Monthly Update September news - The Old Realms mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

For this update we thought we’d take a change of pace! We aren’t just going to show you what our 2D team has cooked up, but also a little sneak peak at some upcoming features and the next map expansion.
First off, as we continue to build upon our featured factions, we are also slowly adding to the campaign map as well. Which of course means new territories!
The next featured factions and territories will be that of Reikland, home to the Emperor himself, and Talabecland. We are excited to show you the map in a future update, once we have everything set up!

We promised sneak peaks and we don’t plan to disappoint, here is a look into some of our new upcoming features.
It’s been a while since the coding team is giving a detailed update on what they do, they spend a lot of time optimising and reimplementing code features that have been rendered dysfunctional since we moved to 1.80. However, they also made some cool additions.
Starting with some quality-of-life improvement

We added a new Section in the Input Screen, where people can define custom keys for The Old realm’s specific keys. While by default our beloved spellcasting mode was “Q”, you now have the ability to remap it to whatever key you wish.
You will notice that there are also more buttons to it. The next and last ability allow you to select spells without needing to switch between spell casting mode and back, as in the above example, we put these on the side buttons of the mouse. Of course, if you don’t have them or don’t like it then you can just use a different binding.
We have been thinking about quick casting for some time, primarily for the Warrior Priests battle prayers. Switching between the spellcasting mode and back to fighting is just a little jarring. Once the quick cast is activated, the spell casting is executed immediately, without the need to switch to spellcasting mode. Even better, it tries to assist the player by selecting the right target direction, in case of a prayer, it directly cast the spell to the ground like any buff spell. We are looking forward to hearing feedback from your side.
We hope you will like our quality-of-life improvements.
Custom perks!

If you paid attention in the last monthly updates, you might have seen something odd about the Skill icons we added in our monthly update. Sure, we replaced the icons, but there were more icons than actual skills in the base game. In fact, we added a completely new Skill row!

We want to introduce our new skill Attribute “Discipline”. Discipline will extend the vanilla system with skills the original game cannot account for but are very characteristic for our beloved franchise. Gunpowder reflects the skill in using all gunpowder weapons like muskets, long rifles, grenade launchers and cannons. Spellcraft accounts for everything related to spellcasting or wielding magical items, while faith is planned to relate to prayers, but that’s still work in progress.
In the upcoming update you will be able to progress your spellcrafting abilities by casting spells. Similarly, your gunpowder skill by shooting with guns or explosive ammunition. You will then also be able to unlock perks that are interact with our damage system or the vanilla Bannerlord’s perk system.
Here is a little feature of some of the perks we already have, as always feedback is greatly appreciated:

• Well Controlled

Your damaging spells do 30% less damage to your own troops. Gain 5% advantage in simulation battles

• Bullet proof

15% less damage recieved from handheld ranged weapons Troops in your party recieve 5% less damage from handheld ranged weapons

• Dead Eye

Longrifles deal +30% damage Two-Handed gunpowder troops in your party have their accuracy increased by 20%

• Arcane link

Any buffs you cast on a friendly unit will now also apply to you even if you are not in range As Formation Captain, all troops in the formation deal additonal 10% magic damage.

New units and the Troop Trees
We are also in the stages of finalising our troop trees, in time you will see grenade launcher outriders and more Knight units for Empire and Vampire Counts, while we also continue to flesh out our existing roster with our own custom-made 3D assets.

As for our usual update material, we have some fantastic work from our 2D team to give you a taste of what some of our future assets will look like or take inspiration from, from the peasantry of the Empire to the Elector Count Wolfram Hertwig himself!

We are still looking for Sound Engineers/Artists, 3D artists, Sceners and C# Coders. If you are interested in any of these roles, or any of the others, feel free to head over to our #applications channel on the discord! Everyone is completely welcome.