Warband: Best Mods

Welcome to my cRPG blog on the best mods for Warband. The best mods for Warband are Brytenwalda, Prophesy of Pendor and Phantasy Calradia.

cf. Warband Review.

Warband Mods: Ranked

Warband spawned a modding community to rival Neverwinter Nights. Some mods expand the Native gameworld whereas other have custom worlds. Some mods are concerned with game balance, others not. Most Warband mods are good because the foundation or underlying systems of Native Warband are rock solid, but there are several mods that I think are a cut above the rest.

Brytenwalda Warband

Prophesy of Pendor

Phantasy Calradia

Perisno Warband

Nova Aetas Warband

Suvarnabhumi Mahayuth Warband

Diplomacy 4 Litdum

Light & Darkness: Heroes of Calradia

Floris Warband

Warband Battle Size Changer

Warband Battle size Changer allows us to increase the size of battles in Warband. Set it to 1,000 units and shed a tear for the epicness that ensues.

You could also just edit battle_size in rgl_config in My Documents. The max setting in rgl is 5.0000, which equates to about 200 vs. 200 battles (without needing a continuation).

TweakMB

TweakMB allows us to tweak the game the way we want it, without needing knowledge of the files.

Morgh's Editor

Morgh's Editor allows us to add our own troops and items or edit existing ones.

Polished Landscapes

You don't need Polished Landscapes if you're running Floris. Basically, it just makes the grass and trees not look someone took a dump on your screen. Used in many mods, including Gekokujo. Note that there are many different links with outdated versions of this mod, don't get creative and look it up yourself, just blindly click on my link and everything will work.

Brytenwalda

Brytenwalda is harder and more realistic than most others. It's set in Dark Ages of the British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland). The ambient sountrack is well-chosen; it's never annoying or repetitive, and it sets the mood.

This mod is... hard. The beginning can be like pulling teeth. Combat is much more realistic than most other mods. For example, archers will strafe and backpedal, making them harder to pin down. Heavy armor penalizes Power Strike and Power Draw, but offers much more protection than in Native Warband. Even early on, there are some pretty scary mobs getting about that make Native Sea Raiders seem like wusses (Frankish and Dena Raiders).

By default, this mod has quite a few hardcore features switched to "on" in its Options menu, such as breakable weapons, fatigue, falling over, bleeding, legshots, decapitation, drowning and armor penalties.

Troops trees emphasize infantry and skirmishers more than cavalry. On the open battlefield, we can't just bulldoze everything with Mamluke and Slaver Chief cavalry like we could in Native Warband. Brytenwalda is more about shieldwalls. Bows/xbows are also not so effective. You're not going to find Masterwork War Bows in Brytenwalda loaded with +3 khergit or bodkin arrows, much less the +12 steel arrows found in Floris or the +8 shield-penetrating steel bolts in Light & Darkness. Brytenwalda is about realism and the Dark Ages, and that means throwing javelins and axes.

I'll say it again... this mod is hard but rewarding. Much more rewarding than Prophesy of Pendor, which is a faceroll in comparison.

Brytenwalda is also quite taxing on low-end systems, both in terms of CPU, RAM and GPU. You will need a decent PC to run this even if you have nerfed every setting to its lowest.

Just like in Native Warband, it's best to roll with a physically strong main character (one-handed weapon and shield + bow, Power Attack and Power Draw) and recruit companion Heroes from town taverns ASAP. Build wealth and then get everyone in your Company horses or you will be run down even by infantry mobs. Get everyone good armor, helms and shields or they will get owned on the battlefield. Pretty much every companion, even the tough Pict ones, should have one-handed weapon and shield setups for staying power. At least until we get good at the game.

Gekokujo

Gekokujo might seem like it's hung the game when you start off; be patient and wait.

Warband Tweaks

Warband is a CPU-intensive game. During large battles (battlefield, sieges), the game may start to lag and even turn into a slideshow. You can avoid this by reducing the Battle Size in the Options screen. If your GPU isn't that good, you should also reduce the graphical settings. Likewise, if you have low-end onboard audio hardware, you may get a performance boost by disabling sound variation.

You can also perform tweaks in the rgl_config.ini file located in ..Documents\Mount&Blade Warband. To return the file to its default, unedited state, simply delete the file and re-run Warband.

The game should also run better on DirectX 7, and in Windowed mode. This can be set via the configuration menu:

When in-game, you can switch between Windowed and Fullscreen modes by hitting Alt + Enter.

The cool thing about Windowed mode is that the game keeps running even when you alt-tab to another application, such as Chrome. So you can just set your Mamlukes to charge and go and do something else, until you hear their victory cries.

Warband Cheats

First, load up a savegame.

Then, click Character, Click Statistics in the bottom left, then click Export Character.

The character will be exported to ..\Documents\Warband\Characters as [your character name].txt.

Now, alt-tab out of the game and open that txt file in your text editor (I recommend Notepad++).

I recommend only editing the following lines:

money = 250
attribute_points = 0
skill_points = 0
weapon_points = 0

For example, to something like:

money = 100000
attribute_points = 100
skill_points = 100
weapon_points = 9999

Save the file, alt-tab back into the game, and import the edited character.

Now, manually assign the points as you would normally. Wait, why didn't we just edit the values of the attributes, skills and proficiencies themselves? Answer: because they won't take effect. You should only edit the point pools (as above).

Warband attributes cap out at 63:

Warband skills cap out at 10:

In Warband, the maximum assignable weapon proficiency score caps out at about 400:

Warband Cheatmenu

Other cheats can be enabled on the Game tab in the Configuration utility.

When in-game, hit the Ctrl + tilde key (~), type "cheatmenu" (no quotes), and hit enter/return.

Then click Camp to find the cheat menu.

The main use of the cheat menu is adding items. You will need money in order to do this (see above on how to cheat-in money).

When you're done, be sure to hit Ctrl + tilde again, and type "nocheatmenu", as the cheat menu may cause bugs in your game if left active.

Note: Top-tier modifiers such as Lordly and Masterwork are not available through the cheat menu. Ha-ha. You will have to farm them yourself.

Remember: Cheaters never prosper. I only put this here for experimentation purposes. If you cheat just to win, you may end up sucking all the enjoyment out of the game.

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This guy died in a funny position (vanilla v.1153):

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