In Mount and Blade: Bannerlord, you are going to be spending most of your time leading armies. One of the most important skill for anyone hoping to defeat armies and take over castles is their ability to lead soldiers around the map and into battles. This guide will talk about why the leadership skill is so important in Bannerlord and show you some of the methods you can use to level up the leadership skill.
After this guide, you should be a successful leader to the people of Calradia!
Contents:
What is the Leadership Skill?
In Mount and Blade: Bannerlord there are 18 different skills to govern how your character can act in the game. These skills are not only important in combat however. From trade and charm, to engineering and stewardship, there are a range of skills which have different effects on every action in the game. The leadership skill can seem pretty self-explanatory but there are some specific effects of the skill most may not know.
The two main factors that the Leadership Skill influence directly are:
- The morale of parties that are under your command
- The size of the garrison you can have at any of your owned fiefs
As you can see this will not increase your actual party size or anything like that. For this, you will need to raise your steward skill level. Even though these two factors aren’t the most important the best thing about the leadership skill (and gaining levels in leadership) is the perks that come with it.
The perks associated with leadership are some of the best in the game. From raising your party’s starting morale, to the ability to have more soldiers on your side, there are some real diverse helpful perks available here. If you make your way up the perks here, you can generally end up leveling up your troops through passive experience and not even have to battle at all.
How to Level Up Leadership Skill in Bannerlord
Now that we know the importance of the leadership skill, we can move on to how we can level it up. As with all skills, actions that you take in the game will gain you a small amount of experience every time you complete them. Hit someone with a sword and you will gain one-handed experience. Likewise, there are some things you can do in Bannerlord to gain Leadership skill.
There are two ways that you can raise your leadership skill in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord:
- Maintain a high morale level in your army
- Assemble and lead other parties in an army
There are the only two options that you have for increasing leadership in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord at the moment. Though, once you follow the advice of this guide, you will be able to walk around gaining passive experience for this skill.
How to Raise Army Morale
As aforementioned, one of the ways that you can increase your Leadership skill in Bannerlord is by maintaining a high party morale. For those unaware of what the morale level is, when you look on the bottom right of the screen from the main map screen you will see symbols and numbers. The one on the far right with the eagle symbol next to it is your party’s morale level. This will determine how quickly your troops run away in a battle you are losing. You will gain experience in Leadership as long as you are keeping this level high.
Some of the ways you can raise your morale and keep it high are:
- Keeping a large variety of food in your inventory
- Winning battles constantly
- Perks within the leadership skill and others
One of the easiest ways to keep a high morale is to have a lot of different types of food available for your army to eat. This will give you a good level. Another thing to take into account is; every time you win a battle you gain a little bit of party morale. On the flip side, losing battles will force your party to lose morale. Winning bigger battles gives your party higher morale so keep your food stocks high, win battles and you will start to raise your Leadership skill.
Assemble Armies and Leading Lords
Another great way to earn experience in the Leadership skill is to lead armies within your kingdom. As long as you are leading some other party’s under your command you will gain leadership skill experience. The larger the army that you are leading, the faster you will level up Leadership. Keep in mind that leading armies will cost you influence. As long as you have a large amount of influence (or keep your party small) you will be able to gain passive leadership experience through leading armies.
You can check out a guide to assembling and leading armies here if you’re unsure how to actually call lords to you and start an army.