A stealth attack in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord can leave the guard standing with a scratch, and a moment later he is yelling for his friends. It happens in the Tevea tutorial as much as in hideouts and prison breaks, and the reason is usually a simple one.

To stealth kill, crouch, walk slowly and come at the guard from behind or while he has not noticed you yet, then hit him with a dagger. The stealth hit multiplies your damage instead of killing him outright. A dagger will deal about 3.5 times its normal damage and any other melee weapon about 1.5 times, and his armour still soaks up part of the blow first.

Stealth is part of the free base game, so you do not need the War Sails DLC for any of it. The numbers in this guide come from the v1.4.8 game files.

Stealth controls

A stealth kill uses your normal attack. These are the default keys on PC:

On PlayStation and Xbox, check Options > Controls for crouch, slow walk and the dagger grip before your first stealth mission, so you are not hunting for the button next to a guard.

How to stealth kill, step by step

In the game’s code, a stealth attack multiplies the damage that is left after armour. Whether the guard drops is going to depend on your weapon, your Roguery skill, his armour and how alert he is when you strike.

1. Put a dagger in your stealth equipment set. The Seax from the tutorial is a dagger and gets the full bonus.
2. Draw the dagger before you get close. With empty hands you will only throw a punch, and fists never count.
3. The reverse grip (X) is optional. Both grips count as a dagger and get the same bonus, but in the reverse grip you cannot block, so switch back if a fight breaks out.
4. Crouch with Z and turn on slow walk with Caps Lock. Crouch-walking makes no noise at all, while crouch-running still does.
5. Close in while the guard is unaware, and stop moving whenever his meter starts to fill. If he is already suspicious, you will have to come at him from behind.
6. Tap attack once you are right behind him, and do not ready the swing early.
7. Aim for the head or neck from slightly to the side. Bandits often carry a shield on their back, and a hit that lands on it counts as 10 extra armour, which can be enough to keep a light stab from killing.
8. If other guards walk past that spot, drag the body away with F.

This is what the multiplier is worth at different Roguery levels:

Because armour gets subtracted first, a weak dagger hit on a guard in heavy armour can still fail to kill him. A heavy two-hander only gets ×1.5, but it may hit hard enough to cut through anyway. A single stealth hit is capped at 2,000 damage.

What the guard knows decides whether the bonus applies at all:

“Behind” is fairly generous. Anything more than about 80 degrees away from the direction he faces will count.

Why your stealth kill is not working

When a backstab only scratches the guard, one of these is usually the reason:

• You punched him because no weapon was drawn. The punch will simply alert him.
• You used a bow, a crossbow or a stone. Bow, crossbow and stone hits never get the bonus (throwing knives are the only ranged exception), and a one-shot headshot is just normal damage.
• Your weapon is a sword, axe or mace. Those get only about ×1.5, which may be too little against armour.
• The guard was already suspicious and you hit him from the front or the front quarter.
• The guard was already alarmed.
• You hit the shield on his back, which adds 10 armour against that blow.
• His armour soaked a light hit. He survives, and now he is alarmed.
• If you use a combat overhaul mod like RBM, armour and damage work differently, so the numbers here will not match and one-hit backstabs get a lot harder.

If a guard spots you anyway, take him out fast. A mission only fails once a guard has stayed alarmed for a few seconds (5 in the tutorial, 15 in hideouts and prison breaks), and the timer resets as soon as nobody is alarmed anymore. Beware that an alarmed guard yells, which will alert the guards near him as well.

Stealth tutorial walkthrough: Villagers in Need

The stealth tutorial is a quest called Villagers in Need in Tevea, a village bound to the town of Poros in the south of the Empire. It starts once the main tutorial phase is over, whether you finished that phase or skipped it, and you will get a popup titled “Stealth Tutorial”.

Talk to the villager in Tevea to start the mission. You will get a fixed kit for it: a Seax, a falchion, two stacks of throwing stones, a Pilgrim Hood and light hunting clothes (Leather Armor over Heavy Cloth, Padded Vambraces, a Tartan Cape and Sturdy Leather Boots). Your inventory is locked, so your own gear stays behind. The guards are mountain bandit raiders, and short hints along the way will teach you crouching, slow walking, tall grass, stone throwing, darkness, the stealth kill and hiding a body.

1. Draw the Seax right away, since you start with it sheathed. Crouch with Z and turn on slow walk with Caps Lock.
2. Stay close to the low wall by the crops on the left. The guards in the courtyard behind it will not see you there.
3. Move into the first patch of purple tall grass. There are two guards here, one standing and one on patrol. Sneak past both, or wait until the patrol turns away, stab the standing guard and then the patroller.
4. Keep to the right after that. A ladder on the right side cuts out a good part of the route.
5. When the stone hint appears, select the stones and throw one to the left of the guard at the building entrance. The archery target makes a good aim point. Walk past him while he checks the noise.
6. Inside the warehouse, stay in the deep shadow on the right or behind the crates and barrels on the stairs. Wait until the patrolling guard walks away, then slip past him or take him out from behind.
7. Go upstairs and talk to the headman. He will not follow you, so do not wait for him. Leave through the other door.
8. Take out the guard outside that door from behind. Dragging his body away is optional here.
9. Drop down from the roof and leave through the broken fence.

None of the earlier guards have to die, and once you know the way, it takes a few minutes. Afterwards the whole kit goes into your inventory, and you are offered 100 denars (you can turn them down).

Can you skip or retry it?

You cannot skip it, but you can ignore it. There is no skip option, and the quest has no time limit, so it will simply stay in your quest log if you never go to Tevea.

Retrying works too. If any guard stays alarmed for 5 seconds, or you get knocked out, the game shows “Mission Failed!”, but the quest does not end. The villager will tell you the bandits “have all gone to sleep again” and that you could try again.

How guards spot you

Every guard has an alarm level that rises when he hears or sees something:

• While he is unaware, he goes about his post or patrol.
• Once he gets suspicious, he turns toward the spot where he last noticed something, and guards who are allowed to leave their post walk over and search it.
• When he is alarmed, he raises the alarm and yells, which alerts other guards nearby, and the fail timer starts.

Keep an eye on his detection indicator and stop moving the moment it starts to fill. The level only falls once he has gone about 2 seconds without noticing anything, and a suspicious guard only calms down after he has reached the spot he went to check. Once it drops below the suspicion threshold, it snaps down to about a third and keeps falling to zero, so breaking contact works well.

Noise

You only make noise while you move, and it gets quieter with distance:

Riding a horse or moving right next to a guard is louder still. Good stealth gear will cut your noise by up to a fifth, and Roguery reduces it slightly more.

Sight

Guards can only see you inside a fairly wide cone in front of them, about 85 degrees to each side. Crouching helps much less against eyes than against ears. It only cuts how visible you are to 80% while you stand still and to 90% while you move.

Light matters a lot more. Ambient light at night is less than a third of the daytime value, and the moon is far weaker than the sun, so darkness will hide you much better than crouching ever will. Stay out of torchlight, because light sources near you make you easier to see.

Tall grass and bushes hide you from sight completely while you are crouched inside them. That stops working when a guard gets within about a metre of you, or when you hold a torch.

Bodies are easy to spot. A guard who sees one becomes suspicious and starts searching. That will not fail the mission by itself, but on busy routes you should drag the body out of sight.

Thrown stones are your distraction. A stone that lands makes a noise where it hits, and guards nearby will go and check that spot. Throw it to the side of the guard and not right past his head, because a stone flying past him raises his alarm toward the place it came from.

Stealth and Disguise Difficulty

The campaign option Stealth and Disguise Difficulty has three settings, and it affects both stealth missions and town disguises:

On Normal, guards notice you at half the speed of Challenging, and suspicion in towns builds three times slower. If stealth is not your favourite part of the game, Normal is a lot more forgiving.

Stealth gear

Every character has three equipment sets: Civilian, Battle and Stealth. Hideout sneak-ins and prison breaks will put you in your stealth set, so whatever you place there is what you are going to fight with. Only items with the stealth flag fit in it, and anything else gets the message that it “cannot be equipped with stealth equipment”.

By default the set holds a Seax, a falchion, stealth stones, a Sleeveless Padded Short Coat, a Pilgrim Hood, boots and a cape. These items are allowed:

• 70 light armour pieces for the body, cape, head, legs and hands (77 with War Sails)
• 6 bows (Practice, Steppe, Recurve, Steppe Recurve, Heavy Recurve and the Sturgian Shortbow), plus the Whispering Shadow if you own War Sails
• 4 light crossbows with light bolts, plus light bodkin arrows
• slings, stones and the torch
• melee weapons whose blade piece carries the stealth flag

That last point also covers weapons you smith yourself. Nearly every dagger and throwing knife blade carries it, and so do many one-handed and two-handed sword blades, a few axe and mace blades, and no polearm blades at all. A crafted sword only qualifies if you pick one of those blades. The quickest check is to put it into your stealth set and see whether the game accepts it.

Best stealth armour

Armour has its own stealth value. Head, cape, body, gloves and legs simply add up. With the best vanilla pieces, the total is 100:

With all 100 points, guards will see you at 75% of the normal rate and hear you at 80%, before Roguery is counted. Without the Blackened pieces, the next best options are Leather Armor over Heavy Cloth or Sloven Leather (20), the Tight Head Scarf (15, or the Raider Fur Helmet with War Sails) and Wrapped Shoes, Tied Boots or Tied Leather Boots (15).

Roguery

Roguery is the stealth skill. Every 100 points add 0.2 to the stealth attack multiplier, every point makes you 0.05% faster while crouched, and it slightly reduces your noise. Two of its perks matter here. Two Faced (tier 2) multiplies your chance to sneak into a town by 1.5, and Smuggler Connections (tier 6) lets you trade while disguised. You can see how they stack up against the other picks in the list of the best Bannerlord perks.

The reliable Roguery XP from stealth comes from hideouts, prison breaks and sneaking through a town gate. You will find the numbers in those sections.

How to clear a bandit hideout with stealth

You can only sneak into a bandit hideout at night and only assault by day. During the day the game will tell you the bandits are “awake and too aware to be ambushed”. The night window for hideouts runs from 23:00 to 02:00 in-game, which is why the menu has a “Wait until nightfall to sneak in” option.

1. Make sure you are not wounded and have at least 25 healthy troops in your party. Up to 40 of them will come along.
2. Pick “Sneak in now” if it is between 23:00 and 02:00, otherwise “Wait until nightfall to sneak in”.
3. You start in your stealth set, with the objective to locate the main camp and sneak your way through the sentries.
4. Work your way to the bandits’ signal fire. You can take out sentries on the way, but you do not have to kill them all.
5. Use the signal fire with F to call in your troops. It does not work while any guard is alarmed, so break contact or finish off the alarmed guard first.
6. Clear the main camp together with your troops. At the end, the bandit boss will either fight you or challenge you to a duel.

For reference, an assault only needs 8 healthy troops and lets you bring 15. These are your own party’s numbers and have nothing to do with how many bandits are inside.

If you cannot call your troops, a guard somewhere is still alarmed. Wait until nobody is alarmed anymore, or take the alarmed guard out, then try again. If any sentry stays alarmed for 15 seconds, the mission ends with “Sentries detected you and alerted the rest of the bandits.” The bandits move back into hiding, and you will not be able to attack that hideout again for 10 days from the moment you started the attempt.

The Roguery XP is the best reason to do it this way. The Ghost bonus of 1,000-1,400 Roguery XP is only paid if you reach the signal fire and call your troops without any guard becoming alarmed and without taking out anyone on the way. Finishing the hideout is worth 700-1,000, or 225-400 if the attempt fails.

“Send troops to clear” is the skip. Its chance is 30% plus your Tactics and Roguery divided by that same sum plus 325, so at a combined 325 points you will be at 80%. You will not get any loot or XP from it, though.

How to sneak into a town

Sneaking in only works in towns of a faction you are at war with, or neutral towns where you have a moderate or severe crime rating. The option “Disguise yourself and sneak through the gate.” sits in the menu outside the town. It does not work at night, since the guards check every entry between 22:00 and 02:00.

1. Come during the day and pick “Disguise yourself and sneak through the gate.”
2. On your first visit, the game tells you that you have no contact in this town and need to set one up. You go in on a disguised walk to find him.
3. Walk calmly and look for the contact, a stranger waiting somewhere in the town. Holding ALT will probably make him easier to spot.
4. Talk to him and accept with “Very well. I accept.” The game will remember your contact in this town. If the new options do not show up afterwards, leave the town menu and open it again.
5. On every later visit you get two choices. “Sneak in as quickly as you can (X%)” is an instant roll. “Take a walk around the town disguised” starts the walk mission without any roll.

When the roll works, you slip in dressed as a poor pilgrim and earn 10-25 Roguery XP. When it fails, a guard recognises you and you are taken prisoner, with 1-10 Roguery XP as a small consolation.

The sneak-in chance

The percentage on “Sneak in as quickly as you can” works like this:

• You start at 30%.
• Every point of Roguery adds 0.3%.
• Every level of the garrison’s average troop level takes away 0.5%.
• Clan renown takes away 0.015% per point, but never less than 15%. So up to 1,000 renown you lose a flat 15%, and above that it keeps growing.
• Two Faced multiplies a positive result by 1.5, and the chance always stays between 0% and 100%.

Party size is not in the game’s code for this, so leaving your troops outside will not help. Renown is what really hurts. This is the chance against a garrison with an average troop level of 16, with Two Faced in brackets:

A garrison full of high-tier troops will cut these numbers further.

Staying hidden inside

Inside the town, a suspicion level builds up whenever guards or officers can see you. These things raise it:

• holding a weapon (a lot) or attacking someone (the most)
• running instead of walking
• crouching, which looks suspicious in a town
• erratic movement or walking in circles
• standing still in plain view
• getting too close to an officer

Suspicion falls again when nobody can see you, and slowly even in view as long as you walk calmly with no weapon drawn. It will not fall while any guard is still suspicious. At 95% the guards switch to alarm mode, and an alarmed guard or officer who gets within 3 metres of you will send you “to the dungeons”.

Bear in mind that you cannot leave while suspicion is at 25% or higher. Walk somewhere quiet, let it drop and then go. If you get knocked out while you have a contact in that town, the locals will help you back up. Without one, you end up in jail. You also cannot trade while disguised, unless you have Smuggler Connections.

Can you sneak into a castle?

No. Castles do not have the disguise option at all. At war, you get no access to the castle, so there is nothing to sneak into. At peace, you can simply visit one as long as you have no crime rating there and your relation with the owner is not negative. Prison breaks still work in neutral castles, which is the closest you will get.

How to do a prison break

A prison break works in any town or castle that does not belong to your faction, as long as its dungeon holds at least one hero prisoner whose faction is not at war with you, such as a captured lord of your own kingdom or a neutral one. Enemy lords are greyed out in the prisoner list.

Below clan tier 3, or with a crime rating in a town, you first have to bribe your way into a neutral keep or dungeon.

1. Make sure you are not wounded and your stealth set is ready, because the mission is going to put you in it.
2. Get to the dungeon. In a neutral town or castle, open the dungeon menu. In an enemy town, sneak in first and pick “Scout the keep”.
3. Choose “Stage a prison break” and pay the guard bribe.
4. Find the prisoner and talk to him without alerting the guards.
5. Escort him out. He gets a one-handed civilian weapon. As soon as he follows you, the game warns that “Guards know that something is up, be ready to fight!”, and every guard you took out on the way in is replaced by a new one, so expect a fight on the way out. The alarm timer no longer fails the mission at that point.

The bribe is at least 1,000 denars. On top of that comes an amount that grows with the prisoner’s ransom value and the settlement’s security and drops by 10 denars per point of your Roguery. That extra is rounded down to the nearest hundred, and under 100 it falls away completely.

Security does not change the number of guards. The game always places 8 guards in the dungeon.

There are three ways the mission can end:

• You get out together, and you gain 15 relation with the hero and 2,000-4,500 Roguery XP.
• You get knocked out, or a guard stays alarmed for 15 seconds before you reach the prisoner, and you are both jailed. You still get 500-1,000 Roguery XP.
• The prisoner is badly wounded, and you escape alone with 500-1,000 Roguery XP. He may still die of his wounds.

Additionally, every attempt puts that settlement on high alert for 7 days before you can try again there.

What happens if you get caught

Conclusion

Stealth in Bannerlord is a lot less random once you know what the game checks. Most failed backstabs come down to the dagger not being drawn, the guard already being alert, or armour soaking a light hit. For towns, and for prison breaks in enemy towns, I would go early in the campaign, while your renown is still low enough for the sneak-in roll to work. Later on, only a lot of Roguery and Two Faced will keep that chance above zero.