What Bannerlord Doesn't Tell You: 12 Things to Know Before You Start

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is one of those games that will happily let you fail for hours without ever explaining why. The tutorial covers the absolute basics and then steps aside, leaving you to figure out the rest through painful trial and error. Most players spend their first ten hours either haemorrhaging money, fielding an army they can't afford, or wondering why every lord in Calradia seems to despise them.

This guide covers the stuff the game doesn't explain. Not a summary of systems you can read on the store page, but the specific things that will save you real time and frustration from the moment you load in.

1. Do the early quests before anything else

The main quest feels optional because Bannerlord never really pressures you to follow it, but the early stages give you meaningful rewards for doing very little work. The tutorial quests in your starting town will give you denars, influence, and relationship boosts with local lords. These matter a lot in the first few hours when you have almost nothing. Don't ride off into the open world the moment you can. Spend an hour finishing the introductory objectives first.

2. Your starting skills decide your early game more than you think

Bannerlord's character creation looks straightforward but has real consequences. The skills you start with determine how quickly you level early on, because skills gain experience faster when they're already at a higher level. If you start with 30 in a skill, it'll take ages to make meaningful progress. If you start with 80, you'll be unlocking perks within a few hours.

Think about how you want to play before you commit. A trading-focused build benefits enormously from starting Trade high. A cavalry character should max Riding from the start. Don't spread points evenly across everything, it slows progression in all of them.

3. Workshops are passive income, but location matters enormously

Buying a workshop is one of the best early investments in the game, but plenty of players buy one and then wonder why it's barely turning a profit. The issue is almost always location. A workshop produces goods based on what raw materials are available in that town and the surrounding villages. A linen workshop in a town with no flax nearby will produce almost nothing.

Before you buy, talk to the town's merchants and check what goods are being traded locally. Smithies near iron deposits, tanneries near towns with lots of livestock, breweries near grain-producing villages. Get that right and a workshop will quietly generate income while you do everything else.

4. Don't rush into war

Joining a kingdom as a vassal and immediately getting dragged into a war sounds exciting. In practice, if your clan is tier one or two with a handful of troops, you'll spend most of that war getting captured, paying ransoms, and losing everything you've built up. Calradia will still be at war when you're ready for it. Spend time building your clan's renown, your party size, and your finances before you swear fealty to anyone.

5. Morale drops faster than you expect

Your troops' morale affects their performance in battle and their likelihood of deserting. It drops constantly if you're not paying attention to it. The main culprits are running out of food, having too many different troop types with conflicting culture bonuses, and losing battles. Keep your food supplies varied (different food types give stacking morale bonuses), avoid mixing troops from opposing cultures if you can, and don't drag your army into fights you're likely to lose just for the sake of it.

6. The smithing system is broken in your favour if you use it early

Smithing in Bannerlord is genuinely overpowered in the early to mid game if you engage with it. You can craft two-handed swords worth tens of thousands of denars that you can sell for enormous profit. The catch is that smithing uses stamina, which recovers when you wait in a town. The loop is: smelt captured weapons for materials, craft high-value weapons, sell them, wait for stamina to recover, repeat.

Unlocking the right smithing perks early makes this dramatically more efficient. If you're struggling for money, this is the fastest legitimate way to fix that.

7. Companion skills complement yours, not duplicate them

Companions are limited and each one has a fixed skill set. The mistake most new players make is hiring companions who are good at the same things they're already good at. What you actually want is companions whose strengths cover your weaknesses. If you're a combat-focused character with low Medicine, find a companion with high Medicine and make them your surgeon. Low Scouting? Get a companion who specialises in it and assign them as your scout. Party roles are assigned in the party screen and they make a real difference.

8. Relation with lords compounds over time

Bannerlord's relationship system is more important than it first appears. Lords with high relation toward you will support you in kingdom votes, vouch for you with other lords, and are more likely to join your kingdom if you eventually start your own. The easiest ways to build relation are completing quests for them, ransoming captured lords back to their faction rather than keeping them, and fighting alongside them in battles.

Insulting lords, executing prisoners, or raiding villages belonging to their faction will tank your standing fast and it's difficult to recover. Be deliberate about whose goodwill you're building from the start.

9. Horse archers are powerful but require the right tactics

Mounted archers are some of the strongest units in the game but they're also the easiest to waste. If you put them on the front line or let them get surrounded by infantry they'll be slaughtered. Their value is in constant movement, circling infantry formations and pouring arrows in while staying out of melee range.

In manual battles, put your horse archers on a separate formation from your cavalry, set them to skirmish mode, and let them work the flanks while your infantry holds the centre. Done properly, a group of Khuzait horse archers will destroy armies significantly larger than yours.

10. Sieges favour defenders by default

Assaulting a fortified position head-on is expensive in troops even when you win. Before you attempt a siege assault, use siege engines to reduce the garrison and weaken the walls. Build multiple siege towers or rams where possible. If you can starve a garrison out through a blockade rather than storming the walls, that's almost always the better option. The AI defenders have a significant positional advantage and will cut through your troops on the approach.

11. Your clan tier gate-keeps everything important

Almost every meaningful progression in Bannerlord is tied to your clan tier. Tier 1 unlocks companions. Tier 2 lets you hire more of them. Tier 3 lets you create a second party led by a companion. Tier 4 opens up the possibility of being granted a fief. Renown is the primary driver of clan tier, and you earn it through winning battles, completing quests, and tournament victories. Keep an eye on your renown target and push toward the next tier deliberately rather than letting it happen passively.

12. Save often and use multiple slots

Bannerlord can be unpredictable. A battle that looks winnable can turn into a rout. A kingdom vote can go badly and strip you of your fief. A companion you've spent hours developing can get captured and sit in a dungeon for in-game months while you try to raise their ransom. The game does not hold your hand when things go wrong. Save before major battles, before kingdom decisions, and before any action you're not certain about. Keeping several save slots means you always have a point to return to that isn't completely ruined.

Looking for a cheaper way to play?

If you haven't picked up Bannerlord yet, or you're looking to grab the War Sails DLC without paying full price, we compare prices across the major key resellers so you can see where the best current deal is before you buy.