Five mods that will change the way you play
Mount & Blade is one of my favorite games on PC. It’s an open-ended world that allows just about anything. If you want to be a traveling merchant, a mercenary for hire, a thieving bandit king, or the champion general of an entire kingdom, it’s probably possible.
On top of its freestyle gameplay, it’s also very friendly to mods. Better yet, it’s easy to have multiple mods installed with Mount & Blade. I’ve rounded up a few of the most interesting ones here for you to try out. Feel free to install them all, but just expect to stay up until 3:00am tonight.
Time: About half an hour for each mod
Difficulty: Easy
What you need: Mount & Blade or Mount & Blade: Warband
Note: Some of these mods are for Warband, while others are only for Mount & Blade (M&B). I’ve marked each of them after the title.
How to install a Mount & Blade mod:
- Download the mod and extract all of the files.
- In Mount & Blades install location (\Steam\steamapps\common\Mount and Blade\ or \Mountblade Warband\ if you are using the Steam copy) there is a folder called “Modules.” Any full conversion mod that you download will go right into this folder. Just copy the entire mod folder here. Some downloads will have optional files or patches, but you usually copy those in here too and overwrite existing files.
- Launch the game and select the current module that you want to play.
Star Wars Conquest (M&B)
This one lets you play around in the Star Wars universe. Jump into a quick battle with Jedi Knights and Storm Troopers duking it out if you want a taste of this conversion mod. The meat of this is its fully fleshed-out campaign. There are three factions (the Rebels, the Empire, and the Hutt Cartel) and just about every major race is available for you to play.
I started off as a Twi’lek working for Jabba the Hutt. On Tatooine I got a mission from Jabba to hunt down and kill some guy. After visiting the cantina for a hand of Pazak and recruiting some wookies to fight for me, I took off in my ship for other worlds. The game map has been changed to a map of space, and you fly around and visit planets. As soon as I left the Tatooine, I was boarded by pirates and after a brief battle, I was captured. So ended the career of Bubba Foo.
Star Wars Conquest is surprisingly well put together. It’s limited by the Mount & Blade engine in what it can do, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun. I highly recommend that you check this one out.
High School of the Dead (M&B)
This is worth about 30 minutes of your time just for the laughs; it takes place in a Japanese high school and, as expected, you fight zombies. It looks bad — and it’s just a handful of quick battles — but it’s so amazingly bizarre, I have to recommend it.
Wastelander The Rift (M&B)
Imagine if Firefly were part medieval. That’s pretty much what this mod is. It’s not completely intentional since it’s far from being completed. At first glance, it looks like the normal base game — it’s not until everyone starts flying around on speeders and shooting at aliens that it feels like a sci-fi medieval hybrid. I didn’t even know that could be a genre, but now I want more.
Brytenwalda (Warband)
This mod simply provides a historical background for Warband. It takes place in the 7th century on the British Isles and all the models have been replaced with period-appropriate ones. The new textures and models look much better than the default ones to the point where it’s actually not bad to look at sometimes.
This is my preferred mod to use when playing Mount & Blade. I love the accurate setting and it’s easier to get into than the made up stuff from the base game.
C-RPG (Warband)
This is a multiplayer-only mod that allows you to have a persistent character who levels up as you play. Normally in Warband, everyone starts each match with a fresh character and you buy your weapons every time you respawn. C-RPG adds more depth to the multiplayer system by allowing your character to persistently get better over time. In addition to leveling up, you gain gold to buy better equipment.
You have to set up an account in order to play, but don’t worry — it’s all free and they don’t spam your email with crap. It’s merely so you can keep track of your characters and they can keep away the cheaters.
This is the type of mod that relies on other people using it to make it worthwhile. Thankfully, most of the current multiplayer matches out there use this.
While there are tons of other mods out there for Mount & Blade, I feel like these ones are the most interesting and worth your time. I may come back and revisit the series in the future and bring another round of mods to you. Feel free to share any mods that you use in the comments!
