Mount and Blade Bannerlord has finally hit consoles following the game’s full release! With many new players hitting the game I thought I should take the time to share some of my best tips that I can think of. Having personally played the game for over 400 hours after purchasing it on release day, hopefully I have some wisdom that can make it easier for new players and veterans alike!
This guide will broadly give tips on many different areas of the game. It will hopefully feature some things you didn’t know and help you conquer all of Calradia, should that be your goal.
Contents:
You can select any of the headings below to jumps straight to that section of the page.
- 1. Buy Cheap From Villages and Sell to Far Away Towns
2. Smithing With Friends! - 3. Making Block Direction Automatic
- 4. Take Village Quests to Improve Charm
- 5. Save A Lot!
- 6. Learn to Couch Lance
- 7. Recruit Unique Units From Each Culture
- 8. Never Run Out of Food
- 9. Hire Horse Units and Horses to Move Faster on the Map
- 10. Take Over Fiefs Easily After Sieges
1. Buy Low, Sell High
One of the things that will get you stuck in Bannerlord is money. Alongside making sure your party stays well-fed, you will have to pay them their daily wage. One of the best ways to make money in Mount and Blade Bannerlord is by trading. You can purchase cheap goods in villages that produce them. Keep an eye out which icons appear above each villages. For example, you can usually purchase wood or horses in a great price in some areas and sell them for large profit in towns with no access to these resources.
One of my personal favorite small trade routes is to purchase a lot of wood from the Battanian forest area as there are a lot of villages there producing wood. I will then go and sell this wood to the Aserai desert area towns. The best thing about trading is, the more you do trading the better your prices will get and the more money you can make from each journey.
2. Use Companions to Smith When You’re Tired
My personal favorite feature in Bannerlord from Warband is the inclusion of the Smithy. Here, you can create custom weapons for you and your companions to wield in combat. You can also sell these weapons to become the richest blacksmith in the lands. One annoying thing about smithing through is that your character tends to get tired after melting down 5 swords.
One thing you can do to counter-act this, (if you don’t have the PC version and access to mods), is to utilize your companions smithing ability as well! Most people may not know that you can also have your companions smith as well and raise their smithing skill/perks.
Simply select your character’s portrait at the bottom left of the smithing screen and you can change who is performing the smithing across the companions currently in your party. You should try to do this if you have a lot of weapons you want to break down, or if you are mass-producing two handed swords to make a great deal of denars.
3. Turn on Auto-Block If You’re Struggling to Block
In Bannerlord you have to control your character’s attacks and blocks directionally. What a lot of new players don’t know is that you can change this in the settings so your character will always block in the correct direction. If you really just aren’t getting the hang of combat and need a bit of help or just want to get through the early game a bit easier, I’d suggest turning this on.
Auto-directional block is only available in single player however, so you won’t be able to block like you’re in the Matrix when playing multiplayer. Still, this can be a game-changer if you find yourself constantly defeated because you aren’t great with the directional blocking controls.
To change this, in the pause menu go to the Settings. Under the Gameplay tab you will find the option Control Block Direction under Controls. Simply change this to Auto and every time an enemy is attacking, you can press the block in shortly before and they will always block in the correct direction.
4. Improve Charm by Taking Quests
One of the skills I personally find the most difficult to raise my skill level in is charm. Charm is extremely helpful through the entire campaign as it will help you deal with conversations in quests and also decisions with other lords.
You can improve your charm quickly enough by taking quests with different characters. Some of the easier ‘minor quests’ can be found within villages. You will generally just have to take out bandit nests, find and destroy someone or help find supplies. Another great thing is that this will improve your character’s honor and after completing a few quests your character may get the Honorable trait which will help a great deal in convincing certain lords and ladies to see your point of view.
5. Tweak the Settings If You’re Struggling
The great thing about Mount and Blade is the fact that it is a sandbox experience. The game is extremely replayable and offers multiple different ways to enjoy the game. The experience is also very customizable. At any time in Single Player, you are able to change some of the difficulty settings. You can change these to your personal preference, it doesn’t have to just be easy, medium or hard.
For example I personally like to keep the combat on difficult but like to give myself a bit more party speed whilst on the main map. Open up the Campaign Options if you find yourself struggling with the game in any aspect or finding the experience too easy to be enjoyable. The settings that can be customized from this menu are:
- Player Received Damage: The damage the player character will receive from enemy attacks
- Friendly Troops Received Damage: The amount of damage your troops will receive compared to other units
- Recruitment Difficulty: The easier you make this, the more troops you can recruit from villages and towns. Otherwise you have to befriend the lords first
- Map Movement Speed Simply how fast your party moves on the map
- Persuasion Success: You can give yourself an easier time convincing others with this setting
- Combat AI Difficulty: In general how the AI will attack, flank, block and attack in general. At high levels strong units may even feint attacks.
6. You Can Couch Lances/Spear Brace For Extra Damage
If you plan on fighting from horseback with spears that you are probably going to need to learn the best lance trick there is in Bannerlord for big damage. You can brace your spears whilst on your horse at certain speeds and then run them into enemies Jousting-style for huge damage. To do this, you must first have a weapon which allows this type of attack. (You can see whether the weapon is compatible by hovering over it in the trade/inventory screen.)
When riding fast enough, you will see an icon on the bottom left of the screen showing that you may brace your spear. TO do this, press X. Your character will aim their spear down and brace it against themselves. Simply line up on of your enemies and knock them down! The faster you go, the more damage you will do.
7. Equip Your Companions With the Best Gear
The customization options in Bannerlord don’t just stop at your character. Any member of your clan is also available to be customized within the game. You can customize basically everything about them as well as long as they are in your clan.
Whilst in the inventory screen, you can select the arrows at the top of the screen to move between different party members and equip them how you wish.
Within the skills screen you can select which skills you wish the party member to have and which perks you are going to level up for them. Using this, you can create specialized units tailored exactly how you wish to have them. Want an archer with the best bow but also heavy armor and a two-hander? Make one of your companions exactly how you wish.
Using the smithy and outfitting your companions, you can create a very custom character with custom weapons to boot! Very cool indeed.
8. Keep An Eye On Food Levels
Along with staying on top of enemy units you will also have to keep watch over your own army management. One of the things you will have to make sure you are keeping an eye on is the food stocks of your army. If you suddenly don’t have enough food to feed your men morale will drop very, very fast. This will lead to many of your men abandoning the army.
The two big things that will keep men by your side is having enough food to feed them and having enough denars to pay their daily wage. Grain is a cheap way of keeping men fed but they will be even happier the more different types of food that are available.
9. Hire Cavalry to Move Faster on the Map
While we previously wrote about how to improve your party speed on a seperate post on Set Ready Game, it’s definately worth mentioning that you can quickly get a little bit faster depending on a few things. Just by hiring a few cavalry units, your movement speed on the main map will increase.
This will also be true for any extra horses you have in the inventory. For every infantry unit in your army, if you have any spare horses in the inventory they will ride them when travelling the map. You won’t actually see this in battle but you can hover over the party speed icon in the bottom right of the UI to see a breakdown of everything making your party faster or slower.
10. Wait for a Fief to Be Taken and Swoop in Afterwards
One of the most difficult parts in the game is getting your first castle or town. It can be extremely difficult especially if you are planning on starting your own kingdom and not joining one of the already established ones. There is one trick I can share to help you get that castle you’ve been eyeing off.
The difficult part of taking a castle is the fact that there will be a large force generally within the castle walls. If you haven’t taken a fief yet, you will only have your small group of men to try to take them over. If you wait untill another kingdom takes it over then you may get a good oppurtunity.
Immediately after a castle/town is taken is when it is most vulnerable. Once a kingdom takes it over they will generally just station a few weak men there and move on to the next objective in their war. This presents a great opportunity for your kingdom to swoop in and re-take it for yourself.
Just make sure that the enemy army has moved far enough away that they don’t turn around and get you while you are sieging the castle…
