[Top 25] Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord Best Mods You Should Use
A Roman legion stands battered against axe-wielding foes, courtesy of the Eagle Rising mod.
This is a list of the 25 best mods currently around for Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord. If you ever wondered where to start with the huge number of mods for this game, this is for you. This list is subject to change, because there is probably no more creative or hard working modding community than the one surrounding this game. If you get to the end of this list and exclaim,”Holy crap! These mods make this game unbelievably incredible!” I am right there with you.
25. ScreamerLord
Mod Showcase
ScreamerLord is a good mod for that little bit of added immersion. With this mod installed, instead of tapping keys during a battle to command your troops, you simply speak into a microphone. The mod uses Windows software that is on most computers, but if it isn’t on yours there are workarounds. It’s a small mod, but definitely worth putting on your next playthrough. I double dog dare one of you readers to play an entire campaign only screaming commands at your troops and record it. Welcome to YouTube stardom.
Why ScreamerLord is fun:
- Gives you the ability to feel like the warlord you are as you scream CHAAAAAAAAARGE at your troops and watch them decimate the enemy.
- Helpful tactically, as you don’t have to stop to look at buttons and select commands through menus in the middle of battle.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3
24. RTS Camera
Mod Showcase
RTS Camera allows you to play Bannerlord from, imagine this, the perspective of a real-time strategy game, ala Total War or Men of War. It also gives you an extensive menu to use in combat that includes slow motion, formation settings, cheats and more. If you feel like you just don’t have enough time to set your troops up with the tactics you like, or the perspective to do so, this mod is for you. It also allows you to play as one of your soldiers in case you die (which happens a lot, at least for me). It does all this at the cost of immersion, but if you’re just looking for a more casual (and cinematic) good time, this is a must have.
Why RTS Camera is fun:
- Allows you to have a much easier time with battle tactics.
- Gives you the option to make the game much more cinematic with the addition of a free camera and slow motion.
- It adds slow motion into a giant medieval battle simulator. Come on. How could that not be awesome?
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/355
23. FireLord
Mod Showcase
FireLord gives you one of medieval times’ most epic inventions: fire arrows (and swords)! With this mod, you can adjust the parameters of ranged troops so that a percentage of their projectiles are on fire. When these flaming weapons hit troops, they have a chance to set them on fire too. It makes projectiles much more deadly, and more importantly, it makes the game look incredible, especially during night sieges. You can also get a fire sword for yourself that has the same effect when you hit people.
Why FireLord is fun:
- It adds a huge amount of epicness to any battle, especially at night time.
- It feels really cool to watch your archers rip through your enemies with flaming arrows.
- Commanding your troops with a giant sword that’s on fire and then obliterating your opponents with it is a pretty good feeling.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/795
22. Caravans Give Trade XP
(Mod is showcased at 3:30 in video)
This mod doesn’t sound like much until you realize what you can do with trading in Bannerlord. This mod makes it so that your caravans make you trade xp passively, which otherwise takes three eons and no less than a million trips back and forth from different cities. Other than the fact that this mod just makes sense, the last perk in the trading tree (currently at 300 in trade) allows you to buy and sell fiefs. That means castles and cities are up for grabs if you have the money for it (which you probably will by the time you get this perk) and you can play God by buying your way to victory.
Why Caravans Give Trade XP is fun:
- It gets rid of one of the most annoying grinds in the game.
- It allows you to get one of the best perks in the game quickly and while having fun elsewhere.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/907
21. Telepathy
Mod Showcase
Telepathy eliminates the other most annoying grind in Bannerlord. In order to complete the main quest, you have to talk to more than 10 lords that are strewn across the entire map and constantly moving. It could literally take an in-game year to travel all the way to them just to talk to them and then move onto the next one. Telepathy is just a telephone; you find a lord in the encyclopedia and click on them, and they appear like you just walked up to them and you can talk to them.
Why Telepathy is fun:
- It is incredibly convenient.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/1203
20. Developer Console
Mod Showcase
Sometimes, cheating in a video game is just what you need after a long day at work. This mod gives you complete access to the developer console of Bannerlord to perform actions such as giving yourself an army of tier 5 berserkers, giving yourself an entire nation’s land just because that one lord dared to attack you, or making yourself the richest and most brilliant man to ever live. It’s great if you want to make videos, because you can set yourself up however you want to for your content.
Why Developer Console is fun:
- Nothing like a good session of playing God in an otherwise fairly difficult game.
- Huge armies.
- Massive wealth.
- Becoming a medieval genius.
- Becoming a golden god and blessing who you wish to bless and obliterating who you don’t.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/4
19. Agriculture Estate
Mod Showcase
This mod is a personal favorite of mine. Agriculture Estate allows you to buy land in villages and give prisoners as slave labor to make passive income for you. There are more than a few features to this mod, including slave revolts, land being destroyed by raids, and even a business ledger. This is the best expansion I’ve seen to village mechanics in this game across any of the mods I’ve looked at, and I highly recommend you snatch it up in addition to some of the other mods on this list.
Why Agriculture Estate is fun:
- It gives you a significant new source of income in the game.
- It fleshes out villages so they are more than just trading posts and recruitment centers.
- It gives you something else useful to do with your prisoners.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3088
18. Detailed Character Creation
Mod Showcase
This mod allows you to do two fun things: make your character how you want them to look, and make NPCs how you want them to look. The possibilities with this one are endless. Play as a baby. Play as a decrepit old man. Make the leader of a nation you hate look like that horrible baby monster from The Witcher 3.
Why Detailed Character Creation is fun:
- Look however you want.
- Make NPC lords look however you want.
- Create Alice in Wonderland: Bannerlord Edition.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/118
17. Bandit Militias
Mod Showcase
In this mod, doom lingers around the corner if you are not careful. Bandit parties will join together under leaders and slowly level up and grow in numbers until they can overtake even the mightiest of armies. This adds an added element of danger and difficulty to the game, and can be very advantageous or very disastrous during wartime. All in all, it adds some fun variety to the game!
Why Bandit Militias is fun:
- Bandits become more than just training fodder and become a real threat to the entire continent.
- Helps balance the game out.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/1768?tab=description
16. Cultured Start
(Showcase starts at 2:30 in video)
Cultured Start is pretty much a must have kind of mod. It gives you a ton of options for how you want to start the game, from coming into the world as a looter to coming into it a king with a kingdom. It gives you the option to skip the main quest, start in a certain region, and gives you more backstory choices to play with your starting stats more. It is truly just an improvement on the main game.
Why Cultured Start is fun:
- You get a lot more freedom about how you want to start a campaign.
- Yet another mod that allows you to get rid of the stupid main quest grind.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/212
15. Kaose’s Parties Sizes
(Showcase starts at 2:00 in video)
This mod allows you to customize party sizes for any faction in the game. You can make looter swarms a thousand strong, or make Vlandia have puny armies. You can set spawn rates for every kind of party, including caravans and villagers. There’s so much you can do with this mod, especially in conjunction with Calradia Expanded Kingdoms, which will be later on this list.
Why Kaose’s Parties Sizes is fun:
- Make Bannerlord a looter survival game if the Khuzaits just steamrolled everyone again.
- Make the Khuzaits have pitiful little 10-troop horse archer armies, then take their towns and execute their lords like the plague they are.
- Make the game so unbalanced and wonky that playing it is just survival, and death and defeat, inevitable.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/684
14. More Troops
Mod Showcase
This mod is an intensive overhaul of every factions troops in the game, including minor factions. This man has added troop trees to almost every single faction, completely rebalancing the game (and making it way more fun). The level of diversity here is incredible. No matter your playstyle, you can only gain by putting this mod on your next playthrough. It’s only problem is that it may not mesh super well with some of the complete overhaul mods that add in a bunch of new kingdoms and troops.
Why More Troops is fun:
- Impressive level of diversity across all factions and troop trees.
- More balanced playthrough.
- A huge amount of strategic possibilities that open up with this mod installed.
- The troops look pretty great.
- Ability to recruit minor faction troops.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2121
13. Xorberax’s Deadly Horse Charges
Mod Showcase
If you’ve ever played Bannerlord and wondered why a thousand-pound animal charging into a human being at the pace of a car did two damage and didn’t even knock them over, this is the mod for you. Install this mod, recruit a bunch of cavalry, put on some smooth jazz and bask in the bliss of trampling line infantry like rats under your steel hooves. It’s a whole lot of fun and, as a bonus, is a lot more realistic.
Why Xorberax’s Deadly Horse Charges is fun:
- Lots of horse trampling.
- Horsey go zoom zoom, little swordsman go smush smush.
- Archers? HA!
- Calvary takes its rightful place as the absolute best type of unit in a field battle, at least until those pesky spears start to appear....
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/386
12. Realistic Battle
(Showcase starts at 5:30 in video)
This mod does exactly as described. Armor begins to serve a more nuanced and powerful role in combat here, because this mod adds in several new damage types as well as basing projectile damage on the kinetic energy of it when it hits a target. Basically, maces do better against heavy armor than a short sword would, and if you shoot an arrow from three stories up, expect it to obliterate whoever it hits. It also overhauls the AI to make them much smarter with tactics, and fixes a lot of issues they have during combat. It has a ton of other features that you can read in the mod description, but to sum it up, it completely overhauls the combat system in a smart and realistic way.
Why Realistic Battle is fun:
- Combat is more balanced than it was previously.
- Battles become more challenging, more thought-provoking, and ultimately more rewarding.
- Watching puny Imperial swords bounce off of executioner-axe wielding Palace Guards as they butcher them is now a fun possibility with this mod.
- Calvary charges actually work a little!!!!
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/791
11. Rulership
(Showcase starts at 2:45 in video)
Rulership adds a feature that needs to be added to the vanilla game. When you have your own kingdom, you have to gain vassals either by persuading other clans to join your nation, or by them choosing to, usually after their faction has been losing badly. With this mod, you can make your companions into vassals so your kingdom can have vassals that are, well, it’s vassals! This is huge, because otherwise you are stupidly outnumbered with no recourse except to cheese the game’s currently broken systems.
Why Rulership is fun:
- You get to make vassals that are not borrowed.
- It makes your kingdom actually feel like YOUR kingdom and not a conglomeration of traitors attempting to take established, honorable countries.
- It makes it so having your own kingdom isn’t akin to the stress of being forced to micromanage the pizza shop you opened three years ago thinking it would be nice to be a business owner, only to land yourself in world-record level debt and live in constant fear of looming poverty.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/380
10. Freelancer
Mod Showcase
This mod gives you a different way to get your foot in the door of power at the start of a campaign. With Freelancer installed, you can go up to any lord and enlist in their army as a soldier. You will start out at the bottom rung, with poor equipment and a small wage, but if you prove yourself in the field of battle, those things will change drastically for you. This is another one of those mods that should really just be added in as a gameplay feature by Taleworlds, but until then, Freelancer is a great mod for increased freedom and immersion.
- You get to play from the perspective of a soldier in a lord’s army, as opposed to the commander.
- It’s a fun way to get through the beginning grind of the game as opposed to the usual trade spam/looter hunting/becoming a mercenary.
- It’s really great for RP. Your character was in the army of a great/terrible lord, clawed his/her way up the ranks, and then became the greatest lord Calradia had ever seen. Really helps you feel like you made a legend, not just a person.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2831
9. Distinguished Service
Mod Showcase
This mod allows you to take soldiers that have performed impressively in battle and turn them into companions. These companions are not like ordinary companions either; they keep their equipment, their skills, and get huge points into other skills of your choosing when they become companions. This is a fantastic mod for building a group of companions that are actually well-rounded and useful, which they often need to be in this game due to the enemy outnumbering and often overpowering you.
Why Distinguished Service is fun:
- You can get attached to your companions from recruitment to promotion to ascendancy into companionship, then cry when they foolishly charge into a looter horde and get stoned to death.
- It allows you to essentially breed much stronger companions then you would normally have just by fighting battles.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/1101
8. Improved Garrisons
Mod Showcase
In my opinion, this is the premiere gameplay improvement mod when it comes to city/castle management. If Taleworlds does nothing else with these systems, they should add everything from this mod into the base game. This mod allows you to hire highly customizable recruiters to fill up your town/castle garrisons, training templates so the troops in your garrison level like you want them to, the ability to turn parts of your garrison into guard party patrols to protect your villages, and much, much more. This is a must have for any playthrough. Use this once, you will never go back.
Why Improved Garrisons is fun:
- Do you like it when your games have vitally important features that work in a fun, intuitive way? That’s what this mod does for garrisons.
- Eliminates some of the grind of recruiting and training troops.
- Gives you a way to combat your villages being raided constantly without you having to walk circles around your settlements instead of going to war.
You can (and should) get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/688
7. Gun and Powder
Mod Showcase
This mod adds guns to a medieval game. That’s pretty ridiculous. And pretty awesome. Every major country gets a pike unit and a firearm unit, and so no matter where you are you can charge into the enemy archers only to brown your pants when your foes begin to open up on you and your steed with small arms fire. You can repay them in turn by stocking your castles with muskets, so the only thing they find when they approach your walls is their gray matter behind them.
Why Gun and Powder is fun:
- Come on. It’s guns in a medieval strategy game.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3075
6. Diplomacy
Mod Showcase
This, in my opinion, is the best mod for improving non-complete overhaul Bannerlord. This overhauls the diplomacy system between countries, which is currently a barren wasteland of untapped potential. It allows for such things as non-aggression pacts, usurping ai kingdoms’ thrones, rebellions within the kingdoms, alliances, war exhaustion and more. It takes the diplomacy system that barely does anything in vanilla Bannerlord and makes it come alive. Use this in conjunction with other mods that improve the politics of the game to make a diplomacy system ala that of Crusader Kings or Total War.
Why Diplomacy is fun:
- The ai can no longer do silly things like declare war right after making peace due to non-aggression pacts.
- You can finally become the rightful king of Vlandia by usurping that old bastard Derthert.
- You can create political factions within kingdoms that can cause civil wars and rebellion factions.
- It is literally almost a full-fledged political system that balances out the game and makes for super fun and interesting surprises, as well as a different playthrough everytime.
- If those Khuzaits come a knocking on your door again, make alliances and rid the world of them once and for all.
- THE FREEDOM TO PLAY THE GAME IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/832
5. Eagle Rising
Mod Showcase
This mod overhauls Calradia to have the Romans in it, along with a host of other new factions replacing many of the old ones. Okay, look, if you’re playing a game like this, you probably want to have a huge and awesome Roman legion to run around a stomp your enemies, and this is what will let you do it. It adds a bunch of new troops, Romans, looks amazing and is compatible with most of the mods on this list.
Why Eagle Rising is fun:
- R O M A N S.
- The units look super great, and there’s a ton of new equipment added along with the troops.
- You can get a whole new campaign experience, especially as the mod gets further developed. Mods like this are where boredom goes to die!
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2428
4. Tetsojin (Ronin)
Mod Showcase
This mod adds samurai into Bannerlord, along with 4 new towns and 2 new castles and a new kingdom. There is a whole new troop tree for this faction as well as incredible looking armor and weapons, and the mod is only growing towards a complete Bannerlord overhaul. Asian medieval warfare has entered the building.
Why Ronin is fun:
- You get to play as (or against) the samurai with powerful troops and very cool equipment.
- The new faction is very fleshed out and makes any playthrough much more interesting.
- It’s really cool to play as a samurai empire conquering a western continent. Seriously. You should try it.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2564
3. The Trials of the Seven Kingdoms
Mod Showcase
Oh yes. This mod overhauls THE ENTIRE VANILLA MAP to make it a huge and accurate depiction of Westeros of the Game of Thrones universe. It also includes whole new troop trees. This mod is being worked on currently too, so expect much more to come in the future. It’s going to be a fun ride.
Why The Trials of the Seven Kingdoms is fun:
- It’s an entirely new map with new kingdoms and new troops.
- You can conquer the world of Game of Thrones as whoever you want to be.
- Did I mention it’s absolutely massive?
- It’s getting better all the time because of its beloved developers.
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2560
2. Calradia at War
Mod Showcase
This is one of my absolute favorite mods. Calradia at War adds in 21 new factions, literally hundreds of new troops, and a huge amount of spawns into the base game (along with much more). Not only does it have all this, but it’s extremely compatible with almost all other mods. Do we like mayhem? Yes, yes I think we do.
Why Calradia at War is fun:
- The mod fills the world to the brim with huge diversity in factions and troops, some strong and some weak.
- It pairs very well with most other mods, making for a significantly more fun campaign experience.
- Increases the difficulty and satisfaction of conquering the whole map.
- What’s the matter you apes!!??! Do you wanna live forever??!?!
You can get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/411
Calradia Expanded/Kingdoms
Mod Showcase
If you get no other mod on this list, get Calradia Expanded/Kingdoms. It is technically two mods, but they are really meant to be played together. Calradia Expanded adds 14 towns, 8 castles and 77 villages into the game, while Calradia Kingdoms adds 8 whole new kingdoms into the game. It makes the continent of Calradia filled to the brim with exciting new kingdoms, politics, troop trees and as of recently, boats! It is a blast and, best of all, it’s compatible with mods like Calradia at War and Diplomacy.
Why Calradia Expanded/Kingdoms is fun:
- If you like a huge open world that is absolutely packed with diversity and great times to be had, you’re in the right place.
- It can be paired with other mods to essentially turn Bannerlord into the ultimate game (like when the Power Rangers combine into those huge robots!)
- This is, truly, the way the game was meant to be played.
You should absolutely get the mod here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2828
If you liked this article, and want to read more like it, check out the links below:
https://www.gamersdecide.com/pc-games/mount-and-blade-2-bannerlord
https://www.gamersdecide.com/pc-game-news/new-world-total-war-warhammer-2-set-double-campaign-map
https://www.gamersdecide.com/pc-games/total-war-rome-ii
