If you’re playing the Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord expansion, War Sails, you may have noticed a debuff at sea related to fleet size. This will reduce your speed, which can be deadly if warring kingdoms are chasing you on the water. Fortunately, it has a simple answer that may require a lot of skill leveling or changing your fleet. Find out everything you need to know about how to increase fleet size and/or ship formations.
How to Increase Fleet Size in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord
The debuff “Over fleet size” is due to having too many ships in your fleet while sailing. Unfortunately, this isn’t clearly explained in the War Sails tutorial, so it’s easy to not understand. However, by default, you’ll have a limit of three ships before getting this movement speed debuff. As long as you’re at three or less, regardless of the ship type, you’ll be okay.
If you want to increase your fleet size, you’ll have to level up your Boatswain and Shipmaster skills to get certain perks. Doing so will allow you to have more ships, both while traveling on the overworld and in battle. With that said, if you’re fighting a sea battle as part of an army, you may have access to more formations and ship slots. This is because the deployment screen seems to share those slots with the other lords in your army.
Here are the specific skills and perks to have more ships without the debuff:
| Fleet Size Perks in War Sails | |||
| Skill Name | Skill Level | Skill Perk | Skill Description |
| Boatswain | 200 | Port Authority |
|
| Boatswain | 250 | Merchant Fleet |
|
| Shipmaster | 225 | Stormrider |
|
| Shipmaster | 225 | Master and Commander |
|
Other Tricks to Deal With Fleet Size Limitations
As you grow your party deeper into each Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord run, you’ll need a larger fleet to hold them all. The unfortunate part about the skills above is that they’ll only get you to a maximum of six ships total. If you can’t get those skills and/or need more ships, you can opt to use larger ships instead.
Early on, you’ll be more likely to have smaller light ships like the Dhow that can only hold 16 troops. Instead of getting a bunch of these, you’ll eventually be able to swap to medium and heavy ships. These can often hold larger crews and may even have upgrade slots to increase them further. For example, a heavy Dromon I’m currently running holds as high as 132 crew. Part of this is due to the Reinforced Battlements with Barracks upgrade it has.
If you’re worried about having enough cargo capacity going from lighter ships to heavier ones, there are upgrades to help offset that change too. Examples include ship upgrades like the Heavy Storm Cover and Large Cargo Tent. Aside from that, that’s all there is to know about how to increase your fleet size in the War Sails expansion. Since its release, the developers at TaleWorlds Entertainment have put out many updates and balance changes. This could lead to more ways of increasing your fleet limit at a later time.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.