Monthly devblog February 24 news - The Old Realms mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Monthly Update (February)

The Witch Hunter

We introduce our new Career, the Witch hunter. Even the vilest creatures of the old world fear the hunters. As any other career, the swift melee and ranged hybrid provides iconic advantages in form of the career ability, and passives obtained via the tree.

Accusation:

The player selects a target on which a debuff will be attached which increases the damage against the target. The debuff gets modified by several choices made in the career tree, like slowing down the enemy or increasing the taken damage further.

Apart the witch hunter will gain the options to recruit a new unit type the “retinues”. Retinues are the personal guard of a witch hunter and allow for magical attacks using their silvered weapons.

Environment

Our Environment Team made significant progress on the world map. We finished up the whole north of the empire and even gave Altdorf a little facelift, to better connect to the new territories.

We also have a new battlemap and a siegemap implemented

Marienburg

Middenheim

Reworked Altdorf (Northern exit)New 3D Assets

New Weapon types and reworked weapon effects

• Goals
• More interesting weapons and therefore combat
• Adding mechanics to weapons (ex. weapon flags)
• All weapon types have a strength and a purpose
• More crafting opportunities
• Merging vanilla and TOR parts
• Better balance
• Wholesale rebalance of melee, ranged, and armor

A new initiative being undertaken is what we are calling the Weapons Overhaul Project. The primary goal is to add more variety to melee combat. In addition to this primary goal we will also be doing a sweeping balance pass on melee, ranged, and armor items. The last goal is merging TOR melee weapon parts and vanilla parts so you can craft them together in the smithy.

Since it is still in its early stages, we will give you two examples that we have got working to some extent.

Maces (includes hammers, flails, and just about everything blunt)

• Knockdown
• All weapons in this type (one-handed, two-handed, and pole) will have the ability to trigger Knockdown. If you hit the enemy hard enough they will fall right over and you will have an opportunity to wail on them as they try to get back up.
• Knockdown for weapons is a vanilla Bannerlord function, but it was only enabled on a few weapons and weapon pieces.

• Crush Through
• Flails will have an additional ability called Crush Through. Being as flails were designed to wrap around weapons and shields we thought to simulate that here. Crush Through allows you to deal damage to a blocking enemy if you meet certain conditions.
• Crush Through is another vanilla Bannerlord mechanic that can be done with certain two-handed weapons. We will not be removing Crush Through from weapons that already have it.

Poleaxes (includes halberds and most bladed swingable polearms)

• Two-Handed Axe Mode
• Default usage mode is Polearm Mode and will use your Polearm skill and perks. You can hit your alternate weapon usage key (same key as couch lance or spear brace) to switch to Axe Mode, which will use your Two-Handed skill and perks.
• Currently, Axe Mode will not have access to thrusting attacks even if the Polearm Mode does.

• Bonus vs Shields
• Like one and two-handed axes weapons in this polearm category will have the same bonus against shields as those weapons.
• Can Dismount with Swing Attacks
• Dealing enough damage with a swing attack will dismount enemy cavalry.
• Require Two Hands
• Whereas it was previously possible to craft a polearm that you could limply swing with one hand you now need to use two hands to wield items in this category.

Stay tuned over the coming months as we talk about how the overhaul is progressing.

We are proud to showcase the new ambient music for the empire region. We thank Jalrick for his awesome contribution