Mount & Blade (Video Game)

Mount & Blade is an indie Action-Strategy RPG developed by TaleWorlds Entertainment and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sandbox-style game set in the medieval-ish land of Calradia. You begin with a lame horse, a rusty sword, a bent crossbow, and some tattered rags, and are then expected to impress a king of your choice and conquer the world for him (or whatever else you feel like, really). Along the way, you can recruit villagers, hire mercenaries, train them, trade between cities, fight bandits, and even become a vassal to a lord, potentially being granted a village, castle, or town.

The game supports both first-person and third-person views. Combat emphasizes a degree of realism, using a physics-based system that calculates the speed of a weapon’s swing relative to its target and applies a percentage bonus or penalty to damage based on that relative speed. Ranged combat follows similar principles: missiles such as arrows travel in visible arcs, and bows become less accurate the longer a shot is held, reflecting fatigue.

The game, along with TaleWorlds itself, started as an indie project by Turkish married couple Armağan and İpek Yavuz. Before its 2007 release, the game spent three years in public beta testing, inspiring a highly active modding community that continues to this day. Some modders went on to join the company as official developers.

An Updated Re-release called Mount & Blade: Warband came out in April 2010, featuring a significantly improved combat model, a revamped single-player campaign with a more in-depth political system, the option to establish your own kingdom, an entirely new faction (Sarranid Sultanate), new items and locations, and probably the most called-for feature: multiplayer.

With Warband, the factions battling for control over Calradia are:

Kingdom of Swadia: A feudal kingdom with armored knights inspired by medieval Western European nations like France and the Holy Roman Empire.
Kingdom of Rhodoks: A mountain kingdom led by a king elected by the other lords, featuring pike infantry and powerful crossbows, resembling early renaissance Italy.
Kingdom of Vaegirs: A snowy taiga kingdom based on Eastern European/Slavic cultures, featuring archers and cavalry.
Kingdom of Nords: A Viking-inspired kingdom with powerful axe-wielding infantry specialized in raiding.
Khergit Khanate: A steppe faction modeled after nomadic Mongol/Turkic horsemen specializing in horse archers.
Sarranid Sultanate: Middle Eastern–inspired desert cavalry and archers with unique units, reminiscent of Mamluk forces and other historical Islamic caliphates.

Expansions and DLC for Warband:

With Fire and Sword (2011): A standalone expansion developed by the Ukrainian group SiCh Studio and Russian Snowberry Connection (formerly Snowberry Connection). It adds early firearms, a historical (fiction) setting, improves town-management, gives more options during sieges, and offers a new storyline to follow.
Napoleonic Wars (2012): An updated version of the popular Mount & Musket mod released as official DLC. It takes place, of course, during The Napoleonic Wars.
Viking Conquest (2014): Another historical-themed DLC, including a solo campaign, set in The Low Middle Ages British Isles. It was developed by the creators of the famous mod Brytenwalda.

The Warband engine has also been licensed out twice for games published outside TaleWorlds, resulting in the pirate-themed Blood & Gold: Caribbean (from the makers of With Fire and Sword) and the China-themed Gloria Sinica: Han Xiongnu Wars, both released through Steam.

A proper sequel, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, was released (after a very long development cycle) into Early Access on March 30th 2020 with a full, official release following on October 25, 2022. It is a prequel to Warband with an engine overhaul and many gameplay additions/improvements.

In addition to its modding community and the mods' own pages, Mount & Blade also inspired This Notched And Rusted Blade, a machinima made with the Anno Domini 1257 mod.

Tropes appearing in mods which don't have their own pages now go at the bottom of the page.

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The main installments of the original generation Mount & Blade

Tropes present in Mount and Blade / Multiple Editions/Expansions

24-Hour Armor: Zig-Zagged in different instances:
- Most characters are always encountered wearing their full combat gear regardless of encumbrance, whether fighting, traveling, or standing idle in a town.
- Downplayed by NPC lords, who switch to civilian clothing while resting in towns or castles, and with the player character, who automatically removes their helmet when visiting towns and weapons/shield when visiting castles.
Action Girl:
- Several prominent female characters actively participate in combat and are just as capable in battle as similarly leveled, equipped, and skilled male characters. This includes claimants like Lady Isolla of Suno and Arwa the Pearled One, as well as female companions such as Ymira, Klethi, Deshavi, Katrin, and Matheld, all of whom can fight, level up, and be equipped identically to their male counterparts.
- Peasant Women and Refugees are among the weakest units in the game and can typically only be recruited from enemy prisoners. They're little better than Cannon Fodder in combat, at least initially. If babied a little, they can become powerful Sword Sisters, some of the strongest infantry units in the game.
- A female player character also qualifies, as gender has no effect on combat effectiveness, skills, equipment access, or battlefield roles.
Actually Four Mooks: On the world map, parties are represented by a single sprite, but the game clearly displays the exact number of troops and prisoners alongside it. As the player approaches, the composition of each party becomes visible, showing the number and types of units present. This system applies universally to all parties in the game, including the player’s own.
Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
- Played straight for weapons, armor, and horses, with the higher-tiers of each being among the most expensive items in the game. However, if you later sell them back to a merchant, they'll offer you only a tiny fraction of the cost. The Trading skill helps to downplay this, getting you better value when selling, but you'll never sell an item for its actual base price.
- Trade commodities are an exception, as they can be profitably traded between different regions, assuming you know where they are cheapest to buy and most profitable to sell.
Adventure-Friendly World: The constant wars between the various kingdoms create ample opportunities for wandering adventurers to make a name for themselves. At the same time, the lack of effective law enforcement, due to most factions' resources being diverted into those wars, results in a steady presence of bandits, providing plentiful opportunities for guilt-free looting and level-grinding.
Aerith and Bob: The game mostly keeps faction naming conventions internally consistent, but its dynamic political systems can produce some unusual combinations when lords defect between factions as noble titles are tied to factions, not to characters. As a result, long campaigns can produce jarring title/name combinations such as Boyar Tribedeau, Emir Gundar, or Jarl Hamezan, where a culturally specific title clashes with a name drawn from a completely different naming tradition. The game never comments on or justifies these mismatches, presenting them as perfectly normal.
The Alleged Steed: The lower-end horses, including the one you start the game with (with a few character background exceptions), are slow with poor health and low maneuverability. The description given lists it as "swaybacked," implying old age, overuse, and/or injury, reinforcing that they are barely suitable mounts rather than true warhorses.
The All-Seeing A.I.:
- AI-controlled troops, especially ranged units, have perfect awareness on the battlefield, able to detect and fire at enemies through fog or terrain long before the player can see them. Thankfully, this advantage applies equally to friendly AI-controlled units.
- AI allies and enemies always know the precise location and status of opposing forces, effortlessly tracking fleeing or hidden units and immediately recognizing when the final enemy has been defeated, even at long distances.
Aloof Ally: Allied lords are frequently in this role. Lords belonging to the player’s faction are ostensibly fighting the same war and working toward the same strategic goals, but they operate almost entirely on their own priorities. While the player can suggest actions such as following them, besieging a specific castle, or patrolling a certain area, these requests are treated as suggestions rather than real commitments. Allied lords may refuse outright, agree but then immediately wander off, abandon a siege to chase enemies on the other side of the map, or even leave mid-operation because their liege has called a feast. As a result, they function as powerful but unreliable allies who are clearly on the same side, yet stubbornly unwilling to commit to true teamwork, fitting the trope’s emphasis on shared objectives without shared loyalty or cooperation.
Amazon Brigade: A female player character can assemble an all-female fighting force by rescuing and recruiting Peasant Women and Refugees from outlaw parties, then training them through their upgrade line. While initially weak, those who gain a little experience can eventually become fully combat-capable front-line troops, culminating in powerful Action Girl Sword Sisters.This can be further reinforced by recruiting female companions such as Ymira, Klethi, Deshavi, Katrin, and Matheld, all of whom can be equipped and developed into capable combatants alongside the player and her troops.
Amusing Injuries:
- Persisting projectiles in combat can lead to this. Arrows, javelins, and thrown axes can make a character into a Human Pincushion. This can also happen to horses, as there's nothing like riding a horse that has five thrown spears sticking out of it. Even more amusing, a horse can take an arrow between the eyes, making them look like a unicorn.
- Taking out the horse of a mounted enemy who is riding at speed can lead to hilarious ragdolling of the rider, including them being rolled over by their mount's corpse.
Anachronism Stew: The game has drawn praise from the realism of the weapons and armor it depicts, portraying them accurately, including their proper names. However, it pulls from a Weapons Kitchen Sink including multiple eras of The Middle Ages (Viking-like Nords of Dark Age Europe, the mounted Swadian knights and Mongol-like Khergit Khanate of The High Middle Ages, the Rhodoks' pike infantry and crossbowmen of The Late Middle Ages) up to The Renaissance itself (the Rhodoks' elective monarchy ruled by a council of nobles maps cleanly onto Italian city-state republicanism, especially Florence, while the presence of late 15th-century full plate harnesses is more typical of Renaissance-era warfare).
Animal Motifs: Each kingdom has a particular beast sign in their menu. Swadians have the lion, Rhodoks the bear, Vaegirs a snow leopard, Khergits a wolf, Nords a raven, and the Sarranids a falcon.
Annoying Arrows: Zig-zagged between different tiers of ranged units, to note:
- Played straight by most lower-tier archers and those equipped by weaker bows/crossbows at base settings. Anything but a headshot is more likely to turn the target into a Human Pincushion who can keep fighting without much impact. (While even tougher units can keep fighting with an arrow sticking out of their face.) Horses can also take quite a few arrows before actually going down.
- Higher-tier archer units, especially the game's lauded Rhodok Sharpshooters, invert it by becoming some of the most dangerous units on the battlefield. They can shred lines of even heavily armored units from half the battlefield away, and woe be unto you if the enemy has them on the walls during a siege...
Anti-Cavalry:
- Infantry wielding long spears or pikes can physically stop a cavalry charge outright. Horses that collide head-on with braced spears will rear up and lose all momentum, completely negating the charge and leaving the rider exposed. This allows cheap infantry units to stop or even reverse what would otherwise be a devastating cavalry charge.
- Polearms inherently deal high damage to horses themselves due to reach and damage type. Once the horse's health is reduced to zero, the rider is dismounted and loses most of their inherent cavalry advantages.
- Terrain can completely neutralize cavalry effectiveness. Forests, steep hills, and rivers reduce charge damage and maneuverability. A cavalry heavy faction like the Khergits or Sarranids, who can dominate in their home steppe and desert terrain, are much less effective fighting in Swadian forests or Rhodok mountains.
Appeal to Force: King Graveth claims he won the Rhodok election by arriving armed before the electoral council and announcing that a Swadian raiding party was imminent, offering to defend the council only if they elected him immediately. He openly praises this tactic afterward, expressing contempt for the town patricians and dismissing their elective system as a hollow democracy.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Zig-zagged in different instances between total party size and on-battlefield representation, to note:
- Downplayed when it comes to total party size, in that the limit is based on skills (Leadership, Charisma) and Renown rather than truly "arbitrary". It's still strangely specific, but at least it's based on something.
- Played straight during battle where only so many total troops will be present on the battlefield at a time due to performance considerations. If you have 40 units in your party, but the battle only allows you to have 25 at a time, the others will appear as "reinforcements" once some of your initial 25 have been killed/wounded/routed. Numerous popular mods exist which raise this limit, as well as a menu setting added in Warband, averting it and leading to some truly epic-sized battles.
Armor of Invincibility:
- Piecing together a full set of high-tier, late-game plate armor allows you to gallivant around the battlefield shrugging off all but the most devastating hits, reducing most incoming attacks to Scratch Damage.
- The dummied out Black Armor is the best armor set available, though it requires cheats or mods to make it available. (It is available in With Fire & Sword, where it is even stronger.)
Armor-Piercing Attack: Melee weapons have three potential damage categories: cutting (swords, axes, and some bladed polearms), piercing (spears, pikes, lances), and blunt (maces, staffs, hammers). Cutting attacks are best against light or no armor, but are penalized more heavily when attacking heavily armored opponents. Piercing attacks are penalized less, allowing for some armor penetration. Blunt weapons, just as they were in real life, are penalized the least against heavy armor and come with the bonus of only "knocking out" opponents so you can capture them after battle.
Army of Thieves and Whores :
- Played straight by many hostile NPC groups such as bandits, looters, and deserters, who prey on villages, caravans, and travelers in the absence of effective law enforcement. Their activities are presented as an ongoing background threat that destabilizes the countryside and creates work for mercenaries and adventurers.
- Potentially invoked by the player as well, who can recruit similar outlaw troops and choose to raid villages, burn settlements, loot caravans, and terrorize the population for profit or strategic gain, embodying the game’s Video Game Cruelty Potential.
Artificial Stupidity: The game provides plentiful examples on numerous levels, to note:
- Battlefield Tactics:
  - On-field AI often commits in simplistic ways that ignore combined-arms logic, such as rushing cavalry units ahead of infantry and archers, creating easy openings for players who utilize even basic positioning/formation control. It's possible to take down much larger enemy forces containing higher quality units simply because the controlling AI won't use them in a synergistic way.
  - Lords generally serve as Frontline Generals where they are heavily armored cavalry units. However, the AI doesn't give them any sort of special treatment, charging them into enemy lines often leading to their wounding/capture very early during battles.
- Unit Combat Behavior:
  - Units will often behave in self-defeating fashion, such as archers being far too eager to drop their bows to switch to less-effective melee weapons the moment an enemy is close, even if not directly engaged yet.
  - Units in the player party controlled by the AI inconsistently follow player orders, sometimes outright disregarding them entirely, such as chasing after enemies when told to hold position or ranged units not even bothering to attempt to keep distance/keep firing.
  - Units badly struggle with certain weapon types. Notably, lance users (especially in tournaments) will stubbornly keep “poking” at point-blank range for Scratch or zero damage rather than switching to a better option. (Lances are notable for their "couched" damage, allowing them to strike opponents for high damage while riding past on horseback but are extremely weak for actually thrusting directly at a target.)
- Sieges: Siege AI is notorious for pathing/bottleneck failures, especially on ladder assaults. Troops can clog, stall, or get stuck in ways that can cripple an assault (including reinforcements jammed on the ladder or invading units just standing on the walls getting picked off by defending archers), while players frequently end up issuing workaround orders because the default behavior doesn’t handle the chokepoint well. (Assuming the AI-controlled units even bothers following the workaround order...)
- Faction Diplomacy/Strategy: On the campaign map, faction AI can behave self-destructively, such as declaring wars on multiple fronts and constantly “indicting for treason” their lords at a frequency often described as near-unplayable without diplomacy-overhaul mods.
Ascended Extra: The Khergits were originally a bandit faction ("Black Khergits" that patrolled the south of the map) but were Promoted to Playable with the "Warrider" (v0.202) update. Later versions removed/cut the Black Khergit bandit troops entirely, while the Khergit Khanate remained as the fully implemented steppe faction.
Assassin Outclassin': A possible random encounter when entering a city is an ambush by three or four hired bandits, explicitly identified afterward as assassins sent by a lord or faction the player has angered. Despite the implication that this is a serious assassination attempt, the attackers are typically no stronger than ordinary bandits and are easily dispatched by a competent player.
Atop a Mountain of Corpses: Corpses persist for the duration of battles, which can lead to this, especially in a spot where two lines of evenly matched infantry come together. Downplayed in that units fight over the tops of the corpses with no ill effect, however.
Attack Its Weak Point: Combat often rewards exploiting specific vulnerabilities rather than brute force. To note:
- Enemies equipped with shields can only protect from the direction the shield is facing, allowing the player to easily circle behind them for unblocked strikes. When attacking from range, the player can also aim at the enemy's unprotected legs for lower-damage but unavoidable hits.
- Armor coverage is equipment-based rather than an abstracted total like in some games. For example, an otherwise heavily armored foe without a helmet remains extremely vulnerable to head strikes, which can result in massive damage or even a one-hit kill.
- As in real life medieval warfare, tight infantry formations are strongest at the front, but are vulnerable to flank charges. It's highly viable to pin an enemy group down with your own infantry and then charge at their flanks with your cavalry to rack up easy casualties.
- Cavalry units are quite powerful while mounted, but their horses represent a critical weak point: mounts are large, cannot block attacks, and the vast majority of horses in the game lack armor of any kind. If you can take out the horse, the rider becomes much less mobile and thus less dangerous, while removing their devastating charge attack entirely.
Automaton Horses:
- Horses are treated like any other equippable item: they never tire, never panic, and are perfectly willing to run headlong into obstacles like walls, trees, or enemy soldiers at full speed unless steered clear by the player. They can be injured in battle, though, and have a chance of becoming lame or dying when they run out of Hit Points. They also have their own AI while not being ridden and will bolt off if hit.
- Warband, horses still behave in a largely artificial manner, but the game introduces limited anti-cavalry counterplay to Downplay the trope. For example, Infantry wielding long spears or pikes can cause an oncoming horse to rear up and stop abruptly if the rider charges straight at them. Despite this small nod toward realism, horses remain fearless, perfectly obedient, and unconcerned with danger, reinforcing their automaton-like behavior overall.
Awesome, but Impractical:
- Two-handed weapons are capable of dealing devastating damage, potentially even killing lightly armored troops in a single hit. However, using one means giving up a shield entirely, which is a major liability in a game where high-tier archers, crossbowmen, and thrown weapons are common and lethal. In large battles, sieges, or against high-tier ranged units, the inability to block missiles makes two-handed weapons extremely risky and impractical despite their raw power.
- It is possible to assemble a "dream team" army made up of the best Elite Mooks from every faction, such as Swadian Knight heavy cavalry, Nord Huscarl heavy infantry, Rhodok Sharpshooter crossbowmen, and Khergit Horse Archers. While this mixed-faction force is undeniably "awesome" on paper, it is highly impractical in practice. Recruiting and training each unit line requires extensive travel across the map and a large investment of time and experience, and maintaining such an army causes morale problems when the player inevitably fights the home factions of those troops. The result is an army that looks and performs incredibly well under ideal conditions... but is far more effort and trouble than a focused, faction-coherent force.
Badass Army:
- The game pits factions built around historically "badass" elite forces against each other in a Cool Versus Awesome fashion. Crusade-era European mounted knights battling Viking Huscarls and Mongol Horse Archers pit some of the most historically "badass" armies of all time against one another.
- The player can assemble a true badass army in a way the AI almost never does: by fielding a relatively small, hand-picked force of top-tier units drawn from multiple factions. A party composed of Swadian Knights, Nord Huscarls, Khergit Veteran Horse Archers, and rare elite troops like Sword Sisters can reliably annihilate much larger lord armies.
Beef Gate:
- Sea Raiders are widely considered the toughest form of Bandit in the game and spawn liberally along the Nord coastlines. They are heavily armored compared to most early enemies, frequently use powerful throwing weapons, and tend to spawn in large, aggressive groups. An early game player character supported by low-tier units will usually be wiped out by them extremely fast. As such, most guides strongly advise against starting in the Nord lands, largely to avoid these guys.
- Steppe Bandits and Desert Bandits serve as regional beef gates tied to mounted combat. Both groups rely heavily on mounted units, making them difficult to escape on the campaign map and overwhelming in early battles where the player lacks cavalry of their own and/or Anti-Cavalry infantry. Steppe Bandits in particular field large numbers of dangerous Horse Archers, while Desert Bandits favor fast-moving light cavalry swarms. These enemies strongly discourage early travel through their respective regions without explicitly blocking access until the player has leveled up a bit and built up a more robust party.
Being Evil Sucks:
- Downplayed, as it's relatively easy and profitable to engage in "dishonorable" efforts like taking enemy lords prisoner, pillaging villages, raiding caravans, and bullying the local peasantry. However, this will draw ire from the local lord who, at least in the early/mid-game, will have a much larger force at his disposal than the player and can punish you accordingly.
- In Warband, you also have to take into account the opinion of your companions; many come from the peasantry and aren't too fond of watching their kind get murdered and looted, especially as they are supposed to take part in the pillaging.
Being Good Sucks: Ranges from Played Straight to Downplayed depending on the version of the game, to note:
- The practical benefits of maintaining high honor are dubious compared to the immediate economic gains of dishonorable behavior. Playing honorably frequently means forgoing or reducing quest rewards, releasing valuable prisoners instead of ransoming them, avoiding lucrative but unethical opportunities like raiding villages or bullying the peasantry, and losing favor with many of the realm’s openly “dishonorable” nobles, all in exchange for improved relations with a smaller subset of honorable ones. Prior to later updates in Warband, these benefits were even less reliable, as honor did not always translate cleanly into improved lord relations, fully playing the trope straight.
- Honor does provide at least one significant mechanical advantage: becoming marshal of your faction's army. With sufficiently high honor, many lords will support the player’s bid for marshal without requiring extensive quest-grinding to raise individual relations, saving considerable time. This allows the player to offset lost income from honorable play through battles and campaigns, which also train troops and maintain morale. Notably, even highly dishonorable lords have a floor of roughly −3 relation solely due to the player’s honor, meaning additional actions are required to earn their outright hostility.
BFS: While most two-handed swords naturally qualify, a few deserve special mention for their truly massive proportions in a game with otherwise relatively realistic weaponry:
- Straddling the line between a sword and a polearm, the Shortened Military Scythe features an upward-facing scythe blade mounted on a long haft. While technically not a sword, its exaggerated size, reach, and brutal chopping motion place it squarely in BFS-adjacent territory.
- The Sword of War is the longest non-polearm bladed weapon in the game, with an absurdly extended blade that visually and mechanically dwarfs most other two-handed swords, making it one of the clearest examples of the trope.
- The War Cleaver, a massive and crudely shaped two-handed blade distinguished by its distinctive notch, emphasizes raw stopping power over elegance. Though not significantly heavier than other greatswords, its design and damage output reinforce its role as an oversized, brutally effective weapon.
Big Damn Heroes: When a friendly army is engaged with an enemy on the field map, the player can intervene mid-battle to come to their aid. Joining an allied force that is badly outnumbered can dramatically turn the tide, transforming an imminent defeat into a victory. The more lopsided the fight was before the player’s arrival, the greater the relationship boost awarded with the rescued lord or faction, explicitly rewarding timely, heroic intervention.
Black Cloak: When sneaking into an enemy-controlled city, the player character is automatically disguised in dark, nondescript clothing, including a black cloak. This outfit is not optional and comes paired with a restricted stealth-focused loadout, typically just a staff and throwing knives, visually and mechanically reinforcing the undercover nature of the mission.
Black Knight: In the early versions of the game, before later patches and the release of Warband, groups of so-called “Black Knights” roamed the world map as hostile encounters similar to deserters or bandits. These heavily armored elite enemies were equipped with some of the best gear available in the game and traveled with sizeable bands of followers, effectively functioning as wandering mini-bosses. Their extreme combat power made them capable of overwhelming not just players but even lord and king armies, which severely disrupted campaign balance and ultimately led to their removal or heavy revision.
Boom, Headshot!: Dealing a headshot to a target with a ranged weapon inflicts double the usual damage. This makes headshots especially effective against enemies wearing high-tier body armor but weak or no helmets (like some Khergit cavalry units). This rule applies universally, however: the player character is just as vulnerable to headshots as any enemy, meaning a single well-placed arrow or bolt can be just as deadly in the other direction, making it unwise to play Helmets Are Hardly Heroic straight.
Boring, but Practical:
- Weapons and Combat:
  - The classic "sword-and-board" melee fighting style will serve you well throughout the game. It isn't as flashy and doesn't offer as much raw damage output as some of the two-handed weapon options, but it keeps you well-defended while still letting you deal solid damage with higher-end one-handed swords.
  - The crossbow easily wins the game's Bows Versus Crossbows debate. While high-end bows deal more outright damage, it requires two slots (the crossbow itself plus bolts) unlike thrown weapons, and it can't be used while mounted, it does not have the skill requirements (Power Draw, Power Throw) of those ranged weapons either, allowing you to put your stat and skill points elsewhere (Leadership, Trading, etc.). If you have the (relatively low) strength required to equip it, you can still deal solid damage from range with minimal investment.
  - Mounted combat offers a number of options for melee attacking such as charging head-on, couching with a lance, drive-by slashing with a sword, etc. However, one of the most basic is also perhaps the most efficient: simply thrusting at enemies with a spear from horseback. It deals solid enough damage with a decent spear (enough to outright kill lower-tier and/or weakly armored units), attacking with this method is much faster than any other upping potential damage output, and it's easily the best for running down fleeing foes as you can simply repeatedly stab their backs.
  - Utilizing defensive battle lines and terrain on the battlefield. As much fun as it might be to order a "charge" for a bunch of elite units leading to a chaotic melee, it's much more practical to set up a line of infantry, with a line of ranged attackers behind them, and cavalry at the ready to flank the enemy, especially on a hill. It'll keep more of your units alive and positions you well to counter anything the enemy may try to throw at you, especially if you're willing to take advantage of the game's plentiful Artificial Stupidity when it comes to battlefield tactics.
- Companions:
  - There are multiple interesting and combat-proficient companions to recruit throughout the game, but there is a reason nearly all game guides encourage you to seek out Jeremus first: he's a free-to-hire surgeon who is great at keeping your troops alive, one of the strongest long-term advantages in the game. Get him early, bury him at the bottom of your party so he's at the lowest possible risk in combat, and enjoy his party ability of keeping your better combatants alive for the rest of the game.
  - Ymira is also free-to-hire and comes with a modest Trader skill by default (her being the daughter of a merchant and all). However, the real practical benefit is her being recruited at level one, meaning you can avoid the misplaced stat and skill points of other, higher-level, "pre-built" companions. She's essentially a character lump of clay you can mold into whatever you need by raising the appropriate stats/skills from the start. Whatever "Party" skills aren't covered by the player character or another companion are easy for her to build up.
  - Deshavi and Klethi are rarely anyone’s favorite companions, but both make excellent low-risk investments as a dedicated Pathfinder and Spotter, respectively. Their ranged focus keeps them out of the thickest fighting, and assigning them Party skills like Pathfinding, Spotting, and Tracking dramatically improves map speed and situational awareness. This makes it far easier to avoid bad fights, catch vulnerable targets, and generally stay in control of the campaign layer, all benefits that are boring, invisible, and extremely practical.
- Units:
  - Spear-and-Shield infantry like Footman and various factional "Veteran Spearmen" are low-to-mid-tier units who pale in comparison to the raw combat prowess of the game's various elite infantry... but they make up the backbone of every early-to-mid-game army. Their spears reliably slow enemy cavalry, shields give them staying power in the battle line without micromanagement, and while they aren't likely to rack up high kill counts, they buy time for archers and cavalry to do their jobs. Finally, the first promotion for the recruits of most factions tends to be a form of spearmen, making them plentiful and cheap to produce/replace.
  - Lower-tier archers and crossbowmen won't be picking off enemies with headshots half the battlefield away like their promoted kin, but keeping a few units of them around is always encouraged. They soften enemies before contact, slow enemy progression on the battlefield by forcing shield use, break up tight formations, and deal reliable "chip" damage even if they aren't likely to get many kills outright. Finally, they're great at shooting retreating enemies in the unprotected backs to save you from having to manually run them down.
- Horses:
  - Warhorses and Chargers are some truly impressive breeds that thrive on the battlefield. They're also more expensive, slower, and less maneuverable than mid-tier horse breeds like Coursers and Hunters. The faster/more maneuverable horses allow you to more easily disengage from a bad matchup, chase down fleeing enemies, and get to trouble spots on the battlefield more quickly.
  - Keeping a few spare horses in your inventory, even low-quality ones, as you travel improves campaign map speed, allowing you to run from stronger armies, chase down weaker ones, and just generally reduce the slog of crossing the map to save you time.
- Stats/Skills:
  - Training may not look like much compared to skills that directly make you stronger in combat or help you earn more money, but it grants free experience to lower-level troops every in-game day, requires no combat, and is the only Party skill that stacks across companions. Having the player character and every companion invest even a few points each into Training quietly snowballs into faster promotions, stronger armies, and fewer losses over time. It’s not exciting and produces no immediate spectacle, but it steadily makes every future battle easier.
  - Pathfinding isn't flashy but is a hugely beneficial skill. Increasing party map speed makes it easier to avoid large enemy armies, catch weaker enemies (including the extremely valuable-to-ransom "fleeing" enemy lords after battles), and allows you to "pick your battles" much more easily overall. While it doesn’t win battles directly, avoiding unnecessary losses and choosing favorable engagements is far safer and more efficient than relying on combat prowess alone.
  - Leadership is another low-flash skill veteran players swear by. Increasing party size and reducing troop wages doesn’t make any individual fight more exciting, but it directly enables larger, more resilient armies and keeps finances manageable. The benefit is constant, passive, and felt everywhere, especially once the player is fielding dozens of expensive, elite, late-game units.
- Income:
  - It's definitely more fun to hunt down bandits/deserters, loot bandit strongholds, raid enemy caravans, and ransom captured enemies to make quick cash. However, if you're looking to turn a consistent profit and support a larger party longer term, commodities trading and town enterprises are much more reliable sources of income. It's definitely a bit "boring" to "buy low" on certain commodities in one town and then ride to another where you can "sell high", plus enterprises are strictly passive income, but these are extremely low risk ventures compared to combat (where even "trash mobs" can still get lucky and take out a few of your quality troops) and relying on selling loot that can be wildly inconsistent.
  - Signing on as a mercenary for a faction is one of the least flashy ways to make money in the game, but also one of the most reliable. The weekly wage is fixed and predictable, battles fought on the faction’s behalf often cover troop upkeep through loot and prisoners, and the contract carries very little risk compared to independent raiding. It’s not "fun" in the sense that it doesn’t offer big "jackpot" moments, but for early- to mid-game players trying to stabilize their finances while building renown and experience, mercenary work is a boring, steady paycheck that quietly keeps everything running.
  - Blunt weapon “prisoner farming” is a reliable way to earn money through combat. Equipping the player character and companions with spare blunt weapons and then giving the “Blunt Weapons Only” order once a battle is clearly won allows most enemies to be wounded rather than killed, letting them be taken prisoner afterward. High-tier enemy units can sell for hundreds of denars each, while even large numbers of low-tier recruits and militia add up to a steady profit. Investing even a point or two into Prisoner Management further raises the number of captives you can hold at once, making it a quietly practical supporting skill as well.
- Diplomacy:
  - Raising your "Right to Rule" metric is slow, unglamorous, and feels like busywork (sending companions on missions to spread word of your accomplishments, waiting for them to return, repeating), but it reduces the chance that the entire world treats your eventual new kingdom as illegitimate and dogpiles you. It’s boring prep work that prevents catastrophic multi-front wars during a fragile time later.
  - Recruiting "honorable" lords when starting a kingdom. It’s tempting to recruit whoever will join you for immediate help, especially at the vulnerable "just declared a new kingdom" phase, but honorable/upstanding lords are a boring but very practical long-term investment: they defect less, cause fewer internal problems, and are less likely to abandon your faction the moment things go poorly.
Born in the Saddle: The Khergits originated as steppe nomads before settling the lands they now occupy, and their culture and military doctrine still reflect that heritage. Their armies are overwhelmingly cavalry-focused, with even basic troop lines emphasizing mounted combat, reinforcing the idea that Khergit warriors are raised to fight from horseback.
Bottomless Magazines:
- NPC archers and crossbowmen will never run out of arrows/bolts, allowing them to fire continuously for the entire duration of the battle. This is especially noticeable during sieges, where defending archers can rain missiles down indefinitely without ever needing to resupply. Notably averted for NPCs with thrown weapons (throwing axes, javelins, etc.), who will run out and then switch to melee weapons.
- This trope is Zig-Zagged for the player character. While the player does consume arrows, bolts, and thrown weapons during combat, fired missiles are returned to the player’s inventory afterward. As a result, ammunition functions as a tactical limitation within individual fights, but not a long-term strategic resource that needs to be constantly replenished.
Bow and Sword in Accord: This is the standard loadout for both ranged NPCs and the player character Starter Equipment. Most ranged units carry melee weapons (and often shields) alongside their bows or crossbows, allowing them to fight effectively once enemies close the distance. Likewise, the player is expected to switch fluidly between ranged and melee combat depending on the situation, reinforcing the idea that archery and swordplay are complementary skills rather than mutually exclusive roles.
Bows and Errors:
- In Bunduk’s backstory, his commander insists on the common misconception that a crossbow should always be kept strung for readiness, even during rain, and treats unstringing it as a dereliction of duty. In reality, leaving a crossbow strung when not in use can damage the string and prod, especially in wet conditions. The commander’s ignorance of proper crossbow maintenance ultimately leads to Bunduk being punished for doing the sensible thing, and later deserting.
- Arrows generally deal their full damage at any effective range, with accuracy being the primary limiting factor rather than loss of energy over distance. This reflects a common video-game abstraction where arrows behave more like bullets, remaining equally lethal whether fired at close or long range, rather than losing penetration and stopping power as they slow in flight.
- Headshots are treated as extremely lethal regardless of circumstances, often killing or incapacitating even heavily armored targets outright. While real arrows could certainly be deadly, especially at close range, this exaggerates their effectiveness and ignores how armor, angle, and sheer chaos on the battlefield would usually blunt or deflect such shots rather than guaranteeing instant kills.
- Archers in general function as decisive battlefield killers rather than primarily as harassment and attrition units. Historically, archery was most effective at disrupting formations, inflicting gradual losses, and forcing enemies to close under pressure; in-game, however, concentrated archer fire can reliably destroy formations outright, reinforcing the common misconception of bows as battle-winning weapons rather than supporting arms.
Boxed Crook: Captured Looters and Bandits can be recruited into the player’s army, but doing so is usually more trouble than it’s worth. While their base forms are extremely cheap to maintain (as low as the 1 denar upkeep of a fresh recruit), they start at very low tiers, level slowly compared to normal recruits or mercenaries, and offer little more than disposable Cannon Fodder. Attempting to train them into their advanced forms is even worse: a single promotion can significantly increase their upkeep (up to 35 gold per unit per week) leaving them both expensive and underperforming compared to regular faction troops.
Bread and Circuses: The game uses feasts and tournaments as a form of political pacification, particularly among the nobility. Rulers regularly call for elaborate feasts that draw lords from all over the faction's territory, often away from active campaigns and sieges. These events improve morale and relations between nobles (as well as the player character if invited). Tournaments serve a similar function, providing spectacle, prestige, and material rewards that distract both nobles and the player from broader political instability. While the realm may be under threat, the ruling class remains fed, entertained, and socially rewarded, allowing rulers to maintain loyalty and cohesion without addressing deeper strategic or structural problems. The benefits are real and tangible, but they come at the cost of effective governance, making feasts and tournaments a textbook “bread and circuses” solution to noble unrest.
Bullying a Dragon: The "Belligerent Drunk" encounters in Taverns, as well as the Bandit ambushes when visiting towns, do not take into account the strength or equipment of the player character. This can result in an unarmored drunk or handful of poorly equipped bandits challenging a player character equipped with the best weapons in the game and a full suit of platemail armor.
Cannon Fodder: Low-tier peasant, bandit, and recruit units don't offer much offensively and are likely to die in droves if used on the battlefield. However, they can be useful in a pinch to Zerg Rush enemies, pad an army’s numbers to speed up siege construction, or fill out a garrison to deter attacks. Those who do survive in batle gain experience and can eventually be promoted into higher-tier units.
Cap:
- No single attack can deal more than 500 damage. Given that an exceptionally durable human character tops out around 80 hit points and even the toughest horses max out at 175 in an unmodified game, this cap is almost never reached in normal play. Hitting it generally requires extreme circumstances, such as a very fast horse delivering a couched lance charge against a lightly armored target, making the cap more of a technical safeguard than a practical limitation.
- Attributes cannot be leveled past 63, though character profile editing can set them higher and the values will be accepted.
- Character level is functionally capped by an experience overflow that happens when attempting to level up past level 62.
- The total number of troops has an adjustable cap, though even the highest unmoddified value of the cap, 150, is still small enough that two lords may well be unable to commit all their forces at once. When the battle starts, the game splits this cap between the two sides based on the difference in the overall sizes of their armies, which is then modified by the highest tactics skill on each side. As troops are killed, reinforcements arrive in periodic waves.
Cast of Snowflakes: The face generator allows an impressive array of variations for the time the game came out, and makes good use of it. In addition, soldiers of the same type will have slightly different equipment, differentiating them further.
Chainmail Bikini: Realistically averted, as armor looks similar on women as it does to men, albeit usually in a slightly slimmer cut. However, in training fields and arena melees, this realism slips: male characters wear knee-length trousers, while female characters are outfitted in what amounts to a sports bra and panties.
Changing Gameplay Priorities: The early game is largely about survival and avoidance. The player character is fragile, lacking in skills, and poorly equipped, traveling alone or (at most) with a handful of recruits who rout or die quickly. Priorities revolve around avoiding dangerous enemies on the campaign map, picking fights only with Looters and weaker Bandits, managing morale and wages, and scraping together money through loot, quests, and tournaments just to stay "out of the red". Against any stronger armies, running away before they engage on the campaign map is a must. As the game progresses, priorities shift dramatically. The player gains levels, skills, and better equipment, while companions become specialized, and the party grows into a disciplined army. Instead of avoiding enemies, the player begins actively hunting bandits, enemy lords, and large engagements for experience, loot, and renown. Strategic concerns like army composition, siege tactics, vassal management, and faction politics gradually replace early-game concerns about food, wages, and survival. By the late game, what was once a desperate struggle to stay alive becomes a power fantasy centered on battlefield dominance and long-term political control of Calradia.
Choice of Two Weapons: The player character is limited to four weapon or shield slots, forcing meaningful trade-offs in combat roles. Carrying a bow or crossbow also requires dedicating one slot to the weapon and another to ammunition, leaving fewer slots for melee weapons or shields. Opting for a shield improves survivability but may require giving up a secondary weapon, while bringing multiple melee options limits ranged capability. As a result, the player must commit to a particular fighting style rather than carrying an answer for every situation.
Chokepoint Geography: The Rhodok lands are mountainous with only a few easily defended mountain passes and narrow valleys to get around. In addition to having strong defensive troops (pike infantry and crossbowmen), their home geography makes them a great defensive faction on the campaign level as well.
Civil War: Each major faction has a "claimant" — a rival noble with a competing claim to faction leadership — that the player can choose to support against the current ruler. Doing so triggers a civil war within that faction, pitting loyalist lords against those backing the claimant. The conflict continues until the player abandons the cause or successfully captures all of the rival faction’s towns and castles. If the claimant wins, they replace the existing ruler and become the new faction leader, typically expressing great appreciation for the player’s support in the form of 50+ point relationship boosts.
Combat Medic: Several Party skills allow the player character and/or companions to serve as one. Each point in the Surgery skill increases the chances that a unit who would otherwise be killed in battle is only wounded instead by 4%. Wound Treatment increases the rate (+20%) at which wounded units heal as you travel, as well as reduces the chances that a horse knocked out in battle will develop the "lame" trait which cripples their speed. First Aid increases the amount of health the player character and companions automatically regain after a battle (from the base of 10%).
A Commander Is You:
- Swadians: Generalist early, Elitist later. Possess the most powerful heavy cavalry in the game, backed by an otherwise balanced roster. Their armies excel at decisive shock charges while still fielding competent infantry and ranged units, making them one of the most flexible factions to command.
- Rhodoks: Technical Elitists. One of the strongest defensive factions in the game, but one that demands careful formation control. Their Sergeants counter heavy cavalry with spears while anchoring the line with massive shields and armor, protecting Sharpshooters who deal devastating ranged damage when given space to fire. While the computer-controlled Rhodoks often struggle outside of castle defenses, a player who maintains tight formations can field an army that is extremely difficult to break, at the cost of mobility and speed.
- Nords: Brute Force Elitists. Huscarl specialists. Field the strongest offensive infantry in the game, with Huscarls excelling at breaking shield walls and storming fortifications. Nord ranged units are limited to short-range throwing weapons and middling archers, while the faction lacks meaningful cavalry entirely, instead relying on raw infantry power and aggressive assaults to overwhelm the enemy.
- Khergits: Rangers with a "Unit Speciality" around Horse Archers. Built around fast, mobile cavalry, with a heavy emphasis on mounted archers supported by lighter melee cavalry. Their armies thrive on speed, harassment, and hit-and-run tactics rather than sustained melee combat, making them deadly in open terrain but vulnerable if pinned down or forced into prolonged engagements.
- Vaegirs: Rangers, Technical. Their top-tier infantry and cavalry function as shock units, excelling at fast strikes and flanking maneuvers but struggling in prolonged melee. Vaegirs also field some of the best bowmen in the game, offering powerful ranged support that complements their emphasis on mobility and rapid assaults.
- Sarranids (added in Warband): Technical. A faction that rewards a fundamentally different approach from most others. Their units favor speed and damage over heavy armor, and while they possess cavalry, it plays a less dominant role than in other factions until higher tiers. When used carefully, Sarranid forces can hit extremely hard and outmaneuver opponents, but mistakes are punished quickly due to their relative fragility.
- Player Party: Unlike the AI, the player is not restricted to a single faction’s doctrine. By recruiting and training units from multiple factions, the player can (and is often encouraged to) deliberately mix complementary strengths, such as Swadian Knights for shock cavalry, Nord Huscarls for overwhelming infantry, and Rhodok Sharpshooters for ranged firepower. This creates a highly flexible, commander-defined army that can adapt to almost any tactical situation.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- While the player must manually recruit all party members, AI controlled lords recover their armies extremely quickly even if you wiped them out moments earlier, doing so far faster than the player ever could. While their replacement troops are not always high-level units, AI lords bypass the need to physically recruit from villages or deal with the same logistical constraints as the player. Rulers provide an even more extreme example, getting troops based merely on the fact that they're kings. So even if you manage to defeat a King's sizable personal force (usually 200+ troops), they'll escape, disappear for a few in-game days, and then show up with their entire force replenished. Particularly devastating if you're trying to take the king's last city, and they keep respawning to counter your forces.
- Computer-controlled armies ignore all prisoner logistics that the player must deal with. AI lords can carry effectively unlimited prisoners without investing in Prisoner Management, while the player is capped based on that skill total.
- Computer-controlled factions do not meaningfully suffer from economic pressure like the player does. Paying troop wages, loss of income from razed villages, enterprise income streams, keeping armies fed to avoid desertion... the player will spend significant time micromanaging these, while the AI appears to run on an abstracted economy where they never have to worry about running out of money.
- The All-Seeing A.I. is in effect for the world map, meaning they always know the general "world state" and suffer no ill effects from the Fog of War while the player does. They know exactly where enemy armies are, exactly what cities are lightly defended to attack, and can adjust to diplomatic actions instantly. Essentially, the AI has near-perfect strategic information available at all times while the player must manually travel to find out about these events.
Conflicting Loyalty: Causes a morale penalty within your party if you have units from a specific faction and go to war with that faction, which can lead to desertion. The larger the percentage of such troops in your party, the greater the morale penalty becomes. For example, if half the units in your party are from Swadia, then you go to war with Swadia, the penalty will be massive.
Constructed World: Calradia is a continent in a fictional world, and while much of its history is quite vague, it was once united by an empire similar to the Roman Empire and the continent broadly resembles medieval Europe, plus the Near East and the steppes of Central Asia (albeit drawing from several medieval eras all at once). There are vague hints about the world around Calradia (the player character is explicitly not from Calradia, neither is Jeremus according to his backstory) but these are given even less detail than the history of Calradia itself.
Continuing Is Painful:
- While the player character can't be killed, losing a battle results in your capture. You're likely to lose much of your equipment, a sizeable chunk of your money, and your entire army will be disbanded. Your companions will be scattered to random taverns across Calradia, forcing you into a time-consuming and vulnerable trek across the map just to reassemble your party. The situation is even worse if you were captured by bandits in a remote area, as you must then travel long distances alone while new groups of enemies continue to spawn. This is especially problematic if there are other bandits around, especially mounted/fast Steppe Bandits who can easily run you down again, leading to a campaign version of Cycle of Hurting.
- This highlights a prominent case of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard as well: while other lords can likewise be captured, they suffer no lasting consequences. Once freed, they rapidly regain full armies and resume normal activity, underscoring how disproportionately punishing it is for the player to continue honestly after defeat.
Cool Versus Awesome: You want Viking Huscarls throwing down with Egyptian Mamlukes? Central European Knights tilting at Altaic Lancers and Horse Archers? A huge variety of cool swords, maces, axes, and polearms to equip yourself and your buddies with? You got all of it. Mount and Blade is essentially a medieval Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.
Cosmetically Different Sides:
- Significantly Downplayed. Each faction's roster is visibly and mechanically unique for the most part, but there are a few exceptions with similar units across factions sharing extremely similar roles and stats. For example, a Sarranid Mameluke and a Swadian Knight are heavy cavalry units with nearly identical stats. Other similar pairings include Nord Veteran Archers and Vaegir Archers, as well as Swadian/Rhodok Sergeants and Sarranid Guards, each looking visibly distinct while functioning almost exactly the same on the battlefield.
- Some of the troop "promotion tree" patterns are very similar across factions. To note:
  - Swadia and Vaegir share a troop tree layout, with the biggest difference being that Swadia gets crossbows for their ranged units while Vaegirs get bowmen. Swadia's infantry and cavalry are also better armored at the cost of dealing slightly less damage by default. With Warband, the Sarranids also share this pattern of promotion, though their actual units are different still.
  - The Nords and Rhodoks share similar patterns as well, with tier one units who can become either marksmen or infantry, and neither having any cavalry. As units progress up the tiers, the Nords focus on greater offensive output while the Rhodoks are more defensive. The biggest difference is that the Nords lack a "tier five" marksman unit (the Rhodoks have vaunted Sharpshooters in that role) while they do gain a "tier six" infantry unit in Huscarls, arguably the best heavy infantry in the game and the only "tier six" unit in any faction roster.
Crippling Overspecialization:
- The Khergits are a near-exclusive all-cavalry faction. They're amazingly powerful in the open battlefield, but they suffer horribly in siege warfare... and since siege battles are the most difficult and the most important battles in the game, they tend to badly struggle in the long-term campaign.
- The Rhodoks are easily the strongest defensive faction in the game, with plentiful Boring, but Practical spear-and-shield infantry, elite crossbow troops, and a fantastic defensive position on the campaign map with ocean on three sides. However, they have a near-total lack of cavalry which limits their mobility and makes them slow to react in open field battles, as well as prevents them from effectively running down routed enemies for capture and ever-valuable ransom.
Critical Existence Failure:
- Characters become bloodier as they take damage, but their performance is unaffected whether at 99% health or 1% health.
- Notably averted for horses during combat: they become progressively slower as they are injured, and being knocked out can permanently cripple them after the battle. However, so long as a horse is not knocked out in a given battle, it instantly and fully heals at the end of that battle, even between stages of large, multi-stage engagements, suffering no lingering penalties or cumulative wear afterward.
- Shields show that they are taking damage and be filled with dozens of arrows/bolts/javelins/thrown axes, but until the moment they're actually destroyed, their protective capabilities are never diminished. Also, much like horses, so long as a shield isn't outright destroyed in any particular battle, it can soak an infinite amount of damage over its lifetime and never lose any effectiveness in future battles.
Cultural Posturing: The citizens of the Rhodoks are supposedly very proud of the fact that they live in what is claimed to be the only Elective Monarchy in Calradia, often presenting themselves as more free and politically enlightened than the surrounding kingdoms. This self-image is heavily undercut by the fact that King Graveth originally seized power by threatening the Rhodok nobility into supporting him, effectively turning the “election” into a choice between voting for him or being killed, making their supposed republican virtue largely performative.
Dangerous Deserter: Deserters are a rogue enemy type similar to Bandits or Looters, but are typically far more dangerous due to numbers and better equipment. They're a big threat early in the game where many a player, typically feeling good after assembling their initial party and dealing with their first groups of weak bandits, will quickly get curb-stomped by the first group of Deserters they try to fight. Later in the game, as the player gets stronger and grows their party, they become less inherently "dangerous", but since they're formed out of units deserting from faction armies, that means potentially stumbling into Deserter groups including, say, 40 Nord Huscarls in full mail armor or two dozen Swadian Knights which can present an unexpected challenge to even a late-game army.
Death or Glory Attack: One of the cheats is this. It deals a serious amount of blunt damage to the enemy and has no cooldown, mash it to instantly win. The problem? Said cheat is Control Alt F4. Slip and accidentally let go of the control key and wave your progress goodbye.
Decapitated Army:
- Played straight by the player army. If the player character is knocked out, even if you were dominating the battle, the auto-resolve triggers and it is notoriously unfavorable toward the player's army.
- Downplayed by the armies of enemy lords. If the lord falls, his troops will continue the attack, but they default into disorganized attacks rife with Artificial Stupidity. While it isn't an Instant-Win Condition to knock out the enemy lord, doing so will still make the fight against the rest of his army easier.
Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Calradia largely presents accurate medieval values. Even the most tolerant lords are rather sexist, with a female player character requiring higher Renown to earn a fiefdom from a faction. The classism split between the nobility and the peasantry is also clear, as granting a fief to one of your "commoner" companions results in an immediate relationship penalty with other lords. Several of your companions may have interactions over these values as well, such as Ymira (commoner) and Alayen (noble) having to hide their relationship, or the more sexist male companions noting the actions of your female companions in battle (either finding it wrong or being impressed by it).
- Even "honorable" lords have no qualms about raiding enemy caravans, burning/plundering villages, and attacking helpless traveling farmers. The only pushback the player will get after taking these actions is from certain commoner companions, who express reservations due to coming from similar backgrounds or knowing them personally, but even then tend to preface it with an acknowledgement that these things happen during war.
Department of Redundancy Department: Certain item modifiers are part of the default names of equipment, leading to things like a Ragged Ragged Outfit or a Strong Strong Bow.
Developer's Foresight:
- The game includes a surprising amount of rare, relationship-dependent lord dialogue that most players will never see without deliberately engineering unusual social situations. Certain lords can make pointed remarks or offer unique conversational responses only if the player has very low relations with them (at least -10), high relations with a different lord (at least +20), and speaks to them after specific cooldowns and random checks.
  (Lord with a Low Relationship): "I hear you have befriended that fool (Hated Lord). Believe me, you cannot trust that man. You should end your dealings with him."
- Playing as a female character unlocks uncommon and sometimes hostile dialogue branches with certain lords, including sexist insults and dismissive remarks that can escalate into duels or open hostility depending on the player’s responses. These interactions are rare, easy to miss entirely, and only occur if the player engages rather than backing out of the conversation. Not that these aren't simply gender-specific dialogue (of which the game has plenty), but a well-hidden scenario that even veteran players with countless hours in the game may never have seen.
Difficult, but Awesome: A high-skill melee technique known as "chamber blocking" allows a player to effectively cancel out an enemy’s attack by timing their own strike from the same direction just as the foe’s attack lands. Mastering this timing is very difficult in the heat of combat, but when executed consistently it can turn defensive parries into negating counterattacks. One especially flashy application is using chamber blocks to negate the damage of a couched lance strike (which, without a shield, is almost certainly be fatal) even using a dagger to do so. When pulled off reliably, chamber blocking is both satisfying and awe-inspiring.
Disc-One Nuke:
- A female player character with the "Lady in Waiting" background starts with a Spirited Courser, an enhanced version of the fastest horse in the game (only a "Champion" Courser is faster, and they cost +1350% of the base Courser price) at the tradeoff of a hit to other starting equipment (and starting equipment is wretched for every background and will get upgraded after a battle or two no matter what). By comparison, every other character starts with either a Swaybacked Saddle Horse, a debuffed version of the second-worst horse in the game, or a Sumpter Horse, the worst horse in the game.
- The "Collect Taxes" quests given by lords are an early-game economy nuke. The quest has you collect a large lump sum from a village, then, if you play it "honestly", you turn it in and receive a cut as your reward. (Typically around 800-1000 for villages and 4000-5000 for larger towns.) Either way, the amount of cash that passes through your hands is enormous by early-game standards, and the worst resistance is usually a small peasant uprising that is easily put down. If you're willing to play it more dishonestly, you can simply keep all of the money. The quest's time limit is removed once you've collected it, so the only downside is that you can't get any more quests from that lord until you turn it in. It's a low-risk, high-reward quest most players eagerly undertake when offered.
- Tournament betting is another potential economy nuke early on. If you bet the maximum on yourself and can reliably win, you can net nearly 4000 denars per round, plus the winner's purse on top. Tournaments are a rather notorious Luck-Based Mission which can screw you over in a number of ways, but a skilled player and/or willingness to Save Scum can net you a ridiculous early game payday.
- Enterprises offer passive income and can be started as soon as you've completed a quest for a town's Guild Master. While the initial investment is a little steep (up to ~10,000 denars for a dyeworks), the resulting income can completely cover your party's wages meaning all reward money, loot, and prisoner ransoms are pure profit from that point on. If combined with one of the other economy nukes to cover the initial costs, you can start an enterprise in every town you're friendly with for thousands of free denars per in-game week, even very early in the game.
- Riding around the map close to a lord from a friendly faction gives you the opportunty to jump into battles you'd otherwise lose handily. Hang back and let the lord and his troops handle most of the fighting for low-risk battle experience and a share of the loot for equipment upgrades/easy money earlier than intended. Rinse and repeat for as long as you have the patience to follow that lord around the map.
Disney Death:
- The player character, your named companions, and all of the lords cannot die in battle. They're only "knocked unconscious" if their health is reduced to zero and potentially taken prisoner by the enemy, then ransomed or escape. Generic units can be killed, but even they have a chance to survive otherwise lethal blows, which is further increased by having someone in the party with a high Surgery skill. It can even be a little funny to witness a unit take a crossbow bolt to the head or get impaled by a couched lance blow, but see the "knocked unconscious" message instead of "killed".
- Downplayed for horses, who cannot be killed in battle and return to full health for the very next one, but have a chance of becoming "lame" after a given battle if their health reaches zero. This permanently and drastically reduces their speed, while also making them much less valuable.
Drill Sergeant Nasty: Lezalit, one of your potential companions, is a career soldier obsessed with discipline and battlefield competence. He has a harsh and authoritarian attitude, routinely belittling other companions he considers unfit for war. If Ymira is also recruited, she'll complain to the player character criticizing his cruelty toward recruits and his belief that fear is the best motivator. While his demeanor makes him difficult to keep in a mixed party, it also aligns with his mechanical effectiveness, as he has the highest default Training skill out of the game's companions.
Dude, Where's My Respect?:
- Downplayed when taking quests from lords. At a low relationship value, they're more likely to use you as a messenger to deliver letters and track down runaway serfs. Once you've proven your worth through doing these types of quests and/or helping the lord's faction in battle, they'll be much less likely to give you these and instead offer much more lucrative quests (tax collection, mercenary contracts, tracking escaped fugitives, etc.), but it's also not a guarantee.
- If you successfully take a castle/fort or town from an enemy faction, you typically get "dibs" on it as a personal fief for conquering it, especially if you did it entirely by yourself. However, your faction leader may still award it to another lord despite the player having done the work to earn it.
Dump Stat:
- "Leader" skills (Inventory Management, Prisoner Management, and Leadership) are pure wasted stats for companions, as only the player character's investment in those skills matters. (Compared to Party skills where the highest skill level in the party is used, player character or companion.) This is a big reason why Katrin is considered to be one of the worst companions, as she comes with several wasted points in Inventory Management by default. If a companion is later made a lord/vassal of your own kingdom, Leadership becomes less of a "dump" but it is still irrelevant for much of the game. (Inventory Management still doesn't matter while Prisoner Management allows them to take more prisoners... but AI armies do not meaningfully use prisoners like a player can.)
- Persuasion is a "Personal" skill but behaves similarly to a Leader skill for most of the game, so it is also mostly a dump stat for companions. Only the player character's skill level is taken into account for mechanics that Persuasion impacts. The only time it comes into play for a companion is if they're named an emissary, allowing them to improve your Right to Rule slightly more, but it is niche enough that most players will still don't find the investment worthwhile.
- Since Party skills (with the notable exception of Trainer which stacks across party members) use the highest skill level in the party for relevant checks, it's best to specialize a companion in one of those skills while that skill becomes a dump stat for all others. For example, Jeremus comes with several points already in Surgery and is a great candidate to serve as the party's Combat Medic, further increasing that skill every chance you get. Thus, it doesn't provide any benefit to invest points into Surgery for any other companion.
- Depending on the player character or a given companion's build, the weapon stats that won't be used are dump stats. For example, a melee fighter won't benefit from putting points into Power Draw or Power Throw, which affect bows and thrown weapons, respectively. Similarly, a companion who won't be fighting on horseback doesn't need to invest in the Riding or Horse Archer skill.
Dungeon Town:
- Sometimes when entering a town, regardless of where you have chosen to go, you'll be dropped into the street and beset by 3-4 bandits. You'll need to defeat them in order to go about your business.
- When visiting a village, the usual screen may be replaced by one saying that it is currently under attack by bandits. Choosing to intervene and help the town drive the bandits off will give you a boost to local reputation, plus experience from the battle, and a meager reward from the villagers. (If you turn it down, you get even more of a reputation boost and some honor.)
Easter Egg:
- The "Strange Set" is a set of samurai-style armor and three Japanese swords, well-hidden with some pieces in Rivacheg (the farthest north town in Calradia) and Tihr. Warband spreads the pieces out even further, with some in Jelkala (on pretty much the opposite side of Calradia from the first two locations) as well. The armor is unique looking, though middling statistically. The katana is one of the better one-handed swords in the game, however, so it's worth the trip.
- Bulugha Castle has a unique skeleton model sitting at the table in the lord's hall with a cup in its hand and a knife in its back.
Early Game Hell: The early game is notoriously punishing, especially for new players. The player character starts with poor equipment, minimal skills, little money, and no reliable combat role, often traveling alone or with a handful of low-tier recruits who break and flee at the first sign of trouble. Even the most basic enemies like Looters can be dangerous due to their numbers and the player's lack of equipment/quality unit support, while stronger Bandits (like Sea Raiders and the mounted Steppe/Desert Bandits) are full-on Beef Gates who can wipe an early party in seconds. Money is a constant problem, with wages, food, and replacement troops quickly draining what little income the player can earn from small quests or trading meager loot. Opportunities to safely Level Grind are limited, and losing a single early fight can mean the loss of equipment, troops, and progress. As a result, many early-game strategies revolve around avoiding combat entirely, running from threats on the campaign map, and carefully picking only the weakest opponents. The difficulty gradually eases as the player gains levels, better gear, and a more stable party, with companions developing into defined roles and the player gaining access to cavalry, stronger ranged options, and economic stability. Once these pieces fall into place, the harsh survival focus of the opening hours gives way to a far more forgiving and empowering midgame, making the early struggle stand out as the most punishing phase of the campaign.
Easing into the Adventure: The game quietly eases the player into the broader sandbox through the optional Quest Merchant tutorial chain found in the starting town. These early quests deliberately keep the stakes low, focusing on simple errands, basic combat, and light travel rather than immediately throwing the player into the wider dangers of Calradia. The culminating "Attack the Bandit Lair" quest uses extremely weak bandits and, unusually for the game, carries no penalty for failure. If the player loses, they can simply retry without losing troops, equipment, or progress. This sequence functions as a heavily padded tutorial, teaching core mechanics like movement, combat, and party control in a safe, controlled environment before cutting the player loose into the much harsher open world. Once completed, the game abruptly removes these training wheels, making the contrast with the Early Game Hell that follows all the more pronounced.
Easy Level Trick: Counterintuitively, bringing a large force of ranged units to a siege as the attacker can make much shorter work of the defending force and make one of the game's most challenging mechanics much easier. Have them "hold position" outside of the wall as soon as the battle begins, don't even bother with the ladders or siege tower, and let them shoot down the defenders on the wall. While you'll still take some casualties from enemy ranged units, their melee units (including those that spawn as reinforcements) will continue to crowd onto the walls but never actually sally out to where they can actually fight, leaving them as sitting ducks while your ranged units (and their Bottomless Magazines of ammo) shoot them to pieces.
Easy Logistics: Significantly Downplayed but extant. The game has numerous mechanics related to the logistics of leading an army and even more when running your own fief. Troop morale needs to be kept high to avoid desertion, which means not only keeping them fed, but making sure you have a variety of foods on hand to keep them happiest. Your army's travel speed on the map decreased based on the weight of items in your inventory, including all of that food as well as loot you intend to sell, so you need to be selective in what you carry. Keeping some extra horses in your inventory helps with that (contrary to popular belief, they don't increase your travel speed, but reduce the penalty from being overburdened), but not too many (the sweet spot before diminishing returns seems to be about 3-4, give or take another based on party size), as having more riderless horses is harder to control. You also need to pay your troop wages, which increase depending on the quality of troops you have, meaning you need to carefully manage your party composition (largely by not immediately promoting every unit that qualifies) to keep it from getting too expensive. While it's one of the more complex logicistical systems in gaming, it's still "easy" compared to reality, and numerous other logistical factors (long marches, weather, raiding behind enemy lines with no supply lines of your own, etc.) are not taken into account.
Elective Monarchy: The Rhodoks have one, and their lords will proudly remind you that they're the only nation in Calradia that does. However, in-game, they don't operate differently than any other faction. Lord Kastor of Veluca, the claimant to the Rhodok throne, bases his claim on the fact that current Rhodok King Graveth violated the rules of the election by coming armed onto the grounds where the election was being held. And before you ask, no, Kastor doesn't want a new election, he wants the player's help taking the throne from King Graveth by force.
Elite Mooks: Each faction has one set of unique, high-tier units that is the best in the game at their role. To note:
- Swadia has Swadian Knight heavy cavalry, the best melee cavalry units in the game. Their charge is devastating and their heavy armor allows them to hold up in battle lines against all but the most elite infantry units.
- The Rhodoks have Rhodok Sharpshooters, the best crossbow units in the game equipped with powerful Siege Crossbows and accuracy to shoot down enemy troops from half the battlefield away. Defensively positioned, they'll make Swiss cheese out of enemy formations before they can even get close, and are truly devastating on the walls when defending during sieges. Even better, their large shields allow them to hold up in melee better than any other ranged unit in the game.
- The Vaegirs have Vaegir Marksmen, the best archer units in the game with high quality bows and a high rate of fire that gives them incredible DPS potential. They're also incredibly good to have on the walls during siege defenses.
- The Nords have Nord Huscarls, the best heavy infantry units in the game with excellent armor and shields making them very difficult to kill. They use Heavy Throwing Axes as a ranged attack before closing to melee, which can deliver a One-Hit KO to even other elite units. When finally engaged in melee, they draw quality swords or axes that can take down any other faction's best infantry units one-on-one.
- The Khergits have Horse Archers, incredibly fast cavalry who can dish out heavy damage with their bows while moving. With proper (and realistic for historical mounted archers) Hit-and-Run Tactics, they can shoot an enemy army to pieces without ever being engaged. (Unfortunately, the AI struggles to use them in this way.)
- The Sarranids, added by Warband, have their own elite heavy cavalry in Sarranid Mamlukes. Covered head-to-toe in chainmail, including their horses, they trade some of the Swadian Knight's staying power for slightly better offensive potential and speed.
- In terms of mercenary units, Sword Sisters are the highest tier promotion of the Peasant Woman chain and very much of an example of Magikarp Power. They're statistically similar to Mercenary Cavalry, the highest tier of the male mercenary promotion tree, but only cost around half the upkeep, making them "strictly better" (in gaming parlance) if somewhat harder to acquire.
Elite Tweak:
- Each faction is designed with obvious strengths and critical weaknesses when it comes to their native unit trees, like the Rhodoks having great defensive infantry/crossbowmen but lacking cavalry entirely or the Khergits having elite Horse Archers but lacking infantry beyond the lower tiers. However, the campaign map allows you to hire the basic recruits of other factions from their villages even if you're currently pledged to a different faction. This enables "optimal armies" that erase intended weaknesses, if you know the trick and are willing to do the logistical/experience grinding work. A primarily Rhodok unit army bolstered by a few Swadian Knights completely negates their biggest weakness, while a Khergit army with a line of Nord Huscarls does the same. There is the potential for wartime friction and party morale penalties if your faction is at war with their faction, but as long as you keep the bulk of your troops from your main faction (or hire neutral mercenaries, though they tend to be a little weaker and more expensive to upkeep), this downside is minor.
- Trainer, which provides non-combat experience to the party each in-game day, is the only "Party" skill that stacks across party members. This makes it an invaluable investment for the player character and companions, putting every spare skill point you can toward it. With this stacking, you can turn a group of new recruits into elite troops much faster than normal combat-based leveling would allow, all without the risk of exposing low-tier units to combat.
Endless Game: There is no set victory condition that actually "ends" the game, and the player character also cannot die (only being captured if their health hits zero in battle, though Continuing Is Painful). You can conquer all of Calradia and then enjoy your new empire, still fighting the endless bandit spawns for as long as you wish.
Enemy Civil War: From the perspective of the other factions, his occurs if you choose to support a "claimant" to the throne against their faction's current leader. You'll start a rebellion within that faction under the claimant's authority and automatically be at war with the current ruling faction.
Enemy Exchange Program:
- Villages that have been conquered by a different faction still produce the basic recruits of the faction they originally belonged to, even if that faction has been eliminated. When a faction is defeated and its lords disperse, they also retain and are able to recruit troops of their original faction even in service of their new masters.
- When a lord is awarded a fief or fortress that is not originally from his faction, their armies automatically mix in the new types of troops in addition to the old.
- If you mix troops from different factions in your party, and two of those factions are currently at war, your party morale will take a hit because of the animosity these soldiers have for one another.
An Entrepreneur Is You: Aside from all the money you pull in from plunder and rewards, you can also fund "enterprises" like flour mills, breweries, smithies, and dyeworks in larger towns to make some passive income on the side (though they stop producing if the town is under siege). Manually trading goods (ie, "buying low" in one town and taking them to another town where the value is better to "sell high") is another reliable way to make money, and following supply and demand can make you a healthy profit.
Event-Driven Clock: In-game time only passes where the player is actively doing something. If you're idle on the world map, the world state remains "paused" until you do something again.
Evil Uncle: According to the claimants you can back, both Swadia and the Vaegirs have one. Lady Isolla of Suno claims her uncle King Harlaus seized Swadia’s throne after her father’s death rather than letting the “rightful” heir (her) rule. Meanwhile, Prince Valdym the Bastard similarly claims his uncle King Yaroglek took the Vaegir throne and dismissed Valdym’s claim by branding him illegitimate. Whether either story is true is left ambiguous, since these accounts come from biased claimants and the game offers little direct corroboration.
The Exile:
- "Indicting" a lord from your faction for treason is the only reliable way to put said lord out of play permanently. Other kings can also order exiles for their own lords, but these just join a different faction (potentially even yours) instead. If an exiled lord has burned all of their bridges with other rulers (relationship values, reputation, dishonorable, etc.) then they can be exiled away from Calradia entirely.
- Rulers of eliminated factions (hold no fiefs or armies) leave Calradia entirely.
Exposed to the Elements: Units wear the exact same gear and clothing regardless of where they are in Calradia, which ranges from snowy taiga to deserts.
Face–Heel Turn: From the player's point of view, this is possible when your faction's lords defect to enemy factions, taking their armies and fiefs with them.
Failure Is the Only Option: Certain companions may leave your party if they strongly dislike your actions or cannot tolerate other companions you keep around. When they do, they typically claim they want to strike out on their own and live independently. However, if you encounter them again later, they will invariably admit that their attempt failed, express nostalgia for their time traveling with you, and ask to rejoin. This does not resolve the underlying conflicts that caused them to leave in the first place, meaning they can later depart again, turning the entire cycle into a Running Gag of repeated failure.
Fake Longevity: Much of your time will be spent simply traversing the map. Looking for enemies to fight then, afterward, heading back to a friendly town to sell the loot clogging your inventory and ransom the prisoners. If a Ransom Broker isn't in that town, you'll have to go to another if you want to sell your prisoners, which means even more traversal. This is especially prominent when your faction's marshal orders you join them for a campaign. You'll only be informed of their "last seen" location and, by the time you get there (especially if you were on the other side of Calradia and several days passed as you traveled), they may be long gone forcing you track them down. (Fail to do so and you may suffer reputation penalties with that lord and the faction itself.) Even if you do find them, sometimes they'll just move back and forth patrolling the same section of the map, and since the campaign map only advances when your party isn't moving, you need to move back and forth as well to keep them going. They're also prone to quickly changing objectives, potentially going from an offensive on one side of the faction's territory to suddenly rushing to the other side to defend against an invasion, then potentially going back to the offensive again. Boiled down, you spend a lot of time just moving around on the campaign map.
Fantastic Naming Convention: The faction rulers and lords draw their names loosely from their faction's Fantasy Counterpart Culture, which helps distinguish factions at a glance. Swadian kings and nobles favor Western European–style names like Harlaus and Klargus, Nords use Old Norse–inspired names such as Ragnar and Lethwin Far-Seeker, Vaegirs use Slavic-sounding names like Yaroglek and Valdym, and Sarranid rulers and lords consistently use Arabic-inspired names like Hakim and Emir. While subtle, this thematic consistency helps reinforce faction identity and makes it easier to mentally group characters by culture.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Every faction is one.
- Kingdom of Swadia - A mix of High Middle Age western/central European feudal kingdoms based on Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of France, and Kingdom of England with an emphasis on mounted knights in combat.
- Kingdom of Rhodoks - An Elective Monarchy of semi-independent regions with late medieval/early Renaissance City States of Italy, Papal States, and Confederacy of Switzerland influences and an emphasis on defensive spear infantry and crossbows in battle.
- Kingdom of Nords - A classic Horny Vikings factions based on various Viking Age Nordic cultures (Kingdom of Denmark, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Norway) and a dash of Scotireland featuring heavy infantry raiders in combat.
- Kingdom of Vaegirs - Based on various medieval eastern European nations including the Empire of Bulgaria, Grand Duchy of Moscow, Novgorod Republic, and Kievan Rus, featuring offensively oriented troops (including the best archers) in the game on the battlefield.
- Khergit Khanate - A classic Hordes from the East faction drawing inspiration from the [[Useful Notes/Mongolia Mongol Empire]] and the Huns, with nearly all of their units on horseback and a particular emphasis on Horse Archers.
- Sarranid Sultanate - A desert faction led by a Sultan drawing from the Umayyad Caliphate, Sassanid Persia, Mamluk Sultanate, and other historic desert cultures with an emphasis on mobile light infantry, cavalry, and some unique units like the heavily armored Mamluks.
- While not as explicit, the Old Calradian Empire has strong hints of both The Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, including both a fall and the modern factions wanting a piece of its legacy.
First-Person Ghost: Averted. You can see your arms, legs, and torso during first-person view. Even when you die.
Fluorescent Footprints: The Tracking skill (whether on the player character or a party member) marks the tracks of NPC parties with bright direction arrows, giving more information on the party when you hover over (such as their size and how long ago they passed).
Flynning: Heavily Downplayed with one notable exception. Battles are full of realistic hard-hitting swings, stabs, and parries. However, "chamber blocking" is an advanced technique that effectively cancels out an enemy’s attack by timing your own strike from the same direction just as the foe’s attack lands. When performed between two sword-using combatants, the exchange can briefly resemble classic Flynning, despite the game’s otherwise realistic combat presentation.
Foe-Tossing Charge: Possible, beneficial, but risky to do when on horseback. With a sufficiently heavy horse, a high Riding skill, and relatively flat terrain, you can simply ride through a throng of enemies, stunning them and even knocking the weaker ones to the ground. However, it carries the risk of potentially being swarmed by the foot soldiers you were trying to ride through, often leading to a quick KO.
Forced Food Taster: Alayen, one of the recruitable companions, mentions in his backstory that he was suspicious of a meal prepared by his stepmother and fed it to one of his dogs, which ended up keeling over. When confronted on this, his father took the stepmother's side and cut Alayen out of the inheritance, forcing Alayen to become a wandering mercenary instead.
Forever War: Calradia is effectively locked into this, being home to six distinct factions that are very frequently at war with one another. Peace treaties aren't permanent (mostly being used to recruit and rearm) and there's always more soldiers ready to fight for their kings and nobility. Outside of the player expending a lot of effort, there will always be at least two factions at war with few permanent gains. The one way to end it is for the player to support one faction until they've conquered the entire land, or to declare their own nation and conquer all other lands themselves, but even then, minor enemies like Bandits and Deserters will continue to spawn so there is always someone to fight.
Fragile Speedster: The Khergits are a faction example. Favoring fast-moving and highly damaging Horse Archer units, their primary "defense" is to simply stay on the move, out of range of melee opponents. However, as sieges (whether defending or assaulting) force cavalry units to dismount, the Khergits are awful at capturing or defending towns/castles due to their "fragility" (lack of armor and reliance on mobility).
Friendly Enemy: If you turn against a faction whose lords you have positive relationships with, or if you frequently let them go after capturing them in battle, they may still address you politely and respectfully before fighting you. This friendliness is purely conversational and does not stop hostilities, but maintaining good relations makes those same lords more likely to defect to your faction later.
Friendly Fireproof: Zig-zagged between different types of weapons. Played straight for melee weapons, which won't harm your own troops or allies. You also won't harm them if you run into them while mounted. Averted for ranged weapons, where it is even possible to kill/knock-out your own units with a misplaced shot. Your own ranged units are generally careful to avoid doing this, with a tendency to hold fire automatically if the only available targets would risk friendly fire, but it's not a guarantee.
From Nobody to Nightmare:
- The player character can become this from the perspective of Calradia's established powers. Most of the background choices during character creation qualify as a "nobody", while the player character starts off very weak with terrible Starter Equipment and no party at all. By the late-game, they're likely one of the most powerful individuals in Calradia surrounded by an elite army who can doom an entire faction by leading a war against them. With Warband, it's even possible to start your own kingdom and potentially take over all of Calradia as a new emperor.
- The "claimants" to each faction throne are essentially exiles stripped of any power or support they might have had, traveling between different castles and keeps belonging to other factions. If you choose to support them, they'll join as a Purposely Overpowered companion and launch a rebellion with you as their marshal. With your help, they'll become a nightmare for their old faction and potentially the rest of Calradia as well.
Frontline General: The player and NPC lords will participate in the battles they lead, commanding and fighting in equal measure. A skilled/well-equipped player, as well as the NPC lords by default, are high-tier combatants which justifies their inclusion, but it does create a risk of them being knocked out in combat, which will cause their units to retreat (player) or devolve into battlefield Artificial Stupidity (NPCs). You can also order your troops to fight without you, but the autoresolve is heavily biased against the player, so you'll want your character to be present even if you stay out of the fighting.
Full-Circle Revolution: In the backstory, the Rhodoks split from the Swadians and rejected hereditary nobility, establishing an Elective Monarchy. However, over time, local strong men built castles, started collecting taxes, and began calling themselves "lords" once again. Just before the events of the game, Graveth, the lord of Jelkala, brought an army to the election site, violating the rules, and had himself declared king. Mechanically, the Rhodoks behave like any other faction.
Game-Breaking Bug:
- Putting points into your shield skill allows you to raise your shield faster and also increases its coverage (making it 'larger'). But it does this for all shields, yours as well as those carried by other characters, including enemies. Especially annoying for archer characters, who need to be able to reliably shoot around enemy shields.
- "Claimant" quests have several:
  - Avoid the "Lend Companion" requests that lords sometimes make if you have a rebellion in progress. These requests can include the claimant, and if the rebellion ends while the claimant is away, the whole structure of the faction bugs out.
  - If a Claimant quest is active but another faction finishes off the claimant's faction before you can, the ending is bugged and won't trigger properly.
- In bandit camps with high mountains, it's possible to fall down onto a rock, which bugs the game into thinking that you're constantly falling (you have the falling animation but can't actually fall any further). You can only use ranged attacks in this state, so if your party members fall to the bandits and you don't have a ranged weapon, you're forced to reload a save.
Game-Favored Gender: Zig-Zagged in different ways for the player character:
- Male characters have much easier requirements for joining a faction and being given a fief, which are huge gameplay advantages in the campaign. In terms of flavor, they also face far fewer dismissive or condescending responses when negotiating, requesting fiefs, or making political demands of lords/rulers.
- Female characters get more valuable attribute bonuses at character generation (especially Intelligence), can choose the "Lady-in-Waiting" background for a Disc-One Nuke horse, and gain Renown at a higher rate than a male character (since a woman accomplishing such feats is much more notable), which allows them to build a bigger party faster.
- Rescuing and recruiting captured peasants heavily favors females. Male "Farmer" units promote into mercenary troops similar to those hired in taverns, who are useful but relatively expensive and easily replaceable. By contrast, female "Peasant Women" can eventually be promoted into Sword Sisters, rare but relatively cheap and powerful cavalry units that can only be obtained through this upgrade path.
Game Mod: Many, ranging from historical (Mongolia, ancient Greece, The Wild West, 1200s Europe, WWII China, the Russian Civil War) to fantasy (The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire), to the gang-filled streets of Glasgow or even some original new scenarios expanding the Calradian setting of the vanilla version (from The Low Middle Ages to the far future of Next Sunday A.D.). See the mod section below for some particularly prominent mod names and links.
Gameplay and Story Integration:
- Female player characters gain Renown faster than male player characters. Given the setting's Deliberate Values Dissonance to medieval norms, it makes sense that a woman accomplishing the renown-building feats (leading armies, winning battles, capturing lords, etc.) is more noteworthy.
- Most of the recruitable companions come with preassigned skill points fitting their backgrounds. Prominent examples include: Jeremus, an exiled doctor, coming with points already in the Surgery skill; Ymira, a merchant's daughter, coming with points in the Trader skill; and Lezalit, a minor noble turned military instructor, coming with points in the Trainer skill.
Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- The Rhodoks have an Elective Monarchy and are quite proud of that fact in dialogue. However, they otherwise mechanically function like every other faction in the game. They never meet to vote on a new king in-game and backing their faction claimant merely results in him taking over the faction by force in the same way he accuses King Graveth of doing before the events of the game.
- The player character and companions, as well as faction lords, rulers, and claimants, cannot be killed in battle. If their health hits zero, they suffer a Non-Lethal K.O. instead. Despite the game otherwise being a grounded, realistic medieval setting, you can witness one of these characters take a crossbow bolt to the head that would likely be lethal even with modern medicine and bounce back into action in just a few in-game days.
- The Nords and related Sea Raiders are historically sea faring/raiding factions inspired by real-life Vikings. However, the game has no sea travel mechanics, leaving them as strictly land-based groups just like every other faction and group of bandits, respectively.
Gang Up on the Human: Zig-Zagged in different situations throughout the game:
- Downplayed on the open battlefield. Enemies will only specifically go for the player character if you're attacking them and the closest valid target. However, if you're fighting a battle with an allied force and split off from them, some players have observed that the enemy tends to disproportionately shift their forces toward the player army, even if it's the lesser threat.
- Downplayed to a lesser extent during the potential second and third wave of sieges, where the player character and a smaller force must fight through the streets and/or castle (respectively) against a small number of enemies. During these stages, enemies have been observed rushing right past the other allied units directly at the player, even to their detriment. (You can even take advantage of this by "kiting" the enemies around your allies who are free to attack.)
- Played Straight bordering on Exaggerated on the Campaign map. The computer-controlled factions are out for player blood and have been witnessed making peace treaties with one another, even after long and bloody wars, just to immediately attack the player's territory the moment you are granted a fief, choose to support a claimant, or establish your own nation. They'll rush to raid your villages and besiege your castles/towns even if they're based on the other side of the map. Part of it is behind-the-scenes threat calculations, causing the factions to "dogpile" a freshly founded fief/rebel/nation as they view it as an easy target, but since those can only come into existence through the actions of the player, it still qualifies as "ganging up up on the human". You can also witness this without doing any of the above if you besiege an enemy faction castle/town on your own, as that faction's lords will rush to stop you as they prioritize breaking a player-led siege even if it means allowing a different neighboring faction to conquer land elsewhere in their country.
Geo Effects: Mild but extant. Cavalry cannot charge up a slope or across a river, making these ideal defensive positions to take. Ranged units can attack from farther away if placed on top of a hill, but also obviously cannot hit targets if blocked by something, so taking cover behind battlefield obstaces is a good way to negate enemy archers.
Glass Cannon:
- Vaegir Marksmen are widely considered the best archer units in the game, with high DPS owing to their strong bows and fast rates of fire. While relatively durable by archer standards, they are still overall frail and struggle in melee, especially compared to other high-tier ranged units like Rhodok Sharpshooters, whose large shields help mitigate the “glass” aspect of the trope.
- The Khergits as a faction are Born in the Saddle with the fastest access to mounted troops and most of their unit roster being on horseback. They're devastating in a charge-and-skirmish cycle, but lack the frontline staying power of the other factions' heavy infantry and cavalry. They're perhaps the most feared enemy faction in the game on the open battlefield, but also perhaps the worst when it comes to sieges and defending against sieges (where their horses do not come into play).
The Goomba: Looters are groups of poorly equipped peasants, wielding knives, clubs, tools, and thrown stones as weapons while wearing little to no armor, typically appearing in areas with recent warfare. They are statistically the weakest enemy in the game and are an easy initial target for new player characters, especially since they're particularly slow on the campaign map to boot.
Gray-and-Grey Morality: The game avoids presenting any faction or individual as purely "good". Most power structures in Calradia are driven by self-interest, tradition, or survival rather than clear moral ideals, even when taking into account the game's Deliberate Values Dissonance. To note:
- Many of the lords you interact with are proud, dismissive, and/or openly self-serving, while even sympathetic figures are often complicit in feudal exploitation, endless warfare, and personal ambition. When playing as a female character, you'll also notice that they're all sexist in one way or another, ranging from mild (having no qualms about you fighting with their armies but still refusing to grant you a fief) to extreme (chastising you for dirtying your husband's armor or commenting that your risking your value as a wife if you get wounded on the battlefield).
- Companions are similarly flawed: some are idealists frustrated by the world’s cruelty, others are mercenaries, scholars, or soldiers whose principles frequently clash with one another (often on the Idealist vs. Pragmatist spectrum), leading to constant interpersonal conflict that lowers party morale.
- Claimants to the throne all present compelling personal narratives about injustice, illegitimacy, and stolen birthrights, but the reigning monarchs also have their own justifications rooted in stability, tradition, and/or force of arms. The game provides little objective validation for either side, leaving it largely up to the player to decide who is worth supporting.
Grid Inventory: The player inventory takes the form of one, with 30 slots by default and 6 more added with each point taken in the Inventory Management skill up to a max of 96. Every item, from weapons to armor to food items to horses takes up one slot. However, each item also has a weight which comes into play when traveling on the campaign map, with a speed penalty for the overall weight you're carrying.
Guide Dang It!:
- "Right to Rule" is one of the biggest "you will not understand this without outside help" systems in the game. The game tells you that Right to Rule matters if you want to found a kingdom, but does a poor job explaining how to raise it in meaningful amounts or why low Right to Rule makes your new realm a punching bag. Most players only learn the reliable methods (sending companions on right-to-rule missions, marriage, peace deals, diplomatic recognition, etc.) from guides and forum posts because the game sure doesn't spell it out.
- Controversy is another infamous stat for how poorly explained its calculation and impacts are. The game will tell you that you have "engendered too much controversy" and then quietly punish you politically, such as blocking fief awards or making it more likely you will be replaced as marshal, but it is much less clear about which actions raise it, what lowers it, and what thresholds matter. Most players end up consulting the wiki or forums just to understand why they are suddenly considered too controversial to reward.
- When a disgruntled companion threatens to leave, the dialogue makes it feel like a simple roleplay choice, but the actual "convince them to stay" outcome is driven by a hidden Persuasion check with designed randomness, essentially rolling a random number and comparing it to your Persuasion skill, which explains why the same option can work one time and fail the next. Without looking it up, many players assume they are doing something wrong in dialogue when it is really a Luck-Based Mission.
- Party speed on the campaign map looks straightforward, at least until the game starts slowing you to a crawl, and the UI does not do a great job explaining what has happened and why. The more weight you are carrying in the inventory, the slower the party moves. However, there are other factors as well. A classic example not explained in-game is that carrying spare horses will reduce the speed penalty from inventory encumbrance, but not your party size penalty or weapons/armor. Even more confusing, having too many spare horses will slow you right back down (more than 3-4 depending on party size), as having more riderless horses is harder to control. This is the sort of thing most players only learn by reading external explanations rather than through clear in-game instruction.
- Information around "Party" skills is lacking in-game. Nowhere does it say that they do not stack (with the notable exception of Trainer), leading to many new players building up seemingly valuable duplicate skills across party members, but only the highest skill in the party is actually used. Skill point investments for that skill on other companions are simply wasted. The game also doesn't clearly state that if a companion is knocked out in battle, any party skills they provide will be lost until they recover. This is most notable for the Surgery skill, as the companion who applies that getting knocked out can cause significantly heavier losses in battle.
- Shields clearly have a Condition stat and a Resistance stat... but nowhere in the game does it tell you what these actually mean. Is the new shield you found with a higher Condition total but lower Resistance better or worse than one you already have? The value of the shield can give you some idea if it's generally better or worse, but different shields are more effective for different playstyles and many players only learn through trial and error.
Hard-Coded Hostility: Looters, Bandits, and Deserters are always hostile to you, regardless of your faction affiliation, serving as the game's ever-present "Creeps" who are always available to fight for loot and experience.
Hard Head: The player character, faction lords, and your companions are only ever "knocked unconscious", never killed. They'll make a full recovery within a few days (at most) with no lasting effects, even if the wound that took them out was a crossbow bolt the eye or warhammer smash to the head. This also applies to your generic units if the Surgery skill succeeds, allowing them to be knocked out instead of killed and return to service after recovery.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic:
- Most of your companions do not wear a helmet as part of their default loadout, but you'll want to give them one quickly as a single headshot in battle can take them out regardless of how strong or otherwise well-equipped they are.
- Generic units have slight variations in their equipment that keep them from all looking like identical clones. Some, like high-tier Sword Sister units, have about a 50% chance of spawning without a helmet (presumably a design choice to better show off their hair and confirm that they are indeed women) but it makes them much less viable than the helmeted version due to having such a critical weak point.
Herding Mission: A common sidequest involves transporting a herd of cattle with your army. By default, you can only "push" them along from behind with your army, simulating a cattle drive, and there is no guarantee they'll go the direction you want them to. Warband adds an option to have them follow you instead, which is an improvement, but they still move frustratingly slow.
Hero Unit: The player character and recruited companions. Unlike generic units, their health is tracked outside of battle (instead of the binary injured/healthy status), they can't die (they're only knocked out if their health hits zero), they level-up for more customized growth (compared to the promotion tiers of generic units), can contribute "Party" skills that apply outside of battle, and can have their equipment changed. Properly equipped and judiciously leveled-up, they will eventually become the strongest fighters in the player's army.
Hired Guns: Mercenary units can be found in town taverns and hired to your party. They are much more expensive to initially recruit and have a higher upkeep than standard recruits, but are more competent in battle right away and don't suffer the morale penalty that faction soldiers get when your supported faction is at war with their home faction. A handful of mercenaries can be an expensive but effective addition right before a tough campaign or something like a siege.
Hit-and-Run Tactics: The modus operandi of the Khergits, who are a Born in the Saddle faction featuring Fragile Speedster Horse Archer units. On the open battlefield, they can decimate enemy armies with mounted missile fire while staying in motion on horseback. They are also the worst faction when it comes to sieges, either defending or assaulting, because they lose their "hit-and-run" advantage and their fragility is exposed.
Hitbox Dissonance:
- Just because you hit an enemy's character model doesn't mean it will register as a hit for damage. This is especially obvious when fighting with long weapons (two-handed, polearms) and/or on horseback against enemy footsoldiers, as your attacks can sometimes pass right through them without actually hitting.
- In the base game, shields are essentially cosmetic unless the unit is actively blocking. Attacks can pass right through them and still strike for full damage. Warband updates it so that inactive shields will still block incoming projectiles, but not headshots (even if the shield is large enough to cover the character's head without being actively used).
Hit Points:
- All units have them, including horses. If it reaches zero for the player character, a party companion, or a faction lord, they'll be "knocked out" of the current battle. They'll spend a few in-game days "wounded" (which can be sped up by certain Party skills) until getting back to 100%. Your horse will return at 100% for the very next battle, but they have a chance of becoming "lame" if knocked out of a given battle, permanently and drastically reducing their speed and value.
- Shields have a "Condition" rating that acts just like hit points. Incoming attacks are weighed against the shield's "Resistance" value and any damage beyond that is removed from the shield's Condition. Once it hits zero, it becomes unusable and the character drops it for the duration of the battle. Once the battle is over, it will be right back to 100% condition.
Honor Before Reason:
- According to Lord Kastor of Veluca, the claimant to the Rhodok throne, King Graveth was a hero for saving the Rhodok council from a raiding party, but Kastor insists he should never have been crowned king because he violated the law forbidding weapons at the council meeting. Kastor claims Graveth approached the unarmed council while armed himself, informed them of the impending attack, and then effectively demanded the crown as the price for their rescue. Kastor argues the crime outweighs the outcome, regardless of how necessary or successful the act was.
- Faction rulers may openly acknowledge a female player character’s military success, renown, and loyalty, yet still refuse to grant her a fief or recognize her as a legitimate ruler purely on the basis of gender. The decision is framed as adherence to medieval custom and social order rather than an evaluation of results, even when denying her land actively harms the faction’s prospects.
- Enemy lords will sometimes attack the player despite admitting in pre-battle dialogue that they do not expect to win. When questioned, they explain that their ruler has ordered the attack and that obedience to their liege outweighs personal judgment, survival, or the obvious futility of the engagement.
- Some lords refuse to defect even when their faction is clearly collapsing, they are landless, and switching sides would restore their power and security. They explicitly cite loyalty and honor as reasons to remain faithful to their liege, choosing ruin over what they consider dishonorable betrayal.
- Lords continue to attend feasts, enforce courtly etiquette, and engage in prestige rituals even while their faction is losing territory or facing imminent defeat. At times, they'll even break long sieges or abandon territories to invaders to make their way to the site of the feast. Maintaining honor, appearances, and social order is treated as more important than addressing the immediate military crisis, sometimes accelerating the faction’s downfall.
Hordes from the East: The Khergits fit the mold as a faction. Inspired by historically nomadic Turkic, Hun, and Mongol steppe cultures, they're Born in the Saddle and emphasize their Horse Archer units in battle with Fragile Speedster Hit-and-Run Tactics.
Horny Vikings:
- The Nords an aesthetically and militarily Viking-inspired faction emphasizing seafaring origins, raiding culture, heavy infantry combat, and a glorification of strength, battle, and personal valor. While they are more settled than their purely raiding forebears, such as ruling towns and castles rather than living entirely by the axe, their aesthetic, dialogue, and battlefield role firmly place them within the scope of the trope.
- The Sea Raider bandits represent a more exaggerated version of the same cultural roots, acting as full-on raiders who embody the Rape, Pillage, and Burn "coastal terror" aspect of Viking stereotypes.
- Both Nords and Sea Raiders favor historically inspired Scandinavian-style equipment such as simple conical or “spectacled” helmets, and their battle cries ("I will drink from your skull!") lean heavily into the trope’s bravado and bloodthirsty warrior imagery.
Horse Archer:
- A speciality (though not exclusive to) the Khergit faction. Like their Mongol Empire inspiration, their speed, maneuverability, and firepower make them devastating in the open battlefield. However, they're also the weakest faction when it comes to sieges and defending against sieges since those take their horses out of the equation, leaving them with sub-par dismounted troops.
- It is possible to build the player or a companion into one by investing in the Horse Archery, Riding, and Power Draw skills. Baheshtur already comes with points in these skills, fitting as he comes from a Khergit tribe.
Hydra Problem: In line with Disney Death, a faction's lords cannot be killed. Eliminating a faction only makes the others stronger, as the eliminated faction's lords (excepting the ruler) will join the remaining factions. Because the player’s "Right to Rule" (a hidden stat that determines how likely you are to recruit lords to your side) is usually far lower than that of established monarchs for most of the campaign, the majority of these displaced lords are far more likely to join rival kingdoms instead of the player’s cause. As a result, eliminating factions causes surviving realms to accumulate massive numbers of lords, leading to late-game scenarios where the player faces enormous multi-lord armies, sometimes numbering well over a dozen commanders at once.
Hyperspace Arsenal: The game attempts to limit what the player character can carry to four weapon slots, with shields and ammo for ranged weapons also taking up a slot when equipped. However, you can still carry far more than is realistic in these four slots, up to including four long polearms (or other unwieldy items) with only two visible on the character model.
Impoverished Patrician: One of the "background" choices for the player character is to come from a fallen noble family. It grants you a banner (much earlier than you can normally acquire one) and a slight Renown boost (increasing your party size and making it easier to become a vassal to a faction ruler).
Improvised Weapon: Many of the lower-tier weapons are tools repurposed as weapons including pitchforks, scythes, sickles, hatchets, cleavers, knives, and even throwing stones. Looters and "peasant" units like Farmers almost exclusively use these, while some can be found among low-tier bandits and recruit units.
Inadequate Inheritor: Some of the usurping faction rulers make this claim about their rival claimants to the throne, while the claimants all vigorously deny it. This is most notable for Lady Isolla, the only child of Swadia's former king and, by all appearances, the rightful heir. The current king, Harlaus, was her father's cousin and seized the throne instead, saying that only a "madman would name a woman as his heir". He does not even try to counter her claims, instead just stating that she's "inadequate" due to being a woman.
Inevitable Tournament: While not mandatory, the player character can fight in them when they take place in a given town. While a massive Luck-Based Mission due to spawning with random equipment and allies, betting on yourself and winning, plus the winner's actual prize, is a significant monetary boost.
In the Back: While it doesn't inherently deal extra damage, enemies cannot block an attack from behind, making it an easy and lower-risk way to take them out.
In-Universe Game Clock: There's an internal game clock, though it only takes a few minutes for a day to pass. Not so much in battle, where time doesn't change no matter how long you fight.
Invisible Wall: Used along the borders of battlefields, beyond which you can't pursue routing enemies. Also used in some towns, along with Insurmountable Waist High Fences, to keep the player from wandering out of bounds.
Invulnerable Civilians:
- Played straight outside of battle, you cannot harm NPCs in towns, villages, or castles. Your attacks will simply pass right through them.
- On the campaign map, you're free (and even encouraged) to attack "civilians" like traveling farmers, trade caravans, and raid villages. Farmers, Villagers, and Peasant Women are among the weakest units in the game, so you'll likely cut them down with ease.
It's Always Spring: Even though the game does have an internal calendar that tracks the days and months going by, seasons never actually change. Snowy regions remain permanently snow-covered, greener areas are always in bloom, and farms continue producing year-round.
It's Up to You: NPC factions rarely make lasting territorial gains on their own without player involvement. Campaigns often stall due to poor coordination, the absence of a marshal, or factions settling for peace after capturing only a single castle or town. By contrast, factions aggressively prioritize reclaiming recently lost territory. As a result, if the player wants to conquer rival kingdoms and have those gains remain permanent, they must personally lead most of the decisive campaigns and defenses.
Javelin Thrower: Any unit equipped with throwing spears (or more specific variants like javelins and jarids) can become this. By default, they'll usually throw them right before a charge (whether initiating a charge or bracing for one).
Jerkass Has a Point: "Dishonorable" lords will scold the player for choosing the "honorable" option of releasing defeated enemy commanders. From a purely practical standpoint, they are correct: freed lords can immediately begin raising new armies, jump to the defense of their faction, and resume their raiding. Capturing and imprisoning them removes powerful enemies from circulation, which can be especially beneficial when dealing with lords who control multiple fiefs and are capable of fielding armies numbering in the hundreds.
Jousting Lance: Lances appear prominently in tournaments, but they are far from limited to this ceremonial use. On the battlefield, certain lances can be couched while riding at speed, allowing the wielder to deliver devastating charge attacks that convert momentum into massive damage. Properly executed couched lance strikes can kill (or unhorse if mounted) even heavily armored opponents in a single hit, making them one of the most lethal mounted weapons in the game. While unwieldy when stationary or dismounted, lances are a defining tool of heavy cavalry on open battlefields.
The Juggernaut: Full-plate armored heavy cavalry on warhorses are pretty much unstoppable when charging unless you've got pike infantry (or get very lucky with a "chamber block"). Anything short of a high-tier crossbow bolt to the head deals Scratch Damage at best and, before you assume that taking out the horse will neuter them like other cavalry, their armored horses are even tougher. They can charge straight through a line of all but the highest-tier units without losing speed and dealing massive damage along the way with their own high-tier weapons. The only real counter is a line of high-tier pike infantry or your own armored heavy cavalry... a case of Truth in Television reflecting the dominance of armored knights in medieval warfare
Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Notably Averted. The game has a relatively complex system of price calculations, which includes supply and demand (selling several times the same supplies to the same merchant results in progressively reduced gains, goods suffering from a shortage can be sold at a higher cost), as well as taking in account whether a good is needed or not by the local workshops. It basically means that it is possible to gain money by "buying low" in a city to "sell high" elsewhere; there's actually a feature in the market's menu allowing to estimate which goods can be more profitable to bought here.
Karma Houdini: Enemy lords qualify on both gameplay and narrative levels. They cannot be killed, have about a 70% chance of evading capture if defeated (compared to the player who is always captured upon defeat), can recruit a new army much more quickly than the player can, and are back to attacking within a few in-game days. Even if you eliminate their faction, they'll just join another one, and it probably won't be yours because they dislike you so much from fighting you so many times. Play long enough and you can have dozens of battles against the same lord, who will never suffer any consequence beyond a mild delay or rare capture (from which they'll either escape or be ransomed back to their faction).
Keep the Reward: An option in quite a few quests that results in an honor gain instead, most prominently in quests given by poor villages and when executing fugitives. This can actually be better, as the monetary reward is fairly low while rulers and most lords have a higher default disposition to a player character with a high honor score, but it means "dishonorable" lords will like you less. It also results in a village relationship boost, which means getting more recruits from that village.
Kick Them While They Are Down:
- A possible, and highly recommended, strategy is to wait for enemy lords to finish a battle with another army, then engage with them immediately after. They'll be weakened from the first battle, potentially having only a fraction of their usual number of units, making them easy to defeat and potentially capture. Defeating them even in this state still provides a sizable boost to your reputation with your own faction.
- With Warband, enemy units may now rout during battle. They're defenseless when fleeing, maing them easy to run down and kill, or even better, switch to blunt weapons and knock them all out to take them prisoner.
Knight in Shining Armor: A high-honor, high-tier plate armor wearing, warhorse riding player character is likely to lean into this as an emergent archetype. Traveling the land defeating bandits, completing quests for villagers, turning down rewards, and conquering Calradia for your chosen lord (or, if you don't deem any of them to be honorable enough, starting your own kingdom) all qualify.
Labyrinthine City: Every Calradian town is built as a realistically organic jumble of cul-de-sacs, market stalls, and battlements. Even in the (relatively) grid-like and well-maintained city streets of the Calradian Empire, both navigation and combat thus become a genuine challenge.
Lady Macbeth: A female player character can effectively become this by marrying into the nobility as a means of gaining political power that is otherwise difficult to access directly. Through marriage to a powerful lord, she gains influence over faction politics, improved social standing, and indirect access to land, armies, and alliances. This allows her to shape the course of a kingdom from behind the scenes, compensating for the additional barriers female characters face in acquiring power outright.
Last Stand: Can occur during siege defenses, particularly when a faction is on the verge of elimination. When defending their final castle or town, enemy forces will commit all remaining troops to holding the position, resulting in prolonged, desperate fighting where defeat means either means total loss of the settlement or the end of the faction itself. Even when defeat is inevitable, defenders will continue to hold chokepoints such as ladders, gatehouses, or stairwells until the last man falls, often inflicting disproportionate casualties on the attackers before being overwhelmed.
Lazy Backup: We Cannot Go On Without You is in full effect, so even if your entire army is still standing and you're knocked out by the enemy's last troop, it will trigger the auto-resolve which is notoriously unfavorable toward the player's army. Worst is when this happens during sieges, which can have up to three stages (assaulting the walls, fighting through the town, and fighting in the castle). If the player falls at any point, even if the final stage, it treats the entire siege as a failure.
Leaked Experience: There are two forms of experience gained during a battle: one for actually killing/knocking out an enemy directly and one for merely participating in the battle, which the entire party gets even if they were deep reserves who never set foot on the battlefield. The latter is helpful for leveling up inexperienced troops who may not survive actual combat as well as your "Party skill"-focused companions (Surgery, Pathfinding, etc.) who you don't want to risk in combat as their getting knocked out temporarily denies you their benefits.
Leeroy Jenkins:
- Your army's default battle behavior is an immediate all-out charge the moment the battle begins, with the pre-battle menu even calling it the "Charge Into Battle" option. This generally isn't the wisest strategy, so you'll want to deliver orders to hold back and reposition before either advancing more tactically or letting the enemy come to you.
- Enemy armies will default to this behavior if their commanding lord is knocked out. While it stops short of being a true Keystone Army situation, it typically results in disorganized, reckless assaults marred by Artificial Stupidity, a pattern that also affects arriving reinforcements and can be easily exploited.
Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Calradia follows a classic medieval European fantasy layout. The western edge of the map is dominated by the sea, while the central regions are fertile, politically fragmented kingdoms reminiscent of feudal Europe. The north is a cold, harsh land inhabited by Nordic-inspired cultures, the east is home to steppe-dwelling horse nomads, and the south consists of desert regions ruled by a sultanate. This mirrors the conventional “Europe at the center, unknown lands to the east and south” geography common in Medieval European Fantasy settings.
Leitmotif: Several factions have strongly unified musical identities. The Khergits and Nords in particular rely on a small set of highly recognizable melodic themes that are reused and rearranged across campaign, battle, and ambient tracks, giving each faction a clear musical fingerprint. By contrast, Swadian and Rhodok music draws from a broader pool of medieval-inspired themes with less reliance on a single recurring melody, while Vaegir tracks tend to be more ambient and less strongly associated with a distinct leitmotif.
Lightning Bruiser: High-tier cavalry typically have high health, quality defenses, strong attacks, and, being mounted, are faster than any foot soldiers. Their drawbacks are economical and logisitical, being expensive to recruit and upkeep, as well as being high-level promotions that take a lot of experience to reach.
Losing the Team Spirit: A contributing factor to the game's Morale Mechanic. Keeping your troops fed (with a bonus for having a variety of foods), winning battles, not fighting against their own faction, and having a high Leadership skill are all ways to keep the "team spirit" up and prevent desertion.
Low Fantasy: The game takes place in the constructed world of Calradia, but features no magic, supernatural forces, or non-human races. Power struggles are driven by land, wealth, and political ambition rather than cosmic good and evil, and morality is firmly Grey-and-Gray. The player is not a chosen hero, but a wandering adventurer who rises through guile, combat, and alliance-building in a harsh, historically grounded setting where wars are fought for practical reasons and honor is often secondary to survival.
Luck-Based Mission:
- Arena and Tournament matches randomly assign you a set of weapons, potentially dooming you from the start if you get something you're not proficient with, including bows. (You can pick up the weapon of a competitor who has been knocked out, but this takes valuable time and there is still a luck element involved.) Further, in tournaments, you're also assigned to a team made up of random generic units. It's possible to get a weak team of low-tier units while your opponents have higher-tier cavalry and heavy infantry. Warband adds a few mitigations, giving you a dagger as well if you draw a bow and placing extra weapons around the arena to grab. It's still worthwhile as the payout for betting on yourself and winning is a nice chunk of money, especially in the early game, but it doesn't make the "luck" aspect any less frustrating.
- When you first spawn into the world map at the beginning of the game, it's possible to spawn right next to bandits who will make short work of a lone, level one player character.
- Quests that require you to search for a particular enemy (bandits, looters, enemy factions to be taken prisoner, etc.). While they do spawn in the vicinity of the town, they'll immediately start moving and can end up half the map away if you're particularly unlucky. You can ask NPC parties traveling on the map if they've seen your target, but they rarely offer much help. It's also possible that traveling lord armies or city patrols will kill them first, causing you to fail the mission.
- Heaven help you if you get the "Enemy Spies" mission at low levels. The spies are not only faster than you, they're a single person (making them nearly impossible to track), they can easily travel all the way across Calradia, and they get a three hour head start. Given that the player is usually outfitted for battle, not high speed pursuit, there's a significant chance you'll never see them again.
Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields, when actively blocking, will stop all damage to the unit. Any damage beyond the shield's "Resistance" stat will come out of it's "Condition" stat, temporarily (for the duration of the battle) breaking the shield once the condition hits zero. The Shield skill increases the speed at which you raise your shield as well as the area it covers. With even a single point, it basically becomes a protective force field from the front against projectile weapons when actively blocking.
Magikarp Power:
- The companion Ymira is recruited at level one and comes equipped only with a simple knife and dress. However, this also means she has very few pre-assigned skill points, meaning you can customize her from the start compared to other companions who often have wasted points in Dump Stat skills or who are redudant with other companions. She's essentially a character lump of clay you can mold into whatever you need by raising the appropriate stats/skills from the start. Whatever "Party" skills aren't covered by the player character or another companion are easy for her to build up.
- Peasant Women are among the weakest units in the game and even their first few promotions (Camp Follower, Huntress) don't give them much practical use on the battlefield. Keep them protected until they gain enough experience to become Sword Sisters, their highest level promotion, and they become some of the best units in the game. Statistically, they're on par with Mercenary Cavalry, but their upkeep cost is only about half (depending on player character skills like Leadership).
- Building the player character into a dedicated Horse Archer requires heavy early investment into multiple combat skills (Power Draw, Riding, Horse Archery), delaying highly valuable "Leader" skills such as Leadership, Inventory Management, and Prisoner Management. For much of the early and midgame, this results in weaker army scaling and poorer campaign efficiency compared to more conventional builds. Once the required skills and equipment are in place, however, the build becomes an extraordinarily powerful Lightning Bruiser, allowing the player to safely deliver high-damage headshots at speed and dismantle entire armies with minimal risk.
Marathon Level:
- Sieges. Whether assaulting or defending, they take significantly longer to play out than standard open battlefield battles. The first stage involves the actual assault of the walls, and if you have a siege tower, it's very slow moving all while you're getting shot to pieces by enemy archers on the walls. During that stage, reinforcements from both sides will spawn in when a particular side drops below a certain troop count threshold, prolonging the battle and contributing to high casualties. If assaulting, there are potential second and third stages as you lead a smaller force through the streets and into the castle, respectively. And if you are defeated at any stage? The game treats the entire siege assault like a failure, forcing you to do it all over again. (Though, at least, the defender troop count doesn't reset, so the casualties you've inflicted remain.)
- Open field battles between large armies can turn into marathons quite easily. The default "battle size" is 150 units, but you can easily have two clashing armies with several hundred units a piece. Combat plays out in waves as reinforcements spawn to replace fallen units, and once a battle ends, the game will immediately initiate another engagement if both sides still have troops available. This cycle can repeat multiple times until one army is completely eliminated or forced to retreat.
Medieval European Fantasy: Or at least, Medieval European Low Fantasy. Each faction in the game either draws broadly from a medieval European group directly (Swadia as western European knights, the Rhodoks as Italian city states, the Nords as Horny Vikings, Vaegirs as mixed Eastern European nations of the era) or groups medieval Europeans would have fought against (Khergits as Hun/Mongol-like Hordes from the East, Sarranids as the Islamic caliphates fought during The Crusades).
Men Are the Expendable Gender: The vast majority of generic units are comprised of men and they will die in droves throughout the game. You can rescue Peasant Women as (very weak) basic units and, with some babying, unlock their Magikarp Power turning them into powerful Sword Sister units. Because of the effort involved in getting them to that point, you will feel their loss more intensely than even similar male units. Further, male units can easily be replaced by visiting a village and taking on new recruits, while additional Peasant Women can only be recruited by rescuing them as enemy prisoners, making them harder and riskier to replace.
Mercenary Units: Can be found in town taverns and hired to your party, bolstering your faction-based forces. They cost more to recruit initially and have higher upkeep than comparable faction units, but join combat-ready (unlike faction recruits) and are considered faction neutral so they’ll fight against any other faction without a morale penalty. Rescued "Farmer" units can also promote into mercenaries as well.
Merchant Money Cap: Town merchants have a limited amount of cash on hand, meaning they can run out of money if you attempt to sell too many items at once. This restriction is easy to work around by visiting other merchants in the same town, as each shop has its own money pool while offering identical sell prices. Village markets, however, begin with no spare cash at all, preventing the player from selling anything unless they first purchase goods (or just straight up barter).
Mighty Glacier:
- Heavy infantry, as well as heavy cavalry who have been dismounted, move at a snail's pace relative to lighter troops due to their heavy armor and typically large weapons/shields encumbering them. Get close, however, and they'll show you why the "mighty" portion of the trope applies, dishing out massive damage of their own.
- The Nords are a mighty glacier faction, having the best heavy infantry in the game and no cavalry at all in their unit promotion tree. Their high-tier Huscarls in particular will slaughter an equal number of any other infantry in the game, but move slowly due to their heavy armor.
Minmaxer's Delight:
- Ymira is a great companion example. She is recruited at level one, is hired for free, and comes with very few pre-assigned stat or skill points, unlike most companions who come at higher levels and have some pre-allocated skill points that may be wasted depending on how you want to build them. This makes her essentially a blank slate that can be efficiently molded into whatever the party needs, especially a dedicated Party skill specialist such as Surgery, Engineering, Trade (which she already has a point in being a merchant's daughter), or Tactics. Because she lacks the "wasted" skill points common to higher-level companions, Ymira can end up more effective in long-term optimized builds, making her disproportionately valuable despite her unimpressive starting gear and combat ability.
- The Trainer skill is another quiet favorite among min-maxers once its mechanics are understood. Unlike most Party skills, Trainer stacks across all companions, granting passive daily experience to troops lower level than the trainer. This means every spare skill point invested in Trainer contributes directly to faster troop leveling, even if only at a low value. By spreading Trainer across multiple companions, players can dramatically accelerate the growth of fresh recruits into veteran troops without needing to fight additional battles. The game does little to highlight how powerful this stacking effect is, but once discovered, it becomes a no-brainer optimization choice that rewards careful planning and long-term efficiency rather than flashy combat bonuses.
Morale Mechanic: Morale is a constantly shifting party stat with major gameplay consequences. It affects how aggressively troops engage in battle and how likely they are to break and run when the fight turns against them, it impacts campaign map movement speed (low morale slows the party down), and if it drops too far it can trigger desertions. Morale is constantly recalculated from several modifiers, including a base value plus a party size penalty (large armies strain cohesion), a Leadership bonus, and a food variety bonus (each food type has a morale value that stacks when a variety is offered). “Recent events” can also swing morale sharply. Winning battles/tournaments and completing quests raise it, while losing battles, retreating, failing quests, starvation/running out of food, and fighting multiple engagements in a single day lower it. Further, being at war with the home faction of "nation-based" troops also imposes a significant morale hit. (For example, any Swadian troops in your party will drag down morale if you're at war with Swadia.) You can also take morale hits from certain management actions (notably recruiting prisoners into your party), making morale something you have to actively manage rather than a passive background number.
Mounted Combat: The player character can fight from horseback, which provides greater mobility to close on enemies, pull out of unfavorable engagements, and more easily chase down fleeing enemies. The game also strives for more realistic mounted combat than most, as horses must be actively maneuvered, you can be forcibly dismounted by enemy attacks (or if they knock your horse's health to zero), and mounted attacks gain momentum-based bonus damage. The Riding skill enhances your mounted fighting abilities, while the Horse Archery skill enables you to fight with a bow from horseback.
Multi-Melee Master: Weapon proficiency in the game is grouped by broad categories rather than individual weapons. A single proficiency covers multiple melee weapon types, meaning a character skilled in one category is automatically competent with all weapons that fall under it. For example, the One-Handed Weapons proficiency applies equally to swords, axes, and maces, while Two-Handed Weapons governs greatswords, axes, and polearms used without shields. As proficiency increases through use, characters naturally become effective with a wide variety of melee weapons without needing to specialize in each one individually, allowing both the player character and AI troops to switch weapons freely within the categories and still perform at a high level.
Multiple-Choice Past: During character creation, the player selects a series of background details that define the player character’s past, such as social class, upbringing, early career, and major life events. Each choice directly affects starting attributes, skills, proficiencies, and Starter Equipment, effectively shaping who the character was before the game begins. For example, choosing a noble upbringing grants higher starting Leadership and better initial equipment, while backgrounds like merchant or hunter favor trade skills or ranged proficiencies. These choices have no direct narrative consequences later on, but they permanently influence the character’s early strengths and weaknesses, making the player’s selected past mechanically meaningful.
Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Downplayed in that you can still recruit all available NPC companions to your party, but each companion has two others they do not get along with. If they are present together and morale is low, they may complain to you about one another. If complaints are repeatedly ignored, one may even desert the party (taking their equipment with them as well). Warband adds another layer of complexity, as each companion dislikes when another specific companion serves as an "emissary" to support the player character's "Right to Rule" over Calradia. Note that this relation targets someone with which he/she has usually a neutral relation (not one of the already disliked companions) and is described as the emissary using a particular argument that offends that character's sensibilities.
My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
- Enemy lords are effectively exempt from many of the rules the player must follow. They lose nothing of consequence after being captured (the player loses equipment, money, and must rebuild their entire party manually), avoid capture outright roughly 70% of the time by default (the player is always captured when knocked out in battle), and are all equipped with some of the highest-tier gear in the game from the very start (even the most minor lords are armed to the teeth).
- During battle, if the player character is knocked out, even if you were dominating the battle, the auto-resolve triggers and it is notoriously unfavorable toward the player's army. Meanwhile, enemy armies will continue fighting even if their commanding lord goes down.
Nerf:
- An early patch removed the ability for archer and Horse Archer builds to resupply ammunition indefinitely during battles by repeatedly returning to the baggage chest. In earlier versions, this effectively granted infinite arrows; in current versions, players are limited to the ammunition they have equipped, any spare ammo they actually carry in the party inventory, and arrows recovered from fallen enemies on the battlefield.
- A patch nerfed the effectiveness of a couched lance attack. While still one of the most damaging attacks in the game, the patch made it more difficult to achieve by forcing the player to manually aim the lance, compared to the original where the aiming was automatic.
- Shield effectiveness was nerfed in an early patch. They originally had overly generous hitboxes that absorbed missile fire too easily. The coverage area was later toned down while they began taking more damage from projectiles, increasing the likelihood of the shield breaking.
- "Party" skills among companions were originally stackable, with players focusing on building up a few dominant key skills (Surgery, Pathfinding, etc.) across as many companions as possible. This was later changed so that only the companion with the highest value in a given skill would have it applied, with the notable exception of Training which still stacks.
No "Arc" in "Archery": Realistically averted. Arrows, bolts, and thrown weapons need to be properly aimed taking into account distance, relative speed, altitude, and weapon arcing. The game's log rates the shot's difficulty if you hit, based on these elements. The "arc" is even more pronounced in third person view.
No Fair Cheating: Downplayed in that, while cheats are enabled, Steam achievements are disabled. However, unlike some games which permanently lock you out of achievements in a playthrough where cheats have been used, you can disable them, then exit and restart the game, and they'll be enabled once again.
No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Some historical characters referenced in-game are clearly based on real-life historic figures. Alixenus the Great is the subject of a book that increases your Leadership skill. Similarly, Galerian is an ancient doctor and philosopher, similar to Galen.
Nominal Importance: If a character has a name and can appear in battle, they'll only ever be "knocked out", never killed. This applies to companions, lords, rulers, and claimants. Those that join your party can also be leveled-up and outfitted with better equipment just like the player character.
Non-Lethal K.O.:
- The player character, companions, lords, rulers, and claimants can only ever be knocked out in battle, never killed. Even if you witness them take a crossbow bolt to the head or a couched lance strike to the chest, they're still only "knocked out".
- If a member of your party has invested in the Surgery skill, there is a chance that your generic units will survive otherwise lethal hits in this same fashion.
- Units equipped with blunt weapons will only ever knock out enemies they strike, even if they're swinging a warhammer at an enemy unit's unprotected head. You can order your troops to use "blunt weapons only" in battle, which massively helps when it comes to taking prisoners.
Noob Cave: The "Quest Merchant" optional tutorial questline at the very beginning of the game uses a unique bandit camp. This early dungeon-like encounter is deliberately designed to be far safer than any other bandit lair in the game, featuring extremely weak Looter-type enemies and forgiving encounter design. Unlike normal bandit camps, failure carries no lasting penalty; if you're defeated, you can simply retry without losing troops, equipment, or progress. The camp functions as a controlled introduction to basic combat and party control, serving as a low-risk warm-up before the player is released into Calradia’s Early Game Hell.
No Stat Atrophy: The player character and companions do not lose stats they've gained through leveling up. One exception exists when it comes to horses, however. If they're knocked out in combat, there is a chance they'll become "lame" which reduces their speed value. This makes horses one of the few things in the game that can suffer a form of persistent degradation.
Not Playing Fair With Resources: The player must recruit troops manually by visiting villages and towns, and can easily exhaust the available pool of recruits in a given area. AI-controlled lords, by contrast, rebuild their armies without needing to physically recruit from settlements, allowing them to replenish large forces far more quickly than the player. In addition, the AI operates under an abstracted economy and does not meaningfully suffer from running out of money, making it impossible to wear them down into relying solely on low-tier recruits through attrition.
Obvious Rule Patch:
- In the earlier versions of the game, you could return to the party "baggage" chest during battle to restock on arrows/bolts, effectively creating a Bottomless Magazines situation for the player character. This led to the dominance of Horse Archer player builds who could basically solo entire opposing armies by riding around, shooting accurately, and then returning to the baggage chest to reload. Rather than redesigning ranged combat, patch nerfed this behavior by limiting you to the ammunition you brought into the battle in your equipment slots (plus whatever can be scavenged from the field).
- In early versions of the game, all "Party" skills stacked creating massively unbalanced benefits for the player and party. Stacking key skills like Surgery and Pathfinding across multiple party members would snowball into massive advantages such as your units only ever being wounded in combat (instead of killed), your party moving twice as fast as any other army on the battle map, and more. Now, only the single highest skill value in the party is applied, with Trainer being the sole exception that still stacks. This matches explicitly how players are encouraged to build parties (specialize one companion per Party skill, Trainer on many).
Offscreen Teleportation: A lord who is defeated in battle but not captured, as well as those who are captured but escape/are released, disappear from the map for a few in-game days before reappearing at one of their faction's castles, sometimes on the complete opposite side of Calradia. They'll also have their full complement of troops available once again.
Omnicidal Neutral: In the base game, the closest thing to a “win condition” is conquering the entire map as a masterless warlord. By systematically defeating every faction and claiming all towns and castles without swearing allegiance to anyone, the player effectively wipes out all organized political powers in Calradia. The game assigns no moral framing or narrative motive to this outcome, treating total conquest as a purely neutral act of domination rather than heroism or villainy.
One-Handed Zweihänder:
- Two-handed weapons obviously require two hands when on foot, but when mounted, most weapons are used one-handed. Two-handed weapons still run off of the Two-Handed weapon proficiency and prevent the use of a shield, in addition to suffering speed and damage penalties (compared to true, on-foot, two-handed use). Even with these penalties and restrictions, their incredible reach makes them appealing in certain situations for mounted combat where it may be harder to connect with shorter one-handed weapons.
- The Bastard Sword (aka Hand and a Half Sword) is usable as either a one-handed or two-handed weapon. When used on foot without a shield equipped, you can switch between the two modes. On horseback, whether they run off of the One-Handed or Two-Handed weapon proficiency depends on if you have a shield equipped in the off-hand.
One-Man Army: In the hands of a skilled player with efficient stat/skill/weapon proficiency point distribution and quality equipment, the player character can be a disproportionate force on the battlefield. Rack up double digit kill counts, shrug off most enemy attacks as Scratch Damage, ride around on your horse like a Lightning Bruiser... In the base version of the game, riding ahead of your army can even trigger a bout of Artificial Stupidity in the enemy AI as they won't break ranks to swarm you until the rest of your army gets close.
One Stat to Rule Them All:
- In terms of attributes, Intelligence far outweighs the others. It has the most skills associated with it (and skill increases are limited by their parent attribute), the majority of the most crucial skills (Trainer, Inventory Management, Surgery, Persuasion...) are associated with it, and, most importantly, taking a point in Intelligence gives you a bonus skill point every level up.
- Skills: (Note: Because most "Party" skills only apply from the single highest value in the party, different companions can specialize in different skills, allowing multiple skills to become effectively "must-have" without competing for investment.)
  - Surgery is the skill most veteran players swear by. It gives a percentage chance of units who fall in battle being only wounded instead of killed, which is both an economic advantage (less rebuilding) and a power advantage (keeps veterans alive). Jeremus, a companion who can be recruited for free right away at the start of the game, comes with several points already in the Surgery skill and if you keep investing there, will cover your Surgery needs for the entire rest of the playthrough.
  - Trainer grants a passive experience bonus to the party every in-game day. Nice enough on its own, but after some initial nerfing patches, it is the only "Party" skill that still stacks. If you make sure to invest at least one point there for every companion in your party, low-tier units can get enough experience for promotion in a single in-game day, without risking them in combat. It enables quicker recovery from losses, a faster party quality ramp, and gives both the player character and companions more experience as well. Most guides recommend putting every spare skill point into Trainer as a result.
  - Pathfinding is a huge "quality of life" skill that enables faster travel on the campaign map. This means easier fleeing from threatening enemy armies, chasing down weaker foes, and just generally reducing the slog of overworld travel on the player. Much like Jeremus and the Surgery skill, Deshavi can be recruited for free early in the game and comes with several points already placed into the skill.
  - For the player character, since many of the other key skills can be covered by easy-to-recruit companions who come with a few points already invested as the non-Trainer skills don't stack, the "Leader" skills become more important. These are based only on the skill level of the "party leader", i.e. the player character, and though several companions come with points invested, they don't apply and are essentially wasted. Once you get the player character's combat skills up to snuff, you'll want to invest in Leader skills like Inventory Management (lets you carry more items), Prisoner Management (lets you capture a greater number of prisoners who are lucrative to ransom), and Leadership (allows you to have a larger, cheaper to maintain, higher morale party).
- "Right to Rule", although not a true attribute or skill, functions as a de facto stat that affects party morale, troop recruitment, and how large of an army you can effectively lead, making it crucial for endgame kingdom play. Veteran players will generally take whatever opportunities they get to increase it (sending companions as emissaries, marrying into another faction's nobility, supporting a claimant for the RtR bonus but abandoning them before reestablishing their rule, etc.).
Only in It for the Money: Mercenary units are expensive to hire and have higher upkeep than other units of comparable tier, but unlike regular faction troops, they do not suffer morale penalties for fighting against their faction of origin. This makes them reliable short-term soldiers whose loyalty can be bought.
Padded Sumo Gameplay: If both combatants knock each other off their horses during a jousting tournament, the fight can devolve into a prolonged and awkward exchange using jousting lances on foot, where they deal very little damage and are slow to use. The player can choose to drop the lance and resort to fists, which is only marginally faster and more effective, while the opponent’s Artificial Stupidity prevents them from ever switching weapons.
Pause Scumming: A well-known exploit allows you to change the "battle size" in the Settings menu of the pause screen at any time, even in the middle of battle. If you're facing an overwhelming enemy force, you can set it to the minimum size and organize your party so your most elite troops are at the top of the list before the start of the battle. Then, during the battle, raise the battle size briefly to the maximum to trigger friendly reinforcements (which will likely be the entire rest of your party), then immediate lower it again before enemy reinforcements arrive. This allows the player to defeat much larger armies in small, manageable waves.
Peninsula of Power Leveling:
- There are a few regions of Calradia where Bandits spawn in especially thick concentrations, who make for great early game opponents to grind for experience and loot. The forests on the Swadian/Rhodok border (the "Woods of Ehlerdah" per companion chatter) are swarming with Forest Bandits on the Swadian side (widely considered the weakest Bandits in the game) and Mountain Bandits on the Rhodok side (who have tougher units but are still easy to defeat as Artificial Stupidity prevents them from actually using the elevated mountain battlefields to their advantage). Spending a few in-game days cleaning up the roving bandits and looting their lairs when found will give fantastic early game experience and loot.
- Tundra Bandits are the next step up after Forest/Mountain Bandits and the snowy stretch between Khudan and Rivacheg spawns them densely as a reliable early/mid-game grind zone. They offer a greater experience payout that lower-tier bandits and drop better equipment as loot.
- Sea Raiders, basically being Nord Bandits, are widely considered to be the toughest bandits in the game, but also have the highest experience payouts and drop the best loot. Each Sea Raider gives relatively high experience compared to other early/mid-game enemies, and they use good equipment like mail armor, axes, bows, decent shields, and helmets, allowing the player to farm these items for their own use (or to sell for decent piles of cash). They're all over the northern part of the map, with an especially dense spawn area between Rivacheg and and Bulugha Castle as a repeatable circuit, so once other bandits are no longer worthwhile, you can move right onto these guys.
- The central map area between Dhirim and Halmar is widely considered the most hotly contested territory in the game, as three factions (Swadia, Rhodoks, Khergits) border it by default, while the Vaegirs and Sarranids often expand toward it as well. Even if your faction isn't currently active in the area, at least one of the factions they're at war with typically is. Even if your army is still too weak to take them out onright, you can lurk there, wait for enemy armies to be weakened by other factions they're fighting, and then jump them for easy experience, valuable prisoners, lords to capture, and reputation-boosting victories with far less risk than engaging a fresh army. Lurk a little longer, rinse and repeat. Sometimes you can even get the jump on a weakened ruler's army in this fashion for even greater benefits.
- In the early game, Arena and Tournament battles make for fantastic experience and weapon skill grinding opportunities. Before large-scale faction warfare becomes common and before enemy armies scale up significantly, the player can travel town to town participating in tournaments for fast, repeatable payouts of money, experience, and renown. Tournaments pit the player against a limited number of opponents using standardized gear, allowing skilled players to win consistently regardless of their actual equipment quality. Because tournaments refresh regularly across different towns and carry little long-term risk, players can chain them together during this early window to rapidly build combat skills, bankroll early equipment purchases, and establish a strong foundation before the campaign fully opens up. The biggest downside is that they are a Luck-Based Mission as you might get randomly assigned lousy equipment and low-tier teammates, but a little persistence (or willingness to use Save Scumming) can overcome that to make them worthwhile.
Plot Armor: Any named character can only be captured, not killed. Only Rulers (finish a rebellion quest) and Claimants (fail a rebellion quest or by defeating the usurper's kingdom) can be removed from play permanently. (Even then, the game implies that they are exiled outside of Calradia, rather than being killed.)
Power Equals Rarity: Some of the most powerful equipment modifiers in the game are also among the rarest. Top-tier horse variants such as "Spirited" and "Champion" horses almost never appear for sale and are typically only obtained as extremely rare loot drops. Acquiring one offers dramatic improvements to speed, maneuverability, and survivability compared to standard mounts. Likewise, high-end armor modifiers like "Lordly" and "Reinforced" are also exceedingly rare, but provide such large bonuses to protection that they can fundamentally change how much punishment a character can absorb in battle.
Power-Up Letdown:
- Various recruited Bandits (other than Looters) promote into the "Recruit" unit of the region they originate from (for example, Steppe Bandits become Khergit Tribesmen, Taiga Bandits become Vaegir Recruits, and so on), which are often significantly lower level than the bandits they replace. This is especially pronounced with Sea Raiders, who are level 16 and competent in both melee and ranged combat with decent armor and shields, while Nord Recruits are only level six, are melee-only, lightly equipped, and may not even carry a shield. Adding insult to injury, bandit units are considered "neutral" and do not suffer morale penalties when fighting their home faction, another advantage lost upon promotion.
- Due to the loose Procedural Generation of troop attributes and skills, some unit upgrades can feel underwhelming, particularly when the promoted unit’s equipment loadout changes little from the previous tier. In these cases, the initial promotion and increased upkeep costs doesn't feel justified by the marginal stat gains, making the upgrade seem like a downgrade in terms of cost-effectiveness. Downplayed in that true cases where a promotion is outright weaker than its predecessor are rare, but disappointing upgrades are common enough to be noticeable. For a specific example, upgrading Swadian Footmen (5-10 denars/week) into Swadian Infantry (10-19 denars/week) nearly doubles upkeep while keeping the unit in the same "shielded melee infantry" role, so the immediate payoff can feel modest compared to the cost, especially with the game’s per-save stat adjustments and equipment variance.
Pretext for War: One recurring lord quest revolves around manufacturing an excuse to start a war with another faction. The lord may task the player with provoking another faction by attacking a village, ambushing a caravan, or otherwise committing an act that can be blamed on political tensions rather than open aggression. If successful, the incident serves as a diplomatic justification for war, allowing the faction to declare hostilities under the guise of retribution rather than expansionism. The player is treated as a deniable asset, taking the reputation hit while providing the political cover needed to escalate the conflict.
Procedural Generation: Generic units have predefined baseline stats, but also receive semi-random allocations of attribute and skill points layered on top of those baselines. These rolls are generated when a new game is started and then permanently fixed for all units of that type for the duration of that save. Weapon proficiencies, however, always use their defined values and are not randomized. As a result, relative unit strength can vary meaningfully between playthroughs; for example, in one game Sarranid Mamlukes might have a clear statistical edge over Swadian Knights, while in another they may be nearly identical, or even slightly inferior.
Proud Warrior Race Guy:
- Several companions embody this archetype, most notably Baheshtur (a Khergit) and Matheld (a Nord). Both place a strong emphasis on personal combat ability, battlefield valor, and earning honor through direct fighting rather than politics or trade. Their dialogue frequently reflects a cultural pride rooted in warfare, and they express frustration with cowardice and indirect methods of conflict.
- Sea Raiders, the highest level of Bandits, naturally qualify being Horny Vikings. They openly revel in combat and raiding. Their battle quotes when attacking really drive it home:
  "I will drink from your skull!"
- The Nords and Khergits are Downplayed examples. Each leans into this archetype culturally, but their martial values are tempered by pragmatism and broader social structures, making them warrior cultures rather than pure embodiments of this trope.
Purposely Overpowered: Claimants. If you take up a claimant’s cause, they temporarily join your party like a companion, and their default statline is absurdly high for a free party member: Level 38 with 20 in every attribute and equipped with solid high-tier gear and elite horses. It reads as a deliberate safety net for the challenging claimant rebellion path, giving the player a powerful hero until the claimant takes the throne, leaves the party, and leads their own army.
Pyrrhic Victory: It is entirely possible to win battles, including capturing towns and castles, at such a catastrophic cost that the "victory" cripples your army and leaves you worse off than you were before. This most often occurs during sieges, where defenders have major advantages and successfully taking a settlement can wipe out large numbers of elite troops that take weeks of in-game time and cost serious money to replace. Because AI-controlled factions replenish armies far faster and do not suffer the same recruitment or economic constraints as the player, they can counterattack almost immediately with fresh forces. The result is a hollow victory: the player may hold ground briefly, but with their army crippled, while the enemy recovers effortlessly and continues the war as if nothing happened.
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits:
- The recruitable companions make for quite the motley crew. They range from disinherited nobles to outright bandits, army deserters, an exiled doctor, a caravan quartermaster, and even a woman fleeing an arranged marriage with no combat skills at all (and she's one of the best companions in the game thanks to her Magikarp Power), plus potentially the claimant to the throne of one of the factions if you choose to support them. They are led by the player character, who can come from one of numerous “misfit” backgrounds depending on character creation choices, and some companions dislike one another strongly enough that keeping them together can harm party morale.
- The generic units in the player’s party can also form a very "ragtag" force. You can recruit troops from every faction, recruit prisoners taken in battle (including bandits and raiders), and even recruit prisoners rescued from other armies (including Farmers and Peasant Women), resulting in an army that is thematically disparate but potentially very effective.
Rain of Arrows: Positioning a large number of ranged attackers on elevated terrain can easily produce this effect. If the units involved are high-tier ranged troops (such as Rhodok Sharpshooters or Vaegir Marksmen), they can sometimes decide the battle before the opposing army even reaches melee range by shooting enemies down en masse and triggering morale-based routs among the survivors. Thankfully, owing in part to Artificial Stupidity, computer-controlled armies rarely attempt this in open-field battles, only doing so consistently when defending during sieges by placing archers on the walls.
Ranged Emergency Weapon: Throwing Knives and Stones require no skill points in Throwing Power to use (unlike javelins and throwing axes) and take up only one of your four weapon slots (opposed to the two taken up by a bow or crossbow plus their ammo) but deal low damage. Their primary use is to give a primarily melee fighter some ranged capability.
Rank Scales with Asskicking: While exactly how much “asskicking” they do varies between individuals, faction lords are expected to personally lead armies in battle and are usually formidable fighters in their own right. They often possess combat skills and proficiencies high enough to rival or exceed those of their own elite troops, and are equipped with distinctive high-tier gear (typically heraldic plate armor, with still-distinct variations by faction) and quality horses that make them stand out on the battlefield. In practice, a lord can personally cut down large numbers of enemy troops if left unchecked.
Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Villages can be raided, looted, and burned by both the player and AI-controlled armies. Raiding a village temporarily halts its production, loots/destroys stored goods, reduces prosperity, and leaves the population impoverished, directly impacting recruitment and income for its owning faction. AI lords make frequent use of this tactic during wars, often repeatedly targeting the same villages to cripple an enemy’s economy and morale.
Recruiting the Criminal:
- Several potential companions are joining you to get out of lives of crime (or at least take a break from it), including Klethi (a thief and assassin), Rolf (a bandit), and Bunduk (a deserter, though arguably justified). Even moral companions like Jeremus and Artimenner are exiled due to misunderstandings that resulted in the deaths of former employers, placing them on the fringes of lawful society.
- The player can also directly recruit criminals and outlaws into their army by accepting captured Looters, Bandits, and Raiders as party members. These units transition from hostile lawless enemies into loyal troops under the player’s command, trading their criminal status for military service, albeit often at the cost of morale penalties or distrust from more “respectable” companions.
Recurring Traveller:
- Tavern patrons move between different towns throughout Calradia each in-game day rather than remaining fixed in one location. This includes non-recruited or dismissed companions, Ransom Brokers, generic Travellers (who can be paid to reveal the current location of claimants, dismissed companions, or other Ransom Brokers), wandering poets who offer gossip on noble courtship and teach poems, book merchants, and various mercenaries for hire. Players often need to actively track these recurring travelers across towns to access their services.
- Claimants regularly move between castles belonging to factions other than their own every few in-game days, rather than remaining in a fixed location. As a result, they must be actively tracked down if you want to offer support and begin a rebellion on their behalf.
Redshirt Army:
- You can expect most of your party’s generic units to die quite frequently, especially early in the campaign. As they gain experience, promote into higher tiers, and benefit from survival-enhancing skills like Surgery and Leadership, they become far more competent and transition into Men of Sherwood instead. Losses among these elite troops are felt much more sharply, both economically and tactically.
- Whenever you are joined by an allied lord’s army in combat, his troops effectively function as this. It is often possible, and even recommended, to hold your own forces back and let allied units absorb the bulk of the fighting. Since AI-controlled lords can replenish their losses far more quickly and at no apparent cost, their armies can be treated as if We Have Reserves.
Ridiculously Fast Construction: When buying land in a town to start an enterprise, it only takes one in-game week to construct the building, fill it out with needed equipment (which is visible if you visit), and start producing product.
A Round of Drinks for the House: This is an option when speaking to the tavern keeper in any town. For 1000 denars, the player can buy drinks for everyone present that night, granting a reputation boost in that town. This can be done once per town per in-game day.
Royals Who Actually Do Something: Faction rulers and lords actively campaign during wars and regularly participate in battles rather than sitting back in their castles. On the battlefield, they are typically among the strongest individual units present, heavily armed and armored heavy cavalry mounted on elite horses. The risks of serving as a Frontline General in this fashion are mitigated by the fact that they cannot actually die, only being knocked out when their health is depleted. The worst result for them is to be captured (which they have about a 70% chance of "escaping"), which will take them out of commission for a few in-game days before they escape or are ransomed back to their faction, at which point they (much more quickly than the player can) immediately raise a new army just like their old one. They also tend to have high skill levels, particularly in Tactics, which can result in the player entering battles at a statistical disadvantage if they lack a capable tactician of their own.
Save Scumming:
- A viable tactic in most cases. The player can freely save before battles or sieges and reload to retry unfavorable outcomes or reduce losses. This can also be done before arena or tournament battles to help mitigate the Luck-Based Mission elements inherent to those and avoid costly defeats. Reloading can also re-roll the likelihood of major world events, such as war or peace being declared between factions. This is helpful if, for example, you are deep in the territory of a faction that has just declared war on you, or if you are holding high-tier prisoners you intend to sell to a Ransom Broker, as enemy faction prisoners are automatically released when peace is declared.
- In the base game, some quests or actions with random outcomes (persuasion attempts, recruitment, certain village interactions, etc.) can lock their result for a short in-game window to discourage save scumming. Reloading a save during this period will produce the same outcome, or even re-roll in a way that discourages immediate retries. Come Warband, this behavior is absent.
Set Swords to "Stun":
- Important characters like the player character, companions, lords, and rulers can only ever suffer a Non-Lethal K.O. in battle, even if struck by lethal weapons in ways that would be fatal in real life.
- Weapons that deal explicit "blunt" damage (maces, staffs, warhammers) are hard-coded to incapacitate rather than kill, despite being fully lethal weapons in reality. One of the battlefield orders is to "Use Blunt Weapons Only", which is great for knocking out routing enemies for capture and ransom instead of killing them.
Sex Sells: This promotional screenshot◊ shows a female player character in her underwear in a castle bedroom. This isn't a scenario that applies to gameplay at all.
Shareware: A legacy of the game’s early development and distribution model. The original version could be downloaded for free and played indefinitely, but progression was capped after a certain amount of in-game time or upon reaching around level 12. Purchasing the game provided a registration key that unlocked unlimited progression while using the same client. New characters could still be created even in the unregistered version.
Shows Damage: Characters, horses, and even shields (which have a condition rating and can be broken in-battle) visibly show the effects of damage, including blood, blood-stained armor, and stuck projectiles.
The Siege: Occurs whenever a castle or town is assaulted. The attacker must first lay siege on the world map, during which time they can build siege equipment though defenders may sally out or allied lords may arrive to break the siege. Once the assault begins, battles typically funnel attackers through narrow choke points such as ladders or siege towers, heavily favoring defenders. In larger settlements, this is often followed by a Storming the Castle sequence with multiple stages: fighting through the interior streets/courtyards against a reduced but entrenched defending force, then finally assaulting the keep/castle with an even smaller number of defenders. Sieges frequently involve high casualties, repeated assaults over multiple in-game days, and significant attrition, especially early in the game when the player’s troops and equipment are weaker. If the player character falls at any "stage", it results in the entire siege failing, even if the defenders have been reduced to a small handful of units while the assaulting force still has hundreds.
Sinister Scythe: Scythes and Military Scythes are polearms with great reach and "swing" damage. The basic version is often found in the hands of "Peasant" forces, being a farm tool that makes for a solid anti-cavalry weapon in a pinch. The "military" version is a more purpose-built variant that can be used effectively from horseback, lending itself to wide, slashing attacks during mounted passes.
Skewed Priorities: Faction lords and rulers have these on multiple levels, to note:
- Allied lords frequently display this during wartime. Even in the middle of active campaigns, sieges, or enemy invasions, lords may abruptly abandon strategically vital objectives because their liege has called for a feast. Otherwise successful offenses can collapse immediately, enemy castles may be left mid-siege, and perhaps worst of all, they may abandon the player's party deep in enemy territory surrounded by multiple large enemy armies. The game treats feasts as a high-priority concern for nobles, often outweighing the immediate risk of losing territory or momentum in a war.
- How and why allied lords choose to pursue certain objectives often defies logic. They may peel off of a siege to chase an unthreatening enemy faction merchant caravan or break off of an offensive to raid a village far from the actual objective set forth by their faction's marshal. From a player perspective, this often feels like they're focusing on petty gains while missing opportunities to swing the entire tide of the war.
- An example that is at least realistic but no less "skewed" is that lords will let personal grudges with the player or other allied lords impact their strategic decision making. They may refuse to answer the marshal's summons to war and, if spoken to, will state that they think they know better and will engage in something they think is more worthwhile... which is often patrolling back and forth near their own fiefs where no enemies are present...
Small Name, Big Ego:
- "Baron" Rolf, a potential companion, brags loudly about his supposed noble lineage despite being widely suspected by other party members of being a bandit, often reacting with indignation if anyone questions his heritage or competence on the battlefield. There is also no actual evidence that he is a noble of any kind.
- Nizar, another companion, is boastful about his prowess, mixing romanticized accounts of his own deeds and poetic flourishes into conversation while insisting he is destined for glory and fame. If the player character’s renown grows high enough, he may even leave the party so he is not "overshadowed" by their achievements.
Sociopathic Hero: Klethi is an impulsive, bloodthirsty companion who openly admits to having been pressed into service as an assassin and seems to enjoy violence for its own sake, casually describing how she would stab someone between the ribs. She gleefully hunts down corpses after battles looking for loot and shows little regard for social niceties, at one point dismissing Artimenner’s engineering charts as witchcraft and threatening violence over it. Her outlook is unapologetically brutal, yet she is loyal to those she cares about and will stick with the player even if her methods unsettle others.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear:
- Companions that leave the party due to low morale or personality conflicts, or who are dismissed by the player, will take whatever gear they have equipped with them when they go. If the player suspects a companion may leave or plans to dismiss them, the only way to avoid losing valuable equipment is to remove it beforehand.
- Can be Inverted with Claimants. When supporting a claimant to a throne, the claimant temporarily joins the party as a companion before departing to rule the newly established kingdom. Since they leave automatically at the end of the rebellion, players can strip them of their often Purposely Overpowered equipment beforehand, resulting in the unintentionally humorous image of sending off a newly crowned king or queen to rule their realm in nothing but their underwear.
Spy Speak: One quest type in the base game requires the player to identify a friendly spy hiding among enemy civilians. The spy cannot reveal themselves directly and instead uses coded dialogue and specific conversational cues to confirm their identity. The player must interpret this phrasing correctly to locate the spy, as selecting the wrong person can result in quest failure or immediate hostility. (This quest type was removed in Warband.)
Squad Controls: The player can give orders to their army during combat, ranging from movement ("Charge", "Hold This Position", "Follow Me", etc.) to positioning ("Spread Out", "Advance/Fall Back Ten Paces", etc.) to weapon commands ("Fire At Will", "Blunt Weapons Only", etc.). You can also sort your army into designated groups (Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, custom designations) to only give orders to certain units. This allows for some tactical flexibility, such as positioning archers on a hill to fire from range, sending infantry to engage the enemy head-on, and having cavalry follow the player character to strike the enemy flank.
The Squadette:
- Five of the game's 16 recruitable companions are women. With equivalent skills and equipment, they fight just as well as the male companions.
- Peasant Women are weak units who can be recruited after being rescued from enemy/bandit armies. They, and their first several promotion tiers, are extremely weak compared to equivalent male units. However, promote them to their highest tier and they become powerful Sword Sisters, equivalent to powerful Mercenary Cavalry at about half the upkeep cost.
Starter Equipment: The game is very stingy about what it gives a starting player character, with variations depending on the "background" chosen during character creation. Items include the lowest-tier weapons (sword, axe, and/or bow), maybe a low-tier shield, lowest-tier armor (mostly ragged clothing), and in all but one notable case^note, one of the worst horses in the game. The equipment serves primarily to establish the player as an inexperienced wanderer rather than a capable warrior, reinforcing the game’s Early Game Hell. Aside from that one exception, the game's starting equipment options are almost universally terrible and quickly replaced as soon as the player loots almost anything else.
Start My Own: You can proclaim yourself ruler of your own kingdom if you don't want to support any of the current monarchs or their rival claimants. It is much more challenging to accomplish, however, as you'll need to conquer your own territories and take on enemy lord armies without any initial support of your own. Given that the campaign AI of the other factions strongly favors Ganging Up On The Human, you'll likely be at war with every other faction in a short time as well unless you've laid significant groundwork with your "Right to Rule" ahead of time (a mechanic many new players are unaware of).
Stat Grinding: If you want to improve a weapon proficiency, you'll need to actually use that weapon. While you get some "free" points to invest when leveling up, you're limited in how high you can raise a proficiency with these points by your Weapon Master skill, and high-level increases (once you get into the hundreds) take multiple points to raise the proficiency even one level. Weapon proficiency increases from actual combat aren't limited in this way, but combat obviously carries other risks. Enter Arenas, with repeatable battles allowing you to grind your weapon proficiencies for as long as your patience allows. Warband expands on this further by adding dedicated Training Fields, where the player can spar with practice weapons for the same effect, even against their own party members, who also gain experience from it.
Staying Alive: Having a party member with points invested in the Surgery skill increases the chances that generic units who would normally be killed in combat are only "wounded" instead. You can even witness them fall to grievous blows, like a crossbow bolt to the head or couched lance strike to the chest, but see that the unit miraculously survived. Though not actually fantastic in origin, given the general lack of medical knowledge in the Middle Ages, being able to reliably save lives after such injuries would look and feel like a superpower.
Sticks to the Back: Polearms, two-handed weapons, and crossbows are all stored on the character's back when not actively drawn.
Storming the Castle: The most common method of expanding your faction's territory in the game. First, you'll start The Siege (or join one an NPC ally already has in progress), which includes building siege equipment over a few in-game days. Once built, you engage in the actual assault of the castle/town. You'll fight your way onto the walls, defeat the bulk of the defending garrison, and then there may be up to two follow-up stages: fighting through the streets/courtyard with a smaller force, then storming the castle/keep itself.
Straight for the Commander: In field battles, enemy lords and rulers are typically the most conspicuous units on the battlefield due to their flasy superior armor, distinctive helmets, and being mounted by default. This is especially pronounced when fighting Nords or Rhodoks, whose troop trees lack native cavalry, making the commander frequently the only mounted unit in the entire army. This makes them easy to identify and target. Taking the commander out of the battle can significantly reduce the threat posed by the enemy army.
Succession Crisis: Each faction has a rival claimant to the throne whom the player can choose to support against the current ruler. While some claimants have more plausible or sympathetic claims than others, all can launch a rebellion, recruiting lords and launching campaigns to seize territory. With the player’s military support, a claimant can overthrow the reigning monarch and assume control of the faction
Suicidal Overconfidence:
- On the battlefield, an AI army's primary strategy is to charge straight ahead into the enemy. Any enemy. Even if they only have low-tier Peasants and the enemy is fielding high-tier elite units. In the base game, they'll continue to fight until the last man standing, but Warband adds the option for them to rout as well (though most enemies still fight on longer than they realistically would in such a hopeless battle).
- Downplayed on the campaign map, as weaker armies, groups of Looters/Bandits/Deserters, and travelling civilian groups like Farmers and Merchant Caravans will try to run away from larger enemy armies. However, once the player engages them, choosing the “Surrender or Die” option never results in an actual surrender, even if the player is fielding an army of 100+ elite units against a dozen farmers and peasant women.
- At the diplomatic level, factions reduced to only a few remaining territories and already at war with multiple enemies may still declare additional wars on neutral factions, including those with vastly greater territory, manpower, and military strength.
- The "Belligerent Drunk" encounters in Taverns, as well as the Bandit ambushes when visiting towns, do not take into account the strength or equipment of the player character. This can result in an unarmored drunk or handful of poorly equipped bandits challenging a player character equipped with the best weapons in the game and a full suit of platemail armor.
Super Not-Drowning Skills: Some battlefield rivers, especially in the early versions of the base game, are deep enough to submerge the player character's head. However, other than the usual movement slowdown when wading through water, there are no additional risks like drowning or other negative effects.
Suspiciously Small Army: While the game otherwise strives for realism in its depictions of medieval warfare, the sizes of armies are conspicuously small. Less prominent lords may lead armies of 60-80, a few higher-profile lords might crack 100+, and rulers themselves can reach 200. The practical maximum for the player's fielded army is around 250, and even reaching that requires maxing out specific skills. Compare that to real life medieval armies, such as Charles Martel's at Tours (est. 15-20,000 men), William the Conqueror's at Hastings (est. 7-12,000 men), or the European forces during the First Crusade (est. 40-50,000 men), and the armies of Mount & Blade are positively tiny.
Take Your Time:
- Downplayed in that, while all non-rebellion quests do have a time limit, the limits are extremely generous, such as being given 30 days to deliver a letter to someone in another town when you can ride across all of Calradia in about two in-game days. The longest potential "quest" is "Marriage", added by Warband, with a time limit of 360 days. This generous limit is fairly justified, since it requires the faction to be at total peace (very rare), a feast (they happen maybe once a month), and the presence of the betrothed (as well as her father if playing a male player character).
- In terms of the overall campaign, it is an Endless Game. No matter how much in-game time passes, no one ages, no named characters die, and, without player intervention, the factions fight Forever War conflicts (broken up by the occasional temporary peace), largely just exchanging the same stretches of territory back-and-forth. Until you actually involve yourself in the conflict, the world state doesn't change much while you're free to travel, fight in tournaments, kill bandits, and the like for as long as you want.
Tap on the Head: Blunt weapons will always deal a Non-Lethal K.O. to units instead of killing them, even if they're being smashed over the head with a warhammer. This allows them to be captured after battle, then potentially ransomed off or recruited to your own party. Your own units knocked out in this fashion will require a little in-game time to recover before they can return to battle, but it's still unrealistically short compared to real life head injuries.
There Are No Tents: Downplayed in that you can set up camp anywhere, at any time, on the world map. While camping, you can still engage in some actions, like persuading captured units to join your party and reading books, all while in-game time continues to pass as if you're traveling. These camps provide no protection like towns/castles do, however, and do not prevent enemy parties from attacking if they happen to pass by.
A Thicket of Spears: Factions with prominent spear infantry units, like the Rhodoks and Swadians, can form tight defensive lines with their spears out if ordered to hold position. They can stop cavalry charges in their tracks and utilize their weapon reach advantage to soften up enemy non-spear infantry before they can engage.
Thriving Ghost Town: If you choose to explore a town, castle, or village, you'll quickly notice that there are only maybe a dozen or so NPCs present while there is nowhere to house the population required for it to function. Villages are an especially prominent example as you can potentially recruit dozens of villagers per day with a maxed out relationship despite appearing almost deserted.
Timed Mission: All quests in the game have time limits, though almost all are extremely generous. For example, you may be given a quest by a lord to deliver a letter to another lord in a different city within 30 days. It only takes about two in-game days to traverse the entire campaign map, plus maybe another day to find the lord if he's not in his home town or castle. For most quests, the time limit only applies to completing the objective, not turning it in to the quest giver, so there is no need to rush back either. Perhaps the tightest time limit comes when commanded by your faction's marshal to join their war campaign. You only get four in-game days, and you're only told where the marshal was "last seen", so by the time you get to them, they may have already moved on forcing you to give chase quickly before the time limit runs out.
Took a Level in Badass:
- The player character, regardless of chosen background, starts the game with the lowest quality equipment, the lowest-tier horse^note, low attributes, very few skills, and no party to speak of. By the late-game, they're likely to be a battlefield juggernaut with the highest quality equipment and an elite horse, leading an army of hundreds, potentially even ruling their own faction taking over Calradia.
- Most companions join the party as weak as low-tier generic units but with some experience and gear upgrades, they become stronger than even the most elite generic units. Ymira is a particularly prominent example, joining at level one with no combat skills, but demonstrating Magikarp Power since she has no wasted skill points like most other companions and can be built in any role the player desires.
- Low-tier units such as faction Recruits/Tribesmen, Farmers, and Peasant Women can progress into top-tier troops with time and experience. Peasant Women are especially notable, as they are extremely weak early on and remain fragile through several promotion tiers, but their final promotion turns them into powerful Sword Sisters comparable to elite Mercenary Cavalry at roughly half the upkeep cost.
Training the Peaceful Villagers:
- A possible village quest tasks the player with training villagers to defend themselves against harassing bandits. Over the course of a few in-game days, with the exact duration depending on the party’s highest Trainer skill, the player engages in several practice fights with the villagers. This culminates in a bandit attack, which the player character helps repel. In addition to the meager monetary reward (which you can refuse for an honor boost instead), subsequent recruits from that village are upgraded one tier, providing Militia units instead of basic recruits.
- This is effectively what happens whenever the player recruits villagers into their party. They begin as the weakest possible units and, through experience and promotion over time, are trained into capable soldiers.
Unblockable Attack: The kick attack can't be stopped by any means, though it's intended less for damage (which is minimal) and more for stunning and knocking back enemies.
The Vamp: Arwa the Pearled One, claimant to the Sarranid Sultanate, is accused of this by Sultan Hakim, who claims she rose to power in the Sarranid Sultanate by charming and manipulating the aging Sultan Ayzar. According to this account, her influence over him was personal rather than political. Arwa herself strongly disputes this characterization, insisting that her rise was due to genuine administrative competence and political skill rather than seduction. The game presents this ambiguity deliberately, leaving it unclear whether the trope applies in truth, or whether it reflects a biased and misogynistic attempt to discredit a capable female ruler by framing her success in sexual terms.
Unusable Enemy Equipment: Zig-zagged in that you can pick up weapons, shields, ammunition, and even mount riderless horses on the battlefield and use them for the duration of the battle, but your inventory will reset to what you went into the battle with as soon as it is over. Worse, there is no guarantee that you'll get any of these items among the battle's loot, either.
Vanilla Unit: Each faction's most basic Recruit/Tribesman, as well as neutral Farmers and Peasant Women, are effectively an untrained commoners using Improvised Weapond with no armor. They're little better than Cannon Fodder in battle, which can make it difficult to get the experience needed to promote them into more useful, higher-tier units.
Velvet Revolution: If you back a Claimant to one of the factions and incite a rebellion, it's possible to get all of that faction's lords (bringing their fiefs with them) to join your side peacefully through the Persuade skill, having a high Right to Rule, and using your companions as emissaries to rally support. At that point, you only need to defeat the current ruler and conquer the capital.
Vestigial Empire: At least a few centuries before the game takes place, the Calradian Empire ruled the continent. It has long since broken up, but many still remember their ancestors' roles within the empire fondly. The current factions are successor states all chasing this former glory, hoping to reunite Calradia under their own authority.
Victory Pose: After eliminating/routing the last enemy unit during battle, your units will automatically raise their weapons and cheer briefly before the battle ends.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: War Is Hell, and you're free to engage in the worst aspects of it. Raid enemy villages, loot everything of value, and then burn them down. Then do it again as soon as the controlling faction restores it. You can force weak enemy armies, even groups of helpless farmers and women, into battle and then slaughter them. With Warband, enemies may rout, and you can run them down as they flee. You can also order your forces to use blunt weapons to knock them out instead, taking them prisoner to ransom off after the battle. You can also wait for two enemy faction armies to fight each other, then defeat each side after they have been weakened.
Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
- Raiding enemy villages, shaking down their peasants, and robbing their merchant caravans are cruel but effective ways to get loot and score reputation points with your own faction, but it takes about an in-game day to complete and will draw attention from the enemy lords. They often rush to stop you during this time, and they typically don't come alone. In the early and mid-game, multiple faction armies led by lords are likely to crush a player army. Even if you succeed, your reputation with that village will take a steep hit, which impacts how many recruits you can get from it. If you later become the lord of that village, this can permanently cripple its usefulness.
- Capturing enemy lords can be very lucrative if their faction offers you ransom money to get them back. However, capturing them (instead of letting them go free) causes you to take a steep reputation hit with their faction, as well as a smaller hits with any factions not at war with them. Do this enough and it's possible to have a deeply negative reputation with every faction but your own which makes later diplomacy much more difficult.
Video Game Delegation Penalty:
- The game gives the option to autoresolve battles, and this will automatically trigger if the player character falls during a battle. However, it is ridiculously unfavorable toward the player's army, often resulting in defeats where, if you play it manually, you'll win quite easily. You can also expect to suffer far more casualties in autoresolved battles, even if your force contains many elite units against an enemy army of low-tier units.
- Your faction's wars can technically be "handled" by allied lords without the player’s direct involvement by ignoring marshal summons and letting AI-controlled lords/vassals engage the campaign on their own. In practice, this produces markedly worse results than personally leading battles and sieges. AI lords frequently lose engagements the player could easily win manually, fail siege assaults, squander numerical advantages, and allow enemy factions to regain momentum. The player’s absence effectively delegates the core task of winning the war to NPCs, and the resulting outcome is consistently inferior compared to hands-on involvement.
Violation of Common Sense: During a siege, if you need to pull back from the walls but cannot reach the tower/ladder, jumping down onto the wooden palisade spikes around the wall will result in less damage than avoiding the spikes and taking the Fall Damage from hitting the ground, as the collision damage from the pikes supercedes the damage from the fall.
Wallet of Holding: You can carry around millions of denars without being slowed down.
War Is Glorious: Presented as such through game's mechanics, as winning battles, defeating enemy lords, and killing/capturing large numbers of enemy units raise the player's renown, honor, relationship values with allied lords, and increases your party's morale.
Warrior Poet: The recruitable companion Nizar explicitly describes him in dialogue as this, with his background as both a fighter and a poet, boasting about his prowess in battle and his poetic talents alike.
We Buy Anything: Any shop in town will buy virtually any item, as will the traveling Book Merchants. Villages will also trade for goods, but they usually have little or no denars on hand, effectively forcing the player to barter for whatever items the village has available.
We Cannot Go On Without You: If the player character is knocked out during a battle, it will immediately end and triggers the autoresolve. Given that the autoresolve is notoriously unfavorable toward the player, you can expect to lose even if you were otherwise handily winning the battle.
Wimp Fight: If both participants in a jousting tournament are unmounted but not knocked out, they'll poke at each other with Jousting Lances. As these have a steep damage penalty when used on foot, they'll deal very little or possibly even no damage to each other. The player character can at least switch to fists, which deal slightly more damage, but it's still a wimpy and humiliating situation to be involved in.
Wizard Needs Food Badly: Food is an inventory item required to keep party morale up. If the party runs out of food, morale drops sharply, eventually leading to troop desertions.
Worthy Opponent: Having a high relationship value with an enemy lord causes them to be more polite during pre-battle dialogue and can sometimes allow the player to avoid the fight entirely. When releasing a captured enemy lord after a battle, the associated dialogue has the player character explicitly praising them for fighting well, granting honor and increasing relationship as a result. This respect is not mutual, however, as even the friendliest enemy lords will still take the player character prisoner if they are defeated.
You All Meet in an Inn: Each town has a tavern where it is possible to meet recruitable companions and hire mercenaries.
Young and in Charge: While her exact age is never stated in-game, Lady Isolla, the "claimant" to the Swadian throne, has a youthful model and is the only child of Swadia's previous king, Esterich, claiming to be the rightful heir on these grounds. King Harlaus, her father's cousin, declared her to be an Inadequate Inheritor due to her age and sex. The player can choose to support her rebellion against the Swadian crown and, if successful, she can be installed as the new queen.
You Will Be Spared: If you free a captured enemy lord after battle, one of their possible dialogue lines includes a promise to show the same mercy should the situation ever be reversed. In practice, this never happens, as the player character is always captured and imprisoned upon defeat regardless of prior generosity.
Zerg Rush:
- Common among low-tier Looters and Bandits, especially in the early game when the player's party is smaller and weaker. 40 unarmored peasants with clubs and throwing stones can easily overwhelm a smaller force that would slaughter them if the numbers were even.
- Village defenders and peasant militias encountered during village raids and tax collection quests qualify. While individually weak and poorly equipped, they often spawn in large numbers and immediately charge, relying entirely on overwhelming the attacker through sheer volume rather than skill or equipment.
- Viable in a pinch for the player’s army as well, such as after a Pyrrhic Victory with heavy losses. By recruiting en masse from every village along the way to a target and throwing the recruits at the enemy, the player can overwhelm opposing forces while higher-tier troops focus on flanking or ranged attacks. Any recruits who survive will often gain enough experience to promote, making them more effective in subsequent battles.

Tropes specific to Mount and Blade: Warband

American Kirby Is Hardcore: An inverted example. The American and European boxarts depict roughly the same scene, but the American boxart has a bunch of bright light added and has a clear sky, with expressions indicating it is set during preparation for battle and is drawn slightly more "realistically". The European art is much darker and stylized, set during battle and has an overcast sky. Rating differences are likely behind this (The ESRB rating is Teen, while the PEGI rating is 16+).
Artificial Difficulty: Whereas the original M&B was fairly sensible in this respect, WB has situations where you're arbitrarily denied reinforcements or the use of some of your weapons.
Cartography Sidequest: Downplayed. The Steam version has an achievement for visiting each of the towns, but only the towns (not the castles and villages). It still requires travel across the entire continent.
Cosmetic Award: The Steam version has a whopping 74 achievements.
Cycle of Hurting: This can occur when the player finds themself in a besieged city that has no hope of defending itself. It is impossible to leave the city by stealth or to surrender, the only options available on the city screen are to join the battle or send the troops in on their own. And due to the fact that the developers though it was a good idea to not allow the player to access the main menu during battle, the only thing you can do is throw all your troops in vain at the enemy and then let the enemy knock you out as well. Only after being defeated and captured are you allowed to load a prior saved game. (Or you can kill it with the task manager.)
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Arrows fired from horseback while moving now actually pick up momentum in the direction of the horse's movement, forcing veteran horse archer players to relearn aiming compared to the base game.
Diminishing Returns for Balance: It can seem that gaining renown at higher levels/troop sizes can be difficult. However, if you fight a much larger army with a smaller one, and win, you can still gain a lot of renown, and the bigger the difference in size the better. This works even if you're by yourself or with a very small party, and get attacked by a group of say, 40 bandits. However, keep in mind that unless you're using high level units and utilizing them where they work best, such as cavalry in an open field battle without hills or a river, it can be difficult to fight off a larger force. Hence why winning with a smaller group earns you bigger renown.
Friendly Fireproof: Unlike the base game, this is averted for all weapons by default in Warband's multiplayer. Since multiplayer is more arcade-like than singleplayer, it's strange this relatively hardcore option would be only available there. Confusingly, many server admins will kick you for accidentally killing your teammates, which raises the question why they don't disable that option if it upsets them so much.
Game-Favored Gender:
- While the starting stats still favor females, the politics system favors males and upfront tells you at character creation that non-noble non-males are especially difficult. You can claw your way up as a female player character, but it'll be a slog to convince anyone to make you a lord, let alone give you even a village to rule. On the flip side, women gain renown faster, since the same accomplishments are more impressive/newsworthy coming from a woman.
- This extends into the plot, with the two female Claimants both having sexism as a major part of denying their claim to their thrones. Sultan Hakim's flimsy justification for why Arwa is unfit to rule basically boils down to women being inherent seducers, too incompetent to run the Sultanate, and that the previous ruler who brought Arwa along was seduced and deceived by her.
Game Hunting Mechanic: Mentioned but apparently dummied out before release: The game allows feudal lords to host feasts at their towns or castles, and wandering poets tell you about the benefits of performing well in the tournaments held during town feasts, as well as on the hunts held in castle feasts. Tournaments are an essential part of a feast, giving the player something to do besides talk, as feasts themselves are rather plain. They also provide the means to impress a potential spouse and/or lord in town. Castle feasts however, are the exact same, rather plain feast, but sadly devoid of any entertainment, despite the poets' claims.
Glass Cannon: One particular build for skilled players in multiplayer: The biggest polearm/hammer your money can buy, and absolutely nothing else. The wind behind a crossbow bolt will kill you, but until then you can easily outrun everyone while everyone that even comes by gets thrashed by whatever you picked.
Hitbox Dissonance: The increasing shield size bug is gone, but is replaced with a forcefield that blocks projectiles as if the shield was up even when it's not.
Left-Justified Fantasy Map : Since the Warband expansion retconned the geography, the game now plays this trope straight to some extent : The sea covers both the north and the west (though the cold area is still to the east).
Mook Maker:
- Bandit parties are now spawned by bandit hideouts, which can be assaulted to temporarily clear an area of banditry.
- Leaving hideouts alone is a singularly terrible idea, as bandits spawn from the hideout based on your party size, and at regular intervals. If you leave an affected area alone for too long, you'll have a dozen groups of 40+ bandits that, when they see you, will gang up on you, resulting in 400+ bandits attacking you!
Moveset Clone: The Sarranids have the same troop tree layout as the original 2 factions, with Vaegir-style archers, elite light infantry, and heavily-armored Mamluke Cavalry who are a direct answer to the Swadian Knight. Their unique tactics make for a Sakura-type.
Pariah State: When founding your own kingdom, it is important to have a high "Right to Rule" stat. Otherwise, it will be very difficult for the player to conduct a successful foreign policy, because no monarch in Calradia will consider it worthy of their rank to engage on equal terms with an upstart who tries to behave like a king without any legitimacy behind it.
Perpetual Beta: It took over two years after release and a standalone expansion pack for critical issues in the singleplayer campaign to be finally resolved.
Retcon: Calradian geography went through yet another complete overhaul, and all the NPCs act as if the new faction had always been there.
Right in Front of Me: If you start your own faction, you can ask various town Guild Masters about your own foreign relation policies, and they will give criticism about their king, evidently without realizing you are the king.
Screw the War, We're Partying: As of Warband, the aristocracy will often call for feasts in the middle of a war when they would much better spend it on the field of battle. King Harlaus in particular gained a reputation as a party dude with the fandom, which is used as the reasoning for why Swadia tends to get eaten up by its surrounding nations despite having high-quality game-breaking units.^note
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Enemy forces that have low morale will attempt to rout from the battlefield. They will also no longer put up any resistance, so if you're quick enough you can run the down as they attempt to flee.
Shout-Out:
- Several achievement names are references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The jumping animation of the player character seems pulled straight from the Camelot scene.
- If you happen to get into a bar brawl, drawing a bow in the tavern will result in the tavern keeper shouting "No shooting, no shooting!"
- One of the Sarranid villages is Rushdigh, named after this guy.
- Several achievements are named after songs and musicians:
  - Holy Diver is one of Dio's most popular songs. The icon even shows a knight making the "horns" hand gesture.
  - Get Up, Stand Up is a famous song by Bob Marley.
  - Baron Got Back is a pun on Sir Mix-a-lot's hit song Baby Got Back.
  - Every Breath You Take is a famous song by The Police.
  - Pugnacious D is a pun on Tenacious D.
- Another achievement is called Khaaan! in reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Spoonerism: Some of the location names, especially in the Sarranid Sultanate. For instance, Durquba (Qurduba) and Sekhtem (Sekhmet).
The Starscream: in Warband, you can ditch the Claimant (to whom you are normally Dragon-in-Chief) at any point of the rebellion quest and take over whatever you conquered under them. You can even take over the entire kingdom, if you give the pretender the boot right before the last battle with the remaining loyalists of the old king. The downside to that is that you don't automatically get all the loyalist lords back if you take over (they accept the pretender as their legitimate liege lord on defeat, but not you).
Suicidal Overconfidence: Enemies can now actually flee the battle, but they'll still try to fight against impossible odds first until they get their noses bloodied.
Updated Re-release: Despite being initially marketed as a stand-alone expansion (and lately even as a full sequel), the game is more of a further development of M&B, albeit with significant improvements in many areas.
Violation of Common Sense: Opening the maingates or the sally port in multiplayer sieges is pretty much this, as it's generally a foregone conclusion on the Mahdaar Castle map that if the sally port is breached before the final minute, the defenders will lose as the attacker's spawn is right outside it and the besieging side will just keep sending cavalry through in a constant stampede.
Voluntary Vassal: This is an alternative (faster, but more risky) way to become a landed vassal. Normally, you sign up to one of the kingdoms as a mercenary, then swear fealty as a landless vassal, then get a burned-down village, and generally wait a LONG time until you can receive a castle or a city on some conquered territory. With this method, you conquer a castle or a city as an unaligned warlord, proclaim your own kingdom and immediately ask one of the kings to accept you as their new subject. You will be accepted and keep the castle or city you conquered.
Walking the Earth: You'll probably spend most of your time in the field, looking for enemy warbands to defeat and territories to conquer.
Wholesome Crossdresser: There is a wide array of feminine clothing that, yes, males can wear. They grow breasts while doing so.

Tropes applying to With Fire and Sword

Armor of Invincibility: Black Armor with an Armet helmet. These two items together can make you insanely tough to kill off, even with gunpowder or an enemy cavalry charge.
Artistic License – Geography: The game's portrayal of Eastern Europe and Western Asia is highly inaccurate, for starters the Baltic Sea is somehow pulled into the maps west rather than being directly north to Poland and looks nothing like it does in real life. Multiple towns have very strange distances in relation to each other.
A-Team Firing:
- A firing line of rookie troopers can fail to hit an entire army. A natural consequence of using black powder muskets, which historically were that inaccurate.
- That being said, elite soldiers as well as a properly managed character and companions can quickly invert this trope, pounding down masses of deathly accurate fire.
Base on Wheels: When you have enough men, you can order your army to construct a wagon fort to provide you protection if attacked at the cost of maneuverability and speed. It can even be rolled along with you as you move on the world map, albeit at a far slower pace than the norm.
Black Knight: The appearance of Black Armor, especially when coupled with an Armet. Considering these two items are the best armor in a game, you and your companions are advised to Invoke this trope regardless of your moral or political alignment.
Blown Across the Room: A decent bodyshot with a pistol can send a bandit corpse flying a foot or two, and it goes up from there until some routed brigand gets shot in the back with one of the bigger muskets and gets sent flying forward like he was hit by a car. However, it was mostly fixed. Enemy soldiers usually slump down and ragdoll reasonably, although they may still fly, especially when you score headshots or shoot at charging cavalry.
Boring, but Practical: Guns don't shoot as fast as bows, nor do they have the sheer destructiveness of grenades. However, they're easy to find (since nearly everyone uses them), are reasonably affordable, don't demand Power Draw to be effective with them (while the strength requirements are low or outright non-existent), and do a lot of damage in a single shot.
Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: King Jan Kasimir of Poland heavily relies on German Imperial soldiers so supplement his native soldiers, and they cut a villainous figure if you are fighting against Poland and later even if you are playing for Poland, when King Jan reacts to an attempted uprising by using them and more allied armies from the German Emperor to try and overthrow Poland's republican institutions and create an absolute regime. Karl X of Sweden also uses considerable amounts of Scottish soldiers, but they are not a discrete Praetorian Guard or as uniformly antagonistic.
Call That a Formation?: Units can be arranged to 1-4 deep lines. Suprisingly, Units tend to remain and/or reform the formation unless told to charge.
Cartoon Bomb: Grenades introduced in this version of the game look like this. Justified as these kinds of bombs were the first and only available explosives in the time period the game is roughly based.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tons, and as a mercenary you can indulge in it as well even though it might not be the most prudent choice. In addition, every single one of the three main story quests features you being betrayed in some fashion by an ally. The Polish-Lithuanian quest probably tops the list because almost every single plot-important Commonwealth character will betray you, including one who is actually the good guy.
Day of the Jackboot: Attempted by King Jan Kasimir of Poland in the penultimate missions of The Deluge questline, on his own government nonetheless.
Eagle Squadron: Prominently featured for almost every faction. The Kingdom of Sweden employs vast numbers of Scottish soldiers and commanders as well as the leader of Brandenburg, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth receives considerable support from the Imperial army and employs Registered Cossacks, and the Crimean Khanate is propped up by expeditionary forces of its' Ottoman Liege. Note that while the Poles can recruit Scottish soldiers and the Swedes can recruit Germans, those are highly limited and not likely to feature them heavily.
Early Game Hell: Featured particularly prominently, even in comparison to other games in the series. Like them, you start out as a low-level scrub armed with third rate equipment and the clothes on your back for protection, making you a glass cannon who is incapable of taking on regular troops. Unlike them, even most of the low level outlaw trash you depend on to level up now have guns that can tear through an unarmored you almost as easily as your own shots can tear through them.
Expy: The party members heroes of the game have the same background as those from Mount & Blade, the same appearance or the same skills. Or all this in the same time.
Gender Bender: Putting female clothing on your male character will cause him to sprout breasts.
Glass Cannon: Any light cavalry with guns qualify, being fast and deadly but with very little in the way of defense.
Guns Are Useless:
- Averted in With Fire And Sword, where guns are extremely powerful: the gun you start the game with will kill most bandit-type enemies in one shot, and getting hit by a gun with your starting armor can easily kill you. The drawback is that they take a very long time to load, even with simple pistol weapons, and if you're on foot, that's a very bad thing (on a horse, you can at least continue to dodge effectively).
- On the other hand, especially early on, said guns can also be rather inaccurate; it's possible to miss a bandit at point blank range. But even as you gain firearms experience and better weapons down the line, there's still the chance that not every bullet would reach its mark, making every shot count.
The Hero Dies: Your hero always ends up dead at the end of The Deluge questline; the only difference is how it happens and what you leave behind. At the most extreme case, this happens in the quest's "golden ending" at the hands of a single assassin after you've conquered the entire map. Because apparently someone who is functionally immortal in the game, has cut their teeth fighting the Badass Army of Sweden and spreading an empire from Siberia to Prussia can die suddenly at the hands of an assassin you would probably be able to beat down in actual gameplay.
Historical Domain Character: The faction leaders are historical characters from the 17th century.
The Horde: The Cossacks and Crimeans/Ta(r)tars both fit to greater or lesser degrees, but unlike most cases these are played realistically. If you deal with them in any great detail, you will see that they are a lot more than raiding barbarians.
More Dakka: Most battles tend to begin with every single musketeer firing off their first shot at once. In the bigger ones, this first salvo tends to be a wall of bullets that takes down an entire line of soldiers.
The Musketeer: Given the game's setting, every faction has some variations of this type among their troops.
Mutually Exclusive Party Members: With Fire and Sword has an even more complex system of relations inside the party than the base game: some party members like one other, some like two others, some dislike only one, some others dislike two or even three, and those feelings are not always reciprocal (there is even the example of Ingri-Algidras: Ingri dislikes Algidras but Algidras likes Ingri).
Non-Standard Game Over: Can happen during "The Secret of the Black Mace" questline. With the help of the protagonist, Janusz Radziwill, the claimant to the Polish throne, becomes the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time, he is the keeper of the secret of the Black Mace - a legendary relic, the owner of which will be considered strong and respectable enough to lead the entire Cossack gentry. Despite the promise given to reveal the family secret of the Radziwills, Janusz breaks his word, and as soon as he gets the Polish crown and takes the Black Mace from the ancestral tomb, the Cossack lords will begin to move to the side of the Commonwealth, on average one or two every three days. If the player does not or cannot prevent this, once all of them, including all their holdings, are under Radziwill's banner, the player will automatically receive a Game Over screen stating that Radziwill has gained full control of the territory "from the Vistula to the Volga", thereby becoming influential enough to detain and execute the protagonist.
Pistol-Whipping: Doesn't do much damage, but it can be done by switching to melee mode while using a firearm. Muskets do have a bit of range like this, and pistols themselves are surprisingly quick to swing, so you're not completely defenseless.
Quick Draw: One of the big advantages of pistols. Sure, they take a little while to reload, but once reloaded they're fast to aim, letting you put a bullet on someone's kidney before they've even gotten a proper backswing.
Rocket-Tag Gameplay: With firearms doing a lot of damage while being commonplace, and armor generally providing less protection, the game's battles tend to take on this tone.
Russia in Ruins: The elimination of the Muscovite Tsardom is a necessary prerequisite for the completion of two of the three quest lines, namely "The Secret of the Black Mace" for the Cossack Hetmanate and "The Deluge" for the Polish Commonwealth. As for the third storyline, "The False Dmitry", the player, instead of destroying the Muscovite Tsardom, must capture all of Eastern Europe for it.
Shout-Out: The Three Musketeers are mentioned by an NPC. Also, one of the books you can buy (the one handling the power of the state) was written by a certain Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu.
Shown Their Work: One of the skill books in the game is Art of War by Niccolo Machiavelli. While the title suggest it should be a tactical manual, the book instead increases Trainer skill, since it's a manual of how to raise and train your army.
Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: Even though real sabres could be used for thrusting, the ones in the game can only be used for slashing attacks.
Sword of Plot Advancement: The Black Mace is the subject at the center of the fittingly-named "Secret of the Black Mace" Cossack storyline, which revolves around you and several others trying to discover it. When you actually do find it, it averts a typical cliche of this trope by being the Infinity +1 Sword of all the melee weapons in the game.
Too Awesome to Use: Grenades. They're expensive as all hell and don't refill like bullets or arrows do, but they hurt more than anything else in the game in a big radius, so even without skillpoints in grenade throwing you can wipe out several troops with just one. If you're willing to spend points in it, though, the radius starts getting seriously big, so you can soften up a siege/wagon fort considerably, if not wipe it out completely in the latter case.
Water Source Tampering: If sieging a town, you can try sneaking into town to poison the well, killing off several troops on a success. However, there's always a risk of being caught and forced into combat.
Ultimate Blacksmith: The Weapon-Master, Armor Master, and Horse Master guilds/craftsmen that can be found in the town square of forts or cities. If you are willing to pay through the nose, they can guarantee you the finest kinds of equipment in the game save for the Black Mace. Somewhat subverted in that the items you buy cannot have modifiers, which means that versions of the same equipment available from random marketplace spawns can be superior; it's just that they are 'random' while the guilds offer you guaranteed quality at a guaranteed time. Oddly enough, there's one in every city, which tends to clash slightly with the usual portrayals of this trope.

Tropes applying to Napoleonic Wars

Commissar Cap: Various Russian and Prussian units wear this in the Napoleonic Wars DLC.
Orchestral Bombing: A part of what makes Napoleonic Wars so epic is the ability of direct dozens of colourfully uniformed soldiers to storm the enemy while Van Beethoven's Ode To Joy, Dvorak's the 4th Movement of the New World Symphony, Grieg's In The Hall Of The Mountain King, or Vivaldi's Summer, just to name a few, blast out of the speakers. It may be Anachronism Stew, but damn does it set the mood.

Tropes apply to Viking Conquest

Artistic License – History: As is common with media set in this period, Ragnar Lodbrok is treated as a real person despite historians being inconclusive on his historicity. His wife Aslaug, a purely mythical character with no attestation, also appears a real character that you can interact with.
Barbarian Long Hair: Unlike the professional Danish and Norwegian army, the vikings will often go into battle helmetless, letting their unkempt blond hair flow.
Beat Them at Their Own Game: There is nothing stopping the player from raiding the Norse homeland like a bunch of vikings.
Beef Gate: The various sea raiders serve as this for a trader player, seeing as how they patrol the extremely lucrative North Sea trade route. To survive trading there without getting constantly robbed, the player needs to spend fortunes on buying bigger ships to have bigger crew, making it suitable only for the late-game.
A Commander Is You:
- Norse: Brute. The most heavily-armored and shielded troop tree in the game, the Norse can win most battles by simply bumrushing the enemy and killing everyone. No fancy tactic needed. Their sword infantry has no equal, the top tier of which could cut down ten times their number if put in a chokepoint.
- Anglo/Saxons: Balanced. Their infantry is second only to the Norse, but it's not as armored and still need to take some tactics into consideration. While their northern cousins have superior swordsmen, the Anglo-Saxons have superior spearmen, which need to stay in formation and be supported by infantry in front to be truly effective.
- Briton/Picts/Goidelic: Rangers. The three Celtic cultures tend to carry smaller shields and wear less armor than the Germanics, which makes them weaker in a head-on clash. They make up for this with superior ranged attack. The Britons have the best skirmish cavalry, the Goidelics have the best foot skirmishers while the Picts win the lottery with the best crossbow (and thus ranged) unit.
- Frisia: Brute. The Frisian troop tree has nothing but melee infantry and cavalry, so by default there's no tactics available to it other than rushing the enemy.
Cutting Off the Branches: Since Viking Conquest takes place centuries after the original Brytenwalda mod and is not too different from history, it can be surmised that the hero of the original mod never made much of an impact on the world beyond aiding the Roman holdout at Hadrian's Wall.
Defector from Decadence: The story campaign treats a Norse Pagan player as the default path, so joining the Saxon campaign requires betraying the Vikings to help the Christians of England.
Disc-One Nuke: While in Denmark (either in sandbox or as part of the story mode), you can enter a place called Troll's Bridge to acquire the Troll Axe, an extremely powerful two handed axe that can two-hit kill almost everyone. It requires 21 strength to build, so if you maximize your character's strength at creation and gain a few more, you can use this axe to basically breeze through much of the game. All you have to do is fight the Troll for it, which is easy with a javelin to his unarmored face.
Easy Level Trick: The "Last of the Tuatha de Danaan" storyline requires you to fight two difficult battles against a horde of Ulfhedinn to establish how powerful they are, which will inevitably see half of your hard-earned army slaughtered. However, they are scripted to retreat after a few minutes, so anyone who knows this ahead of time can just retreat their troops and just kite the Ulfhedinn around until the level ends.
Enemy Civil War:
- The two invading Norse factions (Northumbria and the Irish Norse) are not in an alliance, making it possible for them to fight each other as much as they fight the English and the Celts. As if that's not enough, sometimes even the mainland Norse from Norway and Denmark will join in the fray against the British Norse.
- Storywise, the invading Danes are split between supporters of King Horik and supporters of Sigurd Ragnarsson. Both sides end up clashing and cannibalizing the reinforcement sent to Northumbria
Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Related to Easy Level Trick, even if you retreat all of your soldiers during the Ulfhedinn fights and just kite them around until they go away, the story will still act as if you have fought tooth and nails to wipe them out. The big unstoppable army that chased you just a moment earlier is suddenly reduced to a dozen holdouts even if you have killed none of them.
- No matter how badly Northumbria is losing, once you have completed a certain story quest, they would conquer most of East Anglia and took London from Mercia offscreen while you're out in Spain.
- Northumbria and Denmark can declare war on each other in sandbox. In the storyline campaign, Denmark and Northumbria are nominally the same kingdom with the king of Denmark sending a massive army to support Northumbria.
- The campaign story operates under the assumption that the player picks a Norse Pagan character, even if they are actually a Christian Celt or Saxon. Every character treats them like a native Norse, giving them legal protection and demanding wergilds for wrongdoing. Later in the story, they have to join a Viking expedition with no option to say no.
Historical Domain Character: Unlike vanilla Warband, this DLC takes place in a historical setting and as such feature historical characters. Of note are Alfred the Great and the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok.
Les Collaborateurs:
- Cyning Egbert of Northumbria is an English puppet king who fights for the Norse. He still rules Northumbria on paper, but in practice Jarl Halfdan Ragnarsson calls all the shot.
- Northumbria in general is full of this, as all of its NPC lords use a mixture of both Norse and local English troops.
The Low Middle Ages: The campaign is set in British Isles of the era.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: As part of the main questline, you would be away on voyage to Spain while the war rages on in England. By the time you come back, Northumbria will have conquered much of East Anglia and Mercia, leaving Wessex as the Last Kingdom.
Purposefully Overpowered: Considering that the DLC is called "Viking Conquest", it should come as no surprise that the Norse have one of if not the best troop tree of the entire game. Two hundred Huskarls can cut their way through 800 troops of other factions like nobody's business.
The Remnant:
- The denizens of Hadrian's Wall still consider themselves culturally Romans due to being the descendants of the original Roman garrison. They still use Roman names for their children.
- Though the game takes place centuries after the Christianization of the British Isles, one Celtic pagan holdout exists at the Strange Stones location.
Shout-Out: In the story campaign, Alfred is advised by a Saxon thegn named Uthred.
Soldier vs. Warrior: The dynamic between spearmen and swordsmen is essentially this. Spearmen deal less damage individually and can't attack up close, but their long reach and ability to do overhead stabs allow them to attack from behind their allies. This make them extremely deadly in a tight formation, where one line could hold off the enemy while the other stabs them from behind. Swordsmen meanwhile are stronger up close and deal more damage, but they can't attack over their allies, leaving only the foremost line capable of engaging the enemy. The Norse tend to have stronger swordsmen to emphasize their nature as superior warriors, while the Anglo-Saxons have stronger spearmen to reflect their disciplined status.
Stealth Sequel: The game is a direct sequel to the original Brytenwalda mod, which you will only learn if you talk to the people at Hadrian's Wall. The Roman holdouts there are the descendants of the same Romans encountered by the hero of the original mod and they still remember their assistance.
Story Branch Favoritism: The main questline is clearly written with a Norse Pagan player in mind, considering that a major part of it involves navigating the Norse legal system. A Christian foreigner being given a fair trial in Norse society would be pretty strange, given that Christians had no protection under Norse laws. In addition, whether the player likes it or not, they would have to join a great Danish fleet to relieve the Great Heathen Army, with the option to join the Saxons being a betrayal of the Norse.
Story Branching: In story mode, the player would eventually be forced to make a choice between the Saxons and the Norse. Choosing either would cause 2 companions from the opposing side to leave you for good. Considering that Bodo and Brunhild are more on the useless side, leaning Norse for Absjorn and Solveig seems like a no-brainer.
Spanner in the Works: The player character in story mode. They are just a random person trying to get help for their sick mom, only to end up thwarting not one but two coups that would have reshaped the North Sea. The perpetrator of both coups, Sigurd Ragnarsson, wanted to retrieve an important letter to scare the Jarls of Denmark into deposing the king and putting him in charge. However, the message happened to be on the same ship as the player character, causing them and their mother to be caught up in the plot. The PC's subsequent attempt to rescue their mom from Sigurd's men would end up derailing his plan utterly.
Underrated and Overleveled: In the "Last of the Tuatha de Danaan" storyline, you can recruit Bran mac Caliacas, the youngest son of a leader of a village out in the least inhabited end of Connacht in Ireland. He is level 31 and has 380 in all weapon skills, and huge ranks in several combat skills. He hopes one day to earn enough money to buy a farm and marry a girl.

Total conversions and other mods for the original generation Mount & Blade

Here are some famous mods (non-exhaustive list):

Notable Mount & Blade series mods

Technically, With Fire and Sword is a non-free mod, which changes the setting to the Khmelnitsky War as described in Polish historical epic Ogniem i Mieczem (the wars with Cossacks, Tatars and Sweden in the second half of 17th century), with a storyline based on the novel Black Mace by Alex Trubnikov.
The Last Days (of the Third Age of Middle Earth), one of the Lord of the Rings themed mod, is one of the most successful mods for the non-Warband version of the game.
Solid & Shade makes the Calradian setting become a Dark Fantasy world inspired by occultism, Edgar Allan Poe, and Classical Mythology, in which the player is a Necromancer warlord.
Sword of Damocles and Sword of Damocles: Warlords are two parallel mods. The first expands the setting by adding several factions and an invasion of Calradia from a Roman-like army. The second is set forty years latter and involves the factions (the original and the new ones) occupying a continent which has been colonized between the two games.
Light & Darkness: Heroes of Calradia is a heavily story-driven mod set in a sort of alternate Caldaria with actual Fantasy elements. The plot itself belongs to the High Fantasy genre.
Europe1200 is set in the European High Middle Ages and starts in 1200 AD.
Anno Domini 1257 has the same premise and starts in 1257 AD.
Star Wars Conquest is Mount & Blade literally Recycled In Space.
1866: A Mount & Blade Western is a Western-themed mod.
Phantasy Calradia is a kind of Crossover between Mount & Blade and Dungeons & Dragons (especially with a Forgotten Realms feeling).
The Reckoning (2020) is set in 2019 in the USA after a Zombie Apocalypse. It focuses on a war bewteen various factions, including US Army remnants, Confederacy nostalgists, Neo-Nazis, Rednecks, Church Militants, several raider factions, etc.
Rigale increases the aversion of Easy Logistics.
Prophesy of Pendor is a very difficult mod, set in an original universe, and consisting in uniting the whole map by eliminating all factions (rival kingdoms and wandering bandits parties), except the Noldor elves, who need to be befriended.
Lots of New Companions adds hundreds of new companions, including weak fighters with highest level party skills, strong fighters with low party / leadership skills, and balanced fighters intended to be promoted as vassales. It also adds new skill books, more advanced fief / kingdom management options, and knighthood orders as minifactions.
The Wedding Dance is set in a new map with new factions (although it is still called "Calradia"), in which the player character is a sibling of the legitimate ruler of the whole Calradia (the empress being actually a companion in the player character's party). The goal is still to conquest the whole continent, with the addition of wedding (the player character spouse becomes a party member), Siege Engines, and war chariots in open battles.
Freelancer adds a feature allowing the player character to joins any lord's army as a single unspecific soldier, and eventually being promoted after enough battles (following the default units tree).
The Floris Mod Pack, which incorporates a number of different mods (including Freelancer mentioned above) to overhaul the game and add new features, items, character interactions, and options for an expanded troop tree, better AI (for both your army and your foes), and additional enterprises.
The Eagle and the Radiant Cross is a mod that transports Calradia into the renaissance era.
Kengeki Gaiden is a discontinued mod set in an alternate Calradia inspired by medieval Japan.
Gekokujo is a historical mod set during in 16th century Japan.
- Gekokujo - Daimyo Edition is a standalone mod based on the original Gekokujo, that adds more content and improves historical accuracy.
The Red Wars is set in the Calradian year of 1923, after a communist revolution in Vaegir and Khergit states.
Gangs of Glasgow is set in our era in Glasgow, involving urban warfare and riots. The major factions are town workers, Glasgow police, and a huge gang of thugs.
1860's Old America is set around the American Civil War, though like 1866, extends the map to include Mexico and the western frontier.
- 1755: Old Fronter, also from the creator of Old America, transports the player to the French and Indian War and is rife with shout-outs to The Last of the Mohicans.
- 1776: American Revolution.
A Clash of Kings is a mod based on Game of Thrones.
- A World of Ice and Fire is another mod based on Game of Thrones.
1429 : La Guerre de Cent Ans ("1429: The Hundred Years War") is a mod reenacting the Hundred Years War and beginning in 1429.
Suvarnabhumi Mahayuth, a historical mod set in 16th Century Indochina.
Warsword Conquest, a total conversion mod set in the world of the world of Games Workshop's former flagship franchise, Warhammer. Featuring eighteen different factions to fight for or against: the Empire of Man, Bretonnia, the Warriors of Chaos, Orcs, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Beastmen, Skaven, Kislev, Araby, Nippon and Pirates. Also features revamped tournaments and economy, large roving bandit armies, race-exclusive equipment, naval battles and a litany of hireable companions including some familiar faces like Gotrek & Felix.
Perisno is an overhaul mod based on a semi fantasy continent of the same name, an original universe. It is relatively difficult with most bandit groups capable of killing you and arriving in massive numbers. You can play as Humans, Dwarves, Not Elves called Nophali and even Giants!! A big part of the story is the rumoured approach of a massive army of invaders from another land, and they are no slouches in battle.

Additional Tropes found in Mods lacking their own page

Alternate History: No matter how historically accurate the starting situation is and how much research the developers have put into the mod, each history-themed solo mod eventually turns very ahistorical, thanks to the Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay and unpredictability of the AI.
- What If?: Same thing with mods based on a third-party IP (Start Wars, The Lords of the Rings, Warhammer, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc).
Alternate Universe: With the original Calradian setting.
- The Wedding Dance is an extreme example of this. Its setting is explicitly called Calradia, despite being a whole new map with brand new factions.
- Kengeki Gaiden is set on Warband worldmap, involves six faction which have the same starting location, and each of the sixteen companions are still in the game. Everything gained a Wutai flavour (companion clothings, factions and places names, etc).
Amazon Brigade: The More Women mod makes it so all village recruits are women with faction-appropriate promotion trees that directly parallel their male counterparts (male troops still exist and are recruited at taverns as mercenaries), making it easy to assemble your own, and with much greater tactical flexibility than just running a bunch of sword sisters.
Battle Couple: In The Wedding Dance, getting married (there are male specific romanceable NPCs if you play a female player character) add your spouse as a new companion (initially low-level), who also has the advantage of having no hostile relation with any other party member.
Chainmail Bikini: The Wedding Dance is infamous for adding a lot of armours of this kind (including Chainmal Monokini). The high tier ones protect as much as much as plate armours.
The Dreaded: Dark Knights in the Warband "Native Expansion" mod. You can control when or if they show up, but when they do, their force is one to be reckoned with. They will probably dish a Curb-Stomp Battle on you if you're not leading a massive force yourself against them due to their heavy armor, heavy-hitting weaponry (even with high defense on easy they can probably knock a quarter of your health off in one hit), and most of them are mounted. Encountering them with an insufficient force will certainly make you understand how the enemy forces you fight against feel when you steamroll through them.
Easy Logistics: Rigale aims to bring this trope's aversion up to eleven. For example, troops become tired if they march outside for too long without resting, either in a camp or in a town; building a camp needs wood logs (number proportional to party's size). Also, using ammunition on the battlefield really consumes then. Another features is the necessity to have several different food items in the inventory, or the troops will quickly become sick of dysentry.
Expanded Universe: There are a lot of mods which retain the Calradia setting while adding new factions/new landmass, or are set in another period of Calradia history.
Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The Red Wars is World War II transposed in Calradia.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Mods which add new factions to the original Calradian setting or which are set in a brand new fantasy setting do this a lot (cf the Sword of Damocles dyptich).
- In The Wedding Dance:
  - The Sway of Foment, Kingdom of Orlan, and Prid Empire are three classical fantasy factions of European inspiration, which respectively are inspired by England, France, and Holy Roman Empire.
  - Pontus Politeria is an Ancient Gromish faction turned into a matriarchy.
  - As implied by its name, Valkyrie Kongerike is a Norse-inspired faction turned into a matriarchy.
  - The Calradian Empire (your own faction) is a combination of 16th and 19th centuries' Germany and Austria.
- In The Red Wars^noteextension of the Calradian setting in the 20th of their history, with equivalents of communist revolutions and world wars, the six native factions remained, while some new have been added:
  - Nordic Union is Finland.
  - Swazi Reich is a Kaiserreich and Nazi Germany combination, with black uniforms, eagle and swastika symbols, and spiked helmets.
  - Rhodokian Socialist Workers Union is Italy.
  - United Vaegir Federation is USSR, with red flags, stars, hammer-sickles, commie music, "White Vaegirs" wandering bandit parties, and a faction leader named "Iossif the Steel Man".
  - Peoples Republic of the Khergit is a mix of Communist Mongolia and Communist China.
  - Sarranid Islamic Confederation is a military alliance of Middle-Eastern like countries in the desertic arid areas of the map.
  - Kingdom of Helvetia is a weird Prussia/Poland/Switzerland mix.
  - Confederate States of Balion is USA.
  - New Albion is Canada.
  - Republica Socialista de San Gevera is Mexico.
- Kengeki Gaiden alters the native faction to turn them into Japan-oriented ones.
Gender Bender:
- Gender from the neck-down is altered by what armor is being worn. Also appears in some Fantasy mods (men with female voices) as an unintended consequence of the way the game handles the genders.
- To be more explicit, the game allows to have up to sixteen different genders, which represent some physical and visual differences. For example, in the Phantasy Calradia mod mentioned above, male Orcs, female Orcs, male Drow, female Drow, male Dwarves, female Dwarves, etc are technically specific genders. The issue with the customized gender is that their members are considered as female by the game information (which doesn't prevent the game from giving them actual ladies as wives). It becomes especially weird if the mod is set in a non-original universe. For example, in Star Wars Conquest, Chewbacca and Yoda are female.
Guide Dang It!:
- The promotion trees and favored equipment of various units in Gekokujo are not explained anywhere in advance, and especially if you have a mixed army, what equipment which Ashigaru Skirmisher gets can seem random, even though whether Ashigaru Skirmishers have bows or guns is determined solely by what region they were recruited from (only Oda, Otomo, Tokugawa, Shimazu, Ryuzoji, and the Ikko Ikki get gunner Ashigaru units, while all other regions' Ashigaru skirmishers will be archers). This is, however, a very important distinction as Ashigaru tend to get unimpressive Power Draw skill levels and relatively weak bows, especially compared to Master Archer or Hatamoto Archer Samurai units, while guns aren't dependent on a skill like that and a massed formation of gun users, even if they're just Ashigaru, can be extremely dangerous. Similarly, which two of the four possible Hatamoto level final promotions (Guard, Cavalry, Gunner, or Archer) are available for Samurai units depends on where they come from, and unlike Native factions, other than their final promotion, they're identical, which means that you can easily wind up recruiting Ji-zamurai without knowledge of what their final promotion is, and thus, how best to promote them.
- Also in Gekokujo, that some lances even can be couched - the AI rarely uses mounted lancers, tournaments are entirely on foot, and such weapon use in Japan isn't nearly as famous as in Europe, so it's not readily apparent, but the Fukuro Yari, Su Yari, Jumonji Yari, and Katakama Yari, but NOT the "Yari Pike" versions can be couched.
Gratuitous German: The sheer amount of mods that attempt to add Germany-based factions or units into the game and fail at properly utilizing German spelling and grammar is astounding.
Hero of Another Story : The popular Floris Expanded Mod Pack, which includes a variety of quality of life and variety mods, includes the titular companion Floris, who literally has his own story. He starts just shy of level 30, already clad in endgame tier armor. He is Duke of Holland, owns the Floris King franchise of dining halls, and one of his assignments involves him traveling to Dhirim to check on the development of his autobiographic theatre play. His signup fee is 20000 denars, which is the in-universe equivalent of three king ransoms. And if you request him to go on a mission to support you as King of Calradia, he strongly implies he has already beaten you to the punch.
Historical Domain Character: Of course, in historical modules, most of lords are this.
Jeanne d'Archétype: Lots of New Companions includes a companion named Joan, who is an obvious Calradian Jeanne d'Arc: not only she is an Action Girl with a suspicious similar name wearing a plate armour, but she also gave her support to the player character after receiving the divine revelation that he is the rightful ruler of Calradia, and she has been especially designed by the modder to be promoted as a marshall.
No Historical Figures Were Harmed: While Gekokujo is set in 1587 Japan, the various Daimyos are only referred to as "Great Lord [Dynasty]". While this is not strictly inaccurate, it avoids actually giving any of their real names.
Public Domain Soundtrack: 1429 : La Guerre de Cent Ans has "O Fortuna" and "Douce Dame Jolie"^noteEnglish translation in the link among its main menu themes.
Rocket-Tag Gameplay: In mods where firearms exist and are common, ranged combat tends to be very decisive in comparison to Native, as most units go down in one or two bullets (and sufficiently protective armor to counter this may not even exist). This is taken even further in mods like Gekokujo or Red Wars where there are few or no shields, which makes combat even more decisive.
- In mods about modern or futuristic epoch, grenades and other explosives can also exist - and they usuaally one-hit-kill anyone, ignore shields, and have good radius - mowing down large numbers of enemies. And in more egregious cases, you can have dozen or more grenades per stack.
Shared Universe: In The Wedding Dance, the companion Fawzia states that she is an exiled D'Shar princess from Pendor, implying that The Wedding Dance and Prophesy of Pendor are set in the same universe.
Shout-Out: For a mod focusing on recreating a realistic Sengoku Era Japan, Gekokujo is probably the least likely place you'd expect to find, fight with and even marry the likes of Ran, Meiling and Lunasa
Soundtrack Dissonance: Gekokujo soundtrack originally contained Metal and Japanese Pop Music. It is a serious mod about Japanese history... Eventually averted with 3.0, which replaces the soundtrack with more period-appropriate music. However, the old tracks are still in the mod folders, if anyone wishes to enforce this trope for themselves.
Weak, but Skilled: The female troops in More Women tend to have slightly lower minimum Power Strike/Draw/Throw ranks than their male counterparts (though, of course, Procedural Generation can turn this on its head), but greater weapon proficiencies. Of course, "weak" is relative and a Swadian Iron Lady or Nord Steelheart (equivalent to a Swadian Knight and a Nord Huscarl, respectively) is still a force to be reckoned with, and for units like Rhodok and Swadian crossbow(wo)men that don't depend on these skill ranks, this makes for an unambiguous upgrade.

Mount & Blade

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The main installments of the original generation Mount & Blade

Total conversions and other mods for the original generation Mount & Blade

Alternative Title(s): Mount And Blade Warband

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Video Game / Mount & Blade 6 Following

The main installments of the original generation Mount & Blade

Total conversions and other mods for the original generation Mount & Blade

Alternative Title(s): Mount And Blade Warband

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Index

Next

Mount & Blade

6 Following