The land of Calradia can be incredibly daunting when you’re first starting out. Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is still in early access so the introduction is especially rough right now. Once you’ve finished the tutorial, you’re simply left to fend for yourself. How will you grow your army? How will you gain power? Eventually you may find yourself ready to establish a home for yourself on the continent. Our Mount & Blade Settlements Guide will run down the different ways to obtain your own home.
As a reminder, this is an early access game, things are subject to change. We’ll do our best to keep the guide up to date, but can’t promise we’ll have absolutely everything updated straight away.
How to Earn A Settlement
The first way is arguably the easiest way for inexperienced players to get their own land: having it gifted to them. This obviously means you’ll need to subjugate yourself to one of the major factions. Which one doesn’t matter, but only way to peacefully gain land is to please one of the nobles enough that they reward you.
As you complete missions and continue to earn their favor, the rewards will gradually increase. You’ll earn gold, items, or higher status within the empire. Eventually they may see fit to give you a castle or appoint you to rule over one of the smaller towns.
If you decide to leave the kingdom, you can either forfeit all of your land and titles or you can try to keep them. The latter will cause the faction to go to war with you, leaving you with another problem to deal with.
How to Capture A Settlement
You can, of course, also take a settlement by force. Though keep in mind you can only loot towns. The only land you can fully capture in the world are the castles that dot the map and the large cities.
To take one for yourself, first prepare for a siege. Stock up on food, siege supplies, and troops. Obviously you’ll need to be at war with the faction itself first. Doing so is easy enough if you just strike out at some wandering troops or hit a small town.
Now head back to the castle and click Besiege the Castle. You’ll need to put together those siege weapons to destroy the walls and get your troops in. Building each siege camp can take days if your Siege skill is low. During this time, the AI is likely to send other armies in an attempt to stop you. You will need to fight these troops before you can lead an assault. This may very well weaken your army too much to take the castle.
Once you’ve gained total control of the castle, you’ll suffer a penalty in relations to the faction. You will, however, automatically gain control of the small towns that fall under its circle of influence. It is possible to establish peace with the faction and keep control of the castle going forward though.
And that’s it for now! We’re still working our way through Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. We’ll be sure to update this guide with any new information we find as we play. If you have any tips or tricks to share with fellow players, do leave them in the comments below! If we agree they’re useful we’ll add them to the guide!
