There are instances when players may desire to play a hard turn-based game in which each and every action must be considered and performed with the utmost accuracy. This is shown to the letter in Battle Brothers, where even the smallest error is penalised. This game is not for the faint of heart, as it depicts the cruelty of being a mercenary gang thrown into circumstances where survival is almost impossible.
However, if players maintain a level head and learn from their errors, this game may be rather pleasant. Those who appreciate Battle Brothers will likely have a fantastic time exploring with the modifications available for this game. These modifications have a substantial influence on gameplay in a variety of ways and are the finest of the group.
1) Faster
As with other strategy games, you will sometimes desire to hurry things up. Whether you’re slogging through fights or traversing vast distances, there are moments when you simply want to speed things up. Even if the standard game allows for up to twice the regular pace, it is still insufficient. Especially when there is a considerable distance between your current location and your future destination.
The Faster mod adds keybindings to the “3” and “4” buttons, allowing you to speed up the game by 4x and 8x, respectively. Not only that, but you can also accelerate fight animations. Unquestionably a massive time-saver, this helps you to shorten the time elapsed between enemy actions and push through the more mundane situations.
2) Legends Mod Beta
This is a comprehensive makeover mod that does a variety of tasks, many of which may be found in the modifications mentioned below. If you want a comprehensive overview of the game, though, the Legends mod is currently the best option.
This mod includes new origins, new equipment, new perks, larger mercenary organisations, more adversaries, and improved game mechanics for the dynamic environment. Please note that, at the time of writing, this mod is being updated to be compatible with the Blazing Sands DLC — it will not operate with the new expansion until the update is complete.
3) Addtional Keybinds
Additional Keybinds is a quality-of-life hack that adds keyboard shortcuts for improved usefulness. F1-F4 have been designated to bag slots 1 through 4, facilitating access to your belongings. There are also extra keybinds for movements like rotation, recover, shieldwall, and footwork.
However, one of my favourite additions is that swappable items and their associated hotkeys are now shown to the left of your talents. This makes it much simpler to switch between guns on the fly.
4) Pause Without Conflicts
Given the sheer volume of battle in this game, auto-pausing would be really useful in Battle Brothers. However, this function is totally removed from Battle Brothers for some unknown reason.
Modders are thankfully here to rescue the day. This mod stops the game when an opposing group is seen or while camping, which is handy for obvious reasons.
5) Craft Armor and Shields
Battle Brothers is often criticised for its limited crafting possibilities. The game forces you to grind for chance drops of specified things, but doing so drains your resources and your brotherhood. Craft Armor and Shields is a worthwhile addition to attempt.
It allows you to utilise things dropped by adversaries to build new armour and shields, as its name indicates. The patch includes ten new crafting recipes for a variety of helms, shields, and armour, all of which may be used to better equip your soldiers for war. Your mercenaries will be prepared to confront the world directly.
6) 18 Bros in Battle
This easy modification aims to assist everyone who has ever thought, “I need more Bros.” Battle Brothers normally only enables you to have 12 ‘active’ party members, with up to nine extra mercenaries in reserve, allowing you to swap out damaged members. Some origins now raise or reduce these numbers, but for vanilla reasons, you are essentially limited to a maximum of 12 brothers.
The ‘active’ section of the management screen consists of two rows of nine, while a third row of nine represents the reserves. This modification effectively boosts the limit, enabling you to fill both rows with up to 18 bros for a bro-fest. Contracts are also proportional to the number of brohirim present, so this should not make the game exceptionally simple.
7) Tryout Talents
Battle Brothers tryouts are costly, yet vital for determining a prospective recruit’s skill. However, despite these expenses, these trials still do not reveal the characteristics and skill begins that these mercenaries may possess, which is rather annoying.
This problem is resolved with the Tryout Talents mod, which implements exactly this into Battle Brothers. It is a simple but important modification that makes a world of difference for players that depend on these trials to establish the greatest mercenary organisation in the area.
8) Better Combat Log
We are well aware that in any tactical approach, information reigns supreme. You can only plan your actions if you have the knowledge you need to make the best judgments possible. These next few modifications will aid you with that, particularly because Battle Brothers can be extremely punishing in some respects. Due to the threat of permadeath in Battle Brothers, you will need to be aware of the status of each of your bouts.
This is facilitated by the Better Combat Log’s addition of useful information in the form of morale checks. Not only will it help you remain on top of things, but it will also improve your quality of life. The fight log no longer begins collapsed, which is an improvement that makes it simpler to observe.
9) Settlement Situation Tooltips
Throughout their travels, players will encounter a number of villages with their band of unruly mercenaries. Each colony has its own set of problems, but locating them via the game’s current user interface is a royal headache.
This is when the Settlement Situation Tooltips mod becomes really useful. It’s a basic plugin that provides players with informative tooltips about the different problems a colony is facing.
10) Armor Indicators
Once a brother dies, he is essentially gone forever, hence it is vital to watch his armour levels. This information is provided by the Armor Indicators mod in the form of color-coded indicators that reflect both head and body damage for each of your characters.
With this mod plus the Construct Armor and Shields mod, you’ll be able to swiftly determine whether any of your comrades need new equipment and craft it for them.
11) Smart Recruiter
In Battle Brothers, recruiting mercenaries is very difficult, since the vast majority of recruitable soldiers are completely worthless once their stats are exposed. Tryouts are excessively costly and do not reveal all a player may require!
This is where the Smart Recruiter modification comes into play. It is a simple adjustment that allows players to see the traits of all the mercenaries they are evaluating, which is a lifesaver in so many ways.
12) Better Hit Information
The best surveillance tool for combat. Better Hit Information offers a whole new set of information that were previously unavailable. Better Hit Information provides a weapon/skill hit bonus, surrounded bonus, height advantage bonus, rapid adaptation bonus, and too near penalty at a glance, allowing you to have a much clearer understanding of what’s going on throughout each of your combat engagements.
You’ll be able to make more considered selections with every action, eventually assisting your brothers in surviving every violent encounter.
13) 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 large number of limited-scope minor mods that do this, that, or the other, and you can download each part separately to create a custom experience.
There does not appear to be a centralised tool that will allow you to acquire multiple sub-mods at once, so getting your full ‘loadout’ prepared will be a bit of a hassle, but there are some excellent tweaks here. Please note that, at the time of writing, the designer is in the process of verifying which modifications are compatible with the recently released Blazing Deserts DLC.
14) Scoutable Locations
Scoutable Areas is a highly handy tool for exploring the environment, since it provides more information while hovering over locations. It does not reveal every detail, though. You can now view what sorts of opponents are present in any given area.
If you’ve ever prepped for a battle against, say, orcs and felt unprepared since you’re ostensibly facing the undead, then you need this item. In addition to adversary kinds, the mod provides you with a percentage chance to find certain objects in each place. This is particularly useful when searching for the game’s rarer goods.
15) Bro Editor
Due to the game’s excellent procedural generation, the numerous mercenaries that may be hired in it all seem rather distinct. However, there are situations when players may want further customization choices for their group’s characters.
This is where the Bro Editor comes in in, allowing gamers to personalise their group’s qualities, as well as their traits and ailments. It’s a basic mod that works in-game and is ideal for gamers that want some of their characters to be really distinctive.
16) Level All The Skills
At times, Battle Brothers might seem so extremely difficult that players would choose anything that would level the playing field. Unbalanced and overpowering modifications are among the several alternatives available to gamers.
Level all the Skills is one such mod that is hilariously broken yet does not diminish Battle Brothers’ difficulty. This mod enables users to establish gigantic mercenary organisations with a little amount of time commitment, as indicated in the mod’s title.
