Hello and welcome back to another Strat Gaming video guide. In this episode of The Ultimate Guide to Bannerlord, we are going take an in-depth look at the Medicine skill: from how it works, to how we gain XP and finally how we can efficiently level it. And if you stick around until the end of the video, I’ll show you my favorite strategy for turning a mob of tier 1 volunteers into a horde un-killable zombies! I’m your host Strat and I make Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord guides for YouTube so if you like that sort of content, I highly recommend subscribing so you don’t miss any future guides.
I’ve broken this video up into several chapters so if you’re following along you’ll be able to easily navigate through relevant segments. Check down in the description below for the time stamps. With all that being said, I hope you enjoy this guide and let’s get started!
Medieval medicine was primitive at best, but fortunately TaleWorlds suspended reality and blessed us with a robust medical system. The medicine skill in Bannerlord is responsible for three things: converting troop deaths into injuries, the healing rate of heroes in your party and the healing rate of injured troops back to fighting condition. There is a fair bit of data here, so in order to preserve our sanity we shall look at each individually.
When your troops take enough damage, they enter a downed state and are either injured or killed. Which state they end up in is RNG dependent and heavily influenced by the Surgeon of the party. At level 1, there is no bonus to casualty survival chance. Each 100 levels increases this number by 1% all the way up to 3% at level 300. There are no hard statistics in game telling us what the base death rate is, so at best we can estimate it through many test runs to get an idea. After running 10 Auto resolve and 5 in person battles at each level interval, here are the results: At level 1, the death rate is 41% and injury rate 58% for auto resolve and 46% death rate and 53% injury rate for in person. Notice the casualty rate was a bit higher for in person battles. [data] Level 100: 30% & 70% + 37% & 63%. Level 200: 21% & 79% +25% & 75%. Level 300: 15% & 85% + 19% & 81%. [data] By the time we reach level 300, we can cut our death rate down to 15%, which is 173% less casualties from level 1! A couple final things to note here before we move on: When fighting in person, there was a difference in death rate between your troops actively fighting and fleeing. When in the fleeing state, they seemed to be injured more frequently (about 4-5%). The numbers for a fleeing army was VERY close to the auto resolve numbers. After spending more than 4 hours running 2000 troop in person battles, I realized I only tested against an Aserai army – which has a significant amount of blunt weapons. I redid the testing for level 1 against other factions just to see if there was a difference. The death rate came out to 48% for both auto resolve and in person battles.
Next up, let’s look at the healing rate for all heroes in our party. Anytime our main character or one of our companions takes damage, they will need a certain amount of time after the battle to recover lost hit points. The healing rate depends on a few factors: your level, what perks you have and if you’re in a settlement. At level 1 with no perks and not in a settlement, the healing rate is 5. If we enter a town or castle, we pick up another 10 healing rate. Each level of medicine increases our healing rate by 1%, so at level 1 we get an extra 0.05 outside settlements and 0.15 inside. At level 300, the bonus to healing goes up to 15 and 45 respectively. Initially I thought these numbers were a per-day healing rate, but when testing at a rate of 20 for a single day, it healed a total of 29/100 hitpoints which would be 28% and not 20%. This phenomenon can be summed up in one, probably familiar term – TaleWorlds Mathematics. I ran several tests to see how long it would take to go from 1HP back up to 100 at different medicine levels and here are the results. The slowest run took nearly 9 days to fully recover and the fastest only 2 days. I also tested the level 25 perk Self Medication to see if it helped, which reduced healing time at level 100 by 1.25 days. One final thing to note, the healing rate is hit point based and NOT percentage of health based – so if you have a beefy character [absolute unit cat pic] with lots of hit point increase modifiers, it will take longer to heal.
Finally, let’s look at how injured troops are nursed back to fighting health. When our troops become injured in battle, they need a certain amount of time to recover back to fighting strength. The rate at which they recover is determined by the medicine skill of the party’s surgeon. The healing rate displayed at the bottom of the screen mimics the healing rate for heroes, so at level 300 and in a settlement it shows 60. Once again, TaleWorlds math dictates that we don’t understand what the number actually means – so we run tests! Each run starts with 100 injured troops and tests the same medicine levels as well as inside & outside of a settlement. The slowest recovery was level 1 outside of a settlements which took a little over 26 days. The fastest was level 300 inside of a settlement taking only 1.75 days. It’s great to see leveling medicine give such a big reward since, as we will see next, it’s quite difficult to level.
One final word on medicine for the governor role – I was not able to get any difference in healing rate while using a governor, so I’m not exactly sure it does, if anything. I used the same 100 injured troops, a companion with 300 medicine and my main character with level 1 medicine and the time to heal all troops was the exact same as it was without the governor.
There are three ways to gain XP for your surgeon’s medicine skill: Recovering lost HP for main character & companions, recovering injured troops back to fighting shape and accumulating deaths & injuries on in a battle.
For every 1HP that a character or companion is healed, you will gain 1XP. Without any perks, everyone starts off with 100HP, so healing from 1 to 100 will give roughly 99XP. If you add in perks that increase HP, then the XP will increase by the same amount.
Recovering injured troops back to fighting health will give 10XP per troop. This is a flat XP gain regardless of the quality of troop: Tier 1 = Tier 6 = 10XP.
The final way to gain XP for medicine is through your troop’s casualties in battle. You gain 10XP per injury for both auto resolve and in person battles. You gain 10XP for deaths when fighting in person, but only 5XP per death during auto resolved battles.
Let’s look at several of the methods for leveling medicine going in the order of how early you can implement them in any playthrough:
If you’ve played Rimworld before, then you’ll be familiar with this first method – war crimes & starvation. Gather as many cheap troops as your party limit will allow, get to a city and sell off your food. Your soldiers will then begin to starve. Some will become injured, some will flat out die. In my testing at level 1, about 33% of the troops died and the rest were injured. Once all of your troops are sufficiently starved, go into the trade tab, buy some food and wait for your troops to recover. You will only gain XP for the recovery with this method, so the XP is lost for the initial injuries and deaths. We start with 300 troops and ended up with 201 injuries for a total XP gain of 2010. It took 14 days to starve everyone and back to full health.
The next method involves hiring as many cheap troops as possible and getting into fights that result in mass casualties. We want to have as many casualties as possible, since that’s where most of the XP will come from, but we also need the ability to recoup the injured troops afterwards. The easiest method for doing this is by becoming a mercenary. By doing this, we can join up with an allied army and guarantee ourselves a glorious death in battle. If we get into an easily winnable battle, we simply need to send our mass of volunteers first to ensure they are sacrificed first. If we enter into a lop-sided battle where defeat is certain, then our job is even easier – simply let the enemy roll over our Tier 1 trash. There is a way to lose the battle, avoid capture AND keep your injured troops – once the battle is lost, go to the Clan or Kingdom tab and click leave kingdom. Because you are only a mercenary, there is no penalty for cancelling the contract and your captures will not hold you since you’re no longer at war with them. Shout out to Flesson19 for this gem of a tip! Auto resolve is a great way to lose a battle quickly and ensure that the majority of your troops are injured. If we start with 300 troops, we can expect around 40% of our troops to die ,or around 120, and the rest being injured. The XP works out to 600XP for the dead, 1800XP for injuries and another 1800XP to nurse them back to health or 4200XP total. The higher our medicine level, the more wounded we will have to heal back up, so this strategy scales well into the late game.
Another great method to use is the catapult shield wall combo. Our main goal is to gather enough troops with shields to discourage a sally out from the defenders. We also need to make sure the defenders are building catapults – so if they start building ballista then abandon the siege and retry it until they make catapults. You can do it once the first catapult is build, but in my experience, it’s best to wait until all 4 are up. Lead the battle in person, place your shields all in a single group and in the shield wall formation. Place them close enough that they are in range of the catapults and watch the enemy play bowling with your men. Direct hits can fell upwards of 20 in a single shot, so a group of 300 shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to be obliterated. Catapults do blunt damage so they will ONLY injure, ensuring your casualties will survive to be recouped. Using this method I was able to gain 5458 XP losing only 12 troops in about 30 days from start to finish. With a higher engineering and medicine skill, this time can be cut in as much as half!
The final method is called the Statue of Liberty strategy. It is called so because of the words written on the Statue of Liberty and how they are relevant to our situation – “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Emma Lazarus When we enter the late game and have access to 2 or 3 parties to invite into our army, we can take full advantage of this method. We fill out each companion with Tier 1 rabble as well as our own party. Then we pick a fight that we can win, auto resolve it to ensure mostly injured troops and profit. Once the battle is over, go into your companions troops and take ALL of their tired, sick & injured troops, swapping them for any troops of your that did not fall in battle. It’s not difficult to fill your entire party with injured troops from other parties! Another variation of this method is to siege a local castle, auto resolve the battle, and once lost we will have the option to abandon the siege and limp back to your own town or castle to gain XP. We will likely not be able to fit all of the injured troops in your party, so this can also help level up your companions as well. With this method it’s not uncommon to gain 10k XP or more after each battle and be ready for the next within 10 days or less.
We are nearing the end of the video and as promised, I’m going to show you my favorite method for turning any tier 1 mob into an unkillable zombie horde! To do this, we will need to boost the HP of our troops through specific perks. Here is a chart of all available perks that will boost our troop’s HP. Level 225 One Handed perk Unwavering Defense gives +10 HP. Level 200 Two Handed perk thick hides gives +5 HP. Level 100 Polearm perk Hard Knocks gives +3 HP. Level 200 Polearm perk Generous Rations gives +5 HP. Level 25 Athletics perk Well Built gives +5 HP. Level 275 medicine perk Minister of Health gives +65 HP at level 330 medicine. If we add all these together it comes to a grand total of +93 HP, which is nearly double! Let’s test our new zombie horde out by picking a fight we SHOULD lose and see what happens… but first let’s shoot one with arrows to see how much punishment they can take. This feisty one took a total of 5 shots and 220 damage to finally bring down! Now we put them to the real test – An open battle fight that we should definitely lose without our zombies. According to the balance of power, we will lose this battle 100% of the time. However, our horde is hungry for flesh and wont let us down! By the end of the battle, we only had 132 casualties with 90% being injuries. Just imagine what we could do with tier 5 and tier 6 troops!?
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