Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord’s couched lances deliver one of the game’s strongest attacks but their use and usefulness isn’t immediately obvious, especially if you’re just starting your journey through Calradia.
To get you performing devastating attacks from horseback in no time, here’s everything you need to know about Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord’s couched lances and how they work.
Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord Couched Lance
Before you can rule the battlefield from atop your steed, you need to get your hands on an actual couched lance. To do so, you need to pay attention to the tags associated to weapons in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.
Whenever you purchase or loot weapons, you’ll notice that hovering your mouse above or clicking on them opens up a small panel with stats. On the same panel, you have icons and tags further describing what the weapon is capable of.
What you’re looking for are two-handed polearms with the Couch Lance tag. They’re not the most frequent type of polearm you’ll encounter, but visiting the trade screens of Imperial-aligned cities should eventually get you one.
With a couched lance in your possession, you obviously need to equip it and make sure that you’re riding in battle on horseback.
As your horse gains speed while charging towards the enemy, you’ll notice the small icon on the lower right, just above your health bar, lighting up.
Pressing X will couch your lance, shown both by your character pointing it in front of them and its position on the icon changing from raised to lowered.
You need to not only gain but also maintain speed for this to work. The bright side is that after pressing X, you only need to ram your lance without swinging it into any enemy unfortunate enough to be in your way. The result? A massive amount of damage that’s far greater than any standard swing.
While you still need precision in steering your horse, a decent Riding skill makes it a considerably simpler motion to get used to, as you don’t have to initiate and time an actual weapon strike.
Now that you’re all caught up with couched lances in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, check out our guides on the Stop Conspiracy quest and marriage.
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