Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord guide – Skills, perks, and leveling

Let’s say you’ve already created your character in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. You’ve probably noticed the available focus skill points and attributes. Customization doesn’t stop there since you can continue building up your character as you progress through the campaign and your character’s skills will have their own perks that can be unlocked as you level-up. Here’s our guide to help you out.

Note: This guide is intended for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord‘s early access stage. It’s possible that some mechanics may change in due course, so please inform us if we need to update certain details. For more information, check out our Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord guides and features hub.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – Skills, perks, and leveling guide

Again, we’ll have to go back to our character creation guide since it already explains the basics when it comes to Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s skills. The gist is that if you want a skill to be learned faster, then having more focus points and a higher score for the attribute that governs it would definitely help.

For example, Athletics is increased by fighting and moving around the campaign map on foot; it’s also governed by Endurance. If you have high Endurance and a lot of focus points allocated in Athletics — combined with fighting and exploring on foot often — then you’ll notice that the skill gets leveled-up faster.

Once skills reach a certain threshold, you can then learn perks to gain buffs. Do remember that some options may be mutually exclusive. You can see all the available perks on each page below.

Note: All perks have a “personal,” character-only effect unless otherwise noted. The “clan leader” role is always active for your character since you lead a clan. The “governor” role is given to a companion if you own a settlement. For other roles such as “surgeon,” “engineer,” “scout,” or “quartermaster,” you can assign these via your Clan menu (default “L” key) in case you need to level-up a skill or get the buffs from a perk. The Clan menu also lets you select perks for your companions once they’ve leveled up.

• Vigor perks – One-handed, Two-handed, Polearms
• Control perks – Bows, Crossbows, Throwing
• Endurance perks – Riding, Athletics, Smithing
• Cunning perks – Scouting, Tactics, Roguery
• Social – Charm, Leadership, Trade
• Intelligence – Steward, Medicine, Engineering