Monthly update January 24 news - The Old Realms mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Monthly Update:

First of all we want to apologize for the missing update for the current released version. Not only were the features like the snow flow map and the preloaded shader cache unexpectedly complicated, the testing and side effects we were trying to investigate started to affect the development of the new content. After a few days we decided then, to not release any update, until we have enough content that makes it worth playing and all desired features work stable enough. Which most likely means that an updated playable version of the mod will take a long time.

The positive from this is : we put all our efforts into producing new content and there is ALOT to cover.

Environment:

Progress on the World map

As we mentioned we are working on the map expansion, and so far were able to expand up to the very north of the empire, working on the area for middenland, Nordland and co.

The lore team is assisting our map artist with references and map material but also we're writing out the clans we will introduce in the next update.

Apart from that we also worked on new maps you will encounter:

Coding

For the next big release, the coding team intends to make overall the game more enjoyable with more QOL improvement, introducing more balancing factors and providing more playable content.

Spell selection and casting Rework:

Internally, as work in progress we are working on a more straightforward UI for the spell casting. The spell selection will now take place via a radial menu. Internally we still need to fine tune factors, yet we already see a lot improvement in the way how our mod plays

New Spell selection - ModDB

Career reworks

All 6 existing Careers were and still are under rework. All Careers got a 7th perk line. The maximum Career points are set to 30 though, so the player has a pool from which he chooses.

Most noteworthy a significant buff to the Blood Knight which now Slowing down the time during his ability, but also gets a perk for life leeching and extending the career ability duration.

New Career : The Necromancer

We want to present our first implemented new Career : The Necromancer!

The Necromancer will be provided with lots of perks benefiting his summoning spells and spell casting behavior, without having him to fall into melee combat and highly benefit arch type - typical behavior.

His career ability is very unique to him : Summoning a Champion!

The Ability allows him to summon an undead champion, which is upgraded by the several final perks in his skill tree groups. The clue however is: The player controls that champion.

This makes the player not only extremely strong but also extremely vulnerable for the duration. The Necromancer needs to actively shift his consciousness into the Champion, which leaves his body vulnerable for attacks. In all means you need to make sure that your real body is not dying. There are perks to disarm that situation, but the player has to make tactical decisions for making most of this ability - in combat and in decisions on the used perks.

Game balancing: Waging wars and bandit population:

Yes we hear you, the bandit density is too high, and the game rather feels like “peacehammer”. We put a lot of effort into sweet spotting the densities for bandits, but also provide configurability, for anyone that wants to have either more or less bandits.Apart we try to make wars more frequent and lore friendly, so arch enemies are more likely to wage wars, while neutral factions wait for opportunities their neighbors are weak.

Custom currency:

In the upcoming update we will introduce for factions a new global currency or resource, that is used for accessing high power units. All of these resources work a little bit different, and provide unique play styles in each culture. This resource is used for upgrades, but also can in some cases act as an upkeep alternative to gold - which is a lot harder to obtain or to keep due to new forms of upkeep of new units. We will use this system for example to balance out very powerful units like wraiths, Grail Knights or demi-gryph knights.

Dark Energy:

As our first example we will take Dark Energy. Dark Energy is a new form of resource used for the maintenance and upgrade of undead troops. It is obtained by not taking prisoners after a combat (and using those prisoners for sacrifice). In turn , your obtained Dark energy can then used for the maintenance of high power troops like wraiths or vampires or upgrade undead units ( gold costs are removed). We hope with this change to make all factions and their specifics more interesting and increase the replayability.

The coding team currently has a lot of things in their works which we will show once the time comes. Among these: A lot of new Careers, new magic and a lot of mechanics that improve the overall enjoyability of the mod. We probably can show new things in february.

2D:

3D:

Our 3D team made some shiny new assets for the wood elves , we want to show our progress we made in December and January.