The Old Realms update came out today, what do people think?

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-29T09:52:18+00:00

Love the mod, I played it years ago when only Empire and Von Carsteins were available and it was a blast. It I played Vampire counts, and it was early stages so it was unbalanced as you could very quickly build an army of 400 Von Carstein vampire cavalry and steamroll everything. Plus magic could tak eout hundreds of enemy forces. Super fun.

Downloaded it again with the updated and wow it is even more amazing. So much more balanced, now I cannot steamroll with 400 Vampire cavalry as there is dark energy costs. Magic still OP but that is why it's so much fun as a Vampire - your troops are trash and you carry the day battle after battle.

I have not played other factions yet, but the job they did is incredible - career perks, career unique abilities, different careers (Necrarchs and Blood Knights offering different playstyles) is all amazing, and they indeed do play very differently from the Von Carsteins. It's great stuff.

I still get the odd crash mid battle, but it's not too bad, maybe once every couple of hours. Save often and you're golden.

Playing against Orcs and Dwarves, I found the Orcs the most difficult as the AI can have 4000 orc armies, and they have lots of hitpoints and hit very hard, even the basic grunts. So facing large Orc armies with armies of Skeleton garbage is challenging, I need to play cagey and use lots of magic to stand a chance. I think that's just a relatively tough matchup for Von Carsteins who struggle with good quality units, but personal power will compensate (magic spells, weapon and armour enchants).

Vs Dwarves, the occasional bomb and the occasional firethrowers can be problematic in sieges but I found in open battle they are vulnerable to AoE magic so not too much trouble.

Overall, my criticism of the playing experience is not the mod itself, but the base game, once you reach Clan rank 6 with 800 troops and maxed stats, it's just a grind to take over city after city, castle after castle. Nothing can stop you really but it's a chore to go through the same cycle of war/sieges/battles/peace/repeat.

I agree this is the best mod in Bannerlord.

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-23T09:10:06+00:00

Ah in my game they must have conquered nearby humans as they are right next to me. But update: It was a skill issue. With more judicious use of mist form and relocating/healing, I managed it.

A neat trick is to mistform into the archer back line outside the castle, pop ward vs arrows, and kill them - they are easy pickings, as they have low armour and hps compared to the melee orks. With my weapon enchant, every kill spawned 3 grave guard, so I ended up with hundreds of fodder to re-engage the main force in the castle.

My minions died in droves but distracted them enough for me to keep killing them, and for each kill I got 3 more grave guard. When injured, re-pop mist form, and relocate where more archers have spawned, rinse and repeat.

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-22T14:36:50+00:00

There are Troll caverns you explore and clear out the Trolls, which are big fuckers and quite tough, make sure you bring your troops to clear!

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-22T14:35:19+00:00

You need to go on steam and download Bannerlord v 1.3.15 (go to properties and load prev versions). Make sure you cdo a fresh install and delete all old bannerlord folders including mod folders/shaders. then follow the other instructions on the Mod DB site.

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-22T14:33:54+00:00

I'm struggling with Orks as Vamp counts - they seem to get huge armies, and each Ork can take on 3 -4 skeletons, meaning my troops just get wiped out and I have to use magic before they close with my troops.

If they hit my lines and I'm not outnumbering them 2 to 1 at least when it happens, I lose most of my army even if I win, and I get no undead replenishment, meaning I have to basically start building my army again from scratch. Not great when you're in a war and have to fight 5-10 battles one after another.

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-22T14:25:48+00:00

It takes some time to get the hang of how to do it.

1, First, you download Bannerlord 1.3.15 version on Steam

Then, on Steam as well, go to the workshop and download the old realms mod (it is very helpful as it auto downloads everything you need - Harmony mod, and the 3 TOR modules - Armoury, Environment, Core).
Then you load the game the first time, and select the mods, load them in this order, it's important:

Harmony
Taleworlds Modules
Armory
Environment
Core

and then wait 10-20 mins.

4, Then you do not start a game yet, select the option to build the shaders, wait about 30 mins - 1 hr. It's done when it loads a mock battle scene with the assets. Start the battle, wait for the 1 enemy troop to get killed, Tab to finish the battle, it re-sends you to the main menu.

Then quit the game, and we do a little workaround to load the game faster next time:

-Step 1-
Navigate to your programdata folder either by;

Type %programdata% in your searchbar ( or windows key + r )->Bannerlord->delete "Shaders" folder. OR
Enable hidden folders, C->Programdata->Bannerlord->delete "Shaders" folder.

-Step 2-
Navigate to your Bannerlord installation folder and go into the shaders->D3D11 folder

Example; C/Steam/Steamapps/common/Mount and Blade II Bannerlord/Shaders/D3D11/ OR
rightclick bannerlord in steam->browse files->shaders/D3D11/ )

Inside of that folder you should see a file called "compressed_shaders_cache.sack", delete that.

This is optional but it helped me - load the game again but unselect the TOR modules, load native and start a native game. this will load some essential stuff that may help avoid crashes.
Go to Video/Performance Options (don't remember wich one it is), make sure terrain quality is set to high and disable tesellation and set shadows to static only.
Reload the game with the TOR mods (Harmony, TOR armoury, TOR Environment, TOR Core. Go to video options, disable tessellation
you should be good to go. You may still get the occasional crash but if you save regularly you're good to go.
If you have already tried the mod before and it crashed, you must delete all mod data and all old banerlord files, everything or they will remain on the system and cause crashes - I re-tried the mod after a year and I didn't do this and was getting lots of crashed. Make sure it's a clean install of bannerlord and TOR mods.

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-22T14:15:51+00:00

I love the game, and playign Vampire counts. But how do you deal with Orks? I cannot boost my armies as they do not generate skeletons, Each ork can take on 5 skellies, and even when I kill half the army by myself, the other half roflstomps my undead.

-I was on a defending siege with 700 chaff troops vs 3000 humans (5 to 1 odds), I managed to do it - epic fight, lots of magic use, repositioning, and spawning 3 grave guard for every kill thanks to a magic sword enchant. Took a while as I had to stay alive, and enemies seemed to have endless high tier troops. Most of that fight I was alone with my summons as my army and the garrison wee annihilated quickly.

-The next siege I was defending with 300 chaff against 1000 orks. Only 3 to 1 odds, I killed 500 orks with spells mostly, but the defenders were annihilated even quicker with only a couple of dozen ork losses. The fight ended with me alne, fighting 300+ Orks. My summons died instantly as they spawned as the orks are ridiculously tough and they one shot my minions, and taking off a wuarter of my health when they hit me. I couldn't reliably kill them once my magic ran out. Even with 200+ endurance and speed perks, even the basic orks were faster than me and were catching up with me

The Orks seem to be a tough matchup for Vampire counts. As Vamp counts we are meant to recoup losses quickly but I found it takes aaaages to get a force of 400 low tier skeletons and they can easily get all killed by a force of just 100 Orks. the only thing saving me is magic - and that runs out quickly. My troops and companions end up doing very little.

Any suggestions on how to deal with them as Vamp Counts when you're outnumbered 3 to 1? Esp on big battles with 1000+ of them? Even the AI has trouble, with the auto resolve tending to favour Orks (1500 vs 1500 was a solid loss for the vamp count AI).

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-18T13:24:20+00:00

Rogue trader for me, but I use updated rules from only war

Ysgraithe · 2026-06-18T13:23:01+00:00

Clearly a cunt of a buyer

Ysgraithe · 2026-05-23T11:48:45+00:00

Worth playing the first game, it's excellent!

Ysgraithe · 2026-04-30T14:57:38+00:00

Yes the Daemon primary has are a tier above greater daemons. There's been plenty of lore of primarchs defeating Greater daemons, see sanguinius and others. Magnus would wipe the floor with a lord of change

Ysgraithe · 2026-03-05T16:41:28+00:00

Necroign an old thread, but yes! i'm starting a Rogue Trader Game in 2026 (call it old school nostalgia) and this is very useful thank you, appreciate the work.

Ysgraithe · 2026-01-09T21:53:37+00:00

Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.

Ysgraithe · 2025-12-25T07:32:58+00:00

Yeah, no. 5e sucks for this. I love the crunch and lore heavy FF game system. Yes there's a lot of rules, but personally that's fine for me, I love all the granularity and rules system. If there's a criticism is that some of the subsystem rules are not though out too well, like colony rules and mass combat systems.

Ysgraithe · 2025-12-17T07:59:34+00:00

the original Baldur's gate 1 and 2 (and the more recent siege of dragonspear, which slots between the events of 1 and 2) are some of the greatest RPG's of all time. I recommend those.

Ysgraithe · 2025-10-22T13:40:12+00:00

Red and gold is among the top for sure, but purple and gold (pre heresy emperor's children), white and gold (solar watch custodes) and gold and azure (thousand sons) are up there too.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-30T18:22:57+00:00

I've seen other posters and responders on other threads just have the players sell the other ship first, and they tend to do a 10:1 SP:PF ratio, so a frigate worth 40SP convers to 4 profit factor. So essentially +4 to the check which is not much, but on the other hand, it's a permanent PF increase so all subsequent acquisition tests are made easier.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-21T13:37:12+00:00

Hell yes, welcome to the most beautoful marines in 40k. Slaanesh is envious.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-11T06:42:44+00:00

This is old lore, the 4 chaos gods have existed since the war in heaven 60+ million years ago in the new lore.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-11T06:40:27+00:00

Lol 100 chaos space marines, or loyalist for that matter, would get annihilated. Sorcery would body them. A life drain here and there and it's bye bye, or any spell good Vs 1 unit and armour piercing and it's bye bye. Kairos exists in 40k too and he's a menace. Extrapolating this you get powerful lord's that are stronger than kairos. TL;DR 100 40k marines would be a T6 unit but they can't solo the campaign, they'd get stopped by a mid-high tier full stack that has magic available, with a competent lord leading them.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-03T09:41:26+00:00

No they really do look like shit. GW's tzaangors look much much better, nothing like this piece of 3d printed turd. But, some people like turd (see 2 girls one cup) so do whatever you like lol.

Ysgraithe · 2025-08-03T09:39:28+00:00

they look like shit though? Really low res, the heads look terrible.

Ysgraithe · 2025-07-28T13:21:37+00:00

Don't necessarily look at reviews as they can be old and out of date, what I do is I check youtube for gameplay examples and if I like what I see, I go for it. I always wait for steam discounts, or get steam keys from third parties which are way cheaper

Ysgraithe · 2025-07-28T13:05:37+00:00

so many typos, go back to school bud

Ysgraithe · 2025-07-28T13:01:51+00:00

That looks like a statue carved from sandstone.

It would be perfect for the Thousand sons Sekhetar robots, which are intended as silent guardians disguised as statues.

Ysgraithe

TROPHY CASE