How to change the difficulty in Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

You can alter the odds and change the outcome of combat by modifying your character’s gear, amplifying your armies, and approaching scenarios differently while playing in Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord. However, sometimes the game can prove a little too difficult. When you first start the game, you choose how difficult or easy you want to play it. You may learn during your campaign that what you initially chose doesn’t reflect your enjoyment, and you want to change it.

Altering the difficulty of the game is not a straightforward process; in the sense, it’s not as quick as clicking through “easy” to “hard.” First, you want to load up your game and find a place to pause. After you’ve done that, go to the campaign options, and you will have a list of choices available to you, each of them altering how your game works and making the game’s difficulty change for better or for worse.

These are your choices:

• Friendly Troops Received Damage: How much damage does your army take during a battle.
• Friendly Parties Received Damage: How much damage do your friendly parties receive while they are in combat.
• Player Received Damage: How much damage does your main character receive during combat.
• Recruitment Difficulty: How difficult and how many options do you have when visiting a town to obtain new troops for your army.
• Map Movement Speed: How quickly does your army move across the map during the campaign.
• Enable Death: If a hero dies in a battle, they stay dead rather than being captured.
• Auto Allocate Clan Member Perks: This option enables you to automatically assign the perks of those in your clan or if you do it yourself.

You can alter all of these choices at any time during your Bannerlord campaign. Next to the first five, you have several options that clearly say “very easy” up to “realistic.” There are only three options in total. The last two, enable death and auto allocate clan member perks, are toggled on and off.

Once you finish adjusting these settings, you can save the game to see how they feel for your gameplay style. You can always return to this screen to modify any of these choices.