In this episode of the Bannerlord Perks guide we will look at the Riding skill perks. By the end of this video, you will have a complete understanding of what each one does and which to pick based on your specific needs. I put timestamps in the description for your convenience and without further ado, let’s get started!
Level 25 – Full Speed: Increasing charge damage by 20% seems like a good bonus, but in testing it made hardly any difference. Without the perk, we did between 6 and 7 damage per charge and with the perk between 8 and 9 damage. There certain is a difference, but Charge damage is so small to begin with. The same can be said of the captain perk which gives our troops 10% bonus to charge damage.
Level 25 – Nimble Steed: This perk increases maneuvering by 10%, which is difficult to say what it does without testing. We can see rotating in a circle is faster with the perk than without. This translates to tighter turns, giving us more control. The captain perk gives our mounted troops +30 to riding, which is a great bonus! Riding skills increase gives higher max speed, more maneuver, more damage with weapons and faster reload speed so it’s an incredibly important skill.
The pick here is Nimble Steed for our main character since it’s more useful than doing an extra 1 – 2 damage per charge. It’s also the pick for captain as riding stats are far more important than a little more charge damage.
Level 50 – Veterinary: If our mount loses all of it’s HP during a battle, there are 3 outcomes – It respawns next battle at full health, it becomes lame with significantly worse stats or it will die. According to Bannerlordperks .com, the chance of death is 5% and becoming lame 20%. With this perk, these numbers are cut in half.
The governor perk gives 0.5 prosperity per day, which is quite good!
Level 50 – Well Strapped: In order to avoid going down in the first place, this perk increases the HP of our mount by 20%. As an example, this desert horse has 200HP usually. With this perk, we increase that number by +40 for a total of 240HP. The secondary perk is tagged as party leader, which increases all mounts HP in our party by 10%. Not bad!
The pick here is usually Well Strapped as avoiding going down in the first place is much more useful than avoiding becoming lame. However – if you have a specialty horse that you cannot purchase, then Veterinary can be a good pickup as replacing those types of horses can be difficult. For governor, veterinary is the only choice.
Level 75 – Filled To Brim: For a trading play through, a 20% increase to pack animal carry capacity can be quite handy. We can see from the testing that with 20 pack animals total, our carry capacity is 2030, but with the perk it increases to 2430. The secondary perk is also tagged party leader and will reduce the trade penalty for both buying and selling mounts.
Level 75 – Nomadic Traditions: This perk increases the bonus to movement speed for having spare mounts for our infantry to ride. Unlike other movement speed perks, this one actually works! Yay! We see from testing, there is no bonus without the perk, then a 0.27 speed bonus with 50 troops, 0.25 with 100 troops and 0.23 with 200 troops. In order for this perk to work, you must have enough spare mounts for all foot troops to ride – So 200 foot troops need 200 tier 1 or tier 2 horses in the inventory. The captain perk adds 10% speed damage bonus to cavalry, which is mediocre.
The only reason to pick Filled To Brim is for a trader play through, but even then I would still rather take nomadic tradition. If you plan on a 100% cavalry play through, then pick filled to brim, otherwise take Nomadic Traditions. Inventory space just isn’t that big of a deal compared to movement speed! For captains, nomadic traditions is the only option.
Level 100 – Sagittarius: If you though we were done with testing mounted accuracy, then the jokes on you! We can see from the testing, there is a very slight increase in accuracy when both riding straight as well as turning the horse left and right. The effect is much less than the perks from the control skills, but they do stack. The captain perk is the exact same thing, but for our troops.
Level 100 – Sweeping Wind: Oh boy, movement speed perks but for a horse this time! I had a hard time coming up with a good way to test this with numbers – so I ran at looters top speed and took a rock – for science of course. We can see with and without the perk were nearly identical at 56 meters per second. Not being satisfied, I went to a village to test how long it would take to run into a tree with and without the perk. Yes, this is 2 videos being played on top of each other. No, there is no difference in speed. Thanks TaleWorlds. The secondary perk is also party leader and gives a flat 2% movement speed bonus. We can see from testing, it gives 0.1 speed bonus with no troops, 0.08 bonus with 100 troops, the same for 200 troops and down to 0.05 with 1200 troops. At least it works!
If you’re doing a mounted archer play through, Sagitarius is the pick. Otherwise, Sweeping Winds is the pick and only for the campaign movement speed. For captains, Sagitarius is the only option.
Level 125 – Relief Force: This is a very situational perk as it only works when we are joining a battle that is already in progress. We can see from testing, our ally has already been jumped by a much larger force, so we reinforce them with our tier 1 mob of volunteers. Our base morale going into the fight was 58 and with the perk that jumps to 68, which made a huge difference in keeping our low tier troops in the fight. Only 50 ran away, with the rest fighting until the bitter end! The perk is mostly helpful with low tier troops, but it can make a difference. The governor perk gives more security for mounted troops in the garrison. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. This is the only pick for 125.
Level 125 –
Level 150 – Horse Archer: This perk increases the ranged damage from horseback. We can see from testing – without the perk our bonus damage was 18 – 19 per hit. With the perk, this number increases to 25 – 31. The captain perk gives a 5% increase to mounted archers.
Level 150 – Mounted Warrior: Melee weapons generally do more damage, so they cut the bonus down to 5% here. In testing, we see without the perk bonus damage between 23 – 24. With the perk, bonus damage between 31 – 40 which is a similar increase as the other perk. The captain perk increases melee cavalry under our captain’s command by 5%.
The picks here depend on your play through – if you’re shooting from horseback then pick horse archer. If you’re mostly using melee weapons, then mounter warrior is the pick. If you are using both equally, I prefer horse archer as melee weapons on horseback rarely have issues 1-shotting enemies. For the captain perk, the same logic applies and should be based on your army composition. If both melee and ranged are used equally, go with horse archer.
Level 175 – Breeder: Farming simulator comes to Bannerlord with this perk as animals in our inventory have a chance to multiply over time. In our testing, we took 10 of each horse in the game and sat in town until they did their thing. After 3 months we get a message saying we got 420 horses added to our party. We can see that only 8 out of the 420 horses were actually added. It does work at least! The governor perk gives bound villages an increase of 5% to their production rate. This can be great for fiefs with rare commodities like Aserai horses or silver mines.
Level 175 – Riding Horde: Next we have a very useful perk which reduces herding penalty by 50%. Let’s look at the testing to see why – The max herding penalty in the game is 3.99. We are by ourselves and have 1000 mounts, hence the herd penalty. As soon as we take the perk, we increase our movement speed by 2, taking our movement speed to 4.99. We can increase the number of horses by an infinite amount, but we will never slow down further than this unless we take more troops with us. The same goes for pack animals and livestock. I plan on doing the bonus for trading perks guide using this perk, so I don’t want to spoil anything further here! The governor perk increases the chances of making tier 2 horses, which can be very helpful in the late game when tier 2 horses are harder to come by.
Personally, I pick riding horde 100% of the time but if you have some rare horses than you want to try to breed, then breeder can be okay I suppose. I just don’t think it’s nearly as useful though. For the governor perk, riding horde should be the pick if your fief produces horses and breeder if it does not.
Level 200 – Annoying Buzz: Doing extra damage to the enemy morale can be quite useful for ending the battle quicker and saving casualties. 20% is a pretty good bonus too! We can see from the testing, the group of 35 looters broke after 9 casualties without the perk and also 9 with the perk. I missed a couple headshots when testing with the perk, which accounts for the discrepancy. I use this perk a lot, it does actually work! The captain perk does the same, but only a 5% increase for our mounter archer casualties.
Level 200 – Thunderous Charge: This perk mirrors the previous one, but for melee weapons. We can see from testing, it takes 14 casualties to break the enemy without the perk and only 11 with the perk. Again, headshots make a big difference to morale damage so testing should be more precise than what I had time for here. The captain perk is the same, but 10% this time for our melee cavalry.
The pick for our main should be annoying buzz for mounter archer play throughs, thunderous charge for melee play throughs, and Annoying buzz if you’re using both. I find that headshots are easier to get with ranged weapons, which maximizes morale damage and stacks with the perk nicely. The same can be said for captain perk – if we use mostly cav archers then annoying buzz, otherwise take thunderous charge.
Level 225 – Cavalry Tactics: If you like to recruit cavalry troops rather than converting them as prisoners, then this is the perk for you! This increases the chances of troops in our towns spawning as cavalry instead of foot troops by 30% We can see from the testing, our Khuzait town has only 1 cavalry without the perk and 7 with the perk. The governor perk reduces the wages of mounted troops in our garrison. If you’ve seen the bonus videos for the other perks guides, you’ll know this one made an appearance! We can stack enough bonuses to have cavalry pay us to stay in our fiefs, it’s crazy!
Level 225 – Mounted Patrol: This perk reduces the chances of enemy nobles from escaping our party when we hold them prisoner. The governor perk does the same, but for our fief’s dungeon.
The pick here really depends. If you like to use a lot of cavalry and own towns, then cavalry tactics is a good pick. Otherwise, Mounted Patrols can be really helpful for hanging onto nobles longer after battle. The governor perk is a really tough choice! 50% wage reduction is massive for cavalry, especially when at peace when we can’t make money from fighting. Keeping prisoners for longer can help win wars though. I prefer mounted patrols personally, but either pick is great.
Level 250 – Dauntless Steed: When we our horse gets stabbed by a polearm, there is a chance it rears up and stuns us in place. This perk increases that damage threshold by 50%. We can see from testing that without the perk, a single looter with a pitch fork stops us. With the perk, that same looter still stopped us. I think if we go really slow, it would potentially work, but in battle it’s difficult to move at those speeds and survive, making this perk totally useless. The captain perk grants 5 armor to all mounted troops in the formation, which can help with survival.
Level 250 – Tough Steed: This perk increases our mount’s armor by 20%, which is a significant increase! We can see from testing, without the perk we deal between 28 – 33 damage per hit, but only 12 – 28 per hit with the perk. The secondary perk adds 10 armor to each mounted troop, which is great!
Maybe my testing was bad, but I couldn’t get dauntless steed to work so my pick for both main and captain is Tough Steed.
Level 275 – The Way Of The Saddle: I always love testing the final perk as it’s usually quite good! This perk increases both maneuver and charge damage. Looking at the testing, we can see maneuver was almost identical for 275 and up both with and without the perk. Level 0 was only slightly slower than the others. Testing the charge damage, we see 4 damage at level 0, 8 Damage at 275 without the perk, 8 damage at 275 with the perk and 10 at level 330 with the perk. These results were very disappointing and I can’t recommend going past 225 or 250 depending on which perks are needed. Higher riding levels are useful for increasing mount speed, but the final perk is trash.
We are nearing the end of the video, which means it’s time for the bonus!
Rick Roll Bannerlord Style – Never Gonna Give You Up: Have you ever captured enemy nobles after a battle and wished you could keep then around forever? It’s simple – just have these two level 225 perks on your main character: Riding Perk Mounted patrols and scouting perk Keen sight. This will reduce enemy nobles chances of escaping your party by 100%, effectively keeping them forever. Just be sure to play this for them once in a while [rick roll] because we’re never gonna give you up, never gonna say good bye! While this perk combo can be extremely potent, we must use it in the right situations. If we are a vassal, then it’s not useful enough as our king will sue for peace long before we can use it to the full potential. However, is we are the king or going solo, then it’s game breaking. I’m working on a separate guide for how to use this tactic to own all fiefs of our own culture with 0 risk, but let’s look at a couple highlights from that upcoming guide so you can see it’s true potential. We start off without being a vassal or mercenary and go to war with a kingdom of our own culture group. We do this because it will be difficult to avoid rebellions in towns without policies, and since we are going solo without a kingdom for now, it’s best to stick to fiefs of our own culture. The goal here is to pick as many small parties off as we can, getting them solo or as small armies with low tier troops. Within a matter of a couple weeks, we have taken over 40 nobles from the western empire as prisoners and even took a castle using only our main character. From here, they have no nobles left to defend their fiefs and we can take all of them without worrying about 1500 troop armies coming to spoil our sieges or take their fiefs back! If you want to see how to take 43 nobles and a castle with only 250 troops and losing less than 10 troops the entire time, then keep an eye out for the upcoming guide!
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