In Mount and Blade: Bannerlord you will generally start with some basic troops and work your way up to having some real warlords by your side. As your troops defeat enemies they will gain experience and eventually level up into better troops. One alternative way you can get troops experience is by donating armor and weapons.
This guide will show you how to donate gear for troop experience. It will go over how to get the perks to perform this and show you how to donate armor and weapons.
Perks for Donating Armor and Weapons
In order to start gaining a lot of troops experience, you will have to take two perks in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. There are two perks which will allow you to donate gear for troop experience; Paid in Promise for armors and Giving Hands for weapons. Both of these perks will be unlocked under the Steward skill. In order to unlock Paid in Promise, the perk for discarding armor for experience, you will have to reach skill level 100. For the weapons perk, you’ll need to reach level 125.
Once you have taken these perks you can immediately start discarding armors and weapons in order to get experience for your troops. This is a great way to turn a weak army into a strong one very quickly, without risking their lives in battle.
How to Donate Armor and Weapons for Experience
Now that you have taken the proper perks, you can start to make use of this. To discard weapons and armor, simply fight a battle as normal. Once you have defeated your enemy you will eventually come to the screen where you take the loot. You will probably notice a message on the bottom already showing how much experience this loot is worth.
This text on the bottom of the screen will show how much shared experience your troops will receive if you discard the armor and weapons in the loot area. The better the loot you receive from the battle (and discard), the more experience your troops will receive. As you can see in the image above, we defeated a small bandit party and got next to no experience. By taking on a large army and discarding all of the weapons and armors, you can amass a large amount of XP very quickly.
Donating Weapons and Armor Without Battle
If you want to donate some of the armor you’ve previously collected you can do that too! You do not have to go into battle and win in order to donate armor. Simply open up the inventory screen with the I key and start throwing away armor. By moving the armor from the right side (your inventory) to the left side the discard pile), you will see your troops will gain experience. If you have a great deal of denars already you can use this to essentially pay to give your troops experience.
Extremely wealthy players can simply buy all the weapons and armors from a town and discard them to make their troops super experience. It may not be very immersive to do so but it works if you’re trying to take over a castle quickly!