The new Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord comes with a more diverse skill system than previous installments.
With 18 skills to train and each skill having numerous perks in Bannerlord, it’s important to know how to level up a skill and how to do it fast and efficiently.
Since Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord is in early-access and patches are released daily, this guide may be subject to change.
We will keep this updated with the most recent information we have and make sure it’s the best guide out there when it comes to how to level skills in Bannerlord fast.
How to Level Skills Fast
One Handed
The one-handed skill directly affects how fast you swing a sword and how much damage it will do.
As you progress through the one-handed skill tree, there are various perks that help with damage, shield strength, and other stats. One-handed can be improved by damaging or killing enemies with your weapon.
If you want to train this skill quickly, we suggest hunting down small groups of enemies and telling your army to stay put while you charge in and kill them all.
Looters and sea raiders should pose no problem at certain difficulties and at certain stages of the game. Therefore, they make for an easy way to train your one-handed quickly.
Two Handed
Two-handed is essentially the same as one-handed. It focuses on the larger weapons that require… well two hands.
You train it the same way like almost all combat skills, by killing and damaging enemies. We suggest training this skill the same way as one-handed, by finding a bunch of looters or bandits to solo while your army is told to stay put.
Polearm
The legendary polearms, one of the most popular weapons for players to use due to the deadly couched lanced that can one-hit most enemy troops or horses.
The polearm skill relates to the use of one-handed or two-handed spears and similar weapons.
Since this skill can really only be trained on an open field battle, we again advise you to find a group of looters and run them down while your army watches from afar.
You can also train this skill in sieges, simply stand behind a line of your troops and poke through the line at the enemy thanks to your spear’s excellent range.
Bow
One of the easier combat skills to train along with the crossbow, you gain experience in this skill by… well shooting enemies with arrows.
The combat skills are all pretty straightforward as you would expect. You do get bonus experience, however, for making more difficult shots from a long distance.
So while the enemy is charging you, take a few shots at them and see if you can’t land a headshot or two.
Instead of taking on a bunch of low-level looters, one good way to train any ranged skill is by bringing a bow and three stacks of arrows to a siege.
Tell your army to stay back while you walk up to one of the wooden barriers around the walls and shoot at the enemy archers.
Once you have taken out all the enemy archers, you can focus on shooting the melee troops defending the wall from ladders without worry of getting killed.
If you run out of arrows, simply tell your men to take the weakened wall. Once they have taken it, climb up the walls and look around for arrow barrels.
They will instantly refill your quivers and you can shoot at the remaining defenders within the castle walls. Sieges are a great way to get tons of ranged experience.
Crossbow
Just like bows, crossbows are easiest to train during sieges. Simply stack up on bolts and shoot your enemies from the safety of the wooden defenses.
Once you run out, send your army in and then resupply with the barrels of arrows and continue to shoot.
It should be said that the crossbow skill tree and the lack of crossbows in the game seem to indicate that this skill isn’t fully fleshed out. We hope to see more variation in perks and usable weapons in the future like the variety in Warband.
Throwing
The throwing skill directly affects your accuracy and damage with throwing weapons. Like the crossbow, it doesn’t seem to be fully fleshed out.
The perk tree doesn’t have any choices and there don’t seem to be a ton of throwing weapons in the game like in previous installments. Nevertheless, there is a way to train this skill quickly.
We suggest loading all 4 inventory slots with high capacity throwing weapons and finding a party of looters or bandits and taking them down single-handedly.
Simple stay on your horse, slowly walk away from them or next to them, and throw throw throw.
Riding
Riding is a great skill to train and should almost never be ignored. It affects the level of mounts you can ride, your horse’s speed, and their maneuverability.
You can train this skill by simply moving around the world map while having a horse equipped or fighting on horseback.
An easy way to level this skill, albeit kind of gray, is to simply have something hold down your A and W keys while attacking in a siege.
Order your troops to hold their positions far from the walls so they don’t get shot and then ride around in circles for a while while you afk. Make sure to save before you do this in case you accidentally get hit and downed!
The enemy units should stay inside the castle, leaving you free to spin in circles outside their walls for some time.
Athletics
Athletics only affects your movement speed on foot. Other than that it doesn’t do much.
There are some helpful perks in the skill tree, but unless your playing a no-horse playthrough or something this skill is currently under powered.
We will admit that having a low athletics skill does suck in sieges and arena tournaments. You’ll move like a slug if it’s low!
If you would like to train it you either have to fight on foot like in an arena or siege or move around on the map without a horse.
Moving around the map without a horse is the easiest method, but not the best. We suggest fighting in a lot of sieges or getting off your horse and fighting on foot with your men in the field.
Smithing
Smithing is a fairly easy skill to train, it is just time consuming. Weeks can pass while you train it and you’ll find that the map has changed and factions disappear while you level smithing if you’re not careful!
Smithing can be leveled up by creating weapons, refining materials, and smelting old weapons.
Since smithing uses stamina and you have to wait to regain stamina, it’s important to spend it wisely.
Refining materials gives you the best experience per point of stamina per this post on Reddit. Therefore, you should try and refine the highest items you can before smelting weapons.
One strategy is to run to a city after a battle with all the weapons you looted and smelt the weapons with higher level materials and refine those materials to maximize your experience gain.
Smithing is best trained overtime instead of all at once since you have to wait to regain stamina.
Scouting
Scouting is a necessary skill for any party. If you have a companion assigned as your party’s scout, your character will not gain any experience in this skill.
So if you want to level up your main characters scout skill, you’ll have to assign them that clan role. If you need help understanding clan roles, check out our guide here on it.
Once you’re the scout, simply run around the map. You’ll get experience for finding hideouts, tracks, or running through difficult terrain.
A good way to get both riding and scouting experience is to simply travel in a line, back and forth, through difficult terrain on the map.
Tactics
Tactics in Bannerlord is similar to how it worked it Warband by affecting your ‘odds’ of winning a battle.
It is also fairly easy to level up, but there isn’t exactly a shortcut to leveling it and it can be fairly time consuming.
Perhaps the easiest way to train tactics is to simulate battles. Find low level looters and just send your army at them.
If your army is big enough, you can even simulate battles against enemy lords or militas when raiding villages. Just know that you won’t get any combat experience if you simulate a battle.
You can also get experience by winning battles that have odds not in your favor.
If you’re a good commander (or playing on an easy difficulty) you can simply try and defeat that army of 100 with your 50 peasants and get experience that way.
The last way to get experience is possibly the worst. If you flee from a battle and leave troops behind to flee, you will get experience points.
This isn’t feasibly repeatable to gain lots of experience so we do not recommend doing this. You should only leave troops behind when absolutely necessary!
Roguery
Roguery is fairly easy to regularly train. If you’re playing Bannerlord, chances are your fighting enemies all the time.
And if you’re fighting enemies, you’re taking prisoners. There are cities all over the map and the easiest way to train roguery is to take those prisoners to a city and sell them in a tavern.
You can get tons of experience points after fighting an enemy lord by selling their prisoners away at a tavern.
You can also train roguery by raiding enemy caravans. We only suggest raiding caravans when you become part of a kingdom and they’re at war with someone.
Raiding a caravan immediately puts you at war with that faction, so it’s not smart to do it if you have no one backing you.
Recruiting bandit troops like looters or sea raiders is also a good way to train the skill.
If you don’t want to use them in your party, simply recruit them then disband them from your party.
Infiltrating enemy towns will also give you experience as well as bribing guards, but this can be riskier and isn’t suggested as an easy way to train Roguery.
Charm
Charm can be trained throughout the game. As you play, simply try and do quests for different people and improve your relations with them.
If you’re a vassal of a faction and vote on different policies or who gets a fief, you can spend your influence and pick an option.
Each option will increase your relations with one person, but decrease them with another. The more influence you spend, the higher the increase.
Bartering also helps increase your charm skill, but there aren’t many situations where you will barter.
Recruiting lords to your faction, marrying, and bartering for peace are the often the only times you will barter.
The game is in early-access, so maybe they will expand this feature and there will become other things to barter over.
Leadership
Leadership directly affects your party’s morale and garrison size. You can level up the leadership skill by simply having a high morale in your party.
One easy way to have a high morale is to have a bunch of different food types. In the late-game when you are rich, there is no excuse not to buy 10, 20, or even 50 of each different type of consumable.
Winning battles also helps morale, so try not to lose, as if you needed another reason not to lose a battle!
You can also level up this skill by assembling and leading armies. You can use your companions to start parties by going to your clan tab.
You can then create and lead an army comprised of your party and your companions. This will help level up your leadership skill considerably.
Trade
Trade is another easy skill to level up fast. Simply travel between two cities near each other and buy and sell miscellaneous goods at a profit. When there doesn’t seem to be any margins left, find two new cities near each other and repeat.
We’ve had great success selling furs and hides from Omor and Varcheg to Epicrotea. There’s plenty of opportunity in the land of Calradia to make money being a trade mogul.
Stewardship
Stewardship tends to be most first players highest level skill. It’s just so easy to train.
In the beginning you won’t have a quartermaster assigned in your party, so it will be you.
This means that you will get experience for having a variety of food (like we talked about in the leadership skill above) and just by spending time in your settlements as the clan leader.
There really is no way to train this skill fast, but you can consistently gain experience overtime by simply waiting in a settlement you own or having a variety of food for your troops to eat as you travel.
If you’re planning on laying siege to a castle, grab a ton of different food so you can train both stewardship and engineering as you wait for the siege to finish.
Medicine
Medicine can only be leveled up if your party does not have anyone assigned to the surgeon role.
If there is no one assigned, the duties fall on you and you can gain experience in it. In order to gain experience, you need to help wounded soldiers heal in a settlement.
An easy way to wound soldiers is to simply shove your real army in a castle and recruit recruits from surrounding villages or simply change your army’s groups and move all your low level troops to a new group.
Find some looters or bandits and tell the rest of your army to stay put while your rookies tackle on the enemy.
If you’re lucky, a bunch of them should get wounded instead of killed. Once they’re wounded go wait in a settlement for them to heal. Rinse and repeat!
Engineering
Probably one of the most annoying skills to train. Engineering can only be used during sieges in the mid-late game and it almost always starts out low.
The only way to train it is by operating siege equipment during a siege or by building them while laying siege to the castle.
The longer the siege goes on for the more experience you will get, so we suggest bringing an enemy faction to the brink of extinction.
Then when they have a single castle or city left, you stock up on food and lead the siege.
This will allow you to dictate how long the siege lasts. Now you simply keep building siege equipment until enough time has passed and it’s time to go in and take the castle.
Once you’re in the battle, instead of fighting on the frontlines, operate the trebuchet or catapult or balista you built.
If you ever find yourself defending during a siege, you can operate the balistas your castle built for a defense to gain engineering experience.
We hope you enjoyed our guide on how to level up skills in Bannerlord and how to level them up the fastest ways possible. If you’re looking for more Bannerlord content, be sure to check out our other guides below!