Lore

On the northern shores of the bay of Varcheg, another battle broke out between the Kingdom of Vlandia and the Grand Principality of Sturgia.

At the request of Archduke Suisse dey Gunric-Talbot, King Derthert roused his banners to assemble as the fields in front of Caleus to march on Nevyansk Castle and once again push the Sturgians out of their side of the Bay.

Word of the assembling host reached Grand Prince Ivan of Sturgia and he issued a call to arms to march, ordering his camp to assemble in a hamlet near Nevyansk castle. However, fate did not favor the Grand Prince and after his orders were sent, Ivan fell gravely ill. Still, the princes assembled, unaware.

Word finally reached the camps of Ivan's illness on the eve of the battle, and without a leader, a young Jarl Kasimir of Omor stepped forward to guide the princes. A weary Knyaz Tarrovar arrived from the East and did not protest to the upcoming Jarl, taking his command of the Druzhina host in support of the upstart.

Morale began to waver before the Jarl even issued his first command as he ordered his forces to attack the Vlandians in Caleus before their host, which already seemed to outnumber his own, grew any larger.

Vlandian scouts reported these movements to Derthert and he ordered his infantry to take the highground of the village as the Sturgians began burning the outlying homesteads as they approached. The Sturgians found themselves pinned down by crossbow fire as the Knight's of Vlandia harried their flanks. Several assaults on the Vlandian position ended in miserable failure, to which the King realized that Grand Prince Ivan was not present.

Feeling incensed at the lack of his old rival's presence, King Derthert ordered his marshal Archduke Alexander dey Vilsen to take command, with support from Archduke Suisse's knights.

Alexander steeled his nerves, as once beaten previously by the Sturgians, as he remembered too well the cost of letting the Varyag host get too bold could lead to. The Archduke ordered his crossbows to assault the Sturgians as the Knights swept away any resistance from the ill prepared Druzhininks.

For Jarl Kasimir's part, he found the burden of command quite heavy, as the morale and cohesion of his army began to wither away with each crossbow bolt. Desperate, he ordered a full charge with all his forces onto the hill, surprising the Archduke with classic Sturgian ferocity. A bloody battle took place as sergeants and varyags clashed while knight and druzhina jousted, but it was the Vlandians who stood at the end. The morale of Jarl Kasimir's men finally broke and they retreated back to the coastlines to defend Ustokol castle. A few Varyags remained in the great smithy of Caleus and fought viciously until they were put down by overwhelming numbers. Undefended after the battle, Nevyansk quickly surrendered as Boyar Monty had already fled.

King Derthert ordered his fleet of ships to cross the bay with the victorious army and quickly laid siege to Ustokol Castle. Once briefly held by Vlandia, it was a symbol of Vlandia's near total control of the bay at one point, and The King's ambitions sought to reclaim and extend that reach.

The Nordic Princes of Sturgia dug in, not willing to lose Ustokol so easily, but were ill prepared for the surge of sergeants and horde of peasants under their command the King assembled to assault the keep. Control of the field was lost as the Vlandians took the walls. The Sturgians were taken back by the speed in which this was done, as their siege equipment failed to keep with the assault.

The Jarls had no choice but to abandon Ustokol to its fate, and for Kasimir's part, he vowed vengeance for his shame. Meanwhile, as news reached Balgard, the Grand Prince cursed fate between his coughing fits.

For the Vlandians, it seemed the Sturgian line has broken open once more, and they put Revyl, whose Jarl is rumored missing since the battle, in their sights once again.

Written by Blademaster

Meta

Welcome to the Bannerlord Calradic Campaign, which has just finished event #88!

The battle between the Kingdom of Vlandia and the Grand Principality of Sturgia ended in a VLANDIAN VICTORY, with Nevyansk & Ustokol Castles seized!

When is the Calradic Campaign? The first and third Saturday of every month, at 4pm Eastern Standard Time.

Unfamiliar with the Calradic Campaign? Have no fear! The Calradic Campaign is a casual, player driven, story based event. There are no strict rules or signups, and players of all skill levels often come! If you've never tried multiplayer, now is your best chance to experience large scale formations and battles without the overly strict practices typically found in line battle/clan style events.

Victories in our flagship monthly events are represented on the overall campaign map, while roleplay surrounding the events and their consequences takes place both during said events and on the community Discord. Joining the Discord allows you to communicate with your fellow faction members, trash talk others, and rise through the ranks to one day become lord of a village, castle, city, or if you're particularly successful, an entire kingdom!

To join the event, you will need our Calradic Campaign Module. This module contains all of the custom battle and siege scenes used, as well as many stability fixes and balance changes. Most importantly, the module features three distinct empire factions in multiplayer, each with their own unique perks and cosmetics to lean into the different situations of the three!

There will be a manual installation of the module available for those not playing on Steam. Check the Nexus mods page no sooner than the Friday before the event for the correct download.

As a general rule of thumb, the Calradic Campaign module should be the only one enabled in your launcher! If you have any crashes or issues trying to launch the game / join the server, unsubscribing and resubscribing to the module on workshop will often fix any issues.

Note to clans: While the Calradic Campaign is a public event open to all, clans will not be allowed to organize their own formations and must spread out between teams. Failure to follow these guidelines will result in suspension from the event.

Community Discord

It is highly recommended you join our community Discord, as half the fun of the persistent campaign takes place outside of events. Meet fellow Mount and Blade fans, find new friends to queue with, and make fun of the Imperials together in our community of 30,000+.

Leave any questions, complaints, observations, memes and faction based riffing in the comments below!

Greetings Warriors of Calradia,

Our last content patch focused on the sandbox simulation. It made diplomacy more responsive and encouraged our lords to pursue meaningful wars, create larger armies, go to sea, harass convoys and raid villages. It also included the new seaborne raid, additional ships and equipment as well as many tweaks to gameplay, visuals and performance.

Today’s beta release puts more emphasis on player activities. The segment prior to the patch notes discusses our motivations for some of these changes.

War Sails

While seafaring offers new opportunities for merchants and warriors alike, it requires substantial progress to not only acquire a ship, but also hire a crew that can fend for themselves. This is sensible from a balance perspective, but gates much of the naval content. We wanted to improve upon this without deeply changing the early game that many players enjoy.

The most direct solution the beta introduces is - additional player choice. At the beginning of every Sandbox game, you will be able to choose if you want to enter Calradia with a ship to your name or play the regular game start.

However, even if you opt for the latter, the patch includes a number of changes that should make progression both smoother and more flexible. For one, we added the ferry feature so that smaller player parties can reach (and escape) areas of the map that would otherwise be hard or impossible to get to without a ship. Given player feedback, we also increased land and sea travel speeds by 15% so that you will generally be faster to progress (and recover).

Once you do have a vessel of your own, you will find the pirate spawns adjusted to include smaller parties that you can engage earlier into the game. Similarly, part of the reason for why we introduced naval random events as well as the battle sites and wreckage system is to offer players more experiences that don’t require a strong fleet. Having said that, they should increase the variety of naval gameplay regardless of progression and allow players to organically witness more of what is happening in the world.

The mooring feature, in turn, opens up additional options for aspiring captains as their fleet grows. You will be able to store instead of sell ships that you cannot effectively crew yet. You also won’t need to risk your entire fleet in every naval battle. Instead, you can specialize and only bring what fits your current play style - be that trading, raiding or naval combat.

Finally, we added port points to coastal castles. While more locations to embark and disembark should make sea travel more accessible in general, the larger motivation is offering additional opportunities for armies to clash at sea. Given that most army encounters occur around sieges, naval blockades on castles will contribute to that.

While the beta includes other changes such as improved map visuals, better naval party decision making, storyline tweaks and the ability for players to cut boarding ropes in missions, our focus with this patch is on naval content access, progress and variety. Especially the variety and frequency of what you can experience at sea will remain an important topic for War Sails going forward.

Base Game

As we explored starting with a ship for War Sails, it quickly became clear that this was also an opportunity for the base game. Not the ship, mind you, but advanced starting options.

These are split into three categories - each with their own goals.

The player start options allow experienced players to access later game content more quickly and begin a game with a particular character role (such as king, vassal or merchant). For new players, this will also serve as an additional form of progression since you need to unlock most of the roles in regular gameplay before you can start with them.

The campaign scenarios, on the other hand, are always available. Their primary purpose is to increase replayability through the introduction of tailored but partially randomized world states. What would happen if the Empire remained united? What if you entered Calradia with only two warring factions remaining? What if you threw the dice on the state of the world? The campaign scenarios allow you to find out.

Modifiers are the final piece of the puzzle. They take aim at specific game mechanics that can deeply affect the experience such as recruit generation or travel speeds. Players who do not enjoy the default settings or just want to try something different will now have alternatives.

As you will be able to combine settings from these categories, the advanced starting options should offer quite a bit of content variety. They also integrate the Fast Mode directly into the game rather than the launcher, which will make it accessible on consoles as well. Please note that all of these are set when starting a Sandbox game and cannot be changed later. 

The rest of this patch is less about where you begin and more about what you can see as you are playing.

Battle sites and wreckages are one example of this. Their fundamental goal is to add visibility to battles that take place in the world outside of the player's immediate vision range. Instead of simply happening with players none the wiser, they now leave behind a temporary battle site that you can come across. You can also investigate it for further information and potential rewards. We believe that this will be a good addition to the organic worldbuilding and storytelling of our sandbox.

Visibility or recognizable gameplay impact is also an important aspect for two topics that are frequently raised in the community - traits and relations. 

While they already influence AI in kingdom decisions and military actions (siege, raid, battle) among other things, it can be difficult to discern their role given the competition with other factors - and each other. For example, a valorous lord is less discouraged by a garrison’s power but may still not pursue a siege due to positive relations with the settlement owner - as long as there are more attractive, alternative targets.

With that said, there are options to make traits and relations more apparent and impactful to the player’s own activity. The present patch seeks to do this with the introduction of trait effects and blood feuds.

As the name suggests, trait effects tie a number of effects to your current character traits. These were designed to support gameplay that is aligned with each side of a trait’s spectrum. So whether you are merciful or cruel, you will have effects that suit the role you are playing. And while this is more oriented towards the player’s character development, AI lords do have traits and will benefit from them as well.

Blood feuds, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with relations. If you execute a clan member of another clan, they will begin doing the same to your clan until relations recover or blood money is paid. Notably, AI clans can start a blood feud as well and execute one of your clan members, including you, if you have sufficiently negative relations (currently -50). So you may want to check who you are fighting - or at least ensure that your heir hasn’t already been captured.

Finally, we took a look at the (offensive, defensive, balanced) player clan party stances. Much like traits, the active stance influenced the party behavior scores, but did not guarantee specific outcomes. To give players a more reliable way to manage their clan, we decided to shift away from the score influence and towards hard, observable rules for the most common pain points. You will now be able to directly allow or prohibit joining armies, raiding villages, donating troops and having a fleet (for War Sails).

Naturally, the patch also includes changes that go beyond these themes such as additional battle terrains, passive experience gains for lords and companions as well as a substantial rework of reinforcement spawns in battles.

As we enter this beta period, we look forward to further improving these and other aspects with your feedback. We also want to note that this version’s live release will include captain mode formation targeting, spectator mode improvements and a range of balance adjustments for our multiplayer community. Once we have made a bit more progress, we will also share another update for what the future holds.

Hope you enjoy the Beta - we’re looking forward to your feedback!

Here’s how you can play the Beta via Steam right now: Open Steam, right-click Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord → Properties → Game Versions & Betas → Select “beta - Beta v1.5.0”.

Please note that there may be a delay between the download of the base game and the download of War Sails. If you launch the game prior to both of them being updated, you will crash. If you face this issue, please verify your game files.

Feel free to read the full patch notes for all the details HERE.