Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is a massive medieval sandbox game with many features and gameplay options, and starting out in the lands of Calradia might be intimidating, especially for new players.
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord – 13 Essential Player Character Skills To Prioritize
To make the most out of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, these are the skills you should be putting at the top of your list.
Creating a strong character, learning the basics of combat and army management, and making some starting money can help you have a strong start in your campaign and pave the way for an epic and memorable experience.
Updated on January 24th, 2024, by Nima Dabirian: Patch 1.2 of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord offered some of the largest changes to the game since its launch. With improved AI, balance changes, and more variety of weapons and armor, there’s a lot to explore in the lands of Calradia once again. Whether you are new to the game or coming back after the latest update, there are a few things that can help you get a head start on your new game.
13 Character Creation
The character creation in Bannerlord can seem more complicated than in most RPGs, especially if you’re just starting out. But there are some general tips to create a strong character for your first playthrough. Choose the culture that seems most fun to you since, other than the cultural bonuses, there won’t be any crucial changes to your playthrough.
It’s best to focus a few of your starting points on one-handed and bow and a few points on riding skills. Prioritize attribute points over focus points, as you get one focus point to spend on your skills at each level, but you can only increase your attribute points once every four levels. And finally, spend as many points as you can on Charisma and Intelligence skills and attribute points, as these will be the most impactful skills in the late game.
12 The Combat System
If you are new to the Mount & Blade series, getting used to the realistic combat system might take a while. But if you start in the campaign mode, you can try out different weapons on the training grounds and familiarize yourself with the movements and the system.
The best melee weapons to start with are one-handed weapons and a shield. The shield gives you better safety while you master the directional blocking system, and the one-handed weapons’ high swing speed decreases the margin of error. The best range option for new players is the bow since crossbows are more expensive and hard to come by, and the thrown weapon’s limited range and projectile arc make aiming more challenging.
The best option for mounted combat is thrust polearms and shields. While mounted, it’s better to let your troops engage first, then ride behind the enemy line, pick out easier targets, and avoid direct combat.
11 Starting Items
There are hundreds of unique equipment, mounts, and trade goods in the game, and it’s hard to know what to spend your money on in the beginning. One of the most important purchases that you should make as soon as possible is a mount. You start the game with a stumper horse, which can barely outrun looters and bandits that you face in the early game. If you have put at least one focus point on your riding skill, you can immediately buy a midland palfrey, which is a huge upgrade to your starting horse.
As you start gathering a party, defeating looters, and finishing quests, make sure you always have a few food items in your inventory, and then start investing in better weapons and armor. You might not start with your preferred weapon type, and all starting weapons are very low quality, so a suitable weapon from tier 3 or 4 should be your priority. After that, decent chest armor can offer you the most protection for the money you spend, allowing you to survive longer in fights.
One thing that can get you a couple of thousands of denars at the very beginning of the game is to head to the nearest town when you start a new game, buy as many of their livestock, such as sheep and hogs, butchering them in your inventory, and then selling the meat and hide back to the town. This is only profitable at the start before the prices stabilize through trade, so you only have a short window to take advantage of this exploit.
10 Tournaments
Before patch 1.2 of Bannerlord, tournaments were an easy way of winning money and decent loot in the early game. However, due to the increased difficulty of AI, winning tournaments, especially in higher game difficulties, have become much more difficult. But they are still a great way to train your and your character’s combat skills. Just make sure you don’t bet on tournaments before you are confident you can win them.
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord: All Factions, Ranked
Whether you’re betraying, joining, or declaring war on them, knowing who are the best factions of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is important.
Things that can help you overcome this new difficulty are buying or looting high-tier armor to increase your defensive abilities and training your one-handed combat skills, as they are the most common weapon type used in most tournaments. In group stages, try to isolate and defeat enemy soldiers with your teammates, and in solo duels, keep rotating around your opponents with your shield blocking the right direction and look for openings to land your attacks.
9 Bandit Hideouts
Clearing bandit hideouts is a great way to level up your troops and do multiple quests at once. These hideouts can spawn all around the world, and whenever you see multiple groups of bandits roaming around, you can usually find their hideout nearby. Once you find a hideout, you can clear it for the loot and the experience, but there’s a better option.
Because of the increased activity of bandits near a hideout, surrounding villages can have two quests to deal with them; “Clearing a bandit hideout” and “Need help with brigands.” Also, nearby city gang leaders might also have the quest “Associate captured by bounty hunters,” which also requires you to clear the hideout. If you’re lucky to find all three quests in nearby villages and cities, you can finish them all by clearing the hideout, and considering the loot and prisoners that you get, you can easily make up to 10,000 denars.
After patch 1.2, dueling with the bandit boss is riskier than before, and if you lose, you might fail your quests. So refuse the duel if you don’t have good weapons and armor or if you have been badly hurt before reaching the boss.
8 Noble Troops
Noble troops are a special line of soldiers in each faction that are more powerful and expensive than regular troops, but they are well worth the investment as they can improve your party’s power significantly. Some of these troops, such as Battanian Highborns and Khuzait’s Noble Sons, are so powerful that you can create powerful armies that only consist of them and perform better than most other compositions that require flexibility and micromanaging.
You can recruit noble troops only from villages bound to castles, not towns. While you hover over a village, you can see the settlement it’s bound to. If that settlement is a castle, you can find a few noble troops to recruit from that village. You can mark these villages on your map by clicking the empty circle next to their name, so you always know where you can find stronger troops when you want new recruits.
7 Becoming A Mercenary
Once you reach clan tier one, you can become a mercenary for one of the main factions of the game. You can do this by speaking to any noble from a faction currently at war, and once you are a mercenary, you can make around 150 to 200 denars for each influence you get. You gain influence by killing bandits and enemy factions and doing various quests.
This is a great way to make money as soon as you get to tier one, and there’s no drawback to becoming a mercenary. You can leave a kingdom and change sides as a mercenary with no consequences, so you don’t need to worry about your relationship with factions that you might want to join later in the game.
6 Hiring Companions
Companions in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord can perform many tasks for your clan, such as leading a separate party, leading trade caravans, being a captain in your army, governing fiefs, or taking certain roles in your parties, such as scout or engineer. You can find companions in taverns when you visit a city, and you can also see the full list of them in the encyclopedia and filter the heroes section by “wanderer. “
13 Best Units In Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord
There are tons of units you can choose from in Mount & Blade 2, but these are the absolute best in the game.
On the encyclopedia page of each companion, you can see their highest skills and decide which one will suit your needs. Companions with the Scouting skill can be great options for becoming a scout or leading a trade caravan. Companions with the Steward skill can be great options for becoming a quartermaster, leading a party, or governing a fief. Companions with the Medicine and Engineering skills can be great Surgeons and Engineers respectively. And finally, companions with high combat skills are the best options for being captains in your army.
5 Party Composition
In the beginning, you mostly recruit low-tier troops and upgrade them by winning fights against looters and bandits. But once you increase your clan tier, your party size, and can upgrade your troops to tier three or higher, it’s time to start thinking about and planning your party’s composition.
In the beginning, the bulk of your army should be infantry and ranged troops. Prioritize shield infantry over two-handed and shock troops as they are generally more useful, and support your infantry line with equal or even a bit more archers, as they can provide more damage output and allow you to approach battles with a more defensive and safe formation. Mounted troops are harder to come by as you need to buy mounts, but once you get to mid-game, even a few high-tier cavalry can provide invaluable support to your army. Mounted archers and skirmishers are a great tool to put pressure on your enemy’s back line and break their formations, but unless you are focusing on Khuzait’s noble troops, they shouldn’t be more than your melee cavalry.
Once you are more experienced with the game’s factions and troops, you can plan your composition based on the factions you are at war with to counter their strengths and exploit their weaknesses. But before you have that knowledge, a well-rounded army with high-tier troops is all you need to win most battles in the game.
4 Trade Rumors
Trading is one of the best ways to get rich in Bannerlord, but getting started without knowing the game’s unique economy system can be difficult, especially if you don’t have any skills in trading. This will become easier once you level up trading to level 50 since, with the first two perks, your profit margins will be color-coded on the trade screen.
Before you unlock the perks that make trading easier, trade rumors can be great hints on what and where to buy and sell your goods. You can gather trade rumors by talking to traveling caravans, talking to civilians in a city or a tavern, or by traveling to a few cities and browsing the trade screen for prices of various goods in them.
3 Investing Your Money
By becoming a mercenary, finishing quests, and winning tournaments, you can make a lot of money in the early game. But once you increase your clan tier and upgrade your troops, you will realize that their expenses will significantly increase, to the point that you can no longer cover them and might go broke.
Before you reach that point, it might be a smart idea to invest your denars to help you with your expenses down the line. Once you have around 15,000 denars (or 10,000 if you chose Aserai as your culture), you can speak with any city notable and form a caravan. You can also buy workshops in cities to add to your passive income, but they can cost anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000 denars.
2 Marriage
In Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, you and your family members can marry other nobles to bring them to your clan. Nobles usually have a high level and high skills and can be exceptional party leaders or governors for your clan. You can also procreate with your significant other if you are both waiting in the same settlement.
Just like finding companions, you can search for single nobles in the encyclopedia and find which ones have the best skills to suit your needs. Once you’ve decided, you can track them down and talk to them, and after passing two separate and difficult persuasion checks, you can marry them. But if you have a low charm skill and are unable to pass these checks, you can talk to their father or clan leader and arrange a marriage. This will cost you more money and might seem a bit medieval, but well, the game is set in a medieval world after all.
1 Recruiting Prisoners
While looters are not worth keeping in your party, once you start fighting stronger bandits and other armies, and with high medicine skill, you can take many strong prisoners from your victories. You can sell these prisoners to ransom brokers for some extra cash, but certain prisoners might serve you better if you recruited them in your party.
Once a prisoner has been in your party for a certain amount of time, you will be able to recruit them to your party. The stronger the prisoner, the longer it takes for them to become available, but it’s sometimes the best way to recruit high-tier troops to your party. Try not to recruit too many prisoners before a fight, as without the appropriate perks your party will lose a lot of morale and perform worse in battle as a result of the newly recruited prisoners.
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord – 10 Things Only Pro Players Know You Can Do
Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is a game full of hidden mechanics. That means that there are certain tips and tricks only the best players know to do.