Overview
I try to describe in detail what the actual settings entail. Culture selection. Skills & attributes.Things you can do in game many might not know.A fresh beginners start guide to get them going.
Table of Contents
So you just got Mount and Blade: Bannerlord and are looking for some tips to aid you. Then you have come to the right place. In this guide I will try to give detailed instructions, tips and a starter guide for a new campaign. I have broken things up into sections to more quickly find what you are looking for.
Table of Contents
Starting your new game
Choosing your Culture/Background
Skills and Attributes
Clan Tab
Kingdom Tab
Traits
Marriage and Kids
Party Speed
Making Money
Fresh Campaign for newcomers to get your Kingdom
Closing notes
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I updated my guide(as of Tues night April 14th 2020) as well as added in some pictures for y’all. Let me know what you think.
Starting your Game and Difficulty settings
Starting your new game
I highly recommend playing on the beta patch as so many things were fixed. If interested how to do so, it is at the bottom of this guide.
There are 3 difficulty options. Very Easy, Easy and Realistic.
What this really means is Noob mode, Normal and Dark Souls/Cup head level of difficulty
Friendly Troops Received Damage: Ratio in which damage is received to your troops
Friendly Parties Received Damage: Ratio in which damage is received to any additional computer-controlled soldiers who might join you in battle.
Player Received Damage: Ratio in which damage is received to you
Combat AI Difficulty: How smart or dumb they are in combat
Recruitment Difficulty: Pace at which you recruit prisoners
Map movement speed: Bonus movement speed
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Enable Death: You can die on the battlefield. But won’t necessarily happen till mid or late game
Auto allocate clan member perks: When your people level a skill to a perk point you can pick which one or not. Does not work retroactively.
I personally am running everything on the middle setting Easy(Normal Mode)
I find it’s a nice balance, while still learning the game and still challenging. Playing at very easy (noob mode) is just not going to be satisfying really as everything will just be a snooze fest and not challenging in the least.
For example: If you are using very easy setting for
[[friendly troops take 1/3 damage—]] Let’s say you have 125 troops consisting of an even balance from melee ranges and cavalry… going up against an army of 350. You will crush them if you have mid-max rank troops while keeping roughly 80-100 of your troops. Granted some will be wounded but you still have them.
Choosing your Culture/Background
Choosing your Culture/Background
This will be the Culture along with a nice perk for the remainder of the playthrough and cannot be changed later.
Vlandia bonus: 20% more upgrade XP to troops from battles. Great for getting those high tier units faster.
Empire bonus: 20% construction speed bonus to town projects, wall repairs, and siege engines. If you plan on conquering a lot of cities and castles, take this one.
Khuzait bonus: 10% extra speed bonus for horsemen on campaign map. Catch everyone or get away faster.
Sturgia bonus: 20% less speed penalty from snow. Currently tested and I see no penalty in snow under the Partyspeed tooltip
Battanian bonus: Forests give 10% less speed penalty to parties. Forests give me -1.39 speed. Taking 10% off that makes it -1.251.
Aserai bonus: Caravans are 30% cheaper to build. 10% less trade penalty. Good early not so much in comparison to the others good late game
Skills and Attributes
Skills and Attributes
1st thing to note that to the left of all your skill sections there are
three letters. They represent *attributes* such as: Vigor, Intelligence etc
Each 4 player levels achieved grant’s one attribute point.
On the character sheet you can see the progress of your current level and that of your Clan.
To gain those levels you need to gain experience in your skills.
Having points in your attributes increases the rate at which you learn all the skills to the right of that specific attribute and increases the soft cap of your available skill level you can achieve.
Each Player level earned grant’s you focus points which also increase the rate at which you learn a specific skill. Each skill caps at 5 focus points.
In order to achieve high level Perks faster which are granted at every 25th level of that skill, you need a lot of focus and attribute points in the corresponding areas.
For example, if I want to get my trade skill to 150+ quickly, I will need to put numerous attribute points into social and a high amount of focus points into Trade.
If you want to learn how to level up a skill, navigate to the top right while in the skill section and click on the small and large + symbol. The “ i “ will give you information as to the bonus that is applied to you. Skills marked as “Governor, Surgeon, Quartermaster, etc” are only applied when those clan roles are assigned.
I like to plan my skills and attributes out a bit so I have an easier time getting what I want.
There is a soft and hard cap on skills. The Learning limit is the soft cap. You can earn experience at the rate of 1.00%+ depending on your attribute and focus points. But as you can see from my picture, I have gone well beyond that. Once a skill reaches 0% your skill will be highlighted red and can no longer gain experience, unless you raise your attribute point or add focus points.
Soft Cap
Hard Cap
Learning Limit
Focus and Attribute point contribution
Clan Tab
Clan tab
Members- Shows your Family group, companions. You can also assign Clan roles here as well as see your overall finance income and expenses tallied up.
Parties- Shows your party as well as your limit, caravans, garrisons, and dispatched. Only actual parties count toward your party total.
Fiefs-Shows the land you own and their other information.
Other- Shows your income from shops. Here you can sell the shop or change the production.
Tip: For your clan tab if no roles are assigned they are all defaulted to your character.
Kingdom Tab
Kingdom tab
Clans- Details your clans, showing their influence, members and fiefs on the left. You can see their tier, members and fiefs. You can also spend influence to increase the influence of another clan and also have the option to support a vote to expel a clan.
Fiefs- Are Cities and Castles owned in the Kingdom and shows their connecting villages. You can propose to give these to someone using influence which you can later vote on.
Policies- Are “rules” that you propose within your specific Kingdom. Does not affect other Kingdoms.* Armies- Show any armies currently going on from you or other clans within your kingdom.
Diplomacy- Shows who you are at war or peace with. You can also compare your strength with other kingdoms and other information.
Traits
Traits
Traits to my knowledge at the current time only affect your persuasion checks within the game. For Example: Trying to convince nobles to join you, or trying to get a wife/husband.
Some can be gained at character creation.
Marriage and Kids
Marriage and kids
Kids start out at infants and from what I’ve read not experienced is it takes many in game years for them to grow up into teenagers then adults. As adults they are believed to be able to join your party. But for now they will be in Chaikland. The location where all non-interactable NPCs go and you will not be able to see them, so don’t worry about it.
To get married as of a few days ago there is an age cut off at 35 where you are no longer eligible for marriage. Follow my guide listed above to guarantee a wedding with the mate you fancy. But, pressing N utilizing your bannerlord bible the encyclopedia vet all of your prospective mates. You can go a few ways with this.
Me when I’m starting a new game I search for the most badass girl I can find. I went with Liena. She is a force to be reckoned with. Or you could try to find a son/daughter of a rulers kingdom. I don’t know if it all, but I do know there are a considerable number of nobles that when you marry them they have insane super endgame gear and weapons on them. My Liena was one of these. Making my wealth income skyrocketed quickly by getting my shops and caravans going basically instantly.
My baby farm.
Party Speed
Party Speed
1. Have more speed horses then you’re foot troops. number two good horses are expensive until you get a reasonable amount of denars. so it is extremely good early to invest in mules, Sumpter horses and other cheap horses that you can get your hands on. 2 Increases how much Cavalry you have. This will give a nice bonus to your party speed not to mention they can be very powerful. 3 Have someone in your party with high Scout skill and also assign them the scout role in your clan tab. 5 Prisoners slow you down, the more prisoners, the more of a speed penalty is incurred. 6 Having significantly more horses and mules than your troops can manage will give you a speed penalty called “herd”. 7 Wounded soldiers also slow you down, the more wounded you have, the slower you go.
Making Money$$$
Making Money$$$
There are many ways of making money within the game.
Early I recommend trading between cities, at the same time doing tournaments at these cities and betting each round. Once you have achieved around 13-16k denars I would recommend investing in a pottery shop at “Pen Cannoc and Marunath”. For other shops just research what towns are connected to that city. If there are at least two of a specific resource and also there are less of the same type of shop you want to get in the area then get it. After a few days you should see a steady stream of 400+ from each of them daily. Starting caravans, especially with companions that have good Trade skill and if possible Scouting as well. Fighting armies. Selling grain and other supplies to a city that was just taken over by another kingdom will net you a FAT chunk of change. Leveling smithing and crafting items to sell. Taxes from fiefs(land you own) Your companions when they are in their own party also bring income from their adventures. Marrying Rich and selling your spouse’s armor and everything they come with. There are so many many ways.
Other Tips and Tricks I have learned
Other Tips and tricks I have learned while playing.
Skills
Have a soft and hard cap. For instance If I have 2 Endurance attribute points and zero focus points into smithing I can get at least 28 points into at a minimum. I don’t know the exact number yet. Granted you get xp at a much slower rate but I consider using this highly beneficial for two reasons. 1 If I need to get just to lvl 25 perk of something I don’t need to use my focus points and can better use it somewhere else or get that tiny bit extra in something at a rate less than 1.00%. Each level you get in skills like this reduce from 1.00% all the way down to zero. Once that happens the skill will be marked red on your skill panel and you will no longer be able to gain experience in that skill.
Leadership and Army
Early game the only way to level it is by doing battle and winning them constantly to get to a high morale which you then have to MAINTAIN. But as you level leadership, your personal morale addition to your party increases. Once you have your kingdom, or are at least able to create armies while in another kingdom, then just create an army. You do NOT have to battle with them. Here’s an easy way: Make parties for your companions, let them roam around a while and get near their max troop count. It does not cost influence to call the banners of your clan to your army. You will lose cohesion at a base rate and base on your army size. There are perks to help with this as well as you may spend influence points to increase your cohesion.
leadership skill morale benefit
Wanderers
When starting a game always take a good look at your wander list as it should be seeded/randomly generated. Also I’m fairly certain as you progress in either many years or doing your rebuild clan and main quest line that a tiny number of wanderers are added. You want to inspect their skills and mark down the ones you deem viable as companions, track them down and recruit them. If your list is unsatisfactory just start a new game. If that’s not an option for you then there are some options.
Using the encyclopedia search the wanderer list and find the ones with hardly any skills. For example, ones that have 1 or 2 combat skills and maybe 1 other non combat skill. You can groom/level up these companions as you see fit as they should be very low level. Or you could just get a mod for it.
Policies
Currently when I select to propose a policy, and this while having no other clans in my kingdom, it costs double the influence to enact a policy. While having no other clans policies go into effect immediately and are not voted on. If you only have 50 influence and propose a policy you will go into the negative. I highly recommend “Sacred Majesty” for 5 influence per day as the ruler clan. Helps you to gain it passively.
Leveling combat skills
Battling against looters when they engage your troops try to attack from the side or behind with melee weapons if they are distracted/routing/fleeing you can kill them and gain experience. Also if there are not that many and you are mounted make sure to have your troops hold fire and full-back if necessary so you can hog all the experience. This is one of the best ways early game two level your melee skills early.Same goes for ranged.Just do the exact same as instructed above just use either a bow or crossbow or throwing weapon. Try to get headshots if possible for more XP gain.
Bannerlord Bible
Press “N” for in-game Encyclopedia. This is your Bannerlord Bible. Need to find a suitable me Spouse but don’t know where to look? press N search for your suitcase mate. See what area they were last spotted. By the way, you can click on all the names of things that are highlighted and it will direct you to that page. You can track the town,castle city and start heading there. I frequently hit up towns along the way and check your encyclopedia again to see if their location has changed.l so I can reroute my heading.
Couch Lance
Look carefully at some pole arms for the couch ability. Be on a horse, gain enough speed having lance out, Press X and you will couch the lance and when an enemy is struck you can do INSANE levels of damage. I’m talking like 250-700=+ without certain perks.
Avoiding insanity
Save and save often. Having multiple save’s is your friend.
Food
Food
Pay attention to your food supply and try to keep it diverse. Having multiple items for food and the quartermaster role will Increase your Steward Skill which is an amazing skill to have leveled or a party member with it. At a trade area look and see what is consumable, your troops will eat/drink it. But grain is your best friend to get by with. Your party will also consume your horses, sheep, cows etc it there is no food available.
Steward Skill benefit
Training for XP early
Train on looters in early stages. When training on looters, you can hyper focus your skill so gains by holding back your troops and soloing looters. Alternatively you can auto resolve on looters for better troop XP. Sea Raiders, Mountain bandits, Steppe bandits etc offer much better rewards but they are much harder than the bottom feeding looters. And armies are even better loot.
Early loot
Fight thugs with your companions in major cities at the clearing and back alley etc areas for good loot early on. Gang boss will show up after a while for more potential loot. And do tournaments.
Damage
This game has physics. So if you are standing still hitting an idle target with a javelin it will do its minimum damage. change their speed toward you, or yours toward them or both and your damage will increase significantly like in real life.
Inventory
You can lock items in your inventory to never be sold in the inventory screen on the right hand side.. Useful for when you are fighting a lot and trying to quickly sell junk.
Honor and Charm
I highly recommend that when battling Lords and armies that directly after battle you let them go and do not take them as your prisoner. I’ll tell you why number one being that you will increase your relations with them, so that down the line you can recruit them into your clan. Also you will increase your charm level which is highly beneficial.
Sieging
Create a siege weapon. When it’s built send it to reserve immediately. After doing this 4 times preferably with 4 trebuchets pause the game. Bring them all out of reserve, unpause and watch the destruction of all the siege weapons and walls as they simply disappear.
I’m new and I want my own Kingdom. Help me.
Fresh campaign for newcomers guide to get your Kingdom
If you are new or having trouble getting up and going take a look at a guide I quickly put together to get you started.
A. New game-
Choose the beta patch for the game. To do this on steam, go to library, right click on bannerlord, go to properties, and navigate to betas, select e1.1.0-Beta (should be the bottom one) The reason for being is because there are still broken mechanics and bugs, and performance problems, crashes etc, that have been addressed and fixed in the beta version.
Refer to my game settings atop of the main guide
I recommend the middle setting at the very least for everything.
I’d go with Vlandians as a good 1st pick for culture.
1. If brand new, do the combat tutorial trust me. Spend time learning your blocking and timing and your archery etc
2. go to the nearby towns, they are the small ones and grab at least 10-15 recruits while also getting roughly 30 or so grain to last you a while.
3. I heavily recommend you spend a lot of time in the practice arena in a MAJOR city.
4. Winning a Practice Tournament nets 250 denars. You don’t need to kill everyone, just be the last man standing. Enemies spawn in when others die until i think like 20-30 have died, I can’t remember.
5. Do Arena Tournaments.Winning Arena Tournaments, which you can bet on at each phase as well on yourself nets 3 renown and an item(weapons, armor horse) that is going to help you progress.
6. Also while looking for major cities to do tournaments (talk to the arena master to find out where) I HIGHLY recommend paying attention to the troop movement around you. You will see people roaming around with a blue exclamation on them and they are part of your MAIN QUEST. Talk with them and the quest option is highlighted.
In addition to talking to these specific ones, talk to every noble you see on the map. Select “There is something I would like to discuss”. Then “I have a proposal that may benefit us both.” It will open the barter menu. You can select “gift” immediately, giving them nothing and it acts as a successful barter, giving you charm XP, I personally try to give at least 1 denar since this is a bug. You can do this with them again after some time has passed. Use as much as you can.
7. So, you’ll start capping out around 1500+ or so denars (if i remember correctly) by betting on yourself at tournaments and winning them. As long as you bet at each stage and win the final round.
8. Pro scummy tip for melee, you can run circles on them, stay to your right on their left, and keep horizontally swinging at their head for easy wins on 1v1s using a sword and shield.
8. In tournaments you do not bring your own weapons, but you do however bring your own armour. I make mine a tank.-
9. You can jump from city to city doing this.
10. Finish the rebuild your clan requirements.
A) 2000 Denars,
B) Recruit a companion, which I recommend once you are at 3k+ ish denars,
C) Having 20 troops in party not wounded or prisoners
D) Having 50 renown
11. Once you have around 5-7k denars, start scouting for a mate to continue and expand your lineage. Once you get married you want to be in the same party so you can create offspring. When you find the one you want you will NEED to Save every time before talking to them as there are conversation checks. After a successful one, save. Leave for a while, save, talk, if success they will tell you to talk to their leader, find them, give them the least amount of denars you can ranging from 3-6k ish Denars then boom you are married just like that.
12. Find a kingdom, find their leader and become a mercenary. Once you are Clan level 2
13. This will net you a steady stream of XP, renown, denars, troops, prisoners, loot influence, morale for troops mainly if they are at war with someone.
14. You are able to purchase workshops in Major cities that cost about 13-16k Denars for the first one and it increases with each one you get. just make sure to recon the surrounding areas for competition and supply availability for the type of workshop you want to build. I suggest Pottery shop at Pen Cannoc and another at Marunath.
15. Get enough denars to get a caravan and send a companion (preferably one with decent or better trade skill) with it. It takes a while to get it going but be prepared to lose 150-250 Denars a day until it starts to ramp up. going somewhere between net 150 to over 1.5k denars daily
16. Once you are Renown lvl 3 you can become a vassal and start reaping better rewards and more importantly influence at a substantial rate. You don’t need to cancel becoming a mercenary and then become a Vassal, you can just simply upgrade at the kingdom leader if you wish to stay with that particular Kingdom for a while.
17. I’d recommend once you have at least 50k or so denars with a good steady stream of income and you have max companions with a few caravans and workshops, a relatively high amount and tier of troops when you are nearing the end of the Neretzes Folly quest, but it’s not needed as I finished the quest within one game year.
18. Do this by talking to 10 leaders I mentioned at the beginning of the new start campaign guide.
19. Talk to both of the quest people and do their quests.
20. You go to a hideout they tracked on your minimap, wait till nightfall to attack, wipe out the troops and congrats you have 1 more piece of the banner. Repeat the same quest from the other quest giver, just tell both of them you are siding with them. You can make your decision after all 3 pieces have been collected.
21. Choose which side you want to be. You can help the Sith, I mean Empires, or everyone else.
22. This doesn’t necessarily mean that those options make the opposing side all hate you though and you are immediately at war with them, so don’t worry.
23. Pick a strategic start point for whatever you chose after talking to the correlating quest giver to complete the quest.
24. As of the current patch you cannot initiate war through the diplomacy panel. But you can go to the targets villages, take hostile actions, (loot, recruits or RAID) and they will dry swiftly declare war on you. You can also just attack their parties/armies roaming around.
25. You can then raid castles and cities. But it’s a good idea to raid towns if you can to rob those castles and cities of supplies and food so their garrison starts to starve and then attack the castles and cities.
26. Sieging- at minimum I recommend to always build a battering ram. If you are able to, a Siege tower as well
27. One trick I have learned is that you can create a trebuchet etc ,once it completes immediately click on it and send to reserve. Do this 4 times if you can without other armies crippling you. Because they ARE coming with a vengeance. You are able to fight these incoming parties/armies while not losing your siege progress.
28. Pause and deploy all trebuchet and watch the magic happen. You wont need battering ram or siege towers with this method though as there will be huge gaping holes in their walls.
29. But, there is a but, the chances of you being able to do this without being whittled down from incoming armies is not something that will regularly occur. It’s more plausible if the owner of the city/castle you are sieging is based pretty far away.
30. Remember, the battering ram and one siege tower if possible if not doing the 4 trebuchet method.
31. Once you are able to take the city or castle, sit on it for a while. Do upgrades and at the garrison build up. even go as far as to drop off units there to insure it will not be targeted, or if it is, that it can handle itself. This step is actually KEY if you want to finish the main quest to get your kingdom with no hassle of having to siege another castle/city to own a settlement of your selected quest type. Imperial or Non Imperial.
32. Now Calradia is your oyster.
33. Conquer and destroy the infidels or Join the Empire and crush the rebellion or, Kill everyone. It’s really up to you.
Closing comments
Yes the game is in early access, but having never played any of the Mount and blades and coming to this game. I absolutely love it. Yes there are bugs. But I don’t think I can name too many games that have zero bugs.
The dev’s are on FN on point with the patches and exploit and bug fixes. This game has such amazing potential. I can’t wait to see where it is in 6 months or even a year from now. Not to mention from what I’ve heard, the modding community is gonna be booming with this game.
You will be playing this game a ton once you get used to everything. You could find a good build, a secret strategy or what not to use with your Heirs or a new game campaign.
and that’s after over 100 hours of playing. Also, there is multiplayer for skirmishes, sieges etc with a leveling/ranking system.
I for one really hope the dev’s or the modders add in the Coop campaign. That would just freaking rock. I can only imagine playing this game with like 3 or 5 or whatever amount of friends. some working with some against, that one person that wants to see their friends empire burn to ground, that sorta thing. I can’t wait.
I will be updating this as I go along and learn new things. Please leave a comment and a rate if you found this guide to be useful. It lets me know that I should continue to work on this. If you have any questions I’ll try to get back to you within a relatively short time frame.