Mount&Blade is an ambitious combination of traditional RPG character management with RTS-like troop trees and a strategic world map. The gameplay is mostly free-form; unlike most games there is no main storyline to follow, but quests still play a major role and are a key way of gaining wealth and respect in the land of Calradia. The new expansion, Mount And Blade: Warband features better graphics, multiplayer, new weapons, armor and quests. The map of Caliradia has been recreated to look more like a real landscape, it also features a new faction, The Sarranid Sultnate.
A hard birth[edit]
After the character creation you have to choose in which major city you want to start in, each city is the capital of every faction. Unlike in the original Mount and Blade, Warband gives you basic instructions in basic actions like fighting, there are also a few starting quests. After these quest there are no breadcrumbs to follow, you are on your own, the beginning is usually hard, as there are bandits, deserters and other outlaws just waiting to break you and your warband down and take all those few items that you started out with. But if you manage to survive long enough you should start gaining levels, earning money and even winning a few small battles. There are a few ways to earn money:
- Trade
- Selling loot
- Completing quests
- Looting villages
- Robbing caravans
- Selling prisoners
When you have advanced further in the path to fame, riches or your own kingdom, which is in fact, very steep, and at times almost vertical, you can earn fiefs, either the king of the faction you are serving gives you a fief, or you simply become hostile with a faction without being in a faction and capture their castle, and create you own kingdom.