In this video, we’ll be covering everything there is to know about damage and armor sets and how they both interact with each other. By the end of the video, you’ll have a solid foundation of which weapons to use and which to avoid no matter the situation you’re in. Let’s dive right in!
Damage in Bannerlord is quite a complex topic, but let’s look at each factor that contributes to it: The weapons base damage stat, weapon damage type, which body part is hit, relative movement speed between the two combatants when the strike lands, where in the swing the strike lands, the weapon skill level of the attacker and the perks from both combatants.
A weapons’ base damage stat dictates how much damage the weapon should do to an unarmored target if no other factors were involved, or at least logically that’s what makes sense to me. However I failed to find a single weapon where this held true. Often times, the actual damage was higher than the base damage, so don’t use this number by itself – but use it in relative terms. If weapon A hits for 50 and weapon B hits for 60 then we know for sure Weapon B does more damage, but it definitely will NOT do exactly 60 damage.
Understanding weapon damage type is the main reason I made this guide and we’ll be spending most of our time here in a minute, but let’s cover the basics for now. There are 3 types of weapon damage: cut, pierce and blunt. Cut damage will generally be the highest value of the 3, but is supposed to be reduced the most by armor. Pierce damage is supposed to bypass armor to some degree but have low damage values. And finally blunt damage is supposed to have moderate damage, but mostly ignore armor values.
The body part being hit has an effect on how much damage is done. Hits to the head give a bonus to damage ranging from 19% all the way up to 48%. It seems the lowest and highest damage weapons tend toward 19% while the mid tier weapons peak at around 40%, resembling a bell-curve. All hits to the body, abdomen, chest, shoulder and arm receive no bonus damage and hits to the leg do less damage than the average: anywhere from 9% to 22% less. I understand the bonus to headshots, but maybe someone could explain why a hit to the leg does less damage than to the arm or shoulder?
Moving on – the relative movement speed between the two combatants also plays a role. If two people are moving towards each other, the damage is increased. If they’re moving away, damage is decreased. Even a small relative speed different can make a huge difference – this hatched picks up 19% more damage with only 2.9 difference while a very fast horse can add upwards of 600% more damage with a thrust attack!
Where the strike lands in the arc of the swing also plays a huge factor. Ideally, we want to land our strikes when the enemy is directly in front of us as that produces the peak damage. Hitting at the very beginning or end of the swing can reduce damage to a tiny fraction of the max, essentially bouncing off.
And finally, a character’s weapon skill and perk selections play a big factor in how much damage a strike will do. Higher skill will increase the damage done which usually comes to roughly 10% for every 100 levels or about 30% from level 0 to level 300.
Now that we’ve got the basics covered, let’s briefly go over how the testing was done. As with any experiment, it’s important to hold all variables constant in a controlled environment, then apply changes to one variable at a time and take measurements. For these tests, I isolated Dirtbag Derthert by himself and hired a companion to accompany me. The companion was equipped with a shield and no weapon, allowing for a perfect distraction to lineup accurate and repeatable strikes. One hit was registered to each body category – head, body, arm and leg. If there was any relative movement speed with the hit, the data was thrown out. If a good hit was registered, good defined by being at the very center of the swing, the results must be repeated at least three times before the data was considered good. This would eliminate variance from hitting at different parts of a swing and allow for an accurate comparison across all the data.
Then I made a list of weapons, armor and mounts to use and spent roughly 20 hours testing and collecting data. Only 264 individual tests were recorded, but over 1,000 tests were needed to get to this accurate data set. Now let’s look closer at the three different types of damage and see how they are affected by armor.
Starting with cut damage and a low tier weapon, we see the armor values and the damage reduction values are almost identical. As we increase the armor values, the damage blocked values don’t change much, staying close to 100%. Actual damage vs weapon damage drops to as low as 8.5%, which is basically nothing. If we switch weapons to a higher damage 2H sword, the damage reduction is much more pronounced – blocking upwards of 200% of damage. The lowest our actual damage vs weapon damage is around 40% which is still a significant amount. And finally lets look at the highest base cut damage weapon in the game, the long glaive. The damage reduced by armor for most hits hovers around 225% and only 35% of the stated weapon’s damage getting through to do actual damage. With that said, over 60 damage is still getting through – keep in mind this is a level 0 combat character against the best armor in the game. In the interest of time we won’t cover every scenario tested, but let’s at least look at the long glaive with higher skill and perks. The damage at level 150 increases by about 17% while damage absorbed by armor increases by 20%. Moving up to 300 without perks we see another 12% increase to actual damage and 18% damage blocked by armor. If we add in all the perks at level 300, actual damage shoots up by 25% but the damage blocked by armor remains the same, around 265% of the armor value. It’s nice to see armor scaling with damage rather than a flat rate, but it’s still not very effective against high damage swingable weapons.
Now let’s check the same testing for thrust damage, starting with the crappy tapered blade. We see similar results with damage reduction vs armor value mostly staying around 100%, but actual damage vs weapon damage rating hovering around 75% for mid tier armor and 40 – 50% for high tier armor. Keep in mind, swing damage for the same test was around 8 – 12%, so a higher percentage of the damage number is getting through the armor. Looking at the 2H sword, we see damage reduction numbers staying around 100% and actual damage getting through between 40 – 60% for non-headshot hits. Cut damage was only getting 45% through, but the actual damage was still higher – around 60 per cut hit and only 35 – 40 for thrusts. And again we’ll finish comparing the long glaive thrust numbers. With no skill, very little damage is being blocked by the late game armor – around 65% of the armor rating. Even worse, 15 – 30% of the actual damage rating is getting through the armor, resulting in sub-10 damage thrust hits. As we increase the skill and add perks into the mix, actual damage does increase some, but even with all the perks and 300 skill our thrusts are barely hitting for 14 damage or 35% of the weapon’s damage rating. Even a hit to the head is barely doing 28 damage. If we compare these to the swing cut of over 100 damage, it’s not even close. The only reasons to use thrust attacks in my eyes are physical limitations like a prison break where swing attacks may bounce off the walls and not land, but a thrust attack would. There is one caveat here – thrust damage performed quite well with a large relative movement speed difference like mounted combat.
Time to test blunt damage. With no skill, we see mid tier armor blocking around 90 – 100% of it’s armor value, but only 65 – 80% with the best armor in the game. It seems blunt damage is more effective the better the armor is, although sadly the actual damage done is low since the starting base damage is low. If we add in skills and perks, the damage reduced by armor increases, but actual damage vs the weapon’s damage stats increase at a faster pace going from 45% with no skill up to around 80% with 300 skill and perks.
To sum up the melee weapon damage section – all damage types are blocked by armor to a large degree. Blunt damage has the highest percentage of damage passing through armor, but not by that much. If we look at the actual damage being done, high damage cut weapons like 2H swords and polearms have such a high base damage amount that even reducing it by 50% or more isn’t enough to keep from being 1-shot. Blunt weapons still perform well with high skill and perks, so don’t discount them, but if you have 2H or polearm skill and want to do the most damage per hit, then go that route instead. As far as thrust damage, avoid using it at all costs unless on horseback at high speeds. This was the only scenario in which thrust damage was acceptable.
Next let’s look at the ranged weapons testing, starting with bow and arrow. I was quite shocked to see how damage is calculated for different arrow damage ratings. We see the same test repeated with 0 through 4 pierce arrows and with each step up, only 1 – 2 damage increase can be seen. This holds true for the hunting and recurve bow, level 0 bow all the way up to level 300. I guess I was expecting more performance from the piercing arrows that cost significantly more than other arrow types, but it seems the bow and skill are the biggest factors.
Moving up to the noble bow, we see the same pattern with arrow damage increasing by 1 – 2 for each step up we go. As we get further away from our target, the damage drops off sharply, reducing by 23% at 50m and 43% at 100m without armor. Adding armor into the mix, there’s a massive drop in damage – at point blank range we only do 35 damage vs 175 against unarmored. At 100m we’re only doing 25% of that damage amount or 9 in total. It seems armor is very effective against ranged attacks. Switching to the Noble Longbow we see very similar results, although the noble longbow does hit harder. Against armor it adds around 10 damage at close range and about half that at 100m.
I know crossbows aren’t as popular to use, but I tested the bound crossbow anyways to compare. Sadly we see the same pattern of higher tier bolts doing very little to increase damage done. Against armor or at a distance, the damage done is almost identical for the best and worst bolts. Interestingly enough, crossbow performs worse against unarmored targets compared to bows. They also do about half the damage against armor at close range, but at 100m the damage is nearly identical. One unfortunate aspect of using crossbows is that higher skill doesn’t increase damage output, only reload speed and accuracy.
Now let’s see how damage scales for javelins, starting with the worst ones in the game. The damage only falls off 8% at 50m which is about the longest distance you can reliable hit a single target. Against armor, however, damage drops to 6. If we boost our skill up to 300 and take perks, damage skyrockets to over 200! Even against armor, it’s still hitting for 75 damage. Switching over to the best javelins in the game, we see the same 8% damage drop off at 50m without armor. Against armor with no skill, damage is reduced by a significant amount with only 20 – 25% getting through. However, once we pump up the skill and perks, there’s no chance of survival even from the maximum distance. It’s interesting to see how little damage drops off for javelins and how effective armor is at preventing damage. But once you get a high enough skill, even the worst javelins can be effective.
For the final section, I wanted to test charge damage for mounted combat. We’ll be testing 4 mounts in total, starting with the worst in the game and 100 riding skill. At max speed against an unarmored target, we do 5 damage. Against full armor, we do less than half that amount – only 2. The next 2 horses have the same charge damage value, but the Storm chaser is faster than the Battanian Hobby. The slower horse does only 4 damage while the faster does 6. I’m glad to see relative speed making a big difference in damage even with the same charge damage value. Test the Royal Destrier, we see damage against armor increase to 10. However we see the biggest change when we up the skill to 300 and add in perks. The damage increase is exponential – going from 4 to 42 for the Battanian Hobby, 6 to 44 for the storm chaser and 10 to 53 for the royal destrier. Against an unarmored target, we see a staggering 78 damage done, nearly a 1-shot! I also tested to see if wearing a heavy loadout and heavy horse armor made a difference, but the damage and top speed was the same for both. The key to charge damage is in the skill more than the horse – be sure to get the 275 perk if you want to do significant charge damage.
A few things really stood out to me with this testing: I really thought blunt damage would perform better, didn’t realize thrust damage was nearly useless and that high tier arrows barely have any benefit over the low tier ones. Let me know in the comments what surprised you the most. Thank you so much for your time and I’ll see you on the next one!
