but not 100% necessary with correct positioning in field battles. Definitely makes life easier.

Final verdict: Player choice, but horse archery feels better with Mounted Archery.

5 – Strong Bows & Trainer

Strong Bows

• +8% damage with bows.
• +5% damage with bows to Tier 3+ troops in your formation.

Thank God 8% damage isn’t 5% or less, but it’s still not a huge amount of extra damage. The +5% to your Tier 3+ troops (they’re the only ranged troops that will be killing anything anyway) isn’t great.

Trainer

• +6 XP per day to lowest bow-skill hero in party.
• +3 XP per day to bow-equipped troops.

For stacking XP purposes this perk is OK. +3 isn’t a lot but with other XP stacking it can get low level troops out of h𝚎𝚕l.

Final verdict: Player choice. Strong Bows is mediocre but acceptable, while Trainer can get low-tier bowmen to be less s𝚑𝚒t.

Bow (p.2)

6 – Discipline & Hunter Clan

💩 Discipline

• +50% time until bow accuracy is lost.

As previously, bow firing should have a rhythm which means you are never “waiting” to fire on a target. If you get to the default accuracy loss point, you are aiming for way too long.

💩 Hunter Clan

• +30% bow damage to mounts.

It takes like 500,000 (I tested this extensively) arrows to kill an armored horse in Bannerlord. Just shoot the rider in every case.

Final verdict: Pick your poison. I guess mount damage is better, but both of these are so negligible when correctly playing archer.

7 – Eagle Eye & Skirmish Phase Master

Eagle Eye

• +50% zoom using bows.
• +10% sight range on campaign map.

I’ve never practically used anything but the default zoom and I think only achievement hunting would change that. Extra sight on the campaign map is OK but uh… how about that Scouting skill?

Skirmish Phase Master

• -10% damage from projectiles.
• -5% damage from projectiles to bow-equipped troops in your formation.

A little less damage from projectiles can be appreciable when you randomly get zinged by stray arrows. However, the 5% reduction to your bow-troops is essentially non-existent.

Final verdict: Player choice. Neither of them are 💩-tier bad, but they’re both underwhelming especially this far up the perk tree.

8 – Bulls Eye & Renowned Archer

Bulls Eye

• +10% total XP earned to ranged troops after battles.

This is a good amount of extra XP following battles. It’s similar to the previous melee weapon trees.

Renowned Archer

• +10% morale to ranged troops at the beginning of battle.
• -30% recruit/upgrade cost for ranged troops.

Although by the time you make it this high in the tree you should be commanding armies and swathing denars, upgrade costs can still cost quite a bit. The +10% morale is icing on the cake to what is essentially the “cheaper” option compared to Bulls Eye.

Final verdict: Player choice, and a good one! A surprise for this tree. You either have the option of extra XP or cheaper costs.

9 – Deep Quivers & Horse Master

💩 Deep Quivers

• +3 arrows per quiver.
• +1 arrows per quiver to troops in your formation.

Both of these should be sub-perks for other perks. +1 arrows to your troops is virtually always meaningless and +3 for yourself is only truly great if you have three stacks of arrows as a full-time horse-archer… except Horse Master exists.

★★ Horse Master

• You can use any bow on horseback.
• +30 bow skill to mounted archers in your formation.

Much better than Deep Quivers and that’s all that matters. A better bow means better damage and less arrows needed, while +30 bow skill is significant to bonuses for horse archers.

Final verdict: Unless you intend to (1) never use horse archers (bad choice) and (2) plan on never being mounted in your battles while using a bow (bad choice), Horse Master is the obvious pick.

10 – Quick Draw & Salvo

Quick Draw

• +25% bow aim speed.

Pretty decent. By this point your bow skill is so high this is almost not felt, but it still helps to make you overpowered.

💩 Salvo

• Equipped bows do not slow you down.

Is your athletics skill so bad you need this? If you’re in a field battle, I suggest being on a horse.

Final verdict: Blue-balls tier ending to the tree, Quick Draw always helps while Salvo doesn’t. If you never use a horse, go for Salvo, otherwise Quick Draw is the obvious choice.

Crossbow (p.1)

Ok big thing to look out for on Crossbows is that if you want better ranged troops and you want to ride a horse, go Bow 100% of the time. If you want to boost your athletics and stay dismounted more, crossbow is your guy.

1 – Marksmen & Piercer

☆ Marksmen

• +25% aiming speed with crossbow.
• +10% ranged troop morale at the start of battle.

Extra aiming speed is good and the tier 1 perk of better troop morale is very nice. You can’t discredit a perk when it’s essentially free.

Piercer

• Crossbow attacks ignore armor below 20.
• 20% cheaper to recruit ranged troops.

Ignoring armor below 20 for crossbow is 𝚊𝚜s. But I can respect cheaper recruiting when you can start the game with this perk.

Final verdict: Marksmen has better utility throughout all stages of the game while Piercer is better for the extreme early game.

2 – Unhorser & Wind Winder

💩 Unhorser

• +40% damage to mounts when using crossbow.
• +20% damage to mounts to crossbow-wielding troops in your formation.

Do not shoot horses, shoot riders. If the rider has a shield, shoot someone else. Your troops don’t benefit greatly from this either since AI aiming against cavalry is all about quantity.

★★ Wind Winder

• +25% crossbow reload speed.
• +5% reload speed to ranged units in formation.

This is the kind of quantity that fixes battles. More shootey = more win.

Final verdict: Wind Winder is better for both the player and party members.

3 – Donkey’s Swiftness & Sheriff

☆ Donkey’s Swiftness

• -30% movement accuracy loss on crossbow.
• +30 crossbow skill to crossbow-equipped troops in formation.

Accuracy loss during movement is terrible for crossbow since you shouldn’t be moving if you’re shooting with a crossbow. However, +30 crossbow skill is pretty solid for troops, as are all other +30 bonus perks.

Sheriff

• +50% headshot damage with crossbows.
• +10% crossbow damage to foot soldiers for your formation.

Headshot damage is already great but an extra 50% can get you over the top-tier armored troops I suppose. The 10% damage to foot soldiers is essentially better done by Donkey’s Swiftness +30 skill, though.

Final verdict: If Donkey’s Swiftness had a better main perk it would be the choice, but it’s a subjective take because headshot damage can actually benefit the player. Donkey to improve your troops, Sheriff to be a headshotter.

4 – Peasant Leader & Renowned Marksman

Peasant Leader

• +10% morale to troops tiers 1-3.

It’s OK, but you shouldn’t expect greatness from tier 1-3 troops. They get their s𝚑𝚒t rocked in 90% of battles.

☆ Renowned Marksman

• +2 XP per day to all ranged troops.

This helps you get your troops out of tier 1-3.

Final verdict: Both perks have a use but I appreciate the daily XP over percentage morale for troops I’m already expecting to be bottom-tier.

5 – Fletcher & Puncture

Fletcher

• +4 quiver stack size.
• +2 quiver stack size for crossbow-equipped troops in your formation.

Better than the bow equivalent. The extra ammo on friendly troops is still terrible.

Puncture

• Ignore 10% of enemy armor with crossbows.
• Formation troops ignore 5% of enemy armor with crossbows.

Crossbows already do a lot of damage (pierce) to armor. The 5% on troops is negligible, but 10% less damage absorption is decent.

Final verdict: Puncture for damage, Fletcher if you plan on heavily stacking quivers.

Crossbow (p.2)

6 – Deft Hands & Loose and Move

★★ Deft Hands

• Double interrupt threshold for loading your crossbow.
• Troop interrupt threshold is doubled.

Interrupt threshold is terrible for the player (don’t get shot bozo!) but if you run a very heavy crossbow skirmish line it can support their ability to out-fire other ranged formations.

💩 Loose and Move

• Crossbows do not slow you down when equipped.
• +5% ranged troop speed to your formation.

Train athletics to get faster on the ground. The 5% speed, as with every other speed perk, is awful.

Final Verdict: Deft Hands at least does something to support your party, and is more effective if you want a really heavy crossbow formation.

7 – Counter Fire & Mounted Crossbowman

💩 Counter Fire

• -10% damage from projectiles.
• -3% damage to crossbow troops in your formation from projectiles.

Fart butt. Poopy 𝚊𝚜s. The player should avoid being hit by projectiles, and the 3% reduced damage is a joke.

★★ Mounted Crossbowman

• You can now reload any crossbow on horseback.
• +5% XP for ranged troops after battles.

Well, this is the only option at this perk. And it’s nice because it cuts off a gameplay mechanic if you avoid it, while making future perk choices in this tree worthless.

Final Verdict: Mounted Crossbowman is the only option here. I still think if you want to be mounted go archer, but it’s nice to have options, right?

8 – Sniper & Steady

💩 Sniper

• Double zoom on crossbows.

poop

★★ Steady

• -50% accuracy penalty while on horseback.

Alright well if you now fully man your crossbow on a horse, this is good. If you don’t it’s useless.

Final Verdict: Steady is good if you ride a horse. Sniper is only good if you want to make ludicrously long shots or have bad eyes (no judging here).

9 – Hammer Bolts & Pavise

★★ Hammer Bolts

• Crossbow hits can dismount and ignore 50% dismount resistance.
• +10% damage with crossbows to troops in your formation.

Dismounting is a nice benefit if you don’t kill a rider through a well-aimed shot. Percentage damage boosts are irritating perk additions but it doesn’t hurt you, so it is what it is.

💩 Pavise

• Your shield on your back can block s𝚑𝚒t 75% of the time.

Don’t put yourself in situations where you’re going to get flogged by ranged fire, and this perk is useless — as it should be.

Final Verdict: Hammer Bolts does something while Pavise is a “skill issue” perk. Take Hammer Bolts.

10 – Picked Shots & Terror

Picked Shots

• Tier 4+ ranged troops have 50% less upkeep.
• +5 HP to ranged troops.

+5HP is pretty lackluster when this is all the way up the d𝚊mn perk tree. As well, by this time in the game (battling so much you now have full crossbow skill) you should have enough money to not care about high-tier troop costs. It’s not a poopoo perk, but it’s a dirty toilet.

Terror

• +20% chance to increase bombardment (siege) casualties by 1 unit.
• +25% morale loss to enemy on crossbow kills to troops in your formation.

Wow, that bombardment portion sure is terrible! That being said, the 25% morale loss is decent for crossbow troops. However, you need to heavily invest in crossbows, so YMMV.

Final Verdict: Player’s choice. Both are underwhelming tier 10 perks, but play style is going to style your use.

Throwing (p.1)

Holy f𝚞𝚌k I gotta get through these weapon trees, they aren’t as horrendous and disgusting as the non-weapon trees can get. OK so throwing is for Chad Gamers, let’s just jump right in:

1 – Quick Draw & Shield Breaker

💩 Quick Draw

• +20% drawing speed with throwing weapons.
• +10% drawing speed with throwing weapons to troops in your formation.

★★ Shield Breaker

• +40% damage to shields with throwing weapons.
• +8% damage to shields with throwing weapons for your troops.

Well, if you’re chucking axes at shield walls, this is pretty good. It’s much better than the alternate weapon trees’ shield breaking perks. However, the 8% damage to troops is extremely underwhelming. We give it a pass because it’s tier 1.

Final verdict: You ought get something out of tier 1, so go for Shield Breaker.

2 – Flexible Fighter & Hunter

☆ Flexible Fighter

• +10% melee damage on thrown weapons.
• +15 Control skill to infantry troops, +15 Vigor skill to ranged troops.

10% extra melee damage is total 𝚊𝚜s, but boosting your troops’ skill values is always worthwhile.

Hunter

• +40% extra damage against horses with throwing weapons.
• +8% extra damage to horses for troops in your formation.

This is better than alternate weapon horse-damaging perks, but it’s still underwhelming.

Final verdict: However you want to kit out your party will affect your decision, but extra skill to troops of multiple types is great, so Flexible Fighter is my choice.

3 – Mounted Skirmisher & Well Prepared

💩 Mounted Skirmisher

• -20% mounted accuracy penalties for throwing weapons.
• +10% throwing damage to mounted troops.

I can’t think of a single f𝚞𝚌king time I’ve had a mounted troop kill a dude with a throwing weapon and I’m a proponent of the “cavalry f𝚞𝚌kfest army” so I have some experience in this regard. I suppose if you are going to have 4 stacks of throwing weapons on you, the -20% accuracy penalty could be nice for high-speed throwing?

Well Prepared

• +1 ammo for throwing weapons.
• +1 throwing weapon ammo to troops in your formation.

For a tier 3 perk it’s not bad, but still a little underwhelming when you only benefit an extra shot or two unless you go full throwing weapon mode.

Final verdict: Well Prepared is the lesser of two evils, but still pretty lackluster.

4 – Knock Off & Running Throw

💩 Knock Off

• Thrown weapons can dismount and ignore 25% dismount resistance.
• +5% throwing weapon damage to troops in your formation.

If you hit a rider and don’t kill them, your throwing weapon isn’t epic enough. The 5% throwing damage to troops is terrible.

★★ Running Throw

• +25% forward movement velocity throwing speed.
• +30 throwing skill to troops in your formation.

Forward movement for throwing is an incredibly stupid perk, but +30 throwing skill to troops is awesome.

Final verdict: Running Throw makes your party better. Take it.

5 – Saddlebags & Skirmisher

★★ Saddlebags

• +2 ammo on throwing weapons in battle if mounted.
• +1 daily XP to infantry troops in your party.

+2 ammo per stack is actually pretty good but I don’t get why TW decided you only get it on a horse. I guess because the skill is called “saddlebags”. Get s𝚑𝚒t on, cringelord athletics players!

💩 Skirmisher

• -10% damage from ranged attacks when holding a throwing weapon.
• -3% ranged damage to troops in your command.

my 𝚊𝚜s spraying diarrhea s𝚑𝚒t is better than this perk.

Final verdict: Skirmisher sucks. Go Saddlebags, but always bring a horse. Obviously. Dismount if you want to level athletics I suppose!

Throwing (p.2)

6 – Focus & Last Hit

💩 Focus

• +25% zoom when using throwing weapons.

What the f𝚞𝚌k? Seriously, what in the world?

★★ Last Hit

• +50% extra damage to enemies with less than 50% health with throwing weapons.
• +5 morale for the party at the start of battle.

Wow, this perk is so much better than Focus it’s not funny. Executing damage is solid and is a decent % unlike every other f𝚞𝚌king weapon perk in the game. +5 morale is decent too.

Final verdict: Focus! Haha just kidding that perk sucks my dog’s balls. Go Last Hit every single time no matter what.

7 – Head Hunter & Throwing Competitions

☆ Head Hunter

• +50% damage to thrown weapon headshots.
• Tier 2+ troops are 20% cheaper to recruit.

Distance throwing can be improved by headshots, so this benefits that. Recruiting at this point in the perk tree shouldn’t be bankrupting you, but it’s OK.

Throwing Competitions

• -20% cost to infantry upgrades.

I was tempted to 💩-tier this, but upgrades are generally the most expensive part of owning high tier troops. It’s OK.

Final verdict: Head Hunter is better for every portion of the game if you don’t worry about denars, which is where you should be at all times.

8 – Resourceful & Splinters

Resourceful

• +2 ammo for throwing weapons.
• +10% XP to troops with throwing weapons after battles.

Not bad. If you continue stacking with all the extra ammo perks, you can have a high throwing ammo by the end of the list.

Splinters

• 3x damage to shields with throwing axes.
• +50% damage to shields with throwing weapons to troops in your party.

This is the only really solid anti-shield perk. If you took the previous anti-shield perk in the throwing list this one becomes that much better. You will eat shields for breakfast in a funny way.

Final verdict: Player choice. Probably the first throwing weapon perk that is a tough choice. Splinters is an actually good shield-destroying perk unlike every other one in the game Resourceful gives you a lot more throwing time in combat and bonus XP is nice.

9 – Long Reach & Perfect Technique

Long Reach

• You can pick up weapons from the ground while mounted (double interaction reach)
• +20% morale and renown from winning battles.

Good thing the morale/renown thing is here because holy moly that first perk is bad.

Perfect Technique

• +25% projectile speed on your thrown weapons.
• +10% projectile speed on troops’ thrown weapons.

Projectile speed creates higher damage and supports better accuracy especially for AI. Normally the 10% changes are underwhelming but in this case it can create a better throwing army.

Final verdict: Renown and morale from Long Reach are kick𝚊𝚜s (until you don’t need renown anymore), but if you want to throw s𝚑𝚒t betterer go for Perfect Technique.

10 – Impale & Weak Spot

Impale

• Javelins now penetrate shields if damage is greater than 30+3x (x=shield armor value)
• +10% throwing damage to troops in formation.

If you can consistently kill through shields that’s pretty cool, but obviously if you are more of a flanker or don’t deal with shielded enemies often, don’t get it.

☆ Weak Spot

• Throwing weapons ignore 30% of enemy armor.
• Throwing weapons in your formation ignore 10% of enemy armor.

If you don’t deal with heavily shielded enemies often, go for this, the damage increase is at least palpable.

Final verdict: Weak spot is better if you work around shields and is better in general for your troops.

Riding (p.1)

As with weapons, dogs𝚑𝚒t perks cannot bring down the Riding tree because Riding as a skill is so useful. But that’s not going to stop me! I’m here to be mad about videogames.

1 – Full Speed & Nimble Steed

💩 Full Speed

• +20% horse charge damage.
• +10% horse charge damage to troops in your formation.

Generally as the player you shouldn’t be going for actively “horse charging” enemies because you’re going to get yourself killed if you keep it up. Use weapons. The extra damage to NPCs is OK, but not as effective as riding skill.

★★ Nimble Steed

• +10% horse maneuvering.
• +30 riding skill to mounted troops in your formation.

Riding skill for party members is always good. AI isn’t very great at maneuvering horses but will benefit in all facets instead of just horse damage.

Final verdict: Nimble Steed is better for both the player and AI in the party.

2 – Veterinary & Well Strapped

💩 Veterinary

• -50% chance of a lame or dead horse after it dies in battle for you. (from 20% to 10% lame, from 5% to 2.5% death)

Other than Humpsphrey, what mounts are you that worried about replacing? I have never had a serious issue with replacing a mount if it goes lame or dies. This perk also doesn’t completely negate horse loss, so you’re still at the fate of RNG. SAD!

★★ Well Strapped

• +20% mount hit points.
• +10% hit points to troops in your command.

Mounts as they scale start to get some decent HP values, so this is always decent when you have high armor on them. The troops in command is icing on the cake of a decent tier 2 perk.

Final verdict: Well Strapped is good, Veterinary would only be good if you could Breath of the Wild customize your mount. Just buy another one!

3 – Filled To Brim & Nomadic Traditions

Filled To Brim

• +20% carry capacity of pack animals.
• -10% trade penalty for mounts.

Normally anything with denars I find weak in perk trees because a central part to singleplayer is like a sandwich – the bread always comes first. However, extra carry capacity is always good for staying fast and war mounts can be expensive in excess if you plan on having a lot of cavalry. Solid perk.

Nomadic Traditions

• +30% party speed to mounted infantry (from 1.3 to 1.4)
• +10% speed damage bonus to melee cavalry.

The +30% is deceptive because it really only increases a decimal point, but in theory if you have a lot of mounts you can speed up your infantry heavy army, so this perk isn’t bad. Extra speed damage to cavalry is the best mix for speed damage, so it gets a pass.

Final verdict: Player choice. One of the better tier 3 perk decisions across the board!

4 – Sagittarius & Sweeping Wind

★★ Sagittarius

• -15% accuracy penalty while mounted.
• -15% accuracy penalty for mounted troops.

The difference of this and other accuracy perks is that Sagittarius affects all accuracy, not just rotation and movement. It’s solid for the player but great for your mounted archers.

💩 Sweeping Wind

• +5% mount speed.
• +2% party speed on the map.

These percentages are so tiny and meaningless. Higher tier mounts already become very fast and your riding skill only helps that — the 2% map speed is negigible.

Final verdict: Unless you never use ranged horsemen and never use mounts yourself, Sagittarius is the clear winner.

5 – Relief Force (no choice)

💩 Relief Force

• Joining an ongoing battle with allies grants +10 battle morale to your troops.

Rarely do you get the opportunity to join a battle where your party will make a significant difference, but even rarer will you win that battle due to your morale rating. The few Soldiers different morale would make at that point is better done by the player killing more enemies.

In all battles you would have won or lost (by joining), this does nothing.

Final verdict: You have no choice but to take Relief Force. Relieve my 𝚊𝚜s from sh𝚒t.

Riding (p.2)

6 – Horse Archer & Mounted Warrior

☆ Horse Archer

• +10% ranged damage while mounted.
• +5% ranged damage to mounted archer troops.

Small bonus damage percentages. Take your pick.

Mounted Warrior

• +5% mounted melee damage.
• +5% melee damage to mounted troops in your formation.

Small bonus damage percentages. Take your pick.

Final verdict: Both perks are middle-ground compared to other perks. I prefer the ranged damage because generally I am playing heavily ranged on horseback with a melee weapon more as backup. Pick your poison.

7 – Breeder & Riding Horde

💩 Breeder

• 1% chance per day of any animal in your inventory reproducing.

You would think the 1% chance would scale with number of mounts, meaning more mounts = more chance, but instead it just multiplies that number. So if you have a something like 200 mounts, you’ll get 2 babies instead, but still only at 1% chance. It at least does something, but the amount is so low you effectively gain nothing.

💩 Riding Horde

• -50% penalty for having more pack animals than men.

The only time I get the pack animal penalty is if I just got my s𝚑𝚒t rocked and am escaping prison with the 7 horses they gave me in prison. I drop them and run off. I don’t see the need for this perk.

Final verdict: Breeder is better but is still really bad for being a tier 7 perk.

8 – Annoying Buzz & Thunderous Charge

Annoying Buzz

• 20% more battle morale penalty with ranged kills while mounted.
• 5% more battle morale penalty from ranged kills for mounted troops.

Self-explanatory percentage bonuses.

Thunderous Charge

• 20% more battle morale penalty with melee kills while mounted.
• 5% more battle morale penalty from melee kills for mounted troops.

Self-explanatory percentage bonuses.

Final verdict: Player choice. I value my party troops more than myself (even though I net a lot of kills each battle). For that reason, Thunderous Charge has more chance of morale penalty mattering if used correctly.

9 – Cavalry Tactics & Mounted Patrols

★★ Cavalry Tactics

• +30% cavalry troop volunteering rate in towns your clan governs.

This is pretty good if you’re trying to run heavy cavalry armies, but the governing specific is a little irritating. It also gives less chance for special troops since they spawn in towns.

Mounted Patrols

• -50% prisoner hero escape chance.

This isn’t 💩-tier, I just don’t find it very useful. I like keeping hold of prisoners, but if you drop them off into settlements the perk doesn’t matter anymore.

Final verdict: Cavalry Tactics is the go-to if you intend on your party composition being cavalry heavy. Which you should.

10 – Dauntless Steed & Tough Steed

☆ Dauntless Steed

• -50% stagger damage threshold while mounted
• +5 armor to mounted troops in your formation.

I don’t even know what stagger damage is while mounted so I don’t think it’s effective, but +5 armor isn’t terrible for low-tier troops and even for high-tier can negate potential killing blows since hits to horsemen tend to be mostly ineffective in angle.

Tough Steed

• +20% mount armor.
• +10% mount armor for mounted troops.

If you want your mount to be omega invincible go for this, but mounts are already very tanky.

Final verdict: Player choice but I like Dauntless. Mounts already have a high amount of armor, but troop armor count (by value) tends to be lower than you think and still negate damage. Adding extra armor to mounted troops will make them 𝚊𝚜sholes in a good way.

Athletics (p.1)

Athletics is the gamer’s true skill tree since you have to run everywhere for the entire singleplayer campaign to actually level it well compared to riding. Some of these perk trees start to get really s𝚑𝚒tty at this point. Can’t wait!

1 – Morning Exercise & Well Built

💩 Morning Exercise

• +3% movement speed.
• +5% foot troop movement speed.

Percentages this low barely affect your effective movement speed in battle and do nothing towards contributing to win/loss. Poopoo.

★★ Well Built

• +5 HP.
• +5 HP for foot troops in your formation.

For tier 1, +5 HP isn’t bad across your whole foot troop cast.

Final verdict: Well Built has a purpose and Morning Exercise does not.

2 – Form Fitting Armor & Fury

💩 Form Fitting Armor

• -15% armor weight.
• +4% movement speed to Tier 3+ foot troops in your formation.

As with previous, these small incremental increases to movement speed are not going to win or lose battles for you. If you plan on going heavy in athletics anyway, the armor weight percentage doesn’t make you much faster or slower than you already would be. High athletics will out-do the perk.

★★ Fury

• +10% weapon handling on foot.
• +10% weapon handling to foot troops in your formation.

Weapon handling is one of the key skills to contribute to speed damage and swing/recovery speed. It’s great for infantry.

Final verdict: Fury has a purpose and Form Fitting Armor is for samurai ninja LARPers.

3 – Having Going & Stamina

★★ Having Going

• +30% persuasion chance.
• +5 party size.

Persuasion in Bannerlord is 𝚊𝚜s. It appears TW quickly ran out of things to do with the athletics tree because there’s randomly other trees plotted in here, this being one. But as always I love party size increase, so +5 party size saves this perk.

💩 Stamina

• +50% crafting stamina recovery.
• +5 prisoner size limit and -10% prisoner escape chance (from 10% to 9%)

If you don’t plan on using smithing this is 100% a useless perk. If you do smithing, it’s only slightly better as it increases your stamina recovery from a whopping 2.5 extra points per hour. +5 prisoner size limit is negligible and the escape chance only affects oversize, so has a 1% difference. Wow. Terrible.

Final verdict: Having Going gives you party size which is Gamefuel s𝚑𝚒t, meanwhile Stamina has a good idea that is bad because it’s increasing a very small number by a percentage.

4 – Powerful & Sprint

💩☆ Powerful

• +4% damage with melee weapons.
• +2% damage with melee weapons to troops in your formation.

Your personal melee damage should be funneled through the one-handed tree, not the athletics perk tree. The 2% bonus to your troops is nothing. If they swing for 50 damage they will do 1 additional damage. Incredible.

💩 Sprint

• +5% movement speed when you don’t have shields or ranged weapons wielded.
• +3% movement speed to infantry troops in battle.

Who the f𝚞𝚌k is running around in battle without anything equipped? What a great bonus for travelling around a Town! As with all previous troop movement speed bonuses, this doesn’t have a true effect on battle.

Final verdict: I guess go Powerful since it at least adds something beneficial.

5 – Braced & Surging Blow

★★ Braced

• -50% charge damage taken.
• -50% charge damage taken to foot troops in your formation.

This is actually pretty decent because enemy cav will race through your infantry lines in almost every battle. Troops taking less damage from that is good since after 2-3 horse hits they’ll go down normally.

💩 Surging Blow

• +30% speed damage while on foot.
• +30% speed damage to foot troops in your formation.

Speed damage is the least effective on foot and most effective when you’re racing through lines on a horse. Even though this percentage is good, it’s not significant and especially not for your troops.

Final verdict: If the entire map is owned by the Battanians, Surging Blow is good since you won’t fight cavalry. Otherwise go Braced every time.

Athletics (p.2)

God please kill me.

6 – A Good Days Rest & Walk It Off

A Good Days Rest

• +10% hit point regen while stationary.
• +10 XP to foot troops in your party while waiting in settlements.

+10 XP is pretty amazing since every other perk trees’ passive XP gains are low as h𝚎𝚕l. This synergizes well with smithing skill since waiting around doing nothing is 95% of gameplay when you main smithing.

Walk It Off

• +10% hit point regen while moving.
• +3 XP to foot troops in your party while traveling.

Solid overall since you’re moving all the time.

Final verdict: Player choice. I do more traveling than waiting so I prefer Walk It Off, but a Good Days Rest has some solid XP gain.

7 – Energetic & Healthy Citizens

💩Energetic

• -20% speed penalty when overburdened.

Okay TW, really, who is this for? Is it for players who are bad and don’t manage inventory? Is it for caravan roleplayers? If you have horses in your party you shouldn’t have any encumbrance issues, and 20% speed upgrade when moving slow as f𝚞𝚌k isn’t enough for this perk to mean anything. It’s 7 tiers up for f𝚞𝚌k’s sake.

Healthy Citizens

• +1 Endurance Attribute.

At least this does something, but still very underwhelming for a tier 7 perk.

Final verdict: Healthy Citizens can actually benefit your character while Energetic is a perk that should never be activated.

8 – Steady & Strong

Steady

• +1 Control.

Yep that’s it. TW really knocked it outta the park with this perk.

☆ Strong

• +1 Vigor.
• +5% party speed from foot troops.

The map speed is a super tiny percentage but it’s something.

Final verdict: Strong can get you a tiny amount of extra map speed, so that’s cool. Just take whichever perk you need more attribute in.

9 – Strong Arms & Strong Legs

★★ Strong Arms

• +1 focus point in throwing.
• +20 throwing skill to troops in your formation.

Well, I hope you plan on teching into throwing, because otherwise this perk is useless to you. The skill to troops is OK.

💩💩💩 Strong Legs

• -50% fall damage taken.
• Double kick damage.

This is one of the worst perks in the entire game. This perk is so f𝚞𝚌king bad I cannot believe it exists. Kick damage is already low enough to the point kicking anyone with armor is 1 damage. Why are you even kicking? How much are you taking fall damage that you actually need to lower it? Why are you even taking fall damage? Who the f𝚞𝚌k at TW made this perk? i could rant for an hour about how terrible this perk is.

Final verdict: Strong Arms is useless for you personally if you don’t use throwing weapons but holy h𝚎𝚕l is Strong Legs atrocious.

10 – Ignore Pain & Spartan

★★ Ignore Pain

• +10% armor while on foot.
• +5 (flat) armor to foot troops in your formation.

Armor is harder to come by for foot troops so even though it’s a small flat amount of 5 (for this being the 10th f𝚞𝚌king perk) it’s an upgrade to your party.

💩 Spartan

• +50% stagger damage threshold on foot.
• -20% food consumption for your party.

Stagger damage is already pretty high and if you take it you’re going to get nailed by a rock being thrown at your character. To need the benefit of having a slightly higher threshold is useless if you’re playing melee correctly with your party. -20% food consumption is a joke. By any perk reaching tier 10, you should be at a stage of the game where food isn’t a concern for you anymore.

Final verdict: Ignore Pain is an actual upgrade while Spartan is a fake upgrade. Choose correctly.

Smithing (p.1)

Oh boy my favorite skill tree in the whole game (no). It’s a shame that Smithing is only good once you have 95394539493 levels of it because the method to upgrade it is tedious as f𝚞𝚌k and you’ll be spending a s𝚑𝚒tload of time doing nothing or spamming left click. The pro gamer move is to give yourself half the skills and give an NPC who you slave around the resource-creating skills. The ACTUAL pro gamer move is to get a mod that doesn’t make you feel like you’re in h𝚎𝚕l for sinning.

1 – Efficient Charcoal & Efficient Iron

★★ Efficient Charcoal

• Hardwood to charcoal recipe goes from 2:1 to 2:3.

You’re going to need 5,000,000 charcoal by the end of the game if you’re levelling up smithing from low levels, so this is a great pickup to save some clicks out of your mouse.

💩 Efficient Iron

• Crude iron produce from 1 iron and 2 charcoal goes from 2 to 3.

Crude iron comes off of so many weapons in smelting that you should do that all the time forever instead of smelting iron down into crude iron and using extra charcoal.

Final verdict: Charcoal good. Crude iron not needed when you’ll get s𝚑𝚒tloads from bandit weaponry.

2 – Curious Smelter & Steel Maker

Curious Smelter

• +100% part design learning when smelting.

Steel Maker

• Can now craft steel.

Final verdict: If you have a 2nd NPC to do half of things, give them Steel Maker and put Curious Smelter on yourself. If you’re worried about “missing the boat” and have no NPCs, put it on yourself.

3 – Curious Smith & Steel Maker 2

Curious Smith

• +100% learning on part designs when smithing.

Steel Maker 2

• Can now craft fine steel.

Final verdict: Same as previous tier. Give NPC the metal making s𝚑𝚒t and give yourself the learning s𝚑𝚒t.

4 – Experienced Smith & Steel Maker 3

Experienced Smith

• 10% chance to create a ‘fine’ weapon.
• +2 relationship with notables for successful orders.

Steel Maker 3

• Can now craft Thamaskene steel.
• +4 relationship with lords and ladies for successful orders.

Final verdict: Same as previous tier. Give NPC the metal making s𝚑𝚒t and give yourself the learning s𝚑𝚒t.

5 – Practical Refiner & Practical Smelter

Practical Refiner

• Half stamina spent on refining.

Practical Smelter

• Half stamina spent on smelting.

Final verdict: Once again ideally you have an NPC friend to split the workload here, but just pick whichever one you do more.

Smithing (p.2)

6 – Controlled Smith & Vigorous Smith

Controlled Smith

• +1 Control.

Vigorous Smith

• +1 Vigor.

Final verdict: Attributes are very difficult to get with normal leveling so this perk tier is OK. Pick whichever suits your build. Bit of a lackluster creativity count on TW’s part.

7 – Artisan Smith & Practical Smith

Artisan Smith

• Half trade penalty for selling smithed weapons.

I don’t really have money issues at most points in Bannerlord so I think this skill is weak, especially since most “throwaway” smithed weapons are not worth selling in the first place.

★★ Practical Smith

• Smithing stamina is halved.

Anything to make the process of smithing easier is great.

Final verdict: Practical Smith makes smithing less torturous.

8 – Master Smith (no choice)

Master Smith

• 10% chance to create ‘Masterwork’ weapon.

Final verdict: Good perk considering there is no choice. If you have the ‘fine’ weapon perk you essentially have a 20% chance to create an above-normal weapon.

9 – Enduring Smith & Fencer Smith

Enduring Smith

• +1 Endurance.

☆ Fencer Smith

• +1 focus point to one-handed and two-handed.

Final verdict: I like Fencer Smith because it allows you to upgrade your infantry through party-upgrade perks. If you need the endurance, go for Enduring Smith.

10 – Sharpened Edge & Sharpened Tip

💩💩 Sharpened Edge

• +2% cut damage of crafted weapons.

💩💩 Sharpened Tip

• +2% piece damage of crafted weapons.

Final verdict: What kind of ending perk is this? The smithing tree doesn’t help with anything outside of smithing and will take 40 years off of your life. For your efforts you get 2% extra damage. Absolutely sickening.

Scouting (p.1)

Scouting has some interesting concepts in the perk tree and the nice part is that even if a perk is total s𝚑𝚒t having high scouting level is necessary to not want to blow your f𝚞𝚌king head off with how long you’ll be waiting to travel across the map.

1 – Day Traveler & Night Runner

★★ Day Traveler

• +2% movement speed during the day.
• +10% increased sight range during day time.

Decent perk bonuses even though 2% hardly means anything.

Night Runner

• +5% movement speed during night time.
• +30% sight range during night time.

Good perk bonuses but keep in mind night time is only about 1/4 of a Bannerlord day.

Final verdict: Because night is so short in Bannerlord, Day Traveler is better overall. No matter what you take it will only increase your party speed by 0.1-0.2. Good first tier perks though.

2 – Pathfinder & Water Diviner

Pathfinder

• +2% movement speed on steppes/plains.
• 50% chance to get +1 relation with a notable when you enter a town.

Can’t feel the 2% movement at all but the notable relationship is pretty good.

☆ Water Diviner

• +10% sight range bonus on steppes/plains.
• 50% chance to get +1 relation with a notable when you enter a village.

Sight range is better felt than the movement speed and notable relationship is good.

Final verdict: Water Diviner gets you more bang for your buck with sight range bonus so I prefer it. However, if you feel you’ll visit towns more, take whichever perk is appropriate.

3 – Desert Born & Forest Kin

Desert Born

• +5% movement speed bonus on deserts/dunes.

If you’re in the Asurai area this is great, but otherwise it’s effectively useless. Doesn’t that suck?

Forest Kin

• -50% speed penalty in forests if your party is >75% infantry.

This is a surprisingly good perk no matter where you are, but favors early game when you don’t have much cavalry.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both situational perks that aren’t terrible but have difficult uses.

4 – Forced March & Unburdened

Forced March

• +2.5% party movement bonus when morale is higher than 75.
• +2 XP per day when morale is higher than 75.

The 2.5% speed is negligible and 2 XP is low, and both are over 75 morale which is pretty difficult to activate for a large portion of your game.

💩 Unburdened

• 20% less penalty from being overburdened.
• +2 XP per day to troops when overburdened.

You should never want to be overburdened because it sucks. Making it slightly less s𝚑𝚒t is okay, but this perk could be much better.

Final verdict: Forced March is arguably better but wow both of these perks are 𝚊𝚜s due to being so ineffective.

5 – Ranger & Tracker

Ranger

• +20% track spotting distance.
• +10% track detection chance.

I don’t use tracks as much as I did in Warband, but I can’t say whether or not this perk is useful. Tracks can give you some insight to parties but I tend to not use them often.

Tracker

• +20% maximum track life.
• +2% speed when following a hostile party.

I like this solely for the 2% bonus following a hostile party. Even though it equates to 0.1 extra speed, it allows you to catch a few more parties you’d otherwise not be able to.

Final verdict: I like Tracker but these seem like flavorful player-choice perks. They’re both a bit underwhelming.

Scouting (p.2)

6 – Mounted Scouts & Patrols

★★ Mounted Scouts

• If your party is >50% cavalry, gain +10% sight bonus.
• +5 party size.

The sight bonus isn’t special but you know how I am. I love that party size s𝚑𝚒t. Gimme gimme gimme!!!

💩💩Patrols

• +5 battle morale against bandits.
• +10% advantage in simulated battles against bandits.

This perk sucks so much 𝚊𝚜s it’s insane. In what world do you need +5 battle morale against bandits? When do you need advantage in sim? Bandits are cannonfodder once you have more than 30 trained troops. Why would you ever need this perk?

Final verdict: Mounted Scouts is actually useful and Patrol is unironically worse than gonorrhea (I have done extensive testing to confirm this). Pick wisely.

7 – Beast Whisperer & Foragers

★★ Beast Whisperer

• 5% chance of finding a mount daily when moving through steppes/plains.
• +10% carry capacity for pack animals.

Compared to the riding 1% perk, the 5% is actually felt as you’ll get the occasional additional mount. +10% carry capacity is very decent for pack animals.

💩 Foragers

• -10% food consumption when moving through steppes/forests.
• -15% disorganized state time.

While disorganized state time bonus is OK, the food consumption is so incredibly useless that the disorganized state time doesn’t matter. In general you should be able to out-play the opposing AI when you end up in disorganized state. It should not make a difference to have a 15% timer adjustment.

Final verdict: Beast Whisperer is clearly the best.

8 – Rumour Network & Village Network

💩 Rumour Network

• -5% trade penalty within cities of your faction.
• +30% hideout detection range.

City/town trade bonus is fine and dandy but this is pretty d𝚊mn far up the perk tree to be just giving you a 5% bonus. As with other perk trees, once you get this high up ONE, you should be raking in denars like a fat ba𝚜t𝚊rd in Praven. Hideout detection range at tier 8? Hello TW? Are you alive? Do you feel?

💩 Village Network

• -10% trade penalty within villages of your faction.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I mean denars are so easy to come by I don’t know why you would need this unless you’re spamming an iron village or something? Is this 10% trade penalty that good?

Final verdict: I mean holy s𝚑𝚒t these perks are ineffective for anything significant. I guess if you buy all your food from villages go with Village Network, if you don’t, go with Rumour network. TW why?

9 – Keen Sight & Vantage Point

Keen Sight

• -50% sight difficulty while inside forests.
• -50% chance for prisoner lords to escape your party.

By this point in scouting your vision is already really solid. Is the 50% sight difficulty in forests really an issue here? Less chance for lords to escape is OK. Prisoner lords can be used for rapid influence and lord relation through donation.

Vantage Point

• +25% sight range after being stationary for 1 hour.
• +10 prisoner size limit.

+25% sight range is no joke but I find myself using sight much less than I ever did in Warband. +10 prisoner size limit is acceptable but nothing special for tier 9.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both perks are underwhelming (by a lot) for tier 9. I like the less prisoner escape chance since I use lord prisoners to cheese lord/lady relations.

10 – Rearguard & Vanguard

💩 Rearguard

• +20% troop wounded recovery ratio when in an army.
• +10% damage during simulation when defending the siege camp.

Slight extra wounded recovery ratio is cool, but why here in scouting? +10% damage when defending the camp will never happen ever in your entire life. If your siege camp is being attacked you’re going to have to fight or run, no in-between.

💩💩 Vanguard

• +5% damage in simulated battles when on the attack.
• +10% damage in simulated battles when sallying out.

Oh wow, this is terrible. Why the f𝚞𝚌k isn’t this in the Tactics tree TW? What are you doing with your lives? The +10% damage when sallying out is also terrible. In what situation are you sallying out and winning solely because of the simulated battle feature? You’re either fighting it or auto-winning due to numbers. Terrible!

Final verdict: Taleworlds continues to hit the f𝚞𝚌king homeruns!!! Just go with anything, this set of perks ought not even be in the game.

Tactics (p.1)

Disclaimer; over my singleplayer games, I have found and decided that the Tactics tree as a whole is awful. Tactics has objectively two of the worst perks in the entire game. Every simulated battle I play is an auto-win. I never simulate battles that are “close”. I would never win a battle because my simulation tips me over the edge. So I’m going in here with negative bias. To me, it doesn’t matter if the 20 stack bandit party deals 1 or 2 extra casualties to me, I just want to kill it by clicking two buttons. You should feel the same and never put focus or skill into this tree.

1 – Loose Formations & Tight Formations

☆ Loose Formations

• -10% infantryman damage by ranged troops in sims.
• -25% morale penalty from using line, loose, circle, scatter formations.

This is actually a solid perk but don’t worry I will hate on the Tactics tree plenty later. This perk is essentially free and the -25% morale penalty is solid.

Tight Formations

• +10% damage to cav by infantry in sims.
• -25% morale penalty from using shield wall, square, skein, or column formations.

Infantry already deal little damage to cav so that doesn’t help much. If you use tight formations this is decent.

Final verdict: If you use the “tight formations” heavily, go with that perk. Loose formations is better in my playstyle because I don’t use the tight formations and infantrymen perform better.

2 – Asymmetrical Warfare & Proper Engagement

💩 Asymmetrical Warfare

• +10% sim damage in snow/forest terrain.
• +2% movement speed to troops in snowy/forrest terrain battlefields.

2% movement speed is poopoo and +10% sim damage in random areas is questionable at best. If you were to win or lose a battle on a line, this would not help or hurt.

💩 Proper Engagement

• +5% sim damage in plains, steppes, and deserts.
• +2% movement speed to troops in plains, steppes, and desert battlefields.

Same as above but even less percentage. Fe[pwfpwijfepaweifjpwoijfe Taleworlds I despise these perks.

Final verdict: Just pick one at random for all it’s worth.

3 – Horde Leader & Small Unit Tactics

★★ Horde Leader

• +10 party size
• Army cohesion drops 5% slower.

Party size is SO GOOD oh my GOD. Cohesion of Armies dropping slow is icing on the cake. +10 party size is awesome.

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Small Unit Tactics

• +1 troop during hideout raids.
• +5% battle speed to troops in your formation when you have less than 15 Soldiers.

When I first saw this perk I thought it would be the worst perks would get. I was wrong somehow. This perk is so bad i shouldn’t have to explain why, but here we go. How terrible of a player do you have to be to need an extra troop in hideout raids? If you have tier 3+ troops hideout raids are a literal AFK->win. Using the super speed mod makes them not incredibly tedious too. The +5% battle speed is so little speed for such a specific niche (less than 15 troops). I hate this perk with every fiber of my being.

Final verdict: Horde Leader every single time oh my goodness. If you ever pick Small Unit Tactics, even by accident, you should uninstall Bannerlord. Small Unit Tactics is so terrible I want to write 10 more paragraphs about it.

4 – Coaching & Law Keeper

💩 Coaching

• +3% damage bonus in all sims.
• +1% damage to troops in your formation.

I am sorry to repeat my thoughts but I seriously look through the Tactics perks and scream “who cares” in my head over and over. 1% damage? Seriously? 3% damage in sims? Who cares?

Law Keeper

• +10% damage in sims against bandits.
• +4% damage to bandits for troops in your formation.

Simulation is most often done against bandits so at least this has a purpose. Instead of your 150 size party losing 1 troop to a 20 stack bandit you will lose 0. Amazing!

Final verdict: Law Keeper has a purpose, even if it’s like the purpose of a fruit fly to a human life.

5 – Improviser & Swift Regroup

☆ Improviser

• No morale penalty for disorganized state, sally out, or when being attacked.
• -25% fewer men lost when breaking into and out of a settlement under siege.

This is actually OK. The morale penalty really hurts if numbers are close so with the player killing lots of enemies this can actually turn the tide of battle. I thought about a cool tactic of leaving an army’s siege camp to rejoin it with the riding-into-help-friends perk and gaining some extra party morale.

Swift Regroup

• -15% disorganized state time after breaking sieges and raids.
• -50% Soldiers lost when escaping battles.

The secondary perk of this perk is the actual good one. Breaking sieges and raids should only be done when you are positive you can get away from whatever party is coming to rock your s𝚑𝚒t. But escaping battles with less Soldiers lost (by an actually effective 50%) can be useful if you want to totally annihilate your “honor” trait.

Final verdict: I like Improviser more since it doesn’t require me to piss off my companions and ruin my “honor” trait to lose Soldiers with Swift Regroup. That being said, if you’re roleplayiing a bandit or some s𝚑𝚒t, Swift Regroup could be a fun pick.

Tactics (p.2)

6 – Call To Arms & On The March

★★ Call To Arms

• +10% movement speed for parties called to your army.
• -15% influence required per party called to your army.

Some extra speed to parties that take forever to get to you can be useful. The real kicker is less influence required. That’s always good at any point in the game.

💩 On The March

• -20% fortification bonus in simulations.
• +20% fortification bonus in simulations.

If you want to lose less battles during sieges, play the sieges. If you’re simulating a close siege you’re a nimrod.

Final verdict: Call To Arms. Influence good. Play sieges if you don’t want to lose men.

7 – Make Them Pay & Pick Them Off The Walls

💩 Make Them Pay

• +25% damage to defender siege engines.
• +20% damage to besieger siege engines.

Generally you are one or two shotting siege engines if you’re building the correct way. It’s all about hit RNG and less about damage values. This perk is at least acceptable but absolutely not worth seven tiers of unlocks.

💩 Pick Them Off The Walls

• +25% chance to double casualties (1 to 2) when destroying an enemy defensive siege engine.
• +25% chance to double casualties (1 to 2) when destroying an enemy besieger engine.

You kill 1 (ONE) troop when you destroy a siege engine. Do you really see doubling that to 2 (TWO) as being so effective you have to go up SEVEN tiers of perks to get it?

Final verdict: Make Them Pay can potentially save you some time. I have never whittled a siege down with destroying siege engines and never will, so Pick Them Off The Walls sucks.

8 – Elite Reserves & Encirclement

💩 Elite Reserves

• -20% damage to Tier 3+ units.
• +5% damage reduction to troops in your formation.

The +5% damage reduction is the only real bonus of this perk and it’s OK, but not worth 8 tiers of tactics. Not even close.

💩 Encirclement

• +5% damage in sims when outnumbering the enemy.
• 10% less influence needed to boost army cohesion.

Ah, good, we get 5% bonus damage to battles we’re only simulating because we want to rapidly win anyway. Very useful! The 10% damage is potentially useful, but you should avoid boosting army cohesion when possible because it’s a bottomless pit for influence.

Final verdict: Encirclement is better due to potential influence saving, but both perks are vomit tier.

9 – Besieged & Pre-Battle Maneuvers

☆ Besieged

• +10% more damage in sims when you are besieged.
• +50% influence gain from winning sieges.

The damage in sims when besieged sucks. The +50% influence gain from winning sieges is really solid at almost any stage.

Pre-Battle Maneuvers

• +25% influence gain from winning field engagements.
• If your tactics skill is greater than the enemy, gain +1% bonus per 100 levels in tactics.

+25% influence is solid. The “greater tactics” portion reads well in-game but when you see the stat (1% per 100 levels) you realize it’s absolutely 100% useless.

Final verdict: Both perks are OK. Are you really 9 tiers up the tactics tree though? Lol. I like Besieged more, but choose what you want.

10 – Counter Offensive & Gens d’armes

💩 Counter Offensive

• +10% sim damage when attacked in a field battle
• +10% sim damage when outnumbered.

I sure hope you aren’t simulating a battle when you’re outnumbered because you’re going to f𝚞𝚌king lose. But maybe since you’re 10 tiers down the Tactics tree you can actually overly rely on the simulation function now. I wouldn’t know because I will never do that ever.

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Gens d’armes

• +2% damage to infantry for cavalry units in your formation.

This perk sucks my b𝚊ll𝚜. No further comment.

Final verdict: Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible tier 10 perks. Counter Offensive at least gives you something. Go with that.

Roguery (p.1)

I am going to rip a new 𝚊𝚜shole into the Roguery tree. If you like Roguery it is now your time to become the soyjak and I will be the based trad-pilled Chad. The only purpose of the Roguery tree is to roleplay as a Bandit — surprise surprise, doing that sucks. A lot. Do not put ANY points into this tree. Do not spend any time with this tree. Stay away.

1 – No Rest for the Wicked & Sweet Talker

💩 No Rest for the Wicked

• +20% xp gain for bandit units in your party.
• +5% faster raiding.

Bandit units suck in most cases. Slightly faster raiding should not matter if you plan accordingly. Bad perk.

💩 Sweet Talker

• 20% easier bartering for peace with bandits.

If you need to barter peace with bandits you need to regain control of your life.

Final verdict: Pick your poison.

2 – Deep Pockets & Two Faced

💩 Deep Pockets

• Double the amount of betting you can use in tournaments.
• -20% wages for bandit troops.

This perk is only useful extremely early in the game when you are using tournaments to gain money and need that extra cash away from your troops. Outside of that brief period this perk is totally useless.

💩 Two Faced

• 50% better chance of disguise missions.
• No morale penalty for bandit prisoners being recruited.

I can only remember ever doing one disguise mission in Bannerlord. It just doesn’t happen. Again, if you roleplay a bandit leader and get massive crime rating, this might be useful? But why are you doing that? Morale penalty hurts a lot for bandit prisoners so that’s decent if you plan on converting lots of bandit prisoners.

Final verdict: Two Faced is OK in a sea of 💩. I guess go with that.

3 – In Best Light & Know-How

💩 In Best Light

• Notables give 4 volunteers, up from 3, when forced.
• Your owned villages recover 20% faster.

Well, as previously mentioned, if you are fully roleplaying a bandit dude, this is OK. But I have never used the “force recruits” action if I’m playing a normal singleplayer game. Village recovery is terrible if you’re roleplaying a bandit since you likely won’t own anything, but even if you do it’s not felt often since raided villages are so crap for so long.

💩 Know-How

• Defeated villagers and caravans give 52.5% (up from 50%) of their inventory.

Oh wow what an increas- 😴

Final verdict:

4 – Promises & Slave Trader

💩 Promises

• -50% food consumption in your party from bandit units.
• Bandit prisoners can be recruited 30% faster.

If you plan on recruiting prisoners anyway, you can afford to wait… 30% longer. Food consumption should never be a problem for you ever. Awful perk.

Slave Trader

• +20% ransom broker deals for regular troops.
• +20% prisoner limit.

You can make decent money through the broker early and +20% prisoner limit is no tiny amount. This perk just barely scrapes past the useless line.

Final verdict: Slave Trader is something. Denars should still never be a problem for you, but at least it’s something.

5 – Scarface & White Lies

💩 Scarface

• +30% chance of surrender in bandits, villagers, and caravans.

Bandits should already be extremely easy fights for you. Villagers and caravans are only good to murder relentlessly if you are roleplaying as a bandit. Otherwise they should be very easy to fight.

💩💩 White Lies

• 20% faster crime rating decrease.

Great if you roleplay as a bandit. Completely terrible otherwise. The low percentage means nothing unless you’re getting massive crime ratings which is genuinely difficult to do.

Final verdict: Well roguery is continuing its trend of having terrible perks. Just pick one, flip a coin, do whatever you want really. This entire tree is 𝚊n𝚊l pi𝚜s.

Roguery (p.2)

6 – Partners in Crime & Smuggler Connections

★★ Partners in Crime

• Bandits always offer to join you.
• +2% damage dealt to bandit units in your formation.

Having bandit parties instantly join you is actually pretty OK because it allows you to rapidly build a party. This is a cool perk and is the only interesting one in the entire tree.

💩 Smuggler Connections

• +10 armor when wearing civilian armor.
• Half trade penalty when you have a criminal rating.

So why are you banking on civilian armor when looking for extra armor value? I honestly don’t know how bad the trade penalty is, does it scale? Does anyone actually have a criminal rating in Bannerlord long enough for trade to be detrimental? If your criminal rating is high enough you can’t enter towns, so this seems bad.

Final verdict: Partners in Crime is a cool mechanic and much more interesting than Smuggler Connections.

7 – One Of The Family & Salt the Earth

★★ One Of The Family

• +10 Vigor and Control to bandit units in your party.

This perk is interesting. Bandit units are pretty terrible but giving them +10 to stats can put them closer to “par” with other units. If you’ve bothered to go this far up this terrible perk tree I guess this is a must-pick.

💩Salt the Earth

• +20% resources from demanding goods against villages.

Just raid the village bro who cares holy s𝚑𝚒t.

Final verdict: If you’re psycho enough to go up this terrible perk tree One Of The Family is a must-take to keep yourself relevant at all.

8 – Carver & Ransom Broker

💩💩 Carver

• +10% damage with civilian weapons.
• +2% damage with one-handed swords to troops in your formation.

Oh holy s𝚑𝚒t this perk SUCKS. If you’re at level 8 on any perk you should no longer be dealing with adversity when having a random fight in a town. +2% damage to troops is nothing.

💩 Ransom Broker

• +25% gained from ransoming hero prisoners.
• -30% hero prisoner escape chance.

You get hardly any money from ransoming away lords compared to other denar-producing methods and keeping them when you’re roleplaying as a bandit (the only way you’ll ever be this far up the tree) is hard to do when you have to drag them around everywhere. This perk is way too weak for tier 8.

Final verdict: Both perks suck I am literally falling asleep writing this portion because Roguery is so bad, just pick random.

9 – Arms Dealer & Dirty Fighting

💩 Arms Dealer

• 20% better sell price for weapons.

Wow, a tiny tiny tiny tiny baby-tier denar increase at a tier 9 perk! That’s grea-😴

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Dirty Fighting

• +50% kick stun time.

Some dude at TW was laughing his 𝚊𝚜s off imagining the f𝚞𝚌king idiot who picks this perk.

Final verdict: Arms Dealer at least does something so I guess go with that. 🤮

10 – Dash and Slash & Fleet Footed

💩 Dash and Slash

• +50% speed bonus effect while on foot.
• +2% damage to two-handed weapons for troops in your formation.

I guess speed bonus is OK. Not for a level 10 perk tho lol. It does a tiny bit extra damage for you. The guy who added the randomly placed 2% damage to one-handed earlier decided to give this perk the secondary effect.

💩 Fleet Footed

• +10% speed while no weapons or shields are equipped.
• +30% escape chance against mobile parties.

What a great buff, now I can run around towns at a negligible speed! GREAT!

Final verdict: To wrap up the perk tree TW made even more terrible perks. Surprise surprise. Dash and Slash gives you something, Fleet Footed gives you faster speed when… wandering around towns. Because I guess you’re doing that a lot.

11 – Rogue Extraordinaire (final – no option)

💩 Rogue Extraordinaire
I know I mentioned I wouldn’t talk about the top-tier perks, but was the best thing for the f𝚞𝚌king terrible Roguery tree really just a multiplier for what the skill already does? If you’re at 275 f𝚞𝚌king Roguery do you really need EVEN MORE LOOT from random field battles?

Charm (p.1)

Roguery was so terrible I have to type at least one more sentence saying how bad that tree is. Okay, on to Charm. Charm is an OK perk tree. I think the big problem is that putting focus points into charm is so difficult when there’s way better s𝚑𝚒t out there.

1 – Self Promoter & Virile

★★ Self Promoter

• +5 influence after winning a tournament.
• +1 morale when besieged.

+1 morale is useless but +5 influence could be used to influence stack early game as a mercenary party. Later on in the game the +5 influence means nothing. Not a bad tier 1 perk.

Virile

• +30% chance to have children.

The +30% is a little dishonest. This increases your lady’s (or yourself) chance to get pregnant from a default 24% to 31% per day (24*1.3). Because women in-game have a virtually hard-limit to children, unless you are swapping out your wife after 3 children over and over, this perk is weak. But if you are doing the BABYMAX strat I guess it’s OK. Completely useless perk if you are playing as a female.

Final verdict: Virile is not poop tier because it’s a tier 1 perk, but it’s close. Self Promoter is an interesting perk for early game strategy to farm denars.

2 – Oratory & Warlord

Oratory

• +1 renown and influence for each issue resolved.
• +1 relationship with a random notable in your faction after defeating an enemy lord.

Extra renown is great even at baby levels since it takes incredibly long to level your clan up. The random relation is any NOTABLE, which is worse than any lord, but is still OK.

Warlord

• +30% influence gain from battles.
• +1 relationship with a random Lord in your faction after defeating an enemy lord.

You can gain a lot of extra influence if you pick your battles right, and +1 relationship with lords is better than “notables” from Oratory.

Final verdict: Player’s choice based on intentions. If you don’t think you’ll have renown issues (I always like speeding up the process) go for Warlord, otherwise go Oratory.

3 – Forgivable Grievances & Meaningful Favors

☆ Forgivable Grievances

• 20% chance to avoid critical fail in persuasion.
• 5% chance per day while in a settlement to increase relations with an NPC of negative relation.

RNG continues to be RNG in the bad persuasion system, but a small chance per day to make NPCs actually allow you to do quests for them can be beneficial.

Meaningful Favors

• 10% better chance for double persuasion success.

The RNG nature of persuasion makes this perk way less effective than it could be, and the skill bonus from leveling charm outdoes this perk. I wouldn’t say it’s 💩-tier but it’s not worthwhile.

Final verdict: While both perks are weak, Forgivable Grievances gives you more opportunity both on the RNG side and not.

4 – In Bloom & Young and Respectful

In Bloom

• +20% relationship gain with the opposite gender.
• +2% chance per day to increase relations with a notable of the opposed gender in the settlement.

See Final verdict.

Young and Respectful

• +20% relationship gain with the same gender.
• +2% chance per day to increase relations with a notable of the same gender in the settlement.

See Final verdict.

Final verdict: Alright so the 2% chance is 𝚊𝚜s. Go for whichever relationship gain helps you get better relations with men. These perks are decent (+20% is a good amount bonus).

5 – Firebrand & Flexible Ethics

Firebrand

• -50% influence cost to initiate kingdom decisions.
• +1 recruitment level from rural notables.

-50% influence cost is great.

Flexible Ethics

• -30% influence cost when voting for proposals made by other people.
• +1 recruitment level from urban notables.

Spending more influence on other peoples’ proposals is the easiest path to making them love you, so this is a solid perk if that’s your gameplan.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both perks are beneficial since influence is a huge asset. You’re either going for “king-tier decision maker” or “slightly less pain for gaining relation with other lords”. Oh also the recruitment levels are hardly felt.

Charm (p.2)

6 – Effort For The People & Slick Negotiation

Effort For The People

• +3 relation with the nearest town owner clan after clearing a hideout.
• -25% item barter penalty with lords of the same culture.

Relation with clans is good, but it’s mediocre when applied to hideouts. At least it gives extra incentive to waste time with them. Bartering is painful so I don’t use it often.

💩 Slick Negotiator

• -20% mercenary recruitment cost.
• -10% item barter penalty with lords of different cultures.

Mercenaries are expensive you should be able to afford what you spend on. The percentage differences here are not effective in nearly all scenarios.

Final verdict: Effort For The People makes hideouts slightly more worth it.

7 – Good Natured & Tribute

★★ Good Natured

• 100% of influence is recovered when a proposal you support fails.
• +1 relation with merciful lords.

Full influence recovery is amazing on failed proposals for massive relationship gain and influence maintenance.

💩 Tribute

• +20% chance for relationship bonus when paying more than enough in barters.
• +1 relation with cruel lords.

The extra chance is just that. It’s not a passive bonus, it’s a 20% chance to get JUST +1 relationship after a good barter.

Final verdict: Good Natured is awesome, Tribute sucks.

8 – Morale Leader & Natural Leader

💩 Morale Leader

• -1 persuasion success needed for characters in your own culture.

This perk wouldn’t be bad if Natural Leader weren’t so obviously better.

★★ Natural Leader

• -1 persuasion success needed for characters in your own culture.
• +20% experience gain on companions.

+20% experience gain on companions is decent, and -1 persuasion success needed on other cultures means A LOT of other characters.

Final verdict: Taleworlds. Common f𝚞𝚌king math here. You get more benefit from getting every culture but your own in bonuses. Because there are more cultures than your own. So why did you give Natural Leader the good side-perk? Go Natural Leader.

9 – Parade & Public Speaker

💩 Parade

• +1 loyalty per day when you are in your own settlement.
• 5% chance per day to gain +1 relation with a lord in the same army.

+1 loyalty per day is bad and you should not rely on RNG to be friends with lords.

★★ Public Speaker

• +30% renown gain from battles.

renown gain good. It’s still bad it’s so high up the list (at tier 9) but it’s decent.

Final verdict: Parade isn’t that bad but for tier 9 it’s awful.

10 – Camaraderie (no option)

Camaraderie

• Double relations with lords when aiding them in battle.
• +1 companion limit.

+1 companion limit is great. Double relations is good for battles. This is a solid perk. Is it worth 10 tiers of Charm? More than likely not.

Final verdict: Decent perk for there being no other option.

Leadership (p.1)

Leadership’s perk tree is OK. The skill leveling for better morale is acceptable as well. Amazingly, this tree has no 💩-tier perks.

1 – Combat Tips & Raise The Meek

★★Combat Tips

• +2 xp/day to all troops in party.
• Extra recruit slot from same-culture notables.

+2 xp/day is solid for tier 1.

Raise The Meek

• +4 xp/day to tier 1-2 troops.

Not terrible for a tier 1 perk, but how long will your troops be tier 1-2? It shouldn’t be very long.

Final verdict: The amount of XP is pretty low either way but XP to all troops is better than more XP to troops that won’t get the benefit after a short time.

2 – Fervent Attacker & Stout Defender

Fervent Attacker

• +4 morale when attacking.
• +50% rate of recruiting tier 1-3 prisoners.

Recruitment rate of bandits is mostly irrelevant if you plan on holding them long enough to recruit them. +4 morale is pretty small, but not poopoo-tier for a tier 2 perk. Generally you won’t need extra morale when attacking; you should be ready to win attacking fights.

★★ Stout Defender

• +8 morale when defending.
• +50% rate of recruiting tier 4-6 prisoners.

8 morale is decent. Having faster recruiting tier for more difficult prisoners is decent if you plan on doing that.

Final verdict: Stout Defender is objectively a better choice.

3 – Authority & Heroic Leader

☆ Authority

• +5 party size.

Party size kicks 𝚊𝚜s always.

Heroic Leader

• 10% more morale penalty to the enemy.

10% extra morale penalty against the enemy is decent for tier 3.

Final verdict: I like party size most of almost all perks where it’s available, so I go with Authority. Big party = big Trad energy

4 – Famous Commander & Loyalty And Honor

☆ Famous Commander

• +50% renown gain from battles.
• +200 xp to recruited troops.

Renown gain is one of the most irritating leveling structures in the game, so an extra 50% is solid. +200 XP is negligible but an OK sub-perk.

Loyalty And Honor

• Troops lower than tier 3 do not retreat due to low morale.
• 30% faster non-bandit prisoner conversion.

Often you will not win or lose a battle based on your worst troops not retreating. However, 30% faster non-bandit prisoner conversion could potentially be useful if you kit your army correctly and have a decent prisoner count.

Final verdict: Famous Commander is better but Loyalty and Honor is not even close to being in the dumpster-tier of Bannerlord perks, so you do you.

5 – Leader of the Masses & Presence

★★ Leader of the Masses

• +5 party size for each controlled town.
• 5% of experience gained by heroes is gifted to troops.

Party size is great and when multiplied through this perk can get you serious party size once you’re a kingdom ruler.

Presence

• +5 security in a town per day while waiting.
• No morale penalty for recruiting prisoners of your culture.

The security s𝚑𝚒t is 𝚊𝚜s but no morale penalty on own-culture troops can be solid if you correctly culture yourself for a campaign. However, I don’t tend to notice the “recent events” morale hit from recruiting prisoners kills my party morale so bad I would need this perk.

Final verdict: Although morale helper is OK, Leader of the Masses is always strong and beneficial.

Leadership (p.2)

6 – Citizen Militia & Veteran’s Respect

Citizen Militia

• +20% morale gain from victories.

This can be good if you plan on having lots of smaller but large-enough battles. I don’t find great use in it because I’m usually winning one large battle and there’s a lot of time before the next one.

Veteran’s Respect

• You can now convert bandits into regular troops.

Converting bandits is alright but this is pretty far up the perk. Bandits are TERRIBLE units so getting them to be more normal is nice. But really you should just avoid having them altogether.

Final verdict: Player’s choice, I would say completely avoid Bandit troops and go Citizen Militia.

7 – Inspiring Leader & Uplifting Spirit

Inspiring Leader

• 20% less influence needed for calling parties.
• +5% experience to troops from battles.

Less influence is always a good perk choice, and the +5% experience is solid.

☆ Uplifting Spirit

• +10 battle morale during sieges.
• +10 party size limit.

Give me ALL THE PARTY SIZE. Best perk piece. Extra battle morale during sieges is actually quite good too on the defense, since the longer you can delay your troops crumbling the more headshots you can get with your overpowered bow build.

Final verdict: Inspiring Leader is solid but the +10 party size limit from Uplifting Spirit is too good to pass up.

8 – Lead by Example & Make a Difference

Lead by Example

• 50% melee prisoner recruitment rate.
• 5.5% experience (up from 5%) shared to cavalry troops.

Melee prisoners are probably the most common to get, so this isn’t terrible for recovering your army through prisoner recruitment, but for tier 8 is underwhelming. Why only cavalry for the secondary perk?

Make a Difference

• 100% higher morale effect for kills by you.
• 5.5% experience (up from 5%) shared to ranged troops.

if you are slaying lots of enemies in melee combat this is a solid perk. Why only ranged for the secondary perk?

Final verdict: Underwhelming but not doodoo-tier perks, pick your preference.

9 – Great Leader & Trusted Commander

Great Leader

• +5 battle morale to troops.
• +5 battle morale to troops with the same culture.

This perk is OK but for a tier 9 perk is super underwhelming. Couldn’t you go for 10, TW? A 20 battle morale bonus for legionaries would be very interesting to define culture more.

Trusted Commander

• 50% ranged prisoner recruitment rate.
• +20% simulated experience gain for troops.

The ranged prisoner recruitment is okay but the sim experience gain is super lackluster and isn’t fitting in the leadership perk tree.

Final verdict: Player choice.

10 – Talent Management & We Pledge our Swords

★★ Talent Management

• +10 party size.
• +1 clan party available.

This is great. Clan parties are awesome and +10 party size is good.

We Pledge our Swords

• +1 companion.
• Up to +10 morale (max) for each tier 6 troop (+1 morale).

+1 companion is great but this is way outperformed by Talent Management. +10 morale in a very specific instance is awful. If it had no cap it’d be sweet.

Final verdict: We Pledge our Swords would be a great perk if it wasn’t up against Talent Management. Go Talent.

Trade (p.1)

I hate trade as a skill. it’s a huge pain to get the first two perk levels of trade so that you can actually efficiently (without wasting LOTS of time) level it, and even at that point the perks aren’t significant enough to make an enjoyable difference. I always go for time-based denar-building for my kingdom, so spending too much time trying to make money off of random goods is a waste for me.

Taleworlds please just make it so creating caravans gets you some passive trade. Oh wait you won’t do that because it would be good my bad sorry.

1 – Appraiser & Whole Seller

★★ Appraiser

• 15% decrease sell price penalty for equipment.
• Profits are marked.

Whole Seller

• 15% decrease sell price penalty for trade goods.
• Profits are marked.

Final verdict: The difficult part here is if you don’t go for trade goods you can’t level trade efficiently. Towns do not tell you if equipment is cheaper in other settlements. That being said, however, equipment is 90% of your selling game for a long time, so Appraiser is better.

2 – Caravan Master & Market Dealer

Caravan Master

• Party can carry 30% more weight.
• Item prices are marked.

Party weight gain is nice. As is obvious, item prices being marked is great.

💩 Market Dealer

• 20% less upkeep on workshops.
• Item prices are marked.

Vanilla workshops suck. Having their upkeep be slightly lower but their profit still be terrible is still terrible.

Final verdict: Caravan Master always benefits you. Workshops are terrible compared to caravans, so do caravans first and get workshops when you’re ready to settle.

3 – Local Connection & Traveling Rumors

Local Connection

• Workshops gather rumors.
• 15% decrease in sell penalty for animals.

Rumors are crap but workshops are always around whereas caravans might not be. Workshops can allow you to “trademax” by strategically placing them.

Traveling Rumors

• Caravans gather rumors.
• 15% decrease in buy penalty from villages.

The village penalty decrease is decent for horse villages.

Final verdict: Playstyle matters here since you won’t be following your caravans around everywhere.

4 – Distributed Goods & Toll Gates

💩 Distributed Goods

• Double relationship for artisans from resolved issues.

We’re far enough up the perk list that perks should do something that feels very effective. Unless you are specifically maxing out on quests (both RNG dependent and area dependent) this is not an effective perk.

💩 Toll Gates

• Double relationship for merchants from resolved issues.

Same synopsis as above.

Final verdict: Both perks are lackluster. Pick one at random and it’s the same as if you thought it over.

5 – Artisan Community & Great Investor

Artisan Community

• Profitable workshops give +1 renown/day.
• +1 recruitment slot with merchant notables.

Workshops are limited in numbers but can keep your companions free. Vanilla workshops suck at making REAL money, but if they make you renown, at least they do something right.

Great Investor

• Profitable caravans give +1 renown/day.
• Companion hiring is 30% cheaper.

Companion hiring is useless, but carvans giving renown can increase your renown very nicely.

Final verdict: If you would rather send your companions off to do missions for you and never have any in your party, go with Artisan Community. Otherwise, Great Investor is much better for passive renown gain since there is no caravan cap.

Trade (p.2)

6 – Content Trades & Mercenary Connections

💩 Content Trades

• -50% wages when waiting in settlements.

💩 Mercenary Connections

• +25% workshop production.
• -25% mercenary troop wage.

Vanlla workshops suck so 25% sucks.

Final verdict: The reason these are both 💩-tier is that they are 6 perk tiers up the tree and both are only good for slight monetary gain. Pick whichever fits your playstyle, I think Content Trades is better.

7 – Insurance Plans & Rapid Development

Insurance Plans

• Caravans return 5000 gold when destroyed.
• 25% less trade penalty for food.

If you run lots of caravans this is great since they will get f𝚞𝚌ked up all the time.

Rapid Development

• Workshops return 5000 gold when captured by an enemy.
• 25% less trade penalty for clay, iron, cotton, and silver.

This is a solid investment return for workshops but workshops suck anyway. At least it gives you something back.

Final verdict: Pick based on playstyle; lots of caravans, go Insurance Plans. The trade penalty sub-perks are mostly meaningless at this point if you are playing the game right. Workshops are POOPY!

8 – Granary Accountant & Tradeyard Foreman

💩 Granary Accountant

• 20% food trade good penalty decrease.

💩 Tradeyard Foreman

• 20% pottery, tools, cotton, jewelry trade penalty decrease.

Final verdict: At this point you should be completely fine on denars so having bonuses doesn’t help enough for how high tier this is. Granary Accountant is better for saving some money on food which you’ll always need.

9 – Self Made Man & Sword For Barter

💩 Self Made Man

• -50% barter penalty for items.

If NPCs ever had items worth bartering for, this would be great. They don’t.

💩 Sword For Barter

• 20% cheaper mercenary hiring.
• 15% lower wage for caravan guard troops.

How many caravan guards are you going to have in your party? Cheaper mercenary hiring is a terrible perk for being 9 tiers up.

Final verdict: Self Made Man is better but both are horrible perks.

10 – Silver Tongue & Spring of Gold

💩💩💩 Silver Tongue

• 50% cheaper negotiation for safe passage.
  Caravans & Villagers have 15% better trade deals.

If you’re still being beaten by bandits with a tier 10 perk tree, you are terrible at the game. Your denar count at this point should be in the multi-hundred-thousand. Perks that give tiny monetary incentives are DOODOO!

★★ Spring of Gold

• 0.1% interest per day on gold you have, capped at 1000 per day.

You only need 10,000 denars for this to take full effect and it’s solid. Too bad it’s 10 trade perk tiers up, which is impossible to get unless you are okay with wasting s𝚑𝚒t loads of time.

Final verdict: Spring of Gold does something and has a unique mechanic while Silver Tongue sucks s𝚑𝚒t poop fart.

11 – Man of Means & Trickle Down

💩 Man of Means

• Minor faction recruitment into your kingdom is 20% cheaper.
• 30% reduced ransom offer for you.

This is OK I guess. It’s at tier 11 of the f𝚞𝚌king trade perk tree though. I mean at this point you’re probably swimming in like 1000000000000000 f𝚞𝚌king denars so why do you need light percentage boosts to random costs?

💩💩💩💩💩💩💩 Trickle Down

• +1 (yes really just 1) relation with merchant nobles if you buy more than 10,000 denars worth of trade goods in a town.

Can you imagine spending double digit hours REAL TIME to get this perk and selecting this total piece of 💩? I hope you never subject yourself to such a thing.

Final verdict: Why did TW give this perk tree 11 slots over other perk trees and then decide to make the highest choice-tier horrible? I guess pick Man of Means.

Steward (p.1)

Steward as a skill kicks 𝚊𝚜s. Party size is always great. You should 100% of the time have 5 focus points in steward. Some of the perks are stinkier, but the party size bonus from the skill is enough to make up for any bad perk.

Even though I crap on some perk tiers here, the nice part about Steward is that you essentially get it for free by playing an “average” game. Steward also levels very quickly.

1 – Frugal & Spartan

★★ Frugal

• -5% party wages.
• -15% recruitment costs.

This is a really solid tier 1 perk. Effective through the whole game due to a percentage boost and always has solid effect.

💩 Spartan

• -10% food consumed.
• No morale penalty from having a single type of food.

This is a rare 💩-tier tier 1 perk. 10% food consumed is such a small value for how the game calculates food. You should never have only one type of food after the extreme early game if you’re playing with a brain.

Final verdict: Frugal is the clear choice.

2 – Drill Sergeant & Seven Veterans

☆ Drill Sergeant

• +2xp/day to all troops.

Decent for tier 2.

Seven Veterans

• +4xp/day to tier 4+ troops.

I have a lot of troops that aren’t tier 4+, so I like Drill Sergeant more.

Final verdict: The difference of 2 and 4 xp is minimal so 2 for all is better than 4 for some. Player preference choice.

3 – Stiff Upper Lip & Sweatshops

💩💩💩 Stiff Upper Lip

• -10% food consumption when in an army.

What a small insignificant bonus. The only time you should be running out of food is when you accidentally forget to restock. Food is so common and easy to come by.

★★ Sweatshops

• +20% workshop production.
• +20% siege engine build time.

Siege engine build time is good because those f𝚞𝚌kers build slow as h𝚎𝚕l. Workshops are terrible as always, so that perk portion sucks b𝚊ll𝚜.

Final verdict: Building siege engines faster with Sweatshops is good. Stiff Upper Lip is terrible.

4 – Efficient Campaigner & Paid In Promise

💩 Efficient Campaigner

• Double food item gained from village raids.
• -25% troop wages when in an army.

Food item gain has massive 😴-energy. -25% troop wages is only good if you have troop wage problems, which you shouldn’t.

★★ Paid In Promise

• -25% companion wages and recruitment fees.
• Discard armors to gain troop XP.

The discarded armors are decent but too time-consuming to do often. However, companion wages are RIDICULOUS for how sometimes mediocre they can be as field troops, so Paid in Promise is very solid if you plan on keeping companion fighters.

Final verdict: Paid in Promise has no value if you don’t use companions in your party, but if you do, it’s very solid.

5 – Giving Hands & Logistician

Giving Hands

• Discard weapons to gain troop XP.

I guess it’s OK. I’d rather use weapons to slowly level smithing until I blast my denars (code word for brain matter) out.

💩 Logistician

• +4 morale if mount count is higher than non-cavalry troops.

+4 morale isn’t nothing but 5 tiers in this is such a lackluster perk.

Final verdict: I mean I guesssssssss go Giving Hands. I suppose. I guess. I don’t know. cavalry Army go Logistician I guess. fpewjfpwoeijfpofj these PErks are driving ME ♥♥♥ KTing INSANE

Steward (p.2)

Save me from H𝚎ll.

6 – Aid Corps & Relocation

Aid Corps

• No wages paid for wounded troops.

This is OK. Compared to other passive bonus percentages for wages across other perk trees, this one is always useful since you’ll have plenty of wounded troops after every battle.

Relocation

• +25% influence gain from donating troops.

This is super useful if you’re like me and you send all of your companions off to do random missions to gain you renown. You’ll end up overcap at towns and be forced to give troops or lose them to desertion.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both are OK, but as with all higher tier perks, Relocation is better since it isn’t just about keeping coin.

7 – Gourmet & Sound Reserves

★★ Gourmet

• Double morale bonus from diverse food.

This is a solid perk and gives a very solid morale bonus for something you should already be doing (having multiple foods).

💩 Sound Reserves

• -10% cost of upgrading units.

Upgrading units is expensive but -10% is not enough to make this perk worth it.

Final verdict: Gourmet is better objectively.

8 – Contractors & Forced Labor

Contractors

• Mercenary troops wages and upgrade costs are decreased by 25%.

Only good if you purchase loads of mercenaries.

★★Forced Labor

• Prisoners provide carry capacity.

Always usable.

Final verdict: Forced Labor always gives you value whereas Contractors only gives value when purchasing mercenaries. Player choice, but Forced Labor is objectively more useful.

9 – Arenicos’ Horses & Arenicos’ Mules

★★ Arenicos’ Horses

• +10% carrying capacity for troops.
• -20% mount trade penalty.

Arenicos’ Mules

• +20% carrying capacity for pack animals.
• -20% pack animal trade penalty.

Final verdict: Mounts are better than pack animals 100% of the time. You can use them to upgrade cavalry troops and they carry enough you shouldn’t end up overburdened. Horses is (are?) better.

10 – Master of Planning & Master of Warcraft

💩💩💩 Master of Planning

• -40% food consumption if in a siege camp.

Do TW devs test these perks? Are you seriously having food issues EVER? Why? How? How terrible are you at this game if so?

★★ Master of Warcraft

• -15% troop wages while in a siege camp.

This one is at least helps you out compared to losing less food.

Final verdict: Master of Warcraft is better only because Master of Planning is so bad. Both perks are extremely underwhelming for tier 10.

Medicine (p.1)

Similar to Steward, Medicine is a fantastic skill with good bonuses but some of the perks are very lackluster. That being said — if you get the top perk, Minister of Health, you will kick everything’s 𝚊𝚜s. That is a killer perk.

1 – Preventive Medicine & Self Medication

★★ Preventive Medicine

• +5 hit points.
• 30% of health points healed after each battle.

30% health points regained after battle is great. It allows you to end up in any level of combat (downed or alive) and be able to continue doing s𝚑𝚒t afterward.

Self Medication

• +30% healing rate.
• +2% movement speed.

While 30% healing rate is good, it’s totally outclassed by Preventive Medicine. 2% movement speed is 𝚊𝚜s.

Final verdict: Preventive Medicine is great, especially for a tier 1 perk.

2 – Triage Tent & Walk It Off

Triage Tent

• +30% party heal rate when stationary.

Can be useful if in towns a lot. If you’re into smithing this is a good perk because you’re going to be doing a lot of nothing.

★★ Walk It Off

• +15% party heal rate when moving.
• Heroes regain 10 HP after an offensive battle.

10 extra HP is nice after battle when you can get it. I move more on the map so I feel this is the better perk.

Final verdict: Moving good and done often. Sitting boring and not done as often. Me like Walk It Off.

3 – Doctors Oath & Sledges

★★ Doctors Oath

• Medicine skill applies to enemies, increasing potential prisoners.
• +5 HP.

Extra prisoners is decent. +5 HP is decent for tier 3.

💩 Sledges

• -50% wounded party speed penalty.
• +15 HP to all mounts in your party.

This is more of an issue of game mechanic. Mounts do not die often and 15 HP is not significant to protect than any more. Wounded speed penalty is not significant so a -50% chance (and the math factored in is wrong in the current version) makes this perk ineffective.

Final verdict: Due to game mechanic issues Doctors Oath is the right pick here.

4 – Best Medicine & Good Lodging

Best Medicine

• +15% healing when above 70 morale.
• +1 relation with a random notable over age 50 while in a town after morning wages are paid.

★★ Good Lodging

• +20% heal rate when resting in settlements.
• +1 relation with a random notable over age 50 while in a town after morning wages are paid.

Final verdict: Player choice, but Good Lodging is clearly better. 70 Morale is tough to get until you’re far into the later game.

5 – Siege Medic & Veterinarian

💩 Siege Medic

• Siege bombardment deaths have 50% chance of being wounded instead of killed.
• 30% chance that siege engine being destroyed will end in wound and not death.

Siege engine and bombardment deaths are extremely low in count compared to actually fighting sieges. If you need this perk, something is severely wrong.

★★ Veterinarian

• 30% chance per day to recover a lame horse.
• 50% chance to recover a mount from lost cavalry in battle.

You shouldn’t care about lame horses and just buy a new one, but recovering horses from your cavalry units can be very useful in the long-term for keeping a cavalry-heavy army.

Final verdict: Veterinarian is the ideal perk for usability.

Medicine (p.2)

6 – Bush Doctor & Pristine Streets

💩 Bush Doctor

• 20% bonus healing in villages.

Who stops and waits in towns?

★★ Pristine Streets

• 20% bonus healing in towns.

This is decent.

Final verdict: You’ll spend time in towns, you will not in villages. Take Pristine Streets.

7 – Health Advice & Perfect Health

Health Advice

• The first time a clan member rolls old age death, they won’t.
• Wounded troops do not decrease morale in battles.

It’s OK I suppose. I hope you aren’t banking on living past a certain age in Bannerlord.

Perfect Health

• Food variety increases recovery rate by 5% for each point.

If you have basic food variety this is a solid healing booster.

Final verdict: Player choice. Both perks are acceptable, though underwhelming for tier 7.

8 – Clean Infrastructure & Physician of People

💩 Clean Infrastructure

• +1 prosperity from aqueducts, markets, palaces, and granaries.

I just don’t feel this tiny stat bonus from my fiefs. I just want more fiefs.

★★ Physician of People

• Tier 1&2 troops have 30% higher chance to recover from fatal wounds.

Tier 1 & 2 troops are terrible and will be killed constantly. So getting a 30% bonus for them to survive is decent to try to get them into the “useful troop” tier.

Final verdict: Physician of People is solid for increasing the potency of your party.

9 – Cheat Death & Fortitude Tonic

💩 Cheat Death

• Ignore a single old age death roll. Stacks with Health Advice.
• -50% hero death chance in battle.

You only really die in battle if you take massive head damage. Just avoid it bro lol. If you are concerned about character death, turn death mechanics off, don’t try to out-perk i.

Fortitude Tonic

• +10 max health of heroes in your party.
• +5 HP.

Weak for a tier 9 perk. Very weak. But HP is acceptable for a bonus and if you have a heavy companion party, this is a solid perk.

Final verdict: Fortitude Tonic is a real perk. Cheat Death is a fake perk.

10 – Battle Hardened & Helping Hands

Battle Hardened

• +25 xp to wounded units at the end of battle.

Helping Hands

• Every 10 troops in the party increases troop recovery rate by 2%.

Final verdict: Both perks, although a little weak for tier 10, are OK. You should choose to pick one or the other based on preference.

Engineering (p.1)

Engineering as a perk tree is terrible because being good at sieges involves saving your siege pieces in storage and using them all at once (I will refer to this as “siege meta”). If you don’t do that, you automatically fail. If you do it, you automatically win. There isn’t much skill involved, so the perks available are not useful.

1 – Scaffolds & Torsion Engines

Scaffolds

• +10% non-ranged siege engine build speed.
• +30% shield hit points.

If you need that extra shield health you are not playing the game right and should lern2block lmao xd. Non-ranged siege engines don’t need saving or rebuilding, so it shouldn’t be as time heavy as the ranged weapons.

★★ Torsion Engines

• +10% ranged siege engine build speed.
• +3 flat crossbow damage.

Most of the time spent building for a siege is to build the ranged weapons, save them, and then deploy them all at once. This will save you more time. Bonus damage on the crossbow is better than shield hitpoints.

Final verdict: Both perks are OK for tier 1, but Torsion Engines as a perk performs much better.

2 – Prison Architect & Siegework

💩 Prison Architect

• 25% chance for ranged siege engines to be hit while bombarding.

The reason this is poopoo is that siege meta is to build your items, save them, and then deploy them all at once. You do not need bonus miss chance when you autowin from placing all trebuchets at once.

★★ Siegework

• +10% siege engine hit points.

Due to the meta build order, hit points are acceptable as a bonus.

Final verdict: Due to meta building for sieges, Siegework is the go-to. You f𝚞𝚌ked it, Taleworlds!

3 – Carpenters & Military Planner

💩Carpenters

• Rams & Siege Towers have 33% more hitpoints.

Because of “build and save” meta, this is useless. If you attack a castle and the enemy has siege towers, they will destroy your towers prior to them getting to the walls. It happens every f𝚞𝚌king time. Sometimes rams die, but rarely. If you play a siege correctly, this will be a useless perk.

💩 Military Planner

• 25% extra ammunition to ranged troops when besieging.

Have you had troops run out of ammo during a siege? Due to the new AI for picking up ammo, I have never noticed this and if it has happened I do not think a 25% ammunition bonus would have saved or lost the battle for me.

Final verdict: Military Planner is better, but both perks are terrible.

4 – Dreadful Besieger & Wall Breaker

Dreadful Besieger

• +10% hit chance to siege engines.
• +5% troop crossbow damage.

This is good if you have a massive crossbow army. Which you don’t. Unless you want to win battles.

★★ Wall Breaker

• +25% wall damage during sieges.
• +10% damage to shields for troops.

Walls have 129533295924324923492394 health. I have tested and elaborated on this extensively with timeless research. Any extra damage you can get on walls is a bonus because it wastes less of your time.

Final verdict: Wall Breaker is best objectively, but Dreadful Besieger is funny if you want a full crossbow army.

5 – Foreman & Salvager

💩💩 Foreman

• Mangonels and trebuchets gain 10% accuracy.

💩💩 Salvager

• Ballistas gain 20% accuracy.

Final verdict: Both of these are really terrible due to siege meta. Foreman is better, but both are just awful. TW step your game up for fu𝚌k’s sake.

Engineering (p.2)

6 – Siege Engineer & Stonecutters

💩 Siege Engineer

• Can craft “fire versions” of siege engines.

💩 Stonecutters

• Can craft “fire versions” of siege engines.

Final verdict: When governor perks are the difference-maker at a perk tier, something is severely wrong. Siege meta. No need for fire siege engines. Waste of time and perk.

7 – Battlements & Camp Building

💩 Battlements

• +1 pre-build ballista for siege camp.

Siege meta. Build trebuchets and deploy them all at once. Don’t need any ballistas.

★★ Camp Building

• Army loses 50% less cohesion during sieging.

Maintaining army cohesion is always good. Sieging takes a lot of time and is the #1 (by far) reason for creating an army. This is an actually good perk.

Final verdict: Camp Building is the obvious objective choice while Battlements is terrible due to the meta.

8 – Apprenticeship & Engineering Guilds

💩💩💩💩💩 Apprenticeship

• +5 flat experience to entire party when you build a siege machine.

WOW, 5 flat XP! This was certainly worth EIGHT (8) tiers of f𝚞𝚌king dogs𝚑𝚒t Engineering perks!

💩💩💩💩💩 Engineering Guilds

• +1 recruitment slot from artisans.

TW gave up with this perk tree. They couldn’t think of anything to give to it so they just gave up and gave you +1 recruitment slot to random NPCs. Thanks TW.

Final verdict: Both of these perks are actually horrible and useless. If you could avoid picking either of them I would recommend that, but since you can’t, just randomly pick one.

9 – Improved Tools & Metallurgy

☆ Improved Tools

• +20% faster camp preparation.
• Troops in your formation gain +5 flat melee damage.

See final verdict.

Metallurgy

• 80% chance that “tattered, crude, etc” items will be normal instead.
• +5 flat armor to your troops.

See final verdict.

Final verdict: 9 tiers down the line, this is way underwhelming for how virtually impossible it is to receive without a massive hour-count in Bannerlord’s singleplayer. That being said, the player has an option here. Getting equipment that isn’t broken is really solid for both smithing and selling, but at tier 9 is likely useless. Improved Tools saving you time is probably best. Too little too late.

10 – Architectural Commissions & Clockwork

💩 Architectural Commissions

• 25% faster reload time for mangonels and trebuchets.

This is the better perk due to siege meta. Trebuchets, baby. But guess what? Doesn’t matter, you’ll win if you use siege meta regardless of reload time.

💩 Clockwork

• 25% faster reload for ballistas.

Siege meta makes this completely useless.

Final verdict: Go Architectural Commissions. Hey wait, why are you 10 tiers into the f𝚞𝚌king engineering tree? Terrible.

Closing Remarks

Some perks are pretty kick𝚊𝚜s, but there is a surprising trend of poopoo, doodoo, and peepee tier (i have worked with a team of scientists to devise this rating system) perks. Taleworlds really needs to revamp these but they only have interns working on the game so we’ll be very lucky to see good developments come to this system.

If you have constructive criticism or you want to call me a big peepee head for my Hot Takes, comment below. Just know that you’re always wrong and I’m always right no matter what.

I hope you didn’t read this entire thing. If you did, thanks for reading. CTRL+F gaming is probably king here.