MOUNT & BLADE II: BANNERLORD
Great mods are available already.
e had a long wait for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord to finally reach us—about eight years, by my count. And the moment it finally arrived in Steam Early Access at the end of March, the modders pounced. Mods for Bannerlord began appearing almost immediately, and continue to arrive every single day. The Mount & Blade games have always been flexible, and the newest entry is no different.
WAnd already we’ve seen some highly creative mods, including a trio that are all based around the same theme: Yelling. A mod called Screamerlord, for instance, lets you use your voice to give orders to your troops while in combat. Your real voice! The name is a bit misleading because you don’t need to actually scream—just talking into your mic will do the trick. If you like yelling, though, you should go for it, because there’s definitely something to be said for getting really immersed in your character.
The mod uses VoiceAttack, a speech recognition program. It’s a premium voice tool, though there is a free trial you can use to see if it’s something you want to pay for. The free version of VoiceAttack will let you use 20 different voice commands for Bannerlord, while a paid version will unlock 50 of them. It doesn’t take long to set up and configure, and before you know it you’ll be galloping across the battlefield and giving orders to your soldiers by simply saying them out loud.
It works really well, too! It’s honestly much easier than tapping function keys to direct your troops, which requires a lot of key combos you may not have memorized yet. With Screamerlord, you can react instantly to the battle without having to lift a finger, and just give a shout when your troops need direction.
BIG UP YOURSELF
Speaking of yelling, you probably already know the wonderful sound
game using the same mod. Why give just yourself a makeover when you can tweak everyone else’s looks, too? One player already used the mod to turn his band of followers into passable versions of the Fellowship of the Ring. Now someone just needs to mod in the whole of Mordor.
If you don’t want to spend the time tinkering with how other characters look, rest easy, because someone else is working on it for you. The NPC Revamp mod is an ongoing project to improve the looks of Bannerlord’s population. Don’t worry, it’s not trying to turn every character into a beauty queen (or king), it’s aiming more for more visually appealing looks, which may include making characters look tougher, grittier, and overall less generic. It’s been updated several times and, at time of writing, several dozen characters in Bannerlord have been overhauled, and there are still plenty more to come. The really cool thing is that, if you like any of these revised character’s looks, you can copy the face codes from the mod and use them for your own character.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
While you’re tinkering around with your own party, you might want to put together a few additional parties—though these will remain independent. The Buy Patrols mod lets you visit any villages you own and hire groups of villagers to protect the area. Bandits and looters might not pose much of a threat to you, but you won’t always be around to protect settlements. Now you can have the people do it themselves, provided you pay them daily wages. It’s a great mod that makes your population feel a bit less helpless.
If you want to go all-in on customizing Bannerlord, the Developer Console mod is essential. It unlocks a dev console so you can enter command codes. There are lots to pick from, including all-out cheats that let you add as much gold as you want to your character, gain levels, add influence and renown, and more. But there are reasons to install this mod beyond just making yourself insta-rich. Bannerlord is in Steam Early Access and there are occasional bugs, so console commands can get you out of a jam. Mostly, though, it’s yet another tool to give you the experience you’re after. That’s what mods are all about: Making you the lord of your own personal realm.