Your first hours in Bannerlord come down to a handful of steps: recruit about ten men, buy three kinds of food, win small fights and tournaments, and collect the 50 renown that takes your clan to tier 1.

After that, the game opens up. You will be able to sign on with a kingdom as a mercenary, become a vassal one tier later and start working toward a fief of your own, but none of that is going to go well if your first party starves, runs out of denars or loses half its men to a band of looters.

Most of the numbers in this guide were taken from the game files of the version that is live right now, Bannerlord v1.4.8 with War Sails 1.2.8. Your first steps look like this:

• Buy at least three kinds of food before you leave town, because a party that only eats grain loses morale.
• Recruit from every notable in the villages and towns nearby until you have about ten men.
• Fight small groups of looters only when you outnumber them, and fight in the line yourself.
• Upgrade every troop stack whose XP bar is full, and hire a companion to work as your surgeon.
• Win tournaments and do quests for notables near home until you reach 50 renown, which is clan tier 1.
• Take a mercenary contract at tier 1 and become a vassal when you reach tier 2 at 150 renown.

Contents

• Story Mode or Sandbox?
• Character creation
• Your first day
• First fights
• Troop training
• Money in the first weeks
• Clan tiers
• Companions
• Mercenary or vassal
• Dragon Banner quest
• War Sails for new players
• Early mistakes
• Common questions
• Conclusion

Story Mode or Sandbox?

Bannerlord gives you two ways to start a campaign. Story Mode adds a family, a guided tutorial and the Dragon Banner questline, while Sandbox drops you into the same Calradia with nothing to follow but your own plans. In both, you will start with 1,000 denars and no troops.

For a first campaign, I would pick Story Mode. The tutorial will show you how to buy grain, recruit troops and find a hideout, the first clan quest gives you a clear goal for the opening weeks, and your siblings will later join your clan as extra members who can lead parties, govern towns or take over party roles. Achievements are also only tracked in Story Mode.

The main quest has a timer, but at 20 in-game years it is a long one. Its war will only start when you declare the Dragon Banner yourself, and as such you can simply leave it alone for most of a first campaign.

Sandbox is the better choice for a second campaign, or if you want a stronger character from day one. You will pick your starting age there (20, 30, 40 or 50), which gives you 2 to 8 extra focus points and 1 to 4 attribute points, and you will also name your clan, design your banner and start in the home region of your culture instead of the tutorial village.

Finishing or skipping the Story Mode tutorial ends in the same place. Your tutorial troops, loot and prisoners are taken away, and you will restart with 1,000 denars, 2 Grain and the gear you had right after character creation. Play it once to learn the controls. On later runs, skip it by telling your brother “We have no time to lose” at the training field.

If you own War Sails, its questline only exists in Story Mode, and its ‘Troubled Waters’ offer will still appear after a skipped tutorial. For reference, the 1.5.0 beta adds more start options, such as starting as the ruler of a faction, but they are not in the live game yet.

Character creation

Character creation has a lot of steps, but every background choice gives you the same amount of points. You start with 2 in every attribute, and each choice adds 1 attribute point plus 1 focus point and 10 skill levels to each of its two skills. The only thing you really decide is where those points will land.

Sandbox has five of these choices plus the starting age. Story Mode has no age step and adds a sixth choice about how you escaped the raid on the inn, which roughly matches what age 20 gives you in Sandbox, only with the points already placed.

A skill you pick in three different steps will start at 30, already past its first perk at 25. Leadership is probably the best candidate for that, because Leadership 25 gives you the choice between Combat Tips (+2 XP per day for all your troops) and Raise the Meek (+4 XP per day for tier 1 and 2 troops). Perks like these are the only way your troops will train without fighting.

The second pick worth making is one with Riding. In Sandbox, you will ride out on a Sumpter Horse, which is a slow pack horse, and since a Midlands Palfrey needs Riding 10 and any background with Riding gives you exactly that, one Riding pick is enough to switch to a faster horse on day one. Most cultures have a Riding option in the family step, but Battania and the Nords do not. Any culture can take “your skill with horses” in Early Childhood instead, and every culture except the Nords also has a Riding option in the youth step. The youth step is the better place for it if you also want the private tutor’s Leadership pick, because the tutor is only offered to urban families and most Riding families count as rural.

Young Adulthood is the only step that also gives renown and traits. “You defeated an enemy in battle” gives +20 renown, the most of any option and already 40% of the way to clan tier 1. Leading a caravan or a successful manhunt gives 10 renown and another Leadership pick instead, and “you treated people well” is the only background that gives Honor.

In Sandbox, starting age 30 is a good middle ground, with 4 focus points and 2 attribute points to spend yourself against 2 and 1 at the default age of 20. Starting at 40 or 50 will give you even more, but your character will also be that much older from the first day.

War Sails adds 6 more focus points after creation, in both modes. Put them on skills your background already raised, since each focus point adds 30 to the learning limit of its skill and a skill can hold 5 of them at most.

Bear in mind that no background choice blocks anything later on and that perks can be reset, which is why the best perks in Bannerlord deserve more of your planning than any single creation pick, especially the ones that raise your party size.

War Sails players who want Trade from an Aserai sea family should pick Ferryman, which gives Boatswain and Trade. Corsair Traders sounds like the trading option, but in this version it appears to give sailing skills instead.

Which culture to pick

Your culture decides which family and youth options you will see, where a Sandbox game starts and a set of bonuses, many of which only matter after you own towns, castles or villages. For a first game, they compare like this:

• Vlandia gives +5% renown from battles and +15% income as a mercenary, which makes it the best fit for the usual mercenary-first route.
• Aserai pay 30% less for caravans and War Sails trade convoys, and the desert will not slow them down, but their troop wages are 5% higher. A good culture for a trading start.
• Empire gives +25% influence while you are part of an army and 20% lower garrison wages, which suits the vassal route.
• Khuzait mounted troops are 10% cheaper to recruit and upgrade. Fine for a horse archer army.
• Battania halves the speed penalty in forests and gives +15% sight range there, but the bonus only works in forests.
• Sturgia gets +10% grain in its villages and gathers armies for 50% less influence, but it is probably the weakest early, since its old cheaper-infantry bonus was removed in patch 1.3.
• Nords (War Sails) get +30% loot when they beat villager or caravan parties, and their ships move 10% faster on rivers and coasts, even though the tooltip says 20%. Armies led by a Nord lose 30% more cohesion on land, though.

If you are unsure, Vlandia is the easy recommendation for a first campaign. If the sea is the reason you bought War Sails, read up on the Nord culture first, because a few of its bonuses work differently from what the tooltips suggest.

Your first day

At the end of character creation, the game will ask you to pick a difficulty. The presets are Freebooter (Very Easy), Warrior (Easy) and Bannerlord (Realistic). On Very Easy, your troops take only half the damage, every notable gives you 2 extra recruit slots, your party moves 10% faster on the map and persuasion is 10% easier, while Easy gives you half of each bonus. Separate options decide whether you and your clan members can die in battle, and Ironman mode limits you to a single save file. If Bannerlord is your first Mount and Blade game, Warrior is a reasonable middle ground.

When the game hands you control, you will have 1,000 denars, no troops and very little food: 1 Grain in Sandbox, or 2 Grain in Story Mode after the tutorial. Every background starts with the same 1,000 denars, and the difficulty does not change that either.

Your party will eat 1 food per day for every 20 men, and prisoners count as half a man. As long as you have enough, variety is what moves your morale. One kind of food costs you 2 morale, two kinds cost 1, three kinds bring you back to neutral, and every kind beyond that adds morale. Buy grain plus two or three other cheap foods before you leave the first town.

Next, recruit. Every notable, from village headmen and landowners to the merchants, artisans and gang leaders in towns, has up to 6 volunteers waiting, but on Realistic with neutral relation each of them will only let you hire from the first slot. A tier 1 recruit costs 20 denars and 2 denars a day in wages. Ride through the villages and towns nearby and take what is offered until you have about ten men.

Relation with a notable opens more slots. Relation 5 opens a second slot and 10 a third, then 20, 40 and 60 open one more each until all 6 are open. Quests for headmen and landowners near your home area will therefore pay off twice: money now, and more recruits later.

You also get one extra slot in settlements of your own kingdom and one less in those of a kingdom you are at war with, and since patch 1.4.5 you cannot recruit from or trade with villages of a faction at war with you at all.

If you took a Riding background, this is also the moment to swap your Sumpter Horse for a Midlands Palfrey.

First fights

Looters are one of the first enemies you will meet, and they are not free XP in 1.4.8. They are the same level as your recruits, but they have twice their One Handed skill and at least four times their Throwing skill, and they have carried slings since patch 1.3. A party of fresh recruits that trades blows with the same number of looters can lose.

Take them on with more men than they have, fight in the line yourself, and keep any low-tier cavalry close instead of sending it in alone. A one-handed weapon with a shield is the safest way to fight in that line, and the list of the best weapons in Bannerlord includes the shields worth saving up for. With around 20 men and a few upgrades, bigger bandit groups and hideouts are going to be the next step.

When a fight starts, you can lead it yourself or let your troops fight it out without you, which is auto-resolve. Auto-resolve is fine against weak bandits. In close fights it gets costly, because your Tactics skill only adds 0.1% to your side per point (10% at Tactics 100) and the cavalry bonus that auto-resolve used to have was removed in patch 1.4.5.

What decides your losses is the Medicine skill of your surgeon. When a regular troop is knocked out by a cut or a stab, the game will roll whether he is wounded or killed, and both his level and your surgeon’s Medicine raise his odds. With no Medicine at all, about 9 in 10 knocked-out recruits die. A surgeon with Medicine 60 saves about 4 in 10 of them, and Medicine 100 a little over half. A tier 3 soldier does better, with 24% surviving even without a surgeon.

All of this counts in every battle you are part of, whether you fight it yourself or auto-resolve it. Your surgeon is the first role you should fill.

When you fight yourself, you are going to need a few order keys. With the default order layout:

• F1 opens the movement orders. Then F1 moves your troops to a spot you pick, F2 makes them follow you, F3 sends them in to charge, F4 makes them advance, F6 stops them and F7 makes them retreat.
• F2 opens the formations. Press F2 again for a shield wall or F3 for a loose formation.
• F4 switches your archers between fire at will and hold fire. They will fire at will by default.

Older guides that list F2 as the facing menu were written for the Legacy layout, which you can still switch on in the options under Order Layout Type.

Later on, you can put a companion in charge of a formation as its captain. A captain only helps through their own perks. A companion with Wrapped Handles, for example, gives the infantry in that formation +30 One Handed skill. Check a companion’s perks before you make them a captain, because a high level alone adds nothing.

Troop training

Your troops gain experience in battle and nowhere else, unless you have perks like Combat Tips. That XP goes into one pool per troop type. A kill by one recruit counts toward every recruit of that type, and you will be able to upgrade as many of them as the pool covers.

That pool has a ceiling, though. As soon as it holds enough XP to upgrade the whole stack, any extra XP is lost. Make sure to upgrade full bars right away, as long as you can afford the higher wages. Upgrades also cost a little gold (15 denars from tier 1 to tier 2, 25 from tier 2 to tier 3), and cavalry upgrades need a horse in your inventory.

Recruits from landowners in villages that belong to a castle are noble troops, which start at tier 2. Which troop lines are worth building an army around is a question for the Bannerlord troop tier list.

Wages

Wages depend only on tier: 2 denars a day for a tier 1 recruit, then 3, 5, 8, 12 and 17 up to tier 6. There is no extra wage for mounted troops (horses only raise the recruit price), and mercenaries hired in taverns will cost you 50% more.

Each tier costs about 1.5 times the wage of the one below. Upgrading slowly saves you a little money, but holding back wastes XP, and higher-level troops also survive knock-outs more often. I would upgrade as fast as your income allows.

Morale

Every party starts from a morale of 50. A won battle adds 20, a lost one takes 20 away, and the variety of your food moves it a little up or down.

When your food runs out, morale drops by 30 at once and by 5 more every day you stay hungry. If it falls to 10 or below, men will start deserting every day, low-level troops most often. A party over its size limit will also lose a quarter of the extra men each day, which is worth keeping in mind before you recruit freed prisoners above your cap.

Cattle, sheep and hogs in your inventory count as food, and your men will slaughter them automatically when you run short. Pack animals and horses are never eaten on their own, but you can butcher one by hand in the inventory if you have to.

Map speed

Buy a cheap riding horse for every foot soldier. A fully horsed infantry party moves 15% faster on the map and an all-cavalry party 30% faster, although wet weather cuts both bonuses by 30%.

You can lead one more animal per man (a pack animal, cattle or a spare horse) without any penalty. Beyond that, every extra animal per man costs 30% speed, up to a maximum of 80%. Pack animals carry 100 each, and a few of them will beat overloading, which costs 40% speed for every 100% you are over your capacity.

Additionally, bigger parties are slower in general, forests and fords cost 30%, and night travel costs 25%.

Money in the first weeks

Money is tight at the start, and the first 1,000 denars will go quickly on recruits and food. Tournaments are one of the best early sources. A win gives you 3 renown and a prize item, and you can bet up to 150 denars per round on yourself (300 with the Deep Pockets perk). The odds get worse the more tournaments you have won, and every bet is lost if you are knocked out in any round.

A town will only start a tournament while at least three lords are inside it, and each town only gets that chance one week in three. Peaceful capitals full of lords are the best places to look.

Beyond that, beaten looters can be sold to a ransom broker (only 5 denars each), quests for notables pay in money and relation, and trading cheap goods between nearby towns adds a little more.

Your first big investment will usually be a caravan. It costs 15,000 denars, or 22,500 with better guards, and it needs a companion or family member to lead it. With War Sails, buy it in an inland town, as towns with a port only sell the pricier trade convoys at 30,000 or 45,000.

The guide on how to make money in Bannerlord has the costs and payouts for each of these, all the way up to fiefs.

Clan tiers

Renown raises your clan tier, and the clan tier decides how big your party can be, how many companions you can keep and when a kingdom will take you. You will earn most of your early renown from battles (by how much of the fight your party did), from tournaments and from quests.

Clan tier 1 at 50 renown is the first big jump. Your party limit goes from 20 to 45, you can hire 4 companions instead of 3 and own 2 workshops instead of 1, and kingdoms will start offering you mercenary contracts. Tier 2 at 150 renown lets you become a vassal.

Establish Your Clan

In Story Mode, your first clan quest is ‘Establish Your Clan’. It asks you to:

• hold 2,000 denars (the journal says “increase your denars by 1000”, but what counts is having 2,000 in your purse)
• grow your party to 25 men, yourself included
• reach clan tier 1, which is 50 renown
• hire one companion

All four have to be true at the same moment. Do not spend the 2,000 on upgrades before the other goals are done. The quest has no deadline and will pay you 25 renown when you finish it.

Finishing it also sets up ‘Rescue Your Family’, which starts the next time you visit a town that is not at war with you. That quest brings your elder brother and your little brother into your clan, although a sibling who is still a child stays out of sight until grown. Your little sister joins in the same quest, unless you own War Sails, in which case she will join through the naval questline instead.

Companions

Companions are wanderers you hire in town taverns. The encyclopedia will not show you where a wanderer is until you have met them, but you can simply ask any tavern keeper about people to hire with specific skills. Each question costs 2 denars, and he will name the wanderer with the best skill for that job in the towns around you, as long as that skill is above 30.

Hiring one costs half the value of their gear plus 10 denars per level, and each companion will then cost you 2 denars plus 2 per level every day.

You can keep clan tier + 3 companions: 3 at tier 0, 4 at tier 1 and 9 at tier 6. The perks We Pledge our Swords (Leadership) and Camaraderie (Charm) add one more each.

The four land party roles are surgeon, scout, quartermaster and engineer (War Sails adds a First Mate and a Navigator for your ships), and you set them in the Clan screen, which opens with L. An empty slot uses your own skill. Hand a role to a companion only if they are better at it than you, and keep them in your party, because a role holder outside your party does not count. Since patch 1.4.5, one clan member can hold two roles.

Your first two hires should be a surgeon with good Medicine and a quartermaster with Steward. How to track down a specific wanderer and who is best for each role is all in the Bannerlord companions guide.

Marriage is the other way to grow your clan. There is no clan tier requirement, and family members travelling in your party cost no wages. The best wife picks show which spouses are the most useful to have along.

Mercenary or vassal

With some renown behind your clan, joining a kingdom is the next step. You can work as a mercenary from clan tier 1 (50 renown) and become a vassal from clan tier 2 (150 renown).

The confusion about tier 1 and tier 2 for mercenaries comes down to how offers reach you. Kingdoms only send mercenary offers by courier while your clan is exactly tier 1, with a 2% chance of one arriving each day and 2 days to accept it. As soon as you reach tier 2, the couriers stop, and from then on you will need to ask a ruler in person.

That needs a relation of -10 or better with the ruler and a clan that owns no town, castle or village, and any strong enemy of yours also has to be at war with that kingdom.

As a mercenary, you are paid for the influence you earn, and a richer kingdom pays more per point. You get no fiefs, but you can leave when the contract ends without hurting your relations.

As a vassal, you get a chance at fiefs. Every fief your kingdom captures will go to a vote among its clans, and a clan without a town or castle gets a big bonus in those votes, as does the clan that took it. Joining a kingdom that is winning its wars at tier 2 is the usual way to a first fief.

Before you sign anything, think about where your money sits. The day your side goes to war with a town’s owner, your workshop there goes to a local notable and you get nothing back, and that includes your employer’s wars while you are a mercenary. Buy workshops only in towns of the kingdom you plan to serve.

Further down the road, clan tier 4 (900 renown), a town or castle, 100 men and a clan that serves no kingdom are what you need for a realm of your own. The guide on how to create a kingdom in Bannerlord picks up from there.

Dragon Banner quest

The main quest of Story Mode is the hunt for the pieces of the Dragon Banner. It starts with ‘Investigate Neretzes’ Folly’ right after the tutorial, and you get 20 in-game years from that point, which the journal counts in days (about 1,680 of them). There is no rush.

Nothing forces the conspiracy war on you until you declare the Dragon Banner to one of your two mentors, Istiana or Arzagos. After that, the conspiracy grows, and when its strength reaches 2,000, the three strongest non-imperial kingdoms (on Istiana’s side) or all imperial kingdoms (on Arzagos’ side) will go to war with you.

If the 20 years run out first, the main quests fail. A kingdom founded without declaring the banner never starts the conspiracy at all.

On a first campaign, leave the banner alone until your clan can survive a long war against several kingdoms at once. In most games, that means a kingdom of your own or a strong one that you serve.

War Sails for new players

War Sails changes less about the start than you might expect. It adds the Nord culture, coastal and river backgrounds with the new sailing skills (Mariner, Boatswain and Shipmaster), 6 extra focus points and, in Story Mode only, a questline of its own.

That questline begins with the ‘Troubled Waters’ popup, which appears as soon as the stealth tutorial starts, right after the main tutorial, whether you finished or skipped it. You can let it take you to Ostican straight away or travel there yourself.

Do not expect it to carry your clan to tier 1. The fights on the way will earn renown as usual, but the quests themselves only hand out 5 or 10. ‘Save the Crewmen’ gives you a northern trade ship in place of the ships you had, and the hunt for Emira Al Fahda pays 1,000 denars.

The reward at the end is worth it. When you welcome Gunnar’s crew in ‘Speak to Gunnar and Your Sister’, you will get a medium Nord ship, the Wave-Steed, plus 10 Nord Spear Warriors (tier 3) and 10 Nord Warfangs (tier 4). Your little sister also joins your clan through this questline.

At sea, your men eat 20% less food and their wages drop by 20%. Which hulls to look for and where to buy them is covered in the list of the best ships in Bannerlord.

In Sandbox, you will get the culture, the backgrounds and the focus points, but no questline and no ship.

Early mistakes

• Declaring the Dragon Banner before your clan can hold out in a long war against several kingdoms.
• Waiting for a mercenary courier after reaching tier 2. Those offers only come at tier 1, and from tier 2 on you have to ask a ruler in person.
• No surgeon in your party. Without one, your own Medicine counts, and at Medicine 0 about 9 in 10 knocked-out recruits die.
• Full XP bars left alone to save wages. The extra XP is lost when the whole stack could already upgrade.
• One kind of food, or none at all. Starving costs 30 morale at once, and desertion starts at 10.
• Too few horses. A riding horse for every foot soldier makes you 15% faster, while a herd bigger than your party slows you down.
• Buying workshops in the lands of a kingdom you might fight later. Once you join a kingdom, your caravans also become fair game for all of its enemies.
• Executing captured lords, which costs you relation with a lot of clans. There are better things to do with prisoners.
• Relying on the autosave alone. F5 makes a quick save on the campaign map, and a save before every risky fight costs you nothing.

Common questions

Is Bannerlord hard for beginners?

The first hours are the hardest part, because a small party loses easily and the game explains very little after the tutorial. On Freebooter, your troops take half damage, you get extra recruits and you move faster, and you can also switch off death in battle. With a full party and a steady income, the game becomes a lot more forgiving.

How do you get a bigger party early?

Clan tier 1 is the biggest step, from 20 to 45 men, and every tier after that adds 25 more. Your quartermaster’s Steward adds a quarter of a man per point (your own Steward counts if nobody holds the role), and perks add the rest: Authority (Leadership 75), Horde Leader (Tactics 75) and Imposing Stature (Athletics 75) come first, and Leader of the Masses (Leadership 125) adds more for every town you own.

Can your character die in Bannerlord?

Yes, depending on your campaign options. On the Realistic setting of the battle death option, every hero can die in battle, your own character included. Easy disables battle death for your character and Very Easy for all heroes, while a separate option covers the members of your clan.

Can you change your build later?

Yes. Character creation only sets your starting point, and you will keep earning 1 focus point per level and 1 attribute point every 4 levels. Perks can be reset by talking to the arena master in any town and asking about the teachers. It costs the current skill level times 40 denars, and the skill needs to be at least 25.

Do you need War Sails as a beginner?

No. The land game in this guide works the same without it, and you will not miss anything essential on a first campaign. It is a nice addition after you know the land game, mostly for the sea travel and the free ship at the end of its questline.

Conclusion

The start of Bannerlord is slow and a little bit unforgiving, but it follows a simple order. Feed and grow a small party, keep a surgeon with you, reach 50 renown and pick a kingdom whose wars you can live with. If all you are after is a smooth first campaign, then Story Mode, a Vlandian character with Leadership and Riding, and a mercenary contract right at tier 1 are probably the way to go.