So you’ve finally established a trade route in your merchant playthrough of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, moving cheap livestock from the open plains to the dense cities. Its success depends on your ability to move goods back and forth quickly. While paying troop wages to keep your assets safe. Or maybe you’re taking a trip through the far east to pick up horse archers only to find out your home has been attacked in the far west. For both of these scenarios, you need to move quickly. This Bannerlord Speed guide explains some of the things that might be slowing you down, with tips about how to make your party as fast as possible in Bannerlord.
Table of Contents
What Affects Speed in Bannerlord?
Hovering over the speed in Bannerlord stat at the bottom right of your UI will show exactly which factors are contributing to or detracting from your current speed. There are many factors that can alter your speed, but the following are the main contributions, and explanations about how to make them work for you:
Encumbrance
Like any video game, the amount of weight you’re carrying directly affects how quickly you move. You can see your party’s current weight and maximum weight displayed in the top right of the Inventory (I) screen, as well as the trade screen in towns. Bannerlord does not prohibit you from going over your maximum weight value; it simply slows down your party more and more until you’ve reached the lowest possible speed in Bannerlord (1.0). You can overcome encumbrance by simply getting rid of some of the goods you’re carrying, but hiring more soldiers, and increasing the number of pack animals (see next entry).
Pack Animals
Logically, buying more mules and sumpter horses will allow you to carry more goods. The amount of weight each animal can carry is listed in its description when you mouse over its icon, though it’s always 100 unless it’s ‘lame’. Be advised: simply buying a ton of pack animals isn’t a direct answer to your speed in Bannerlord problem.
If the amount of animals you own exceeds your party by too many, you incur what’s called a ‘Herd’ penalty. Just as it would be in real life, if you don’t have enough soldiers to wrangle those pack animals, traveling with them becomes a chore, and this leads to the single largest penalty against your speed in Bannerlord in the game. Ideally, you want 1.5 times the amount of pack animals as soldiers, at most (e.g. 150 animals for 100 soldiers). Also, note that selling these animals will affect encumbrance, so find a balance between the two if you want to carry more goods but still be able to move fast.
Skills
The Scouting skill is the only one that is directly related to your speed in Bannerlord in moving across the map. To increase speed, you always want the companion with the highest scouting skill. As your party’s scout, even if that’s your character. Perks throughout this tree will increase speed in Bannerlord in various scenarios. As well as moving faster at night, or through the desert. There are a few other skills with perks that can affect you less indirectly. You’ll find some perks that allow your party to carry more weight, incur less of an encumbrance penalty, move faster with high morale, and move faster when chasing or running from other parties. The breadth of these is too lengthy for this post, but you can find them simply by clicking through the perks and reading about their benefits, as you would normally.
Percentage of Cavalry
The amount of cavalry you have compared to ground troops greatly affects your parties’ speed. If you want to have the fastest party possible, maintain a 2-to-1 ratio of horsemen versus infantry and archers. This includes both horse archers and melee cavalry.
Terrain
Traveling across what the game considers rough terrain can slow down your party considerably. This includes snow, desert, forest, and hills. As mentioned, certain perks negate these obstacles and allow your party to navigate them with less of a penalty. There are also certain faction/race perks that give you a permanent bonus on the terrain of their respective homelands. For instance, the Aserai, being desert folk, incur less of a penalty when moving through the desert; the Battanians, being from a land full of trees, incur less of a penalty when moving through forests.
Time of Day
Naturally, all parties move across the map much slower at night. Combined with the other factors mentioned above, the nighttime can really bring your party to a crawl. This can be offset simply by planning trips for the day and resting your party at night. Just like feudal lords did in real life. You can also find a perk in the scouting tree. Which makes your party travel faster during the night at the cost of traveling slower during the day (and vice versa).
The Ideal Setup for Speed in Bannerlord
The ideal setup would have mostly horsemen, just enough pack animals to carry your inventory. Then, traveling during the day, across flat plains. Where “normal” speed in Bannerlord in the game is about 4.2-4.7 in a well-balanced party. Also, you can see speeds as high as 6.4 in these circumstances. Plan your trade routes for places that have lots of flatlands between them. And, don’t be afraid to travel what seems like a longer route if you can avoid forests. You’ll probably make a better time even if the trip seems out of the way.
