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

To begin with, we have some very exciting news! One of the most requested features we have had over the years is for us to somehow incorporate a mod like ‘Serve as a soldier’, while it has been on our to-do list with no timeframe in mind, we can happily announce we finally dived right into it! We have now added a similar function we have dubbed the ‘Hireling’ system, but it is something everyone should be familiar with functionally.

You will now be able to serve and fight for a lord directly from the very onset of your campaign, fighting battles and performing various tasks related to your chosen career. These tasks will allow you to progress in your career while you wait for your next battle, in addition to this you will of course be earning money and any relevant faction resource such as Imperial Prestige for the Empire, or Dark Energy for Vampire Counts. Faction currencies such as these were showcased in our previous updates.

This is a feature we have wanted as a team for quite some time and are equally as excited about using it, for both roleplaying and simply gameplay purposes it’s a nice change of pace for the early game wherein you can be more involved in your faction, or following your favourite Lords.

We would like to thank LLMuse and Bloc who maintained the Serve as a Soldier mod, which has become the foundation for our implementation of the feature.

The images below will give you a good idea of the sort of options available to you as a hired sword:

Since the reveal of the career system, we have been continuously tinkering and thinking about what sort of additions we can make for each faction, this time around we have added a Necrarch career for players who love a magic-focused playstyle, bringing further options to those who are aligned with the Vampire Counts and undead in general.

The Necrarch will be provided with multiple lores of magic, not only dark magic or necromancy but also lores like heavens and metal that need to be unlocked and studied as you play.

The career ability is called “ Blast of Agony”, which is essentially Fireball, that will be free to cast, only requiring the usual career ability charge.

As we expand on our map, heading further into the north of the Empire, we are also thinking about the landscapes players will come to battle across. Amongst these is a map of the Nordland coast, the coast in general sees some of the bloodiest fights between the Empire and the Norscans as it is a primary landing point for any raid or invasion.

Another we have is a map dubbed Marbad’s Tomb, Marbad was the King of the Endal Tribe during the reign of Sigmar and would later be known as Marienburg.

Wood elves have some of the more interesting weapon designs in Fantasy and this glaive is a great example. In the hands of both the player and the elves themselves, it will cleave through man and beast alike!

The Wood Elves have access to a pretty interesting roster of monsters, beasts and animals and we are working to get them in-game, with the Dryad unit being the first of many!

As ever we are still looking for anyone interested in helping out with the Mod, if you think you'd be interested or have any skills you want to work on through our mod please head on over to our applications channel on the discord!

we are grateful for our community and your continued support, if you have any feedback or issues, please don’t hesitate to head on over to our discord! We look forward to sharing our progress once more with our next monthly.