Valorlord

A curated Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord modlist by Valtarien (ACE).

Built for v1.4.7 (build 117484) with the War Sails 1.2.7 DLC.

147 mods plus the seven official modules, ordered and configured for stability first, performance second, feature richness third. The game still plays like Bannerlord — no overhauls, no fantasy content, no overpowered troop trees or items.

Playable in Sandbox (the default) or Campaign. Both use the same module list; only four settings differ.

Valorlord is an independent derivative of Vanilla 1.4.7 Plus Modding Notes by TadasTheLithuanian, which it treats as upstream. It is not a fork in the sense of a branch awaiting a merge — it is a separate list, separately maintained, that draws on upstream and continues to track it as a reference.

Relationship to upstream

Upstream supplied the foundation: the divider-based load-order structure, the ownership philosophy that assigns each gameplay system to exactly one mod, and the majority of the MCM values reproduced here. That work is TadasTheLithuanian's and the credit for it is his.

What "derivative rather than fork" means in practice:

• Changes flow one way, selectively. Valorlord reads upstream's changelog and adopts what fits. It does not mirror upstream, and nothing here is submitted back.
• Divergences are settled decisions, not drift. Every entry in §8 is a deliberate choice with a stated reason. Where the two lists disagree, Valorlord is not out of date — it reached a different answer.
• The selection criteria differ. Valorlord is ordered strictly stability first, performance second, features third. It defaults to Sandbox play but supports Campaign; the four settings that change between them are collected in §7. Upstream does not carry those constraints.
• Support is separate. Problems with this list are not upstream's to answer, and this document should not be cited when reporting an issue against upstream's guide or against any mod author.

Last reconciled against upstream as of its 27 July 2026 update. The eleven points of divergence are listed in §8.

Contents

1. Before you start
2. Game client settings
3. Launcher
4. Installing the mods
5. Load order
6. Mod configuration
7. Starting a new game
8. Divergence from upstream
9. Known issues
10. Maintaining the list

1. Before you start

You need a clean 1.4.7 install. Not 1.4.6 or earlier. Verify the build number in the bottom corner of the main menu.

Update your graphics drivers, then delete these two directories:

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord
C:\ProgramData\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord

The first holds saves, mod settings and logs. The second holds compiled shaders. Both are regenerated on next launch. Back up any saves you want to keep first — they will not be compatible with this list anyway.

Launch the game once with the official launcher before installing anything. This recreates the configuration files the list depends on.

Extract every mod with 7-Zip. Windows' built-in extractor can leave DLLs flagged as blocked, which makes them fail to load silently. If you already extracted with something else, right-click each DLL → Properties → Unblock.

Mods install to:

...\Mount & Blade II Bannerlord\Modules\<ModuleName>

Each archive contains one folder that goes directly there.

A note on updates

Mod versions move constantly. Rather than pinning versions in this document — which would be wrong within a week — the approach is:

• Track every mod on its source page so you get update notifications
• Read changelogs before applying updates; a "fix" in one mod is often a behaviour change that collides with another
• Update in small batches and verify with Harmony Patch Scanner before committing to a campaign

The only versions worth stating are the core libraries, because everything depends on them and mismatches are silent:

Note that some mods list a required MCM version that does not exist on the download page — mod authors sometimes quote the NuGet package number, which runs slightly ahead. Install the newest published release and ignore the discrepancy.

2. Game client settings

These prevent engine-level crashes in a heavily modded install. Set them before installing anything.

Video

• Disable Force VSync in Menus
• Frame Limiter → 89

Performance

• Shader Quality → Medium — higher settings can produce stretched textures with exported shaders
• Number Of Corpses → High (125) — never Unlimited, this reliably causes battle crashes
• Number Of Ragdolls → 10
• Disable Motion Blur
• Sound Channels → Medium (256)

NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings → bannerlord.exe

• Low Latency Mode → Ultra
• Max Frame Rate → 90
• Power management mode → Prefer maximum performance
• Vertical sync → Off

3. Launcher

Valorlord uses Novus Bannerlord Launcher, which supports saved presets and named divider entries. The dividers (divCore, divUtil, and so on) are cosmetic grouping entries — they load nothing, they just make a 175-line list navigable.

Do not use Vortex. Beyond the general reliability problems, Vortex has a documented history of writing a module argument string the engine resolves differently, which produces bizarre symptoms such as bandits rendering as children. If something looks wrong, verify that the launcher's module string matches your intended order before suspecting a mod.

Do not use Steam Workshop mods alongside this list. Automatic updates mean changes land without you reading the changelog.

4. Installing the mods

Work down the table in §5 in order. For each entry:

1. Download the archive from the linked page
2. Extract with 7-Zip into Modules\
3. Confirm the extracted folder name matches the Module ID column

Some mods ship multiple builds on their download page — pick the one for game version 1.4.7. Where a mod offers an MCM and a non-MCM variant, take the MCM variant.

Enable everything in Novus in the order shown, save the preset, then launch once and check the log at:

C:\ProgramData\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord\logs\rgl_log_<pid>.txt

Search for Assembly load result. Every entry should read SUCCESS. Anything else means a blocked DLL, a missing dependency, or a mod built for the wrong game version.

Four entries are not on Nexus:

• Encyclopedia Extender is distributed on GitHub — take the release from the repository
• The three Artem mods (Core, Nostalgic Conversations, Lively Animations) are Patreon downloads. Artem Core is a dependency for the other two
• Stealth Flag Fix is not a standalone mod. It is a file hosted on the Files tab of the upstream guide's own mod page

Two entries have a near-identical sibling on Nexus — take the one linked:

• Dynamic Looks Change — the link points to the 1.3.X build by geraltofpiss232, which is the one the upstream guide adopted. An earlier, separate mod of the same name also exists and uses the same module folder
• World Events Announcer — the link points to the "Updated for 1.3.15" build. The original standalone release is a different mod page

The div* entries are supplied by Dividers – Mod List Load Order Organizers. Install it first if you want the same visual grouping; the author of the upstream guide also posts a refreshed divider file in that mod's comments section. Novus only.

5. Load order

Order matters. Harmony resolves same-priority patches by registration order, which follows load order, so moving a mod can silently change which of two competing patches wins.

6. Mod configuration

Every setting below is applied through the Mod Configuration Menu, reachable from the main menu (Options → Mod Options) unless noted otherwise. Mods not listed here need no configuration.

Settings are grouped in load order so you can work down the list once.

Utilities

Bandit Voice Fix

• Debug Logging → off (the default). Only enable it if you find a silent bandit and intend to file a report.
• The mod author's install note says to place it towards the bottom of the load order. Valorlord places it at position 17, near the top — see the note in §9 before changing it.

Fix For Raiding Cultures Influence Loss

• Misc → Non Raiding Culture Influence Change → -10

Unit Spawn Prioritization For AI

• Main Settings → AI Spawn Prioritization Mode → Homogeneous
• Set the matching option in the game's own Gameplay settings too

User interface

Horse Counter (and Manager)

• Disable Handle Horses Hourly

Item Quality Visuals

• General → Visual Style → Colored Icons
• Enable the Tier 5, Tier 6 and Tier 7 icons

Tier Visual

• Tier Colors → Disable Show Tier Text Suffix

Gameplay

Bannerlord Expanded — Companion Expanded

• Disable Wanderer Join Request
• Disable Enable Companion To Sibling Conversation
• Disable Enable Companion To Son/Daughter Conversation
• Disable Additional Companion Slots

Bannerlord Expanded — Settlement Interactions

• Disable the Inn module. It throws a null reference in InnBehavior.SetupInn() when a quest forces a programmatic settlement entry — most reproducibly the "Extortion by Deserters" quest — because Settlement.CurrentSettlement and LocationComplex.Current are transiently null at that point. Everything else in the mod is safe. Re-check after any update.

True Relations

• Relations → Radius of Impact → 100
• Relation Change Chance → 50%

Vassal Baron

• Costs → Denars Cost → 100000

Persistent adjustments

Better Attributes

• Disable Player Only everywhere — 22 separate checkboxes
• Disable Crush Through Chance
• Disable Healing Rate Bonus
• Disable Slice Through Chance
• Enable Support for more Bonuses (at the very bottom)

Use the maintained fork linked in the table. The original build silently fails to register 14 of its 16 patch classes on 1.4.7 because of a renamed parameter in DefaultBattleRewardModel.CalculateRenownGain. There is no error message — the mod simply does almost nothing.

Better HUD

• Disable Enemy Info

Shadow Tweaks

This mod exposes over 900 settings. Valorlord uses three of its features and switches off everything else, because most of what it offers is already owned by another mod in the list.

• Leave enabled: XP Tweaks → Hero → Battle, and Character Development → Learning → Learning Rate
• Disable Party Wage Tweaks — Harvest And Production owns wages
• Disable Party Speed Tweaks — Harvest And Production owns party speed
• Disable Workshops Tweaks — Harvest And Production owns workshops
• Disable Smithy Tweaks — Better Smithing Continued and BannerCraft own smithing
• Disable Tournaments Tweaks — Arena Overhaul owns tournaments
• Disable Settlement → Town Mason — Improved Economy For AI Lords owns construction

The mod registers its Harmony patches regardless of whether the features are switched on. That is expected and costs essentially nothing; only the enabled features change behaviour.

Combat

AI Kick N Bash

• Injured Animations → HP Threshold → 10

Heroes Must Die

• Player Death → Enable Use Probability
• Player death chance → 0.03, use surgeon skill → on
• Leave Use Probabilities For NPCs off and all NPC death chances at 0 — this keeps the mod from overriding AI Values Life, which owns NPC battle death
• Hero Protection → off in Sandbox, on in Campaign — see §7. In Sandbox there is no story to break, and leaving protection on blocks succession, executions and rebellion, which is a large part of what the rest of this list does.

Knocked Down Heroes Influences Troops

• Enable Disable Hero Knockdown Sounds

Siege AI Fix

• Defaults are fine to start. The mod adds casualty-based retreat, army disbandment and cohesion loss on failed sieges. Fight one siege as attacker and one as defender before adjusting anything.
• It spawns cover and replacement ladders into siege scenes at runtime. If you use a mod that alters siege scene props, watch for misplaced geometry during the wall-breach phase.

Crafting

Visible Smithing Stamina While Waiting

• Additional options → Enable [Town] Show current stamina percent

NPCs

Culture Diversity Mod

• Disable the civilian and notable clothing overhaul. Dress The Wanderer owns wanderer and notable clothing in this list; running both produces inconsistent results.
• The mod's body-type corrections apply to newly generated characters, so install it before starting a campaign rather than partway through.

Truly Useful Wanderers

• General Settings:
  • Disable Use 6 Attribute Templates For All Heroes
  • Enable Enable Wanderer Level Scaling
  • Disable Enable Skill prefixes
  • Enable Age scaling for wanderers
  • Enable Age-based skill count for wanderers
  • Wanderer Max / Min Skill → 200 / 50
  • Minor Lords Max / Min Skill → 200 / 50
  • Children Max / Min Skill → 250 / 20
  • Disable Enable Elders & Smiths
  • Disable Enable Ordinary Lords

Dress The Wanderer

• Misc → Enable Disable equipment for Main Hero
• Maximum Tier → 3, Minimum Tier → 1
• Takes effect on new games only

Nobles and Wanderers In AI Parties

• General:
  • Disable Only Clan Leaders Can Hire Wanderers
  • Enable Recruit Same Culture
  • Buy Missing Equipment Chance → 0% — Lord's Gear owns AI equipment purchasing
  • Upgrade Equipment Chance → 0%
  • Disable Enable Tavern Spawns — Companion Expanded owns tavern spawns
  • Disable Enable Companion Limit Options
  • Disable Enable 'Make Family' Dialogue
  • Disable Enable 'Make Noble' Dialogue

World map

AI Executioner

• Hero Protection → off in Sandbox, on in Campaign — see §7.

AI Values Life

• Surrender Notifications → Enable Surrender Banners
• Disable Player Faction Only
• Death % → 0.03
• Death Protection → off in Sandbox, on in Campaign — see §7.

Realistic Prisoner

• Player → Max Loss % → 0.80
• Enable Surrender w/ Honor
• Disable Stealth Too
• Disable Civilian Too

Auto Best Role

• Battle & Army → disable all three options. Enable Battle Auto Assignment is the important one — Immersive Battlefields owns battle formation assignment
• Auto Assign Messages → Disabled
• Enable Skip Player Party
• Assignment Check Intervals → 24 hours

Garrison Do Something

• Vanilla Patrols → Enable Enabled
• Disable Patrols — vanilla patrol behaviour is more stable, and Harvest And Production and Improved Garrisons both add parties of their own

Lord's Gear

• AI Gear Purchase:
  • AI Gold Spending Percentage → 0.20
  • Disable AI Restrict Weapon to Culture
  • Clan Shop Visit Chance → 5%
  • Clan Gold Spending Percentage → 0.20
  • Enable Clan Restrict to Culture
  • Disable Clan Restrict Weapon to Culture

No Lord Free Troops

• Interface → Disable Show spawn messages
• Enable Remove troops on new game start
• Initial troop count → 7

Items and troops

Retinues

• Leave Maximum Troop Tier at its default. The mod can raise the cap to tier 10 for use with overhauls; nothing else in Valorlord expects tiers above the vanilla range, and Tier Visual in particular assumes it.
• Leave Keep Custom Troops Out of Tournaments enabled (the default) — otherwise clan troops flood tournament brackets, which already have two other mods shaping them.
• The console command retinues.scrub_save cleans corrupted saves and orphaned troops. The author's own advice is not to run it unless you need it. Back up first.

Tournaments

Arena Overhaul Redux

• Tournament settings → Maximum bet → 1500
• Disable Enable high quality prizes
• Reward for the won round → 200

Balanced Tournament Armor

• Change Armor → Troop Tier → 3

Diplomacy and economy

This is the one area where two large mods overlap, so the ownership split matters.

Bellum Civile owns war and peace, rebellion, court politics, succession and marriage. Diplomacy owns everything else — alliances, non-aggression pacts, messengers, influence and corruption, and kingdom elimination.

This follows upstream. It is also the arrangement Bellum Civile itself expects: disabling its war/peace engine so that Diplomacy can run war and peace instead produces recurring error messages from Bellum Civile in play. The two are not symmetrically swappable, whatever the settings screens suggest.

Diplomacy

• Civil Wars → set all three to 0%:
  • Daily Chance To Start Rebel Faction
  • Daily Chance To Join Rebel Faction
  • Daily Chance To Start Civil War
• War Exhaustion → Disable Enable War Exhaustion
• Disable Enable Fief Repatriation
• Minimum War Duration → 0 days
• Declare War Cooldown → 0 days
• Kingdom Diplomacy → Disable Delay Fiefless Kingdom Elimination

Bellum Civile

• Marriage → Male Minimum Age 18, Female Minimum Age 18, Female Maximum Age 45
• Enable War/Peace Logic Revamp — this is the engine the Diplomacy settings above are cleared for
• Enable War Score Map Widget — the campaign-map readout for that engine
• Leave Dynamic Relation Drift enabled at weekly drift 1.0
• Leave Strategic Marriage Logic and Strategic NPC Marriages Only enabled

Do not run both war engines. Enabling Bellum Civile's revamp while leaving Diplomacy's war exhaustion and war-duration timers active gives two systems a vote on the same decisions, and the result is incoherent. Turning Bellum Civile's revamp off to hand war and peace to Diplomacy is the configuration that generates the error messages described above. Take upstream's split as written.

Harvest And Production

• Defaults are correct. Do not change them until you have played a campaign with it.
• This mod cannot be removed mid-campaign. Removing it crashes on load, because custom workshops, items, item categories and party components can no longer resolve. Install it before you start, or not at all.
• Leave its debug log switched off unless you are investigating something — it costs frames.

Improved Economy For AI Lords

• Town Settings → Disable Enable Towns Denars Increase — Harvest And Production owns town economy

Compatibility patches

Universal Patch

• Disable Armor Standardization
• Disable Debug (at the bottom)

7. Starting a new game

Sandbox or Campaign

Valorlord defaults to Sandbox. Campaign works with the identical module list — StoryMode is already enabled at position 9, so nothing is installed, removed or reordered. Four settings change.

Why Campaign needs them. The main quest requires specific nobles to remain alive, and several mods in this list can kill them: AI Values Life and Heroes Must Die in battle, AI Executioner and Bandit Militias Redux through executions, Bellum Civile through post-war executions and treason purges. With protection off, a Campaign run can quietly become unfinishable — there is no warning and no error, the quest simply cannot be completed. Set these before starting, because turning protection on later will not bring anyone back.

What Campaign costs you. Protection covers seventeen faction rulers and claimants, and it is enforced at the kill action itself, so none of them can die by any route. That makes several systems inert for those characters: Bellum Civile's partition succession and heir selection, its post-war executions and confiscations, Nepotism, and Bandit Militias Redux's execute-a-captured-leader option. Succession still works normally for every clan outside that seventeen.

Player death is separate. Heroes Must Die is configured for a 3% chance per knockdown in both modes, and the protection toggles do not affect it. In Campaign that will eventually end a run or hand it to an heir. Set the player probability to 0 if you would rather it didn't.

All four are ordinary MCM settings and can be changed at any time, but the protections only prevent deaths that have not happened yet.

Game options

Set these in the game's own settings, not MCM:

Suggested keybinds: Fast Forward → Up Arrow, Toggle HUD → ], take/release ship helm → F5.

Governors Handle Issues — must be redone every campaign

This mod's settings only appear once a save is loaded, and they reset on every new playthrough. Configure it immediately after starting:

• Enable AI Clan Governors Handle Issues
• Disable Handle Constructions — Improved Economy For AI Lords owns construction
• Enable Governor Skill Check
• Disable Auto Resolve Issues That Cannot Be Solved By Companions
• Issue Cooldown → 30 days
• Enable Relation Change Notifications, Renown Notifications, Trait XP Notifications, Show Success Chance
• Disable Grant Trait XP To Player
• Enable NPC world recruitment and NPC prisoner recruitment
• Maximum NPC recruitment threshold → 1000
• Enable NPC garrison training, maximum training tier → 6
• Enable World recruitment enabled by default, threshold default → 2500
• Enable Training enabled by default, training tier default → 6
• Enable Guards can recruit prisoners by default

Session hygiene

Exit to desktop between loading saves — do not return to the main menu. Several mods re-register their Harmony patches when a campaign initialises. Going back to the menu and loading again stacks a second copy of those patches on top of the first, and the effects compound over a session.

8. Divergence from upstream

Each entry below is a decision, not an outstanding difference to be reconciled. If you are working from upstream's notes alongside this document, these are the points where the two part company and why.

9. Known issues

Live defects in this list at time of writing. None are crashes on startup; all are reachable only through specific actions.

Do not offer peace to Jomsborg Reaver lords. Crashes with a null reference in PeaceBarterable.GetUnitValueForFaction. Their lords are generated at runtime from line-troop templates and lack the ruler, fief and tribute plumbing the vanilla peace barter assumes. Nothing in the list patches that method.

Fourberie pit fights may crash on load. An open, unresolved report against the current version. Avoid pit fights or treat them as a deliberate test.

Encyclopedia unit pages can stack-overflow. Opening the encyclopedia page for certain low-tier troops from the party upgrade screen can produce a 0xC00000FD stack overflow. This is uncatchable by .NET, so there is no crash window and no log entry — the game simply vanishes. The cause appears to be a cycle in a troop upgrade tree. Retinues ships a fix for duplicate "ghost" troops and a retinues.scrub_save console command that clears orphaned entries; run the latter if you hit this.

Patch-ordering caution — Realistic Combat Mod. Realistic Blood and Stamina System both register short-circuit-capable prefixes ahead of Realistic Combat Mod on Agent.HandleBlow and MissionCombatMechanicsHelper.DecideWeaponCollisionReaction. If either earlier-registered prefix ever returns false, RCM's damage model is bypassed silently. No misbehaviour has been observed, but it is worth knowing about if combat ever feels wrong.

Bandit Voice Fix vs Bandit Militias Redux. Both postfix DefaultVoiceOverModel.GetSoundPathForCharacter, which is exactly the collision the Bandit Voice Fix author warns about — the mod is only incompatible with something that "also patches Bannerlord's voice-over resolver." Postfixes at equal priority run in registration order, so with Bandit Voice Fix at position 17 and Bandit Militias Redux at 155, Bandit Militias Redux currently has the last word on any bandit voice path both mods touch. The author's own advice to load Bandit Voice Fix near the bottom would reverse that. It is add/remove safe and writes no save data, so the change costs nothing to test — but if bandit voices sound correct as-is, there is no need.

Open medium-severity patch conflicts. These are documented rather than fixed, because in each case both mods are wanted:

10. Maintaining the list

Scan in-campaign, not from the main menu. Harmony Patch Scanner only sees patches that have actually been registered. Over a hundred patches register only when a campaign or a mission starts, not at load — 106 in a measured comparison, concentrated in Bandit Militias Redux (46), Harvest And Production (21), Shadow Tweaks (11), Diplomacy's campaign instance (8) and Organized Frontline Mod (8). A main-menu scan will report them as absent and understate your conflict count. Load a save, fight one field battle, then scan.

For reference, an in-campaign scan of this list on 26 July 2026 returned 2,875 patched methods and 52 cross-mod conflicts (0 high, 8 medium, 44 low). Roughly 62% of the patch count is Retinues' blanket try/catch crash-guard wrappers, which are by design. Treat that figure as a point-in-time reading rather than a target — it moves with every mod update, so what matters is the diff against your own last known-good scan, not the absolute number.

Do not trust launcher version strings. Novus reads RequiredVersion from each mod's SubModule.xml, and many authors never update it. Verify by DLL timestamp, or by checking whether a mod's expected patches actually appear in a scan.

Diagnostic workflow when something breaks:

1. Better Exception Window report, if one appears
2. rgl_log_<pid>.txt and rgl_log_errors_<pid>.txt from that session
3. Harmony scan diff against your last known-good baseline
4. Mod toggling, guided by which mods updated most recently
5. Windows Event Viewer for crashes that produce no log at all — stack overflows in particular

Back up before every update batch, and before running any save-repair command.

Credits

Upstream: Vanilla 1.4.7 Plus Modding Notes by TadasTheLithuanian. The load-order structure, the single-owner-per-system philosophy and most of the configuration values in §6 originate there. Valorlord would not exist without it, and upstream remains the reference this list is measured against — but it is a separate project and its author bears no responsibility for anything here.

Modding documentation at bannerlordmodding.lt by LitauenLitauen.

All credit for the mods themselves belongs to their authors, linked in §5.

Valorlord is maintained by Valtarien (ACE) and published in case it is useful to others. It carries no warranty and no support commitment, and it claims nothing over the mods it lists — those belong to their authors under their own terms. Read §8 before adopting any divergence wholesale; several follow from Sandbox being the default, and upstream's choice may be the better one for you.