The Battle Brothers mod scene is modest, but has some wonderful gems worth exploring. The game itself was a shining light in terms of indie releases back in 2017. If you haven’t encountered it yet, it’s a turn-based strategy game where you are in charge of a mercenary company in a fictionalised setting loosely based on medieval Europe.
From humble origins, you have to travel the procedurally generated world taking job after job, gaining fame, money and growing your troop’s abilities. The campaign layer is dynamic and progresses around you. It’s also hard as nails at times, with one mishandled skirmish wiping out most of your best soldiers all in one go and forcing you to start all over again (or fail). Save scumming is common.
But like all good strategy games, eventually you feel the desire for new things to do. Battle Brother’s DLC output isn’t so prolific that you can bank on new official content, so we must turn to the modders to find those fresh angles to bring the game to life.
Battle Brothers mods
These are the best Battle Brothers mods:
- Legends Mods Beta (Overhaul)
- 18 Bros in Battle
- Tweaks and Fixes
- Dark Age – New Class Scenario Pack
- Settlement Situation Tooltip
- Craft Named Weapons
- Sell Loot for More
Let’s explore them in more detail…
Legends Mod Beta
This is an overhaul mod that does a wide range of things, many of which can be found in other mods we’ve listed below. If you want an all-in-one sweep of the game though, the Legends mod seems to be the best in town right now.
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It features new origins, new gear, new perks, bigger mercenary companies, more enemies, better mechanics for the dynamic world… there are few stones left unturned in this mod. Please note that at the time of writing, this mod is currently being updated to be compatible with the Blazing Sands DLC – it won’t work with the new expansion.
18 Bros in Battle
This is a simple mod that seeks to help anyone who’s ever thought “I need more Bros”. Battle Brothers typically only allows you to have 12 ‘active’ members in your party, with up to nine additional mercenaries in reserve so you can chop and change as people get injured. Some origins now increase or decrease these base numbers, but for vanilla purposes you’re basically stuck with 12 bros at any one time.
You’ll notice though that the ‘active’ area in the management screen consists of two rows of nine, with a third row of nine representing the reserves. This mod essentially raises the cap so that you can fill both rows to the full, allowing for a bro-fest of up to 18 bros. Contracts also scale for the presence of this many brohirim all in one place, so it shouldn’t make the game unusually easy.
Tweaks and Fixes
This is essentially a collection of sub-mods brought together under the banner of “things that the game could do differently and things that it should do better.” It consists of a lot of limited-scope minor mods that do this this or that and you can download each part individually to suit your needs for a perfectly tailored experience.
There doesn’t appear to be a central tool that will allow you to grab multiple sub-mods at once, which means getting your full ‘loadout’ ready will be a bit of a pain, but there are some excellent tweaks here. Please note that at the time of writing, the creator is going through the process of checking which mods are compatible with the recent Blazing Deserts DLC. The currently approved list is at the top of the page.
Dark Age – New Class Scenario Pack
The later DLCs for Battle Brothers have done some really interesting things with modifying the starting scenarios available to the player. Some of these don’t have as many long-term relevance as we’d like, but it certainly gives enough variety to get you over that early game hump.
We’re surprised there aren’t more mods that look at the concept, but this Dark Age mod seems to be the most interesting of the bunch. It adds eight new starting scenarios, seven of which all feature a new ‘class’ for the central character with unique abilities. The general rules for all scenarios is that, if the main character dies, the game ends and hiring and trading penalties are increased by 10%.
Settlement Situation Tooltip
The great thing about Battle Brothers’ living world is that, as time progresses all of the villages and towns get affected by the actions of the NPCs around them. These manifest as ‘Situations’ that you can get summaries off in the base game.
This is a minor quality of life mod that simply shows the actually in-game effects of these situations, rather than just vague summaries. Useful to try and get a proper understanding for what’s going on and how these things affect the wider world.
Craft Named Weapons
Named/Uber weapons become a thing in the late-game and this mod allows you to craft them in the Taxidermist. Crafting in this game is a little opaque, as you can’t see a ‘master’ list of craftable items to then go hunt down the materials for. Items only appear when you have the required items already.
Worth keeping in mind as the same applies for the named weapons and there are some other restrictions imposed by the mods creator as well.
Sell Loot for More
One thing I always struggle with in the early game is making money and figuring out the best way to trade. This minor mod can help alleviate some of that by raising the base price of loot by 15%. So when you next find yourself awash with round shields and clubs that you don’t want, know that you can now get a bit more for them!
This mod does not affect the price of trading commodities. Also note that this mod is currently broken if you’re using the recently released Blazing Sands DLC.
How to mod Battle Brothers
Unlike a lot of strategy games these days, Battle Brothers has never formally added Steam Workshop support. It’s possible the devs thought they wouldn’t really need to, as there was a time where they tried to stop working on the game and move on to other projects.
Considering we’re three years on and they’re still releasing DLC for the game, I imagine that plan has gone… badly? Anyway, you need to rely on Nexus mods, for all your Battle Brothers modding needs.
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Most of the mods in this guide simply involve you downloading files and placing them in the ‘data’ folder. If you’re using the Steam version, this will typically be: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Battle Brothers\data
Make sure you read the installation instructions carefully though on each mod, to make sure it’s going in the right place.