[Warband] Couched lance

[postm00v]

After playing over 100 hours on Native Warband, I noticed something for the first time. I received couched lance damage ! Not knowing what it was, I ignored it. But today, it happened again .. so I looked it up on the internet, and tried to couch a lance myself.

And Holy sh*t ! it is freakin' awesome ! I delivered over 250 damage while couching a tournament lance !

But in battle, the lance couching only knocks an enemy unconcious, so my question is .. can I kill a guy while couching. Maybe a different weapon ?

 

[unmerged(326187)]

In a battle a crouched lance attack is the strongest attack a horse soldier can make. Any pole weapon can be used as a lance attack, the longer the better in my book. It is easier to aim with. I was once in a battle, outnumbered and soon all my troops were dead or knocked out. I charged up and down through the enemy lines, lancing anyone in my way. I defeated 100 soldiers, just me and my lance. A crouched lance attack can be used to down horse soldiers, horse only or horse and rider.

 

[unmerged(249971)]

In native everyone was couching lances since all you had to do was move forward and have a lance. It took me a while to figure out how to couch in warband and I can see how someone new to the series wouldn't even know what it is.
To answer your question, yes, you can kill people with a lance but the one you have does blunt damage so it only knocks them out. If you get one that does piercing damage it will kill them although knocking them out is probably better since you get more prisoners.

 

[darthturtle]

Couched lance damage is the main way I get my kills. Give me an open plain, and things directly in front of me WILL die.

However, I can't get couched lance to work in multiplayer. Is this a balance thing, or am I doing something wrong?

 

[postm00v]

I read somewhere you need to press 'X', and then you enter couched lance mode. It will stay couched for a couple of seconds, then it goes back to normal, so you have to time your couch. You can see the little dot under your weapon ( the same dot that lets you know wether your crossbow is loaded or not ), if it's red, you're not couched and grey (?) is for couched.

I'm not sure though !

 

[darthturtle]

Hmm, gonna have to try that. Lances couch automatically in SP, and doesn't need to change attack modes. The only use for the X button that I know of is to change a throwing weapon to melee mode.

 

[postm00v]

Even in single player you have to press X, depending on the difficulty setting you used. IIRC, there are 3 options.

 

[darthturtle]

Yeah, I think I saw an option to change how couched lance worked, but are you forced to always be on the manual/difficult setting when in multiplayer? It makes sense, I guess, considering how powerful couched lance damage is.

 

[HTAPAWASO]

Yep multiplayer always uses manual, it was added for balance reasons back in beta.