Each Culture offers different family choices. In this Mount & Blade II Bannerlord Character Creation Guide we list all of the different Cultures available as well as the Family options for each Culture as every individual Culture provides different Family options that offer different character improvements.
Seemingly basic at first, the character creation tools in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord are actually quite deep, complex, and rewarding. As well as changing and customizing your characters physical attributes, there’s a huge variety of potential builds from the start thanks to the combination of Cultures and Families.
Before committing to building your character it’s a good idea to just select a Culture, any will do. Then, when you are on the Family option, highlight all the stats on the left hand side. Vigor, Control, Endurance, etc. IF you want to specialize in two-handed weapons for example, you want to select choices that enhance that skill in the Vigor tree.
Cultures
Think of Cultures as an overall buff to your campaign. It provides some detailed background for your characters past and goals but more than that, it provides improvements to your army and campaign that you will struggle to find elsewhere. Below is a list of all of the different Culture options available.- Vlandians – 20% more upgrade XP to troops from battles
- Sturgians – 20% less speed penalty from snow
- Empire – 20% construction speed bonus to town projects, wall repairs, and siege engines
- Aserai – Caravans are 30% cheaper to build, 10% less trade penalty
- Khuzaits – 10% extra speed bonus for horsemen on campaign map
- Battanians – Forests give 10% less speed penalty to parties
Those buffs alone are huge but there’s more to Cultures than these initial improvements. After selecting a Culture and changing your appearance, you will also get to choose a Family. However, the Families available to choose are based on your Culture.
Family
Early Childhood Choices
The options for Early Childhood are identical across all Cultures & Families. The stats given by these options are marked as the lighter green colors with the arrows, the darker green are stats provided by the Family choice
Adolescence, Youth, Young Adult, Story Choices
Now that you have the main backbone of your character, you get to specialize further with choices in additional trees. The choices in Adolescence, Youth, Young Adult and Story are different depending on what Culture you have chosen and what Family you have chosen. For example, Vlandians of Barons Retainers has different options to Vlandians Hunters, both the same Culture but different Families.Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to build your character. It’s better to build towards aspects of the game you find appealing, building to your strengths. There’s not much point in specializing in trade if you burn the world to the ground, likewise, you don’t want to focus on military power if you want to make friends with every neighbor. The choice is yours.
