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Dev Update & Beta WS v1.2.0 / BL v1.4.0

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord · Community Announcements · April 09, 2026

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Greetings Warriors of Calradia, The past year has been an exciting journey, marked by the release of War Sails, our expansion for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Alongside it came substantial additions to the base game, such as alliances, trade agreements, stealth gameplay, deserters & patrols, random events, improved visuals, and more. You have since given us a lot of feedback on both — what's working and what isn't. This update is aimed at a number of these topics. In addition to the regular patch notes, you will find a segment that discusses our current priorities, the goals of this patch, as well as some insight into what’s yet to come.

War Sails

[p align="justify"]Our immediate focus remains on the War Sails expansion. While many important issues were addressed by the initial patches, we still want to close gaps in the experience so that you can better enjoy naval combat and the strategic and role-playing opportunities of seafaring.

Lord Sea Presence, Naval Patrols & Seaborne Village Raids

[p align="justify"]The availability and variety of encounters at sea are key aspects in this regard. While pirates, convoys, and fishers are already plentiful, it is currently too difficult to consistently locate the fleets of nobles, who tend to offer larger, more challenging naval engagements. Tweaks such as increasing the map viewing distance can help - but don’t address the broader issue. Simply put, our lords are not setting sail frequently enough, and when they do, it is often short-lived. To improve upon this, today’s release includes AI score adjustments that increase the likelihood of longer nautical journeys and, more notably, a new offensive naval patrol behavior that lays the groundwork for lords to pursue some of their strategic goals entirely at sea.  For now, this means that they patrol enemy town and village ports to intercept fishers, convoys, and fleets. Based on initial observations, the change doesn’t just increase the naval presence of lords but also shifts their activity from primarily hunting pirates near their own coastline toward a more meaningful interaction with other factions. During the beta period, we will expand on this by allowing naval parties to interact with coastal and river villages without disembarking. Lords will thus be able to resupply in more locations while avoiding pathfinding costs that may otherwise prevent them from continuing their journey at sea. The bigger addition coming during the beta, however, are seaborne village raids. They will not only add to the lord sea presence and strategic naval activity but also offer an entirely new mission experience. Unlike land raids, attackers will approach the coast and disembark their ships as defenders scramble to mount a defense. To support this, we have created a range of new scenes for coastal villages. We intend to further expand this pool after the feature's release as well. On the campaign side, seaborne raids allow attackers to more easily evade responding lords and introduce a new consideration to fleet management, as they can only be conducted with shallow draft ships. Consequently, large ships with holds are not the answer to everything.

Content Variety, Gameplay Feel & Future Content Patches

[p align="justify"]Increasing the overall variety of content is another important goal for us. While the current update is focused on the addition of patrols and seaborne raids, new vessels, and greater item variety, we will still pursue further naval feature integration (such as the naval clan roles in this release) and feature additions to expand the range of possible naval gameplay in future content patches.  Alongside this, we will continue to improve the existing features and content of War Sails. This concerns broad topics such as the visuals of the new world map and faction balance, as well as many individual tweaks aimed at the fun factor of naval gameplay.  For missions, this currently entails creating a tighter, more consistent experience by resolving issues that unnecessarily prolong the engagement. You will already find many related changes in this release, and we look forward to further improving this aspect with your feedback. On the campaign side, we are primarily concerned with improvements that enable naval gameplay earlier into the game, raise the benefits of seafaring, and ease the progression and recovery loop.

Base Game

[p align="justify"]Even with the work on War Sails ongoing, the base game is not standing still. While the release of alliances and trade agreements significantly expanded the game’s diplomacy and addressed long-standing community requests, we are not quite done with them. Right now, these agreements don't reflect enough of what's happening in the world around them. This patch is looking to change that — making them responsive to more factors you can influence, better integrated with related mechanics, and shifting alliances away from a default everyone opts into toward something that responds to actual threats. War, diplomacy’s well-known extension, is also under scrutiny. Both micro wars and prolonged inactive wars called for further action to ensure that conflicts impact the world in sensible, meaningful ways. To that end, we have taken several steps to ensure that kingdoms not only create sizable armies without overly depleting their pool of free parties but also apply them effectively. As with the expansion, we are pursuing a range of individual tweaks to benefit our existing base game features. The stealth mission changes, for one, seek to make gameplay more challenging and responsive while rewarding players who remain undetected. Sending troops to clear a hideout, in turn, now takes into account related skills, which makes rogue-ish character development more valuable. The improvements to atmospheres, performance, and AI, on the other hand, serve the mission experience as a whole. This kind of effort will continue in future versions as well. For instance, we want at least some random event effects to scale so that the mechanic remains relevant for longer into the game. And as trait development becomes firmly established, we will explore trait effects that are more meaningful and visible to players. Another aspect we are reviewing is party clan management, as we believe it still has significant potential to improve the quality of life for both Bannerlord and War Sails. Naturally, we are also pursuing a number of ideas for new base game features, but we want to spend a bit more time before teasing them to you. Having said that, we do want to respond to multiplayer inquiries and reaffirm our commitment to the previously discussed spectator mode and captain mode formation targeting, as well as general multiplayer balance. Thank you for your patience and continued support. Hope you enjoy the Beta - we’re looking forward to your feedback!

Below are the major highlights from this Beta patch (with Naval Village Raids coming to the Beta branch soon), and feel free to read the full notes for all the details.

Here’s how you can play the Beta via Steam right now: Open Steam, right-click Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord → Properties → Game Versions & Betas → Select “beta - Beta v1.4.0”.

Have fun, and looking forward to your feedback - please share it with us on the official forums. Please note that there may be a delay between the download of the base game and the download of War Sails. If you launch the game prior to both of them being updated, you will crash. If you face this issue, please verify your game files.

War Sails Beta v1.2.0

The following changes are specific to the War Sails expansion and are not part of the base game.

Clan and Party

Changes

Fixes

Naval Battles

Changes

Fixes

War Sails Storyline

Changes

Fixes

Art

Campaign Map

UI

Changes

Fixes

Animations

Character Development System

Audio

Settlement Actions (Town, Village, Castle and Hideout)

Other

Save & Load

Localisation

Performance

Crashes

Bannerlord Beta v1.4.0

The following changes are part of the base game and apply to the War Sails expansion as well.

Singleplayer

Armies

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

Changes

Fixes

Stealth & Disguise

Hideouts

Art

Battles and Sieges

Changes

Fixes

Clan and Party

Changes

Fixes

UI

Changes

Fixes

Settlement Actions (Town, Village, Castle and Hideout)

Character Development System

Crafting

Quests & Issues

Conversations & Encounters

Animations

Other

Save & Load

Performance

Crashes

Multiplayer

Combat

UI

Crashes

Both

Combat

Changes

Fixes

Art

UI

Audio

Performance

Modding

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