Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – How to increase inventory capacity and movement speed

While it’s true that you may have been increasing your party’s size in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord thanks to leveling up certain skills or acquiring perks, you might still be wondering why your inventory’s capacity remains limited. That’s a given because, unlike in previous Mount & Blade titles, Bannerlord no longer has the “Inventory Management” skill for characters. Instead, you’ll mostly rely on the number of troops under your command or pack animals. You may even increase your army’s speed because of the mounts you have. Here’s our mini-guide to help you out.

Note: This guide is intended for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s early access stage. For more information, check out our Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord guides and features hub.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – Increasing your inventory capacity

Items in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord have their own weight which, in turn, determines how much inventory space they’d take up. For instance, one-handed weapons may have a weight of 1.0 to 1.8 whereas two-handed polearms can go up to 2.8 or 3.0. As for consumables (food), these have a weight of 10 per unit.

As mentioned in our guide for managing your party, you’ll often roam around Calradia with sacks of food to keep your party’s morale high. Because of the weight of each unit of food, you’ll run out of space soon enough. Also, don’t forget, you also need extra space when you’ve got a lot of goods to sell while you’re increasing your Trade skill.

Anyway, to add to your inventory capacity, you should have a number of horses and pack animals with you. You can buy these from villages or they could be part of the loot at the end of battles.

Pack animals vs. your regular mounts

You can ride any type of mount be it a warhorse or a camel if you have a high enough Riding skill, but there’s a difference in how much inventory capacity they add:

• Regular mounts – +20 inventory; these include warhorses, coursers, and other generic horses and camels
• Pack animals – +100 inventory; these include mules, sumpter horses, old work horses, and pack camels

Army speed and herd size penalty

Let’s say you have a number of extra horses in your inventory but no one needs them, don’t go sell them off at the nearest village for a bit of gold. This is because the additional horses you have actually count towards increasing your army’s movement speed on the world map. That’s the game’s way of thinking that these mounts are being used by other foot soldiers — not in battle, but just while you’re exploring. Other skill perks can also boost movement speed slightly.

Conversely, having a lot of pack animals will slow you down a bit. This is known as the “herd penalty,” taken to mean that your army is trudging slowly because of shepherding all the pack mules and watching over the baggage train.

The goal, of course, is to strike the right balance. It’s good to have a lot of horses to speed up your movement, but will you have enough space to carry all the plunder you’ve just taken? Remember, once your party is over-encumbered, your speed will be slowed down significantly whether you’ve got a lot of mounts or not.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is available now via Steam’s early access program. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.