Best Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Mods on PC 2020
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is TaleWorlds Entertainment's latest installment in its incredibly popular Mount & Blade series of PC games. We love it thus far, even though it's still in Early Access development, having new features and improvements implemented regularly. That hasn't prevented the modding community from releasing a few good mods, however.
Fix All The Things
Bannerlord Tweaks is a collection of... well, tweaks to the game. These include a bunch of improvements like reworked crafting stamina, tournament rewards, hideout battles, settlements, sieges, and everything else in between. The list of tweaks is massive, and you should check it out before downloading the mod. A whole host of settings can be configured in-game to your liking.
Get On With It Already
To render conversations in 3D with model interactions, the game needs to hop you into a loading screen, which can become annoying when you're going around talking to people. Fast Dialogue looks to fix this by removing the loading screens altogether, but this does come at the cost of no longer having face-to-face chats.
Hello, You
You can already create yourself in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord with some degree of accuracy, so long as you have a spare few hours to fine-tune all the sliders on the character creation screen. This mod adds yet more options further to customize your character, including age, and more.
Diverse Landscape
Have you ever felt like wartime in Calradia felt a little empty? This is what Calradia at War looks to fix with 21 new minor religious, deserter, bandit, peasant, and racial factions. You'll be met with new random events, custom AI, spawns, hostilities, troop trees, and a Calradia truly at war.
AAAAAAARGH!
This is an interesting mod that allows you to use yell-based perks, which are great for improving nearby troop morale in battle. These shouts are on cooldown between uses, but are incredibly useful, especially if you want to cause fleeting allies to return to battle, and even have a negative impact on your foes.
True Sandbox
This mod is incredibly simple. It disables the main questline, the tutorial, and even gives you a kingdom without any issue with other lords. If you simply want to get started in the sandbox and create your own storyline, this is the mod for you. Coming from Skyrim, you could think of this mod like Alternative Life.
Better Looking Clay
The non-playable characters (NPCs) in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord aren't the worse looking models produced in gaming, but if you wanted some characters that look a little more realistic, the NPC Revamp 9.0 mod is for you. This isn't a beautifying mod that makes everything look like a model but instead keeps the realistic aesthetics.
At A Glance
This handy mod adds icons to the names of settlements across Calradia. A crown represents noble troops available for recruitment. Blue exclamation point represents an available quest for you to take. Finally, a bracelet showcases a tournament underway. No longer do you have to click on settlements to see what's going on.
How to install mods in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Why you can trust Windows Central
Installing mods in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a streamlined process, thanks to using Vortex and ModNexus. This is the same platform we enjoy for hit games like Skyrim Special Edition, which has thousands of mods available that can all be installed but with a few clicks. The same goes for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.
The mod manager (known as Vortex) will be able to download, install and manage all your favorite Bannerlord mods. Everything installed using Vortex will be available the next time you launch Bannerlord. Just be careful to watch out for incompatibilities between mods, which can occur when you have two similar mods installed.
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Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.