Dwarves always have the last laugh news - Warsword Conquest mod for Mount & Blade: Warband

Greetings Warsword fans,

It has been a couple of months since our last article so the time has come to inform you of our progress and also reveal some more features from the new release. In terms of where we are since last time not much has been made due to other commitments for our modellers. But we still have new models we can show that were made some time ago which we will post soon.

Marshal_157 has done some incredible work optimising our resources to help the performance of the mod for those on hardware which has struggled in the past. This has come in the form of new LODs and reducing poly count without any impact on quality. He has also been improving the quality and performance of our current textures among many factions, especially chaos and the Empire.

Burspa has been making some new particle effects for the spells which will enhance the visual quality of the mod while also working on a new mount for the mod.

Significant testing has begun since February and a lot of issues have been dealt with. There is a major issue we are having currently which must be fixed before we can release, it has not been rectified yet but we hope to bring good news on this for our next article.

I apologise for the amount of time it is taking to finish things for this release and get it out to the players. All the time the team can spare is being put into the mod and I am grateful to all contributors who are helping to work through the list of things which need to be made. We will get there.

Dwarf runesmith

We initially said that dwarves will have to wait for their feature but with the modelling slowdown I found the time to add them in. Now if you are a dwarf and you have over 500 renown (magic skill is useless for dwarves) you will have access to the dwarf runesmith.

In the runesmith you can purchase runic items which can then be used to create a special item of your choice (only these items can be runed, not normal items from merchants). There are 4 kinds of items you can buy from the runesmith: Hand held weapons, ranged weapons, armour and banners (which need to be in the top left inventory square to work in battle).

Each item may have up to 3 runes and some runes can be added multiple times to increase effect

You can only ever buy 1 of each master rune

You can only repurchase a master rune if the item gets looted or the runesmith destroys the item it is currently on (you will get some gold if you trade in your items)

You can only give dwarf companions runic weapons

Melee weapon runes

Master rune of Snorri Spanglehelm: +5 to weapon swing speed

Master rune of Skalf Blackhammer: +20% damage (applied in battle)

Master rune of Alaric the Mad: +5 damage, no ward saves or ignore pain allowed when equipped

Master rune of breaking: Chance of destroying armour when equipped

Master rune of swiftness: +10 to weapon swing speed

Rune of fury: +2 to weapon swing speed, 2 Runes of fury: +4 to weapon swing speed, 3 Runes of fury: +6 to weapon swing speed

Rune of cleaving: +2 damage, 2 Runes of cleaving: +4 damage, 3 Runes of cleaving: +6 damage

Rune of dragon slaying: double damage against large enemies, 2 Runes of dragon slaying: triple damage against large enemies

Rune of smiting: 50% chance of double damage

Rune of might: +8% damage (applied in battle), 2 Runes of might: +16% damage (applied in battle)

Rune of striking: +2 weapon master when equipped, 2 Runes of striking: +4 weapon master when equipped, 3 Runes of striking: weapon master 10 when equipped

Rune of fire: +1 damage and fire damage

Banner runes

Master rune of Valaya: +2 magic resistance

Rune of dismay: Nearby allies cause fear

Rune of courage: Nearby enemies become unbreakable

Rune of santuary: +1 magic reistance, 2 Runes of sanctuary: +2 magic resistance

Rune of spellbreaking: attempts to dispel all magic effects on the battlefield

Ranged Runes

Rune of accuracy: accuracy increased by 10%, 2 Runes of accuracy: accuracy by 20%, 3 Runes of accuracy: accuracy increased by 30%

Rune of burning: +5 damage and fire damage

Rune of Skewering: accuracy by 20%

Rune of penetration: +12 damage, 2 Runes of penetration: +25 damage

Rune of reloading: +75% reloading speed, 2 Runes of reloading: +150% reloading speed

Armour runes

Master rune of Steel: +8 armour

Master rune of adamant: gain advanced ignore pain while equipped

Master rune of Gromil: +15 armour

Rune of fortitude: heals wounds at the start of a battle (and subsequent phases of battle)

Rune of shielding: 4+ ward save against ranged and magic missile attacks

Rune of preservation: wearer cannot be poisoned

Rune of warding: 6+ ward save, 2 Runes of warding: 5+ ward save, 3 Runes of warding: 4+ ward save

With these options available we hope you have fun creating your own selection of personalised special items which can give you the advantage over any enemy.

Chaos Dwarves

The dwarf kingdom are not the only dwarves which have benefitted from the latest update. Introducing the chaos dwarves as a faction has been a popular request from players and we are happy to announce that the chaos dwarves will indeed be a fully fledged faction in this update.

We have given the chaos dwarves the western Norsca locations of Goslor and surrounding castles (this will strengthen chaos as all of the lords who were there before and far away from Kislev will now share locations much closer to the front line) and we have also given them Albion as well and added a town and 2 castles on the island. They do have a couple of new troops and some new models which we will show later on. We are unsure at the moment whether the player can choose to be a chaos dwarf. We will clarify this later.

This position is not their canon position but we are not expanding the map and this positioning should help chaos (despite them losing territory) and also put more pressure on the dark elves.

The pirates are overrun

They initially took Tilea for themselves and now the pirate kingdom has fallen to the skaven horde. Every single Tilean location is now under the power of the skaven underworld and the pirates are now scattered to the wind, sailing off to whatever sanctuary they can find.

This doubling in size of the skaven realm has strenghtened them significantly (and they really needed it) and the pirates have replaced the chaos dwarves as bandits and mercenaries.

Chaos skin changes

Previously there have been 2 chaos skins, marauder and chaos, with only 1 being available to the player. Now all chaos troops will just be on the chaos skin and marauder bodies, armours and helms have all been converted to the chaos skin so now the full range of chaos items will be accessible to chaos players and we have freed up a skin slot for use in the future.

Sea battles

Sea battles in warsword conquest have been fundamentally broken for a long time. We have reverted back to the static battle we had a few years ago. It is not perfect, troops can sometimes fall into the water at weird spots but generally you are capable of having a normal, unglitched fight on them. It was either that or remove sea battles completely and we decided it is better to have them than not.

Fast travel map lag

This has been a problem for many players for a while and I am not going to make any false promises, it is unlikely we are going to be able to remove it completely. However I have made some changes and reports are that the map lag has been noticeably reduced from what it was in the past. This is just after a couple of changes, full focus will go on it right before release as it is the last item on my list. We will do whatever we can to ease the impact of this lag on your playing experience.

Thank you for your continued support for the mod and your patience.

Nameless Warrior