Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord: Complete Beginner’s Guide

David Mickov
9 Min Read

An action/strategy RPG. In a huge medieval sandbox, you can make a character, negotiate, craft, trade, and take over new lands. Start raising troops to lead into battle, and use a deep but easy-to-understand skill-based combat system to lead and fight with your troops in huge real-time battles.

Here you will be getting the most useful Complete Beginner’s Guide that will help you out a whole lot! Let’s get started.

Complete Beginner’s Guide – Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord

After almost 2 years of the early development process with its ups and downs, Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord is finally released on its first stable patch. It has a lot of good things going for it but if you are a beginner and a newcomer to it, you will be left in awe of how many things there are actually to do.

Here are some of the most important things you will need to know if you are a beginner and they will send you off to a very good start.

Food Variety

This is the single most important thing but also the easiest when playing Bannerlord. You will just need to keep different types of food with you no matter to where you might be going. Having different types of food will mean much more happiness to your soldiers.

With this easy thing to follow you will have much happier soldiers and the morale will almost always be high. Also having more variety of food will level up the Steward perk which will let you have a higher number of party size, as a quartermaster.

Archer Formation

Formations are the most important thing when it comes to leading your soldiers in Mount and Blade Bannerlord. But other than that, you will need to focus on the long-range fire and the archers.

You will want to set up your archers to be with the distance between them. This way even the ones on the far back will be able to constantly be firing toward the enemy army. You will be getting way more kills in battles. Also, don’t place infantry directly in front of them.

Use These Troops

There are some troops that are overall just better than others. You will want to make sure that you are using them

These are the best units that you will want to be using more and more if you want to have a better overall success rate.

  • Legionnaires – super tanky with armor and shield; amazing front-line unit
  • Fiend Champions – they are the best archers in the game; amazing DPS and very high kill count
  • Cataphracts & BannerKnights – they are the best cavalry units in the game
  • Khan’s Guard – the best horse archers in the game; amazing DPS and very fast and agile

Keep using these troops and you will have a much easier game.

Movement Speed

The movement speed of your whole team is the most important thing in the game. You will be less likely to be caught off guard. You will want to be fast on the map but you will also want to be fast while in battles as well.

But the speed of your army on the road map is the most important. Having the ability to move around as wast as you can lets you live longer but also catch enemies off guard much more. You will want to take the fights you want always.

Check your party speed by clicking on the arrow on the bottom right corner of the screen.

  • Horses – don’t have too many. Instead have the right amount to get the maximum speed boost
  • Prisoners – this will slow you down
  • Too many items – this will slow you down a lot
  • Disorganized – this is a debuff that you’ll get for a short time after every battle
  • Game Difficulty – easy to hard changes your speed
  • Perks & Culture – they boost your speed by a lot

Sieges

You can actually press on the little siege icons next to your camp to begin building your siege units. Then after you have finished building it you will see that the enemy fortress will start attacking you too.

That is why you will want to pause the game, and put them in Reserve. Then just before the battle happens you will take them out at the same time. This will change all the sieges that you will go through!

Companions Are Key

You have an Encyclopedia inside the game of Bannerlord. Just press M and you will get to the screen. On the second is the Heroes tab. This is to filter all the names of the companions. They are under the Wanderer’s tab.

Companions are crucial in your army. They will give out so many various roles that you are able to win and turn battles around in your favor. You can also use them as party leaders, army leaders, caravan leaders, governors…

If you click on their name you will see their traits and everything they are good at. You can choose to have death enabled, so make sure to send them back so they don’t die.

Garrison Expenses

Garrison will actually cost you a lot depending on how many soldiers you have placed inside. You can reduce these wages by putting a good Governor but there is an option to do this manually.

Go into the Parties Tab and here you will see a bar that you are able to change for the Party Wage. By default, there is no set limit to Garrison Wages. So if you have some Garrison that is safely inside your empire you don’t actually need to pay high wages for it.

Auto-Resolve Is Dangerous

Auto Resolve is very good and handy when you don’t want to be dealing with the same looters over and over again. But it has lots of risks. Most of the time these battles you will most likely win these without anyone actually dying.

Whereas when you do Auto-Resolve you might get even a companion killed out of nowhere. Do not use it until you have leveled up your Tactics Skills

Cheat Mode

To be able to access the cheat mode of Bannerlord and get all types of weapons and armor, gold, units, skills, and everythingthat you might need, just write this in your console bar:

  • config.cheat_mode 1

Now you can just go to the party menu and choose whatever you want to put in your game.

Try Out Mods

The Modding community is the best thing ever about Mount and Blade Games. Make sure to keep checking out the Steam Workshop to be able to find out the best possible modes that you want to play this game on. You can go all the way from Roman Empire to guns.

That’s everything that you need to know about Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord. We hope that this Complete Beginner’s Guide has helped you out with everything you need to know. Have fun!

ALSO READ: Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord: All Banner Tiers & Effects Guide

This bearded looking fellow on our left is David and he is a 26 year old passionate gamer. He has been an active member of the gaming community from a very young age, specifically from 2003 when he first played Warcraft 3 and discovered tachycardia from how enjoyable and relaxing it was. Gaming for him has been, and still is a way of life style. He loves delving deep into whatever it is he is playing, losing himself into countless of hours discovering everything there is that created that video game. He learns about the backstories, about the development, the creators, fan theories and boy oh boy he's open for discussions about what makes a game great and what doesn't. He can play everything from small Indie games , to big triple A titles. His theory about games is this : small details make big games. So that is why whatever it is that he is playing, he is the guy who discovers 99% of the maps with every little side quest or trophy to be found. That is why his favourite genre is RPG. Having the big explorable created world at your fingertips, where everything from a scary bloodsucking demon to a friendly talking goat can be found and interacted with, as well as immersing yourself into the roleplay game you are playing, is fascinating for him. He is a laid back type of gamer, after a rich history of getting his ass kicked in competitive games. He is very passionate about writing blogs and articles about games, as it is soothing and meditating for him.
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