Mount & Blade
This is a short and sweet modding guide for the original Mount & Blade PC game by TaleWorlds Entertainment. This does not cover Mount & Blade: Warband or any of its related expansions and offshoots. While rougher around the edges and less full-featured, the original game has its own special charm, at least for those of us who played it first and can appreciate a simpler, more responsive combat system. There are some interesting overhauls of the native game that add guns and magic or offer a complete, themed makeover set in the universe of Middle Earth or Star Wars for instance. My interest has always been in the core game itself, which is essentially an open-world, military conquest and combat simulator set in a fictional, medieval realm with mild RPG elements. My mod picks enhance and improve native gameplay without making too many drastic changes.
Recommended Mods
Recommended Links
Recommended Mods
- Battle Size Changer - Allows more NPCs to appear on the battlefield at the same time than the game's default slider does. It scales up to 1000 but warns that going above 200 can cause crashes. However, this is largely dependent on your PC specs. Install in your main game directory and activate the executable to patch the game with your desired amount.
- Graphical Enhancement Textures v2.5 - Texture replacer for the game that dramatically improves texture quality. To install, activate the executable and choose the main Mount&Blade file folder as the install location. Steam users may have to manually locate the folder in their Steam directory.
- More Metal Sound Mod V2.2 - Adds combat sounds dominated by the clanking of metal impacts on metal swords and armor. Includes install instructions.
- Native Expansion v0.586 - An optional overhaul that I still highly recommend that makes a lot of big and small changes to the game without straying too far from the native experience. Main features include the addition of kingdom management, nearly 100 new units, stronger fighting units, stronger war parties that replace looters, assassins, a Dark Knight invasion, and new items including weapons, armor and horses. There are also new game options and formation commands to use in battle. In general, this mod turns the base game up to 11 by amplifying a lot of game effects and adding additional content. My only complaints are the unnecessary renaming of companions and some of the kingdom rebalancing that forces you to relearn the troop advancement trees. Still, this is one of the best overhaul mods I've tried that largely stays true to the native game while incorporating a lot of cool additions to keep gameplay from getting stale. To install, drop the extracted main folder into the Modules folder in your main Mount & Blade folder.
Recommended Links
- Mount & Blade Nexus - The single best spot for game mods includes all the files from the Mount & Blade Unofficial File Repository.
- Mount & Blade - StrategyWiki - If you're new to Mount & Blade or just want to get more out of it, this is a great reference site for the native game.