Skip to main content
If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord bugs: fixes and workaround for crashes and known issues

There are ways around a lot of the problems

Dave Irwin avatar
Guide by Dave Irwin Former Guides Writer
Published on
6 comments


Let's just say that Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord has had a bit of a rough start. Performance issues are plentiful and many have complained about it. Some are funny, like the baby mode pictured above, but many are really not amusing at all.

Some workarounds have been found, as well as causes for critical errors, so we'll list the most troublesome ones here for your convenience.

There's a really helpful list of known issues collated on Steam by the user "LawH", who is doing the lord's work here. Hopefully it will remain on the Steam forums. If you have any other confirmed bugs or workarounds that are not seen here, do mention them in the comments.

Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord bug fixes and workarounds

There are other bugs and issues that have been reported elsewhere, including one that is utterly hilarious. So we'll start with the funny one and move onto more serious general fixes.

Baby mode

  • By pressing the "R" key in character creation, your character will become a baby. There is currently no way to reverse this, so don't press R if you want to ensure your character is an adult.

Crashes

  • Try lowering your graphical settings or remove shadows if you experience crashes when transitioning from maps to towns.
  • If you do not get an error message, but the game crashes while booting it up, right click Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlords in your Steam library and click properties. Click the local files tab and follow the these steps:
    • Open the "Modules" folder.
    • Open "SandBox"
    • Open "ModuleData"
    • Open "Languages"
    • Open "CN"
    • Delete the file "std_TaleWorlds_CampaignSystem-zho-CN.xml"
  • Companions can crash the game in towns sometimes, so remove companions from the party to avoid this.

Bannerlord won't close

Some users are reporting that, after exiting, the game doesn't actually close and continues to eat up resources. Thankfully user Raineacha found a fix and shared it on the game's official forum. The issue is caused by Bannerlord's launcher, and you can avoid that launcher entirely if you start the game directly via it's executable.

You'll find the .exe in Bannerlord's install folder. If you went for the default location when downloading from Steam, that's probably C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mount & Blade II Bannerlord\bin\Win64_Shipping_Client.

Browse to that location, double-click the 'Bannerlord.exe' you'll find inside, and you'll reportedly be able to open and close the game without issue. You can also add this .exe to Steam by, within the Steam interface, clicking 'Games', then 'Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library', and then browsing to and selecting that same executable. The game is going to launch within Steam either way, but doing this gives you an easy shortcut.

Graphics

  • If you have graphical or user interface related issues, go full screen and manually set it to your desktop resolution rather than the automatic "Desktop Resolution" option.
  • Pressing ALT + TAB to go out of the game may introduce graphics issues when you come back in. If that happens, check to see that the game has not changed to "Borderless" instead of "Full Screen".

Performance

  • Turn off shadows to help with performance if you run into issues.
  • Multiplayer apparently does not work on Windows 7.
  • If there is a memory leak issue, restart the game or your PC.
  • Large battles of over 500 total units might crash the game.
  • While loading times were long at launch, there was a patch that fixed this issue.

Sound stuttering

To fix many sound stuttering issues, you will need to perform the following actions:

  • Go to sound settings in sound control panel and look for your speakers (should be the default device).
  • Right click on the speakers, and select properties.
  • Go to the sound effects tab, and disable all sound effects and enhancements.
  • Boot up Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord. In the options, go to sound, and change the quality of the sound from 256 to 128.
  • Then go to video settings, set a 65 FPS limit, and turn on V-Sync Full.

In-Game

  • Avoid forcing any overlapping dialogues. If this happens, press and hold TAB to escape from the settlement back to the map screen.
  • In addition, do not ask a villager to find a person, then talk to anyone else before the villager declares "here they are". You'll lock the game if you do this.

Known Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord critical issues

There are some issues that just don't have any known fixes, but we do know the causes of them. Below are all of the things you should never do:

  • Above all else, make sure you have at least two manual saves. It will help you restore some progress if you have accidentally locked your game. Label one as a base where you know you can restore progress, and one as "test" if you want to see how much you can push the game.
  • Do not accept the mission to defend against Deserters. It may work the first time, but if you need to reload, the squad with the attackers will crash the game, or potentially if you take the quest a second time.
  • Do not accept the mission to go to the Sea Raider Camp. It may crash to desktop. If this mission expires, the game will not let you continue.
  • Do not attempt to walk around town in the location "Pen Cannoc". This causes an infinite loading screen. (This has now been fixed in the latest patch. Thanks to the user "Freestanding" for confirming this)
  • Do not use the lock item feature. You may find that you crash to desktop if you gain more of that item, or attempt to remove the lock.
  • Do not shut down the PC while the game is still running. Shutting down the PC while in game can corrupt saves. It's worth noting that Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord might hang in the background if there is a crash. To ensure you don't corrupt saves, quit Steam, or log out and back on again in Windows.

Cover image for YouTube video
Watch on YouTube

Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord guide series

Thank you for reading our Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord guide. We hope that you found a fix or a workaround for an issue that's been stopping you enjoying the game. There are plenty more guides in the works, but for now you can check out the below to get you started:

Read this next