Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Update v1.3.12 Patch Notes – News for Battles and Sieges

The latest update for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, version 1.3.12, delivers a substantial package of refinements across its sprawling medieval sandbox. While not a headline-grabbing expansion, this patch focuses on the crucial pillars of stability, quality-of-life, and gameplay balance, addressing long-standing community feedback. From revamping hideout assaults and fixing critical battle simulation bugs to implementing key UI enhancements and performance optimizations, v1.3.12 represents a significant step in polishing the Bannerlord experience for both single-player campaigners and modders alike. This update lays a stronger foundation for the game’s core systems, ensuring that your journey to conquer Calradia is smoother, fairer, and more visually cohesive than ever before.

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Battles and Sieges: Tactical Overhaul and Critical Fixes

The v1.3.12 update brings decisive changes to Bannerlord‘s core combat loops, directly impacting player strategy in both open battles and critical settlement encounters.

Hideouts & Lord’s Halls Rebalanced: The reintroduction of the “Assault” option for hideouts (available during daytime with 8-15 troops) alongside the nighttime “Sneak In” (now requiring only 20 troops) offers meaningful tactical choice. This addresses previous frustrations where players were forced into stealth. More critically, the Lord’s Hall battle simulation has received vital fixes. The bug that prevented all available troops from being used in simulations—a primary cause of inexplicably lost sieges—has been resolved. Furthermore, attackers will no longer auto-surrender due to low morale while still having troops, and the corrected reinforcement logic (spawning 5 attackers at once) makes these final assaults more dynamic and logical.

Combat Mechanics Polish: A comprehensive shield rebalance ensures that weight, hit points, tier, and price now accurately reflect a shield’s physical size and model, bringing much-needed consistency to equipment choices. The adjustment to throwing stones (increased speed but reduced base damage) fine-tunes their role. The change of the Huscarl’s spear to be braceable rather than couchable refines unit roles, while the fix for troops stuttering when attacking the same siege object eliminates a persistent pathfinding annoyance during chaotic castle storms.

User Interface & Quality of Life: Streamlining the Campaign

This patch places a strong emphasis on improving the player’s interaction with the game’s complex systems, making information clearer and navigation more intuitive.

Enhanced Visual Feedback: The updated Stealth and Disguise UI introduces a glowing exclamation mark for full suspicion and a clear progress bar for hideout timers, removing guesswork from covert operations. The improved visibility of battle power comparison bars and updated building icons in town management contribute to a cleaner, more readable interface.

Restored and Improved Functionality: Several key features make a welcome return. The Order of Battle save/load system is now functional within armies, with separate saves to avoid conflicts. Shortcut buttons for upgrading and recruiting troops are restored to party screen pop-ups. The inventory search bar is now enabled, and the smithy confirm hotkey reverts to the more standard Enter key, correcting a previous misstep. The ability to scroll through credits is a small but respectful addition.

Bug Squashing: Critical interface bugs have been addressed, including the random event trigger that could incorrectly grant massive sums of denars and the gamepad navigation issue that would jump to the top of lists. The fix for the combat log displaying “Engage” instead of “Charge” ensures order feedback is accurate.

Performance, Stability, and Under-the-Hood Improvements

Beyond gameplay, v1.3.12 delivers significant technical enhancements that make Calradia run more smoothly.

Optimized Performance: Targeted reductions in memory allocation on the campaign map result in fewer frame spikes and smoother overall navigation. During missions, memory usage is improved by dynamically unloading campaign map banners and flags, then reloading them afterward. Optimizations to unused weapon details and troop face generation help maintain performance without sacrificing visual variety.

Crash Resolution: The update fixes several specific crash scenarios, including those related to mount harnesses, noble AI parties defending already-destroyed attackers, and besieging leaders with no healthy troops. Perhaps most importantly, the crash uploader has been improved to allow players to report instances where they become soft-locked in missions—a vital tool for developers to identify and fix progression-halting bugs that previously went unreported.

Multiplayer: Refined Controls and Interface

While primarily focused on the single-player experience, v1.3.12 introduces thoughtful adjustments for the multiplayer community, enhancing clarity and control.

Settings and Interface: A key change is the update to the “Always Show Friendly Troop Banner Indicators” setting, which now includes a “Multiplayer Only” option as the new default. This smartly balances battlefield readability in competitive matches without cluttering the single-player campaign screen. The intermission map selection screen has also been upgraded from a simple list to a scrollable grid, making browsing and voting for the next battlefield more visual and intuitive.

Animation and Visual Fixes: Multiplayer combat feels more precise with the restoration of the couched lance animation blending speed. The fix ensures the initiation of a couch is slower and more deliberate, as originally intended, rewarding timing over spamming. First-person crossbow users will appreciate the fix for an awkward bug that caused the aim to slide sideways during the reload animation, improving weapon handling and immersion. A minor but noticeable visual glitch in the “Buy Sigil” pop-up, where the shield displayed inverted colors, has also been corrected.

Modding: Supporting the Creative Backbone

Taleworlds continues to strengthen the foundation for Bannerlord‘s vibrant modding community with targeted fixes.

Critical Tool Fix: The most important change for modders is the resolution of a bug that made the IsUniqueItem flag unavailable. This flag is a crucial tool for modders creating custom weapons, armor, and items, allowing them to define special, one-of-a-kind gear within the game’s economy and loot tables. Restoring access to this functionality removes a significant barrier for complex item-based mods and ensures the modding toolkit is more complete and reliable.

Character Systems, Kingdoms, and Quest Polish

The update rounds out its comprehensive scope by smoothing over narrative and strategic inconsistencies.

Character and Kingdom Management: The Encyclopedia now lists clan members sorted by age, a simple but invaluable change for players tracking lineage and succession. In kingdom management, a bug causing the decision screen to display non-existent relation changes has been fixed, providing accurate diplomatic information. A more serious save corruption bug related to abdicating from rulership due to a UI issue has been resolved, protecting player progression.

Quest and Dialogue Cleanup: Several immersion-breaking bugs in quests and encounters have been addressed. Players will no longer see a single noble’s quest marker duplicated across all nobles in an army, and they will be addressed by the correct name in dialogue. An exploitable bug allowing players to receive double gold when selling prisoners to ransom brokers has been closed. Additionally, the visual bug that hid party models during hostile map encounters has been fixed, restoring those tense face-offs.

Ironman and Save Stability: For players seeking the ultimate challenge, the Ironman mode experience is now more robust. The game properly disables Ironman during character creation if the save limit is already reached, and it correctly re-enables the “Save” and “Save & Exit” options when a save slot becomes available, preventing a frustrating soft lock.

Localisation: The patch includes ongoing localisation improvements for German, ensuring a better experience for a significant portion of the player base.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Update v1.3.12 may not introduce flashy new content, but its value is undeniable. By systematically addressing a wide array of bugs—from game-breaking battle simulations and crashes to irritating UI glitches—and implementing thoughtful quality-of-life improvements, Taleworlds has significantly polished the core game. The enhancements to stealth mechanics, shield balance, performance, and modding tools demonstrate a commitment to refining both the player experience and the platform’s longevity.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Update v1.3.12 Patch Notes – News for Battles and Sieges

Bannerlord Beta v1.3.12

The following changes are part of the base game and apply to the War Sails expansion as well.

Singleplayer

Battles and Sieges

• Hideout Improvements:
  • Reintroduced the hideout battle mission as the Assault option (available during the day), with Sneak In remaining the night option.
  • Assault requires at least 8 troops and allows up to 15 to join the battle.
  • Updated all hideout scenes to support the Assault option.
  • Reduced the minimum troop requirement for Sneak In from 25 to 20.
• Lord’s Hall Battle Improvements:
  • Updated reinforcement logic: 5 attackers will now spawn at once, instead of 1.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented all available troops from being used in simulations, which could previously cause losing battles due to limited troop numbers and entire sieges being lost as a result.
  • Fixed a bug that caused attackers to lose Lord’s Hall battles (both mission and simulated) due to low morale, even when they still had troops remaining.
  • Fixed a bug that caused settlement advantages to be applied in Lord’s Hall battles.
• Adjusted shield stats and pricing to better match their size and visuals:
  • Corrected shield weight values so they now properly reflect the shield’s physical size and model.
  • Rebalanced shield hit points to be consistent with their size and construction.
  • Updated shield tier and price formulas to account for the new stat distribution.
  • Most commonly used infantry shields received minor adjustments.
• Increased the speed of throwing stones, resulting in more damage loss at range as well as less damage gained from speed bonus. Base damage further reduced from 15 to 10.
• Huscarl’s spear changed to be braceable instead of couchable.
• Fixed a bug that caused friendly troops to push and stutter when multiple formations were ordered to attack the same object (such as gates) during siege battles.

Audio

• Improved the sounds of the main menu videos.
• Fixed a bug that caused the slaughter button to play an incorrect sound in the inventory.

UI

• Updated Stealth and Disguise UI in missions:
  • Adjusted the suspicion bar in town disguise missions, with a bar and an exclamation mark that will glow when the bar is full.
  • Added a white progress bar to hideout stealth missions to display the remaining time before failure.
• Adjusted clan member lists in the Encyclopedia so that they are now sorted by age.
• Improved visibility of the battle power comparison bars by adding a subtle highlight for dark color themes.
• Updated the icons for the Barracks and Waterworks buildings in town management.
• Added an option to toggle between formation distances and scale displays.
• Enabled the inventory screen search bar.
• Added the ability to scroll the credits.
• Reverted the smithy Confirm hotkey from Space back to Enter (PC).
• Re-enabled Order of Battle save/load functionality while in an army, with army-specific OOB saves now stored separately from non-army saves.
• Restored upgrade and recruit shortcut buttons to the party screen pop-up menus.
• Fixed a bug that caused the combat log to display “Engage” when issuing the “Charge” order.
• Fixed a bug that caused random events to trigger when switching menus, which could induce incorrect calculations (giving players very large sums of denars instead of taking the correct amount away from them).
• Fixed a bug that caused gamepad navigation to scroll to the top when equipping an item with the equip button.
• Fixed a bug that allowed accessing photo mode in situations where camera movement was not allowed.

Character Development System

• Added a condition in character creation that disables Ironman mode if the save limit has been reached.

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

• Fixed a bug that caused the kingdom decision screen to show relation changes even when none would occur.
• Fixed a bug that caused invalid ruler clan data to be saved for the player’s former kingdom when abdicating due to a UI issue. Affected saves should now load with correct data.

Quests & Issues

• Fixed a bug that caused quest markers of one army member noble to apply to all noble members of the army.
• Fixed a bug that caused the player to be addressed with the wrong name during quests.

Conversations & Encounters

• Fixed a bug that caused players to receive double gold when selling prisoners to the ransom broker via dialogue.
• Fixed a bug that caused party visuals to be hidden during hostile map dialogue.

Save & Load

• Fixed a bug that disabled the “Save” and “Save & Exit” options in Ironman mode when the save limit was reached.

Localisation

• Localisation improvements for German.

Performance

• Improved campaign map performance by reducing memory allocation and usage, resulting in fewer frame spikes and smoother gameplay.
• Improved memory usage during mission scenes and battles:
  • Campaign map banners and flags will now unload during missions and reload afterward.
  • Optimized the unused weapon details.
  • Optimized troop face variation while maintaining variety among troops.

Crashes

• Improved the crash uploader to allow players to report cases where they become stuck in missions or quest progression (situations that previously couldn’t generate a report).
• Fixed a crash that occurred on the campaign map when a noble AI party attempted to defend a settlement after the attacking party had already been destroyed.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the besieging leader’s party had no healthy troops during a siege state change (such as being attacked by a friendly force or a sally-out).
• Fixed a crash related to mount harnesses.

Multiplayer

Changes

• Changed the “Always Show Friendly Troop Banner Indicators” setting to include a “Multiplayer Only” option, which is now the default.
• Updated the multiplayer intermission map selection to use a scrollable grid instead of a scrollable list.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the couching animation to blend too quickly; blending speed has been restored to its previous values, making couched-lance initiation slower again.
• Fixed a bug that caused the crossbow aim to slide sideways during reloads in first-person view.
• Fixed a bug that caused the “Buy Sigil” pop-up’s shield to display inverted colors.

Crashes

• Fixed a crash that occurred when mounts died underwater.

Modding

Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the flag from IsUniqueItem to be unavailable.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Update v1.3.12 – FAQ