Mount & Blade II Gets Major 1.1 Update; Alpha & Beta Branches Announced to End Crazy Patching Pace

If you have played the first few days of the early access of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, you know that the pace of patches over the last couple of weeks has been a little crazy.

I don’t mean it in a bad way, as it’s nice to see the folks at Taleworlds reacting quickly to issues and working so hard to address them, but we pretty much got a patch every day since the release of the early access.

This ends today, with the release of update 1.1.0, which is by all mean a major one. It changes a lot, and you can find the full patch notes at the bottom of the post. It also comes with a whopping 2.3 GB download.

Even more relevant is a rather large change to the update pace. From now on, you’ll be able to opt into alpha and beta branches.

By selecting beta the beta branch (right-click on the game on your Steam client, select “properties” and then opt “into e1.1.0 beta” in the betas tab)  you get access to 1.1.0, which has already been tested internally by Taleworlds. This lets players help testing it further.

In roughly a week it’ll be rolled out to everyone and a new beta patch will be released.

The Alpha branch is untested (and as such much riskier), adding changes and fixes on roughly a daily base, intended for “modders and explorers that wish to be as close to development as possible – even at the cost of stability”

Basically, you can opt-out of all betas to make sure what you play has been tested by both Taleworlds and the community, you can opt into beta to have a relatively safe experience and try the new stuff before it officially goes live, or you can be really adventurous and go for the alpha. In that case, we thank you for your service.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is currently available in Early Access for PC. If you want to see more, you can enjoy the latest trailer.

Without further ado, here are the patch notes.
Singleplayer

Crashes

• Fixed a rare formation AI exception.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when a mount without a rider heard an arrow.
• Fixed a crash that occurred at the end of the “Army of Poachers” quest when the AI tries to continue fighting.
• Fixed a crash that happens when a campaign is started for the second time without exiting the game.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when selecting the option to attack in the “Rival Gang Leader” quest after loading a game.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when AI characters tried to barter prisoners.
• Fixed a bug where talking to a companion in settlements during the main storyline would crash the game.
• Fixed a crash in main storyline conspiracy phase.

Performance

• Ram and VRAM usage is reduced and many leaks are fixed.
• Scene loading performance improvements.

Localisation

• Improvements, additions and corrections for Turkish and Simplified Chinese translations.

Art

• Added new armour “Northern Lamellar Shoulders”.
• Added new armour “Plated Helmet”.
• Assigned a banner to poachers and other neutral parties.
• Overhauled all of the NPC faces to reduce asymmetry, tone down exaggerations and create culturally appropriate and appealing phenotypes.
• Updated some of the lords and ladies faces for a more culturally appropriate look.
• Updated nav meshes in “sea_bandit_a”, ”battle_terrain_p”, “battle_terrain_020”, “battle_terrain_029” and “battle_terrain_030”. This should resolve unwanted fights in water and improve fleeing behaviour in these scenes.
• “Aserai_town_a” civilian scene related fixes.
• “Aserai_town_b” civilian scene related fixes
• “Empire_town_j” siege scene siege related fixes and seasonal improvements.
• “Khuzait_town_004” siege related fixes and visual improvements.
• “Aserai_castle_002” siege related fixes.
• “Vlandia_castle_005a” siege related fixes.
• “Sturgia_castle_003” siege related fixes.
• “Khuzait_castle_002” siege related fixes.
• Night atmosphere illumination amounts adjusted.
• Visual fixes for battle scenes.
• Winter season issues with steppe scenes have been fixed.
• Winter related problems with the outer meshes are solved.
• Low-poly tree meshes are now used in hideout prefabs.
• Agent spawn positions in some scenes are fixed.
• Fixed a season problem with Aserai’s arena.
• An issue with Battania arena spawn points being too close to each other is fixed.
• Fixed some scene issues of Aserai Village.
• Fixed merlon physics issues of Vlandian Castle parts.
• Fixed some lighting issues of Empire Lords Hall.
• Fixed physics issues of Battania Castle Wall.
• Fixed UV issues of Sturgia Castle Gatehouse.
• Fixed an error while opening the Forest Hideout scene.
• Refined snowy atmospheres.
  • -western_plated_helmet
  • Empire_guarded_lord_helmet”
• Beard intersecting helmet issues were fixed for:
  • -western_plated_helmet
  • Empire_guarded_lord_helmet”
• Nordic sloven armour’s bones problem fixed.
• Fixed clothing clipping issues.
• Replaced some textures and meshes.
• Updates on Hero Creation Stages:
  • Some clothes updates.
  • Poses overhaul.
  • Face animation.
  • Scene lighting.
  • Skin shader updates.
  • Specular texture channels updated.
  • Diffuse Texture updated.
  • Beard /tattoo material:
  • Alpha and colour updates.

Campaign Map

• Parties participating in an event are no longer moving, which fixes some footstep sound issues.

Audio

• Fixed that Campaign music could play many tracks in quick succession.

UI

• Implemented trade perks that relate to profit in inventory.
• Minor UI tweaks and fixes in Crafting, Barter, Save/Load, Recruitment, Board Game, Siege screens.

• “No Saddle” visuals in Inventory.
• Removed helmets from hero portraits to see their faces more clearly.
• Added Weight Carrying Mount and Speed Mount icons in inventory mount tooltip panel.
• Fixed a spacing issue with ‘ğ’ character in Turkish localisation.
• Fixed barter offer item visuals not being visible.
• Enabled being able to give names with space and numbers in creation.
• Fixed two hints showing up in inventory equipment slots.
• Changed character developer traits from texts to icons.
• Implemented a basic item tooltip, now players can see the basic stats of a tournament prize item.
• Added a “Busy with an issue” or “Busy with a quest” or “Busy with a common area” notifications in Create a Party instead of just a “Busy” explanation.
• Fixed attribute and focus point tooltips to reflect correct numbers.
• Moved NumberOfCorpses and MaxSimultaneousSoundEventCount to performance options.
• Implemented being able to sort/move modules in the launcher.
• Renamed “Resume Game” to “Saved Games”.
• Added minor faction filter to clan page list page.
• Added tooltips to map bar circle notifications.
• Added new perk icons.
• Fixed banner visual errors with some icons and banner icons not matching with the UI.

Battles and Sieges

• Simulated battles no longer give more XP than fought battles.
• Added missing patrol spawn positions to forest hideout scenes. Forest hideout missions should now open normally.

Combat AI

• AI quality for NPCs is now determined by skill points in the current weapon’s governing skill instead of overall character level.
• A tactics bug related to the defensive ring that occurred when archers ran out of ammunition has been fixed.
• An issue in caravan/villager battles that could potentially cause unexpected behaviour at agent processing level was corrected.
• Cavalry not being able to hit enemies right next to them when they had swingable weapons and circling each other endlessly issue fixed.
• Bodyguard troops could rarely stop moving when their commander died, this is now fixed.
• Mounted agents can calculate enemy positions better and thus more accurately aim their thrust attacks.
• Some agents couldn’t move properly due to invisible scene AI barriers. This has been fixed.
• Fixed some Sea Bandit AI issues.
• Agents attack less often if the combat AI difficulty is set to normal.
• Holding ready duration for attacks was added as a driven property and tied to melee combat skill in order to make easier/less able AI agents fight less relentlessly (i.e. they will wait for a while before releasing their attack).

Character Development System

• Level 1 characters now start with 120 skill points.
• Reduced XP required to learn higher skill levels.
• Troops can now upgrade more easily.
• Reduced wanderers’ skills outside their main area of expertise, making them easier to level up.
• Made wanderer age correlate roughly with their skills.

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

• Fixed bug where fiefs were regarded to have a negative value in barters if the “Everything Has a Price” perk was enabled.
• Fixed a rare bug where the AI proposed a kingdom decision on behalf of the player clan.

Economy and Trade

• Prices for armour were changed and high tier boots and gauntlets now cost more.
• Range weapon prices have been re-adjusted.

Quests & Issues

• Reviewed about a third of the quest issues, improving dialogues and persuasion:
  • Major changes in particular to “Family Feud” and “Spy Party”.

Other

• Icons on banners and shields were not appearing. They are fixed now.
• Updated “Imperial Legionary” equipment.
• Minor updates to Sturgian troop tree equipment.
• Added more variation to caravan master’s equipment.
• Added more variation to helmet drops from troops.
• Various other fixes to troop trees and stats.
• Armour values of various equipment have changed to better match their visuals and increase faction armour variety.
• Armour values of mount bardings and harnesses were changed to match their visuals.
• Riding a horse without a saddle now incurs 10% penalty to max horse speed and manoeuvring.
• NPC agents carrying heavy items (apple baskets etc.) will no longer run (with items in hand) when the player asks them to take him/her to a particular agent.
• Added an “Exposure Compensation” option that allows players to adjust the brightness levels of the visuals to their preference.
• Fixed missing items for blacksmith characters in towns.
• Some grammar mistakes and typos were fixed.
• Fixes a bug that caused the player character to be invisible.
• Fixed a bug that caused characters to spawn without any equipment.

Multiplayer

Animations

• Fixed some wrong cavalry idle animations.
• Fixed a rare condition in which client rider gets stuck in defence animation after a successful hit.

Audio

• Implemented a Voice Spamming Filter for multiplayer.

Design & Balance

• Damage interrupt threshold values are set as 5.
• Headshot damage multiplier is increased from 1.7 to 2 for pierce damage.

Map Related

• Bug fixes for Harbour of Ovsk.
• Bug fixes and improvements for Castle of Fen Altai.
  • Some spawn locations are re-adjusted for team balance. Atmosphere has changed.
  • Added particles to be formed when the breakable wall is damaged.

Other – Miscellaneous

• Slow-motion and pause cheats are disallowed during multiplayer matches.

Performance

• Decreased bandwidth usage of impact sounds.

Server & Network

• Server Improvements.

Both – Singleplayer & Multiplayer

Crash

• If the AI is not holding a ranged weapon, it tries to find a ranged weapon in its equipment and uses this weapon to calculate attacking scores against distant enemies. During this weapon selection, some equipment was causing a crash. This was fixed.

Performance

• Improved the performance of the sound system.
• Big improvements for the multi-core performance of the game.
• We now select Maximum sound count according to your CPU’s core count. You can increase this setting if you have a recent CPU. We’ve also added a new very low(64) option.
• Some other minor performance improvements.

Audio

• UI sounds don’t get cut by other UI events anymore.
• Added “is missile” check to crafted weapons’ impact sounds (like Throwing Axes).
• Fixed Ballista reload sound phasing.
• Minor changes in the hearable distance of loud sounds.
• Fixed some Vlandian scenes opening up with an echo.

Combat AI

• Improved the calculation of ranged units for the enemy’s future position.
• Ranged units can target mounts or different enemy bones. Cases that caused errors during this calculation are fixed.
• After issuing the “Hold Fire” command, the AI weapon selection gives less priority to ranged weapons that have a secondary melee mode.

Other

• Added an option to disable controller vibration.