Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord: Character Creation and Skills

Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord has an awful lot of customization built in. You make your medieval leader, then take them on a grand adventure to becoming a king or queen of their own tribal fiefdom. When you first make your character, you’re going to be presented with various options. You can change anything about the physical characteristics of your leader, with hair, eyes, facial features and more up for tweaking. Once you’ve made your appearance, you actually begin Bannerlord character creation.

Each phase of character creation is defined by picking the backstory of your fighter. Each choice gives you basic skills to begin the game with, as well as a bit of lore about how you came to be in this world. You can choose between combat and economic-focused backgrounds, with bonuses in the relevant stats and skills. The first choice you make is your culture, and pick wisely, you cannot actually change your culture once the game begins.

All Cultures in Bannerlord

The Culture bonuses are unique to each choice, and again, they cannot be changed once you’ve made your character, so pick carefully.l

Culture	Effect
Vlandians	Bonuses: 5% more reputation from battles, 15% more income from mercenary service. A 10% production bonus for villages that are connected to castles. Penalty: Recruiting lords into the army costs 20% more reputation.
Sturgians	Bonuses: The cost of recruiting and upgrading infantry units is 25% less. Armies lose 20% less cohesion each day. Penalty: 20% greater penalty to the relationship resulting from the kingdom’s decision.
Empire	Bonuses: 20% less pay for the garrison. You gain 25% more influence for being in the army. Penalty: Farm increase is 20% smaller.
Aseri	Bonuses: The cost of creating caravans is 30% less. A 10% smaller penalty to trade. No penalty to movement speed in the desert. Penalty: The daily wage of units in the party is increased by 5%.
Khuzaits	Bonuses: The cost of recruiting and upgrading mounted units is reduced by 10%. 25% bonus for breeding horses, mules, cows and sheep in villages ruled by Khuzait rulers. Penalty: 20% less income from taxes in towns.
Battanians	Bonuses: 50% less penalty to movement speed and 15% bonus to range of sight in forests. Cities ruled by Battanian rulers receive +1 to volunteer growth. Penalty: 10% more time to finish building town projects in districts.

Once you get through each part of the process, you will be greeted with your starting stat screen.

Attributes each have a starting value, but you’re not locked into those values. You get an attribute point every 3 experience levels. Investing a point in a given attribute will make the skills related to that attribute develop faster. You get XP fromk doing anything, from smithing to combat.

Each skill has a related attribute that works to scale the effectiveness of that ability in combat or various other gameplay systems. Keep reading below learn more about skills in Bannerlord.

Skill	Attribute	Development
One handed	Vigor	Attacking with one-handed weapons and using a shield
Two handed	Vigor	Attacking with a two-handed weapon
Polearms	Vigor	Attacking with polearms
Bow	Control	Shooting opponents with a bow
Crossbow	Control	Shooting opponents with a crossbow
Throwing	Control	Hitting opponents with throwing weapons
Riding	Endurance	Riding in campaign map mode and combat mode
Athletics	Endurance	Walking on foot in combat map mode and combat mode
Smithing	Endurance	Crafting equipment, converting gear into crafting materials
Scouting	Cunning	Traveling in unfavorable areas (snow, forests, mountains) and finding hideouts
Tactics	Cunning	Commanding troops during combat, winning battles where you don’t outnumber enemies
Roguery	Cunning	Bribery, attacking towns, villages and caravans, controlling bandit units
Charm	Social	Improving relationships with characters, trading
Leadership	Social	Having a large army and maintaining high morale
Trade	Social	Allows for more caravans, and grants better trade potential
Steward	Intelligence	Developing your locations, maintaining high morale by providing diverse food
Medicine	Intelligence	Treating soldiers and fixing wounds
Engineering	Intelligence	Building and using siege equipment

There are also two other areas of concern: Perks and Focus Points. Think of these as additional ways to power-up your leader. You get one Focus Point every new experience level.

Each Focus Point adds a certain amount of bonus to XP gain for the skill its attached to. This makes it easy to hyper-focus on particular areas. So if you’re aiming to become the best bowman in all the land, focus points should be dumped into skills such as Bow and Athletics to make you a more accurate and nimble archer. Perks are extra bonuses that can be purchased on some level up thresholds, adding new unique bonuses to the skill. You can choose new perks every 25 skill levels.

You can then get up to the fun of waging war and engaging in diplomacy. You can recruit lords for your faction, bringing more armies under your banner. There’s a lot more to learn about this game, so pay attention. Other things you might want to learn are how to properly manage your party’s size and movement speed. No use building a massive army if it’s too slow to fight. Smithing and other crafting disciplines are key to outfitting your troops. And knowing how to deal with rival lords and vassals is key to actually building that army.