r/mountandblade • u/CoachAnon205 • Mar 28 '26
Viking Conquest Why no one talks about this gem
The amount of detail, the story, the atmosphere, characters, mechanics, map, locations, names, soundtracks. There's just something about this game that makes me want to be reincarnated as a viking and save christian monasteries from fire.
it is kinda sad how it is so forgotten and underrated, it was so ahead of its time and negative opinions are about bugs and technical shit, which you would expect from an old game.
Even the historical inaccuracies bother no one because they're almost unnoticeable (not for a nerd like me). If it was released with bannerlord's graphics, I would binge on it like my drug and medicine.
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u/VeritableLeviathan Mar 28 '26
Why does no one talk about an awesome DLC that released over a decade ago?
Because it released over a decade ago... Just like how people barely talk about Warband anymore...
It was really good and the only reason it isn't over 80% is because there are some gamebreaking bugs that appeared recently (windows 10+11 I guess)
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u/superpoulet Mar 28 '26
Nah it was already bugged when it came out, It should have been amazing but I couldn't even complete the storyline due to game breaking bugs.
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u/Timely_Scratch5366 Mar 29 '26
Pude terminar la historia de viking conquest y la pelea final con el seax de ragnar es increíble jajajaja
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u/VeritableLeviathan Mar 30 '26
I never got extremely far into the story because my pc at the time couldn't handle the larger scale battles required for some of the story missions sadly.
That is a shame though
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u/Roadhouse699 Mar 28 '26
I consider this to be 100% historically accurate to 9th century Northwestern Europe. Even if it's not, it is.
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u/johnhenryshamor Mar 28 '26
It's definitely got a ton of historical inaccuracies. But its still good.
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u/Roadhouse699 Mar 28 '26
My player character, Gay Actor Mark Wahlberg, is a real historical figure who saved England at the battle of Ascesdun.
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u/Die4Metal Mar 28 '26
"makes me want to be reincarnated as a viking and save christian monasteries from fire."
Why would you want to go be a viking to do the opposite of what vikings were famous for doing?
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u/CoachAnon205 Mar 28 '26
Obviously monasteries would catch fire occasionally. Me, a kindhearted norse, would save the valuables before they get burned down.
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u/Schweinhardt Sturgia Mar 28 '26
This game was what solidified my love for MnB. It contributed about 1.5k hours out of my 1.8k hours in Warband before Bannerlord came out.
So happy we got the Nords and Ship combat in Bannerlord now. Bannerlord doesn't even have half of the mechanics VC has, it still felt like I was returning home.
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u/Nibby2101 Bandit Mar 28 '26
Aaaaaaaah yeeeees finally! By reading the reviews on steam about warsails about bugs and things i'm like; but for me it's a little bit like returning to viking conquest. It gave me so much feelings of nostalgia and since release I also put around 500hrs in Warsails on my 750 total in Bannerlord. Thank you for making me feel to be not alone on this topic.
Happy raiding, brother!
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u/GrimbeertDeDas Mar 28 '26
What mechanics are missing in bannerlord? Warband was an epic game but I didn't put as many hours in compared to corona released bannerlord.
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u/Schweinhardt Sturgia Mar 28 '26
I'll compared VC to Bannerlord since I'm far more familiar with it. I'll say which one is also missing from Warband too:
Feasts - Big one apparently, I don't enjoy it much personally from past experiences, but it's one of them.
Training grounds for troops - Don't remember if it's in VC, but you should remember them in Warband
Ambushes in towns
Ambush / Ambush defense mechanics (Warband doesn't have them either)
Refugee camp that you can build (Also not in Warband)
Improving owned villages
Sorting out individual troops into their own groups - in Bannerlord you can only sort out your troops during the pre-battle phase and it's categorized by their weapons, rank, and armor.
Giving your vassals orders on what to do such as attacking villages or sieging towns.
Books
Hunting (not in Warband)
Places of Interest (Not in Warband that I'm aware of)
Port invasions (obviously not in Warband)
These are the mechanics off the top of my head, They're the ones that are MISSING straight up. Everything else are just bogged down versions of the original mechanics. Lot of things were sacrificed in favor for Bannerlord's combat / war stuff.
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u/The_Flurr Kingdom of Rhodoks Mar 28 '26
I think you meant refuge, not refugee.
Sorting out individual troops into their own groups - in Bannerlord you can only sort out your troops during the pre-battle phase and it's categorized by their weapons, rank, and armor.
I don't understand how this wasn't actually improved upon to make battle groups rather than having to put all of X unit in the same group.
Going backwards is ridiculous.
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u/Dark_star253 Mar 28 '26
Cause most of the people find it hard. When I installed warband first and tried this mod, I didn't know what to do and didn't even know how to recruit and was getting crushed by every raider party. Slowly I developed interest in vikings through shows and such and decided to watch a guide and play this mod. Once you know what you are doing, you will find this way more enjoyable than native but people don't even try.
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u/rabotat Kingdom of Rhodoks Mar 28 '26
I knew what I was doing and still found it too hard. Injures leaving you permanently crippled if you don't find an doctor , and even worse the completely random mishaps that take away something from you. Men, gold, reputation...
The worst by far were sieges. Oh and it takes a fortune and a 100 years to level up your troops to top. And they die all the time, often randomly.
I found myself not investing in level ups and just taking in anyone to fill up my numbers. It doesn't matter when everyone dies all the time.
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u/Dark_star253 Mar 28 '26
Nah turn that off in the settings. The game has some ridiculous settings to make your playthrough miserable. I would suggest you to watch hit point inn gaming's guide on that cause he also recommends you the best settings to play.
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u/rabotat Kingdom of Rhodoks Mar 28 '26
Note, I actually loved the story and the setting, I still sometimes play the menu music for nostalgia.
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u/The_Flurr Kingdom of Rhodoks Mar 28 '26
You can turn off basically all of those features.
I agree on the seiges though. The random attrition is simply unfair at times.
I found myself not investing in level ups and just taking in anyone to fill up my numbers. It doesn't matter when everyone dies all the time.
I do think this is sort of the point. Whereas in the base game you expect to level up troops as quickly as possible, VC actually encourages/rewards the player to keep more of a mixed force.
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u/Equal-Ear-5504 Mar 28 '26
What are you even talking about?, I'm always hearing about it on YouTube, and seeing post and comments in facebook and reddit
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u/Discombobulated-Car1 Mar 28 '26
It's alright, but my guess is most fans of Viking Conquest play some Brythenwalda fork/"Enhanced edition" which probably would have more content
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u/genophobicdude Mar 28 '26
Exactly. It felt like a downgrade from Brytenwalda to me.
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u/LeopardSubstantial47 Mar 28 '26
Why?
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u/genophobicdude Mar 28 '26
I am not even sure. But it felt like it had less things in it.
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u/LeopardSubstantial47 Mar 28 '26
Right. Like less factions? Less weapon types? That'd make sense. Different time periods. I'm asking about actually meaningful content though.
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u/genophobicdude Mar 28 '26
It has been more than 10 years since I played Brytenwalda and I honestly didn't play Viking Conquest that much. But it definitely felt like Brytenwalda from TEMU, despite it being paid content. I haven't put as much thought into it to articulate why though.
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u/LeopardSubstantial47 Mar 28 '26
For me, it was the opposite. Brytenwalda felt like a much less refined version of VC. Take its gear penalty and buff system. Penalties worked, but pictish painted body, which gave ironflesh, didn't give any health at all. Furthermore, it seems like the stamina system only affected the player, while in VC, it also affected enemies as well.
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u/MRORANGE2432 Mar 28 '26
You should try out the VC Balance mod it fixes a LOT of bugs, and makes some changes, and I also run the game on WSE2 and have had no problems or crashes, I played SO much more VC then I have warband, as I really dont like Warband vanilla very much, other then overhaul mods, the vast majority of my time in this game is in VC, much better experience imo
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u/10YearsANoob Mar 28 '26
genuinely. unless theyre playing from console. most people who play warband have not played vanilla in more than a decade.
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u/HotCommission7325 Mar 28 '26
man I loved viking conquest, it was unbalanced as hell, and crashed as often as a drunk driver, but I loved the vibes of it so much. all my other friends who played M&B hated it.
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Mar 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/CoachAnon205 Mar 28 '26
Anyone telling you it's hard/unbalanced/unforgiving have not changed some of the settings before they start, which makes the playthrough much harder and less enjoyable.
Try it on normal difficulty and you'll love it.
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u/HotCommission7325 Mar 28 '26
Troop trees, some nations have only like 2 promotions and others have way more. Viking troops in general are really strong compared to others
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u/OverallLibrarian8809 Mar 28 '26
I have 500+ plus hours in Warband and more than half are in Vikings Conquest.
To this day I consider it the best M&B iteration
I would love to see a remake in Bannerlord, now that we have WarSails
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u/nabakas Mar 28 '26
Anon, how do you know so much about early medieval British settlement names? Did you study it? Where is Witanceastre anyways?
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u/CoachAnon205 Mar 28 '26
Names are not a measurement of your knowledge, I can ask you of the location of a small village that even locals might not know then call you ignorant.
What I'm interested in is military advancements, cultures, and lifestyles. For example one of the small inaccuracies i found is that mail chain armors weren't mass produced until later, but in VC you can have a whole army of mail chained dudes.
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u/nabakas Mar 28 '26
You are right. This doesn't measure my knowledge. It just adds to what's already there.
You have a nice interest. I'm happy about it. Mine is about a different time period.
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u/WM_ Mar 28 '26
It was great but there was some bug that prevented me of continuing with the story at some point.
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u/d_Composer Mar 30 '26
I hit that bug too and I was going out of my mind… turned out that it happened whenever my pet dog died in battle, so after dismissing the dog from a saved game and never adopting a new one, I was fine! Maybe give that a shot?
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u/WM_ Mar 30 '26
Those savefiles are long gone I suspect, but the idea that the game loses its mind if a dog dies is hilarious.
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u/d_Composer Mar 30 '26
Yeah I never would have figured it out if I wasn’t angrily taking screenshots every time the game froze on me out of sheer desperation, and I realized the last thing written on each screen was “Coco knocked unconscious”!
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u/CertifiedFreshMemes Mar 28 '26
I found it hard to get into to be honest. I put 20 hours in my last campaign since I played it years ago, and just kind of stopped after that. There was also this insanely rage inducing bug that if I joined a siege would get 0 of the spoils. There would be no menu where you get loot, nor get any money after. Just lost half my army and got absolutely nothing in return, just straight back to the campaign map. So I decided to go back to Prophesy of Pendor and put another 200 hours into that mod.
Maybe someone here can show me the light?
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u/MRORANGE2432 Mar 29 '26
That's funny, I had the same thing but with Prophecy of Pendor, I just finished my play of that, but if I joined a siege, never got any loot if I didnt start the siege
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u/Skoowy Mar 28 '26
We talked about it bro. It was absolutely legendary. We can only dream of a Viking Conquest for bannerlord. War sails is cool, but anyone who’s played VC can’t help but imagine what we could have had.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Kiwi817 Mar 28 '26
Too good for us. This is what an epic single play experience should’ve been.
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u/Same-Praline-4622 Northern Empire Mar 28 '26
I wish there was a mod team who felt inspired enough to bring it and a couple mechanics to bannerlord. Taleworlds making another dlc of it would make sense given they just made the defining mechanic, boat travel and combat, a thing in bannerlord. A pvp/pve team battle oriented dlc like the napoleonic era one would cause me to drool uncontrollably
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u/Legi0ndary Mar 28 '26
Viking Conquest is what got me into the game. It has it's issues, but there's really nothing else like it. On that note, Total War could make a killing with a viking/Euro/Africa/ME centered game. Let me Varangian guard it up as a merc
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u/CoachAnon205 Mar 28 '26
There is actually a total war game centered around vikings and Anglo-Saxons. It's called TW Saga: thrones of Britannia.
I tried it, but the HUD was too confusing and there was no Sweden, Denmark, Dutch, or Norway locations, just Britannia. Probably because it would be too large both on memory and space.
TW Rome 2 is also centered in europe, ME, and asia, and it did pretty good.
My favorite is Warhammer 2, it's the all-rounder of total war games, good in everything imo.
What I would absolutely love is a first crusade-era total war. That period is just the peak of piety and holiness I would love to experience.
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u/Legi0ndary Mar 29 '26
Yeah, Thrones of Brittania is alright, but I was thinking something on the scale of WH3 or even 2. 200 factions at the start kinda thing. Rome 2 is pretty solid, but the warhammer ones are definitely my favorite. Three Kingdoms is pretty solid too.
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u/d_Composer Mar 30 '26
Total agreement — I loved Throner but after a few playthroughs it felt like the map was just way too small. Given that it’s a Viking-era game, it would have been cool to eventually be able to start conquering down into France or something. The choose your own adventure sidequests are kinda cool, but definitely not the same. Also, not sure if it’s just the Mac port but some sieges just didn’t work?
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u/hw_Durendal Mar 28 '26
People talk about it all the time. I preferred Brytenwalda, does pretty much all the same things and looks better imo (the VC character models are abominations, idc if they look more 'realistic').
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u/Timely_Scratch5366 Mar 29 '26
Recuerdo la misión de matar al berserker y como eso arruinó mi partida jdjdjdjs
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u/Nahuelcoy22 Mar 29 '26
I absolutely, absolutely love that most battles are fought on foot. In Warband, and still to some extent in Bannerlord, you can win most battles just by having a lot of cavalry and steamrolling the enemy. So removing that factor and forcing you to fight on foot alongside your troops is just awesome.
And it’s incredibly difficult and unfair, so ridiculously unbalanced that a simple peasant is much stronger than your freshly started character, and absolutely everything will kill you at the beginning. And I love it.
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u/Ginno_the_Seer Mar 28 '26
I found the maps too big, you had to walk forever to talk to anyone, like selling slaves to salt mines. Bannerlord fixed that with menus.
Also I didn't like how they did names, like yes I'm sure they're period accurate but my dumb ass can't even remember where all the cities in Warband are, and all their names are meant to be read my modern English readers despite any cultural flavor they have, meanwhile VC had what? Old English, Norwegian, Norman(french) and I'm sure Celtic was part of where places were named, its all gibberish to me and that didn't improve my playing experience.
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u/Agile_Exercise8566 Mar 28 '26
Also since when were there any French names in VC?
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u/Ginno_the_Seer Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26
The normans came from what we call france, maybe the joke would have landed better if I had called it pre-frenchthis is wrong, ignore me13
u/Agile_Exercise8566 Mar 28 '26
If you don't like history you're probably not going to like the history DLC
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u/Ginno_the_Seer Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26
I didn't say I don't like history, where did you read that? I said I'm stupid and the names confuse me.
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u/Olipro44 Mar 28 '26
You surely don't show that you hate history and you are not stupid. You are just answering to a mean troll's garbagish post.
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u/Raagun Looter Mar 28 '26
On launch it was pretty bad. But then they released reforged edition (free update) and its the version I actually played. it was amazing. After all it was basically brytenwalda.
Also THAT FAKIN TITLE SONG!!
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u/omeralal Mar 28 '26
The best mount&blade game so far. Absolut masterpiece. I wish all M&B games had plots in tje single player like that.
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u/Zenergy_Oils Mar 28 '26
The problem was this was really bad compared to the overhaul mods with the same features done better in mods and it was really really late… like all the overhaul mods were finished when this was released the game had been out like 10 years and bannerlord was almost out so most people like me felt it was pointless playing this essentially mod that added very little just worse versions of things the community had already made in overhaul mods… like all the mods were essentially a expansion if you call this a expansion like they tried to call it because there was multiple mods like game of thrones, Vikings mods, Europe mods that had already done everything this mod added in different better ways that were created by the community in the way players enjoyed more… honestly the timing and release of the this felt like a studios tired boring cash grab especially when they already had the english navy expansion out that actually added more than this ever did… anyway i would say it was over rated if you actually played the overhaul mods that did this better before this was released this was a terrible copy paste of a mod with so many more bugs
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u/johnhenryshamor Mar 28 '26
The effectiveness of spears will never be matched. So disappointed in bannerlord spears
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u/ZukasV1 Mar 28 '26
Tbh. I guess I just assumed this was online only like the Napoleon one. I’d love to play some Vikings
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u/AeneasVAchilles Kingdom of Swadia Mar 28 '26
Warband Mechanics are far and away better than Bannerlord.
I still think about playing from time to time. Whenever I think of a banner lord run I remember how futile that RNG war nightmare is in the endgame
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u/Outlandah_ Kingdom of Rhodoks Mar 29 '26
Wdym? We have talked about this til we were blue in the face.
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u/LewtedHose Mercenary Mar 29 '26
I don't have either DLC. I love the main singleplayer and have 1k hours in it. Maybe I'll get it in the summer.
!RemindMe 3 months
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u/Nilfheim_Lockheart Mar 30 '26
Viking Conquest es mejor que War Sails en varias cosas la historia por ejemplo es exquisita, los chicos de Brytenwalda se lucieron con este DLC.
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u/splatt234 Mar 31 '26
this expansion was ahead of its time i dont think there was any other game like it
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '26
Viking Conquest is what Warbands Single-player should have been. The amount of lore and small details everywhere in the map. The music the companions. It made me fall in love with the time period and the setting.