character let loose a roar at the end of
a battle right alongside your bloodied,
battered, yet still loyal soldiers is a bit
of a thrill and feels like it should have
been in Bannerlord in the first place.
Speaking of yelling, there’s one
more mod with a more practical use
for raising your voice. The Yell to
Inspire mod turns your warcry into a
character ability, complete with a
cooldown. Tap a key to issue a yell,
and it’ll provide a morale boost to
your soldiers within a radius of 15
meters. It works on the opposing
army as well, only the other way—if
your enemies seem to be growing
demoralized, your fearsome shout
could push them over the edge and
send them fleeing. The cooldown and
range means you’ll have to use it
tactically, making this mod a nice
strategic addition to combat sessions.
For a game that doesn’t have the
most lifelike characters or anything
approaching photorealistic graphics,
Bannerlord is surprisingly brutal
when it comes to violence. Combat
can be a bit wonky as stiff-armed
soldiers shuffle around with their
legs pointed one way and their torsos
another, but as wooden as these
people appear, it’s still gruesome to
drive a lance into someone’s chest or
thump an axe into their head, or
witness someone falling off a horse to
be brutally swarmed by an angry
crowd bearing spears and clubs.
But Bannerlord still shies away
from true gruesomeness because
arms, legs, and heads stay attached
no matter how much you hack and
slash at them. The Dismemberment
Mod changes that. With this mod
installed, if you deliver a fatal blow to
someone’s head with a weapon that
does cut damage, like a sword, there’s
a chance it’ll fly off in a shower of
gore. Gross, but effective. It’s
customizable, too: You can choose the
percentage of the time a decisive
neck strike will result in a
decapitation. There’s even an option
for activating a brief period of slow
motion when you pop someone’s
head off, so it feels like a real
finishing move. Brutal? Definitely.
But like I said, the game is already
pretty brutal even without it.
There’s a less grisly mod that
changes the way you hack and slash
at enemies, but it has a much more
profound impact on the nature of
combat. Most weapons, when swung
at an enemy, will only damage the
first enemy you hit, even if there’s a
cluster of them within range.
Xorberax’s Cut Through Everyone
mod changes this, so if you swing a
sword at a group your blow won’t
stop at the first guy it hits, or even the
second. Your slash will continue,
cutting everyone within its arc,
meaning you can do a whole mess ofdamage on several enemies with one
big swing. It’s definitely pretty OP in
that respect—you’re not meant to be a
super soldier that can kill five people
with one big swing. But that’s exactly
what makes this so much fun.
If you want to focus less on taking
people apart and more on putting
people together, a wonderful option
is the Detailed Character Creation
mod. Bannerlord’s character
customization is already great—
there’s even asymmetry sliders you
can play with for more realistic faces
than a lot of games allow. But it’s
lacking in other areas. This mod lets
you use new sliders to change the
weight, muscular build, and age of
your character.
Even better, you can customize
the looks of other characters in thegame 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.MAJOR MODS, ANALYZED
MOD SPOTLIGHT
IF YOU SWING A
SWORD AT A
GROUP YOUR BLOW
WON’T STOP AT THE
FIRST GUY IT HITSBANNER SCORE What your banner says about you
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basically a 20
percent. Be gentle.2
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seen a real horse.
He... he did his best.3
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