For those unfamiliar (probably not many), Battle Brothers is a tactical turn-based strategy game where you lead a band of mercenaries. You roam across a procedurally generated open world map, recruiting new warriors and taking on contracts for various towns as you go along. Think XCOM, except with a medieval fantasy theme. With two DLC’s already out and a Switch release, there’s no better time to jump in on the fun. Plus this game is fully mod capable, so there’s already tons of community content to explore out there. Here I’ll share some of the best to get you started:
20. Faster
Check Out This Mod As with most strategy games, you’re going to want to speed things up from time to time. Whether you’re grinding through battles or traveling over long distances, sometimes you just want to get things moving quicker. With the base game allowing for up to 2x normal speed, it’s still not enough. Especially when there’s a large amount of map to cover before your next destination. The Faster mod adds keybinds to buttons “3” and “4”, letting you speed the game up to 4x and 8x respectively. Not only that, but you can speed up combat animations as well. A huge time-saver for sure, this allows you to reduce time spent between actions made by enemies & push through the more generic moments.
19. Addtional Keybinds
Check Out This Mod Another great quality of life mod, Additional Keybinds adds some keyboard shortcuts for better functionality. F1-F4 have been assigned to bag slots 1 through 4, making it much easier to access your items. There are additional keybinds for certain actions as well, such as rotation, recover, shieldwall, and footwork. One of my favorite features, however, is that swappable items are now shown to the left of your skills, along with the hotkeys assigned to them. This makes it much easier to swap different weapons on a whim.
18. Craft Armor and Shields
Check Out This Mod One of the common criticisms of Battle Brothers is the lack of crafting options. The game makes you grind it out for chance drops of named items, but doing so takes its toll on resources, and the brothers as well. Craft Armor and Shields is a great addition to try out. It lets you to do just what the name suggests – make use of items dropped by enemies to craft new armor and shields. The mod adds 10 new recipes for crafting a variety of helms, shields, and armor, all to help prepare your men for battle. Your mercs will be prepped to take the world head-on.
17. Better Combat Log
Check Out This Mod We know all too well that in any tactical strategy, information is king. The only way you can plan out your moves is to have the information necessary to make the best possible decisions. These next few mods will help you with that, especially since in certain aspects, Battle Brothers can be quite unforgiving. With the possibility of permadeath in Battle Brothers, you’re going to want to know what’s going on in each of your battles. The Better Combat Log helps with that by adding helpful information in the form of morale checks. Not only will it help you stay on top of things, but there are a few quality of life upgrades here as well. The battle log no longer starts out collapsed, which is a nice change, so it’s easier to monitor too.
16. Tryout Talents Alternative
Check Out This Mod Recruitment is a huge part of Battle Brothers. Starting off with three men, you’re bound to hire more as you explore the world and encounter new characters along the way. Given that hiring and maintaining men in your group has costs, strategy plays a big part in how you decide who gets to come along. The Tryout Talents mod makes it much easier to weigh possible benefits, as you’ll have more information to go by. For a percentage of hiring cost, you’ll now be able to see how stars are distributed between skills before hiring a new brother. Give this one a try and see whether you like it, you’ll know pretty quickly.
15. Armor Indicators
Check Out This Mod Armor levels are also important to monitor, as once a brother dies, he’s basically gone forever. The Armor Indicators mod gives that information in easy-to-read color-coded icons that represent both head and body damage for each of your characters. I think this mod would be great paired with the Craft Armor and Shields mod, as you’ll be able to quickly tell if any of your brothers needs new equipment & can craft it up for them.
14. Boneplating Indicator
Check Out This Mod With Boneplating Indicator, monitoring brothers wearing boneplating is much easier with the added UI icons showing whether boneplating has been damaged or not. If it could mean the difference between life and permadeath, well, this is just smart then. I’d want to know these things – and I’m sure you would too.
13. Better Hit Information
Check Out This Mod The ultimate battle monitoring tool. Better Hit Information adds a whole new list of details that are just not available in vanilla. To have a much better idea of what’s going on in each of your combat encounters, Better Hit Information gives you a weapon/skill hit bonus, surrounded bonus, height advantage bonus, fast adaption bonus, and too close penalty at a quick glance. You’ll be able to make more calculated decisions with each move, ultimately helping your brothers survive each hostile encounter.
12. Scoutable Locations
Check Out This Mod A very useful tool when exploring the world, Scoutable Locations gives a bit more to go on when hovering over locations. It doesn’t give everything away, though. But you’ll now be able to see what types of enemies are in any given location. If you’ve ever prepared for a battle up against, say, orcs, and felt unequipped because you’re apparently fighting undead – well this is exactly what you need. In addition to enemy types, the mod also gives you % chances for named items in each location. This is especially helpful when hunting for those rarer items in the game.
11. Settlement Situation Tooltips
Check Out This Mod Trading is also such a huge part of the game. It’s always smart to make sure you’re managing your resources well. When heading out into different villages, it’s unavoidable that you’re going to end up selling or buying equipment to help your mercs survive the wilds. A cool feature of the game is that villages differ in terms of market situations. However for the most part, we’re given pretty vague descriptions and left on our own to figure out what they actually mean. Like really, who knew that a recently-raided village would actually mean they have 50% less items for sale? And 50% less recruits available? Well now you do, because the Settlement Situation Tooltips will tell you exactly that information! No more guessing and walking around blind. You’ll now have a better idea of trading circumstances before even setting foot in a nearby town.
10. Cut To The Chase – Rumors
Check Out This Mod Last of the information mods in my list: Cut To The Chase for Rumors. As with settlement information, rumors tend to be cryptic and vague as well. Maybe you’ve spent days grinding through battles in search of that named item you really want, and haven’t got the energy to decipher that next rumor. Well this mod solves that problem. Avoid having to trudge through dialogue. Instead you can just… well, cut to the chase – with the important information already extracted and given to you right at the beginning. More play time, less weird talking. Win-win I say.
9. Smarter Inventory Sort and Post Combat Sort
Check Out This Mod Inventory management is of course important. And this mod is especially helpful for determining which items to keep, and which to sell. It adds a new sort function for both weapons and food, something worth trying to see how you like it. First off, food can now be sorted by time until expiration. This is helpful if you already have too much food in your inventory, so you can throw out any excess. As for weapons, a cool feature here is that they’re sorted based on post repair value. This makes it easier to identify if a weapon could be profitable if repaired, or if it would make more sense to just throw it out. The sorting options have been added to the post combat loot screen as well, so you can make quick decisions after each battle.
8. Battle Preparation
Check Out This Mod Enemy encounters are all too common. And it’s not uncommon to be taken by surprise. It could be that you were preparing to fight a completely different enemy type, but whatever the case, you’ve probably found yourself wishing you could shuffle around some brothers or weapons to better suit the battle. Battle Preparation makes this possible, as you’re given the opportunity to pull up the inventory screen and make changes before each battle takes place. This one’s sure to keep you alive on more than one occasion. Some may not like it, but this feature could almost be part of vanilla and still feel completely normal.
7. Get Loot Without Last Hit
Check Out This Mod Grinding it out for specific loot can become quite frustrating. Especially with the last hit requirement the game imposes. With this easy fix, you’ll be worrying less about correctly timing your hits so you can focus more on actually winning battles. All it does is disable that pesky “last hit requirement” for you to get loot. This isn’t Dota 2 or LoL, after all.
6. More Perks
Check Out This Mod Most fans of the game aren’t aware that there are actually a few hidden perks that didn’t make the final cut. It’s unclear why the devs removed them, but whatever the reason, they actually coded 8 perks that aren’t available in the vanilla game. This mod unlocks those perks. Easy,r ight? Now you’ll have more factors to play around with when selecting your brothers. Perks include Bloody Harvest, Inspiring Presence, Lookout, and Slaughterer, among others.
5. No More Asking For A Raise
Check Out This Mod Anyone who’s interested in playing really long campaigns has probably encountered this annoying game mechanic. You know how your mercs collectively demand more pay? Well that would normally trigger once you have 30k crowns or more, effectively preventing you from stretching your campaign. With this quick fix, that event will no longer trigger. You’ll be free to extend your campaign playthrough as long as you want, regardless of how much money you’ve saved up. Hooray for mods!
4. Hyper Killing Frenzy
Check Out This Mod This next one doesn’t really do much for the game, but I threw it in because it looks pretty cool. All it does is makes your character’s eyes glow when they’re on a killing frenzy. They either glow red or blue, and just make your MVP characters all the more frightening. Looks pretty killer in the heat of battle.
3. Campaign Tweakster
Check Out This Mod For the most customizable Battle Brothers experience, you’ll likely want the Campaign Tweakster mod. It basically allows you to set up a campaign with options that you choose, from XP gain rate, Daily Food Consumption, Treasure Value, and much more. If you’ve played through the regular campaign and now you’re looking for a fresh experience, this is definitely a mod to look into.
2. Increased Champion Spawn Rate
Check Out This Mod Now this particular mod makes the game much more interesting, but focuses more towards the later stages. If you’ve reached the point where your main focus is to grind for named weapons, you may find it repetitive to go through endless battles just to get some measly shields. Increased Champion Spawn Rate makes it more likely to encounter champions, up to 50%, increasing the chances you’ll find some of those named weapons as well. Call it cheating if you want, I call it enjoying my time in the game.
1. Legends Mod
Check Out This Mod Finally we hit the Legends Mod, which is widely considered a favorite among Battle Brothers fans. The Legends Mod is pretty much the only overhaul mod that adds tons of content to the game, making for a completely fresh BB experience. The aim here is to add replayability and variety to Battle Brothers, and it does that very well by adding new starts, mechanics, weapons, effects, and so much more. There are now 25 scenarios to choose from too, with the vanilla scenarios enhanced with new perks and equipment. There’s a ton to discover in this mod, so if you feel like you’ve gotten all that you can out of the game, here’s the best way to rediscover it.
