The Mercenary Codex
A Sellsword's Field Ledger

The Mercenary Codex

Everything you need to take a ragged band of starving recruits and turn them into the company that ends a Greenskin Invasion. Builds, weapons, perks, enemy tactics, and the secrets nobody writes on the contract board.

Current Patch — v1.5.2.2 (June 18, 2026)

First content update in roughly a year. Balance changes across weapons, armor and perks, plus new enemy variants. Our patch page tracks confirmed v1.5.2.2 changes and notes where we use guide-canon estimates (e.g. the community Estoc).

Read the full patch breakdown →

Where do you want to go, sellsword?

The Company

Company Origins

All 11 starting origins explained — roster, bonuses, penalties, and difficulty. From the balanced start to Lone Wolf and the Davkul Cultists.

The Hiring Hall

Hiring & Recruitment

Every recruitable background tiered (Hedge Knight to Beggar) with role, cost and tryout advice, plus how price, wages and nicknames really work. Searchable.

The Retinue

Company Followers

The non-combatant followers that buff the whole company — what each does and the best picks for early, mid and late game.

The Roster

Character Builds

Named archetypes with full perk orders, target stats, weapons, and which backgrounds to recruit for each role.

The Armory

Weapons & Skills

Every weapon family and skill, what it counters, and full sortable hard-stat tables for every weapon. Searchable.

The Quartermaster

Armor & Shields

Every body armor, helmet and shield with exact stats, the protection-per-fatigue ranking, and which character stats to build for heavy tanks vs. Nimble fighters.

The Reliquary

Named & Legendary

Every Named item's roll ranges (durability, damage, armor, fatigue bands) and every Legendary unique with its special effect — what's a god-roll and what's not. Searchable.

The Training Yard

Perk Trees

All seven perk tiers ranked, what synergizes with what, and the standing rules for leveling a brother.

The Campaign

Game Phases

Early, early-mid, mid, mid-late, and late game. What to fight, what to buy, and what to build at each stage.

The Ledger

Economy, Trade & Renown

Selling loot, trade-goods runs, reading a town's buildings and prices, settlement relations vs. company renown, and how to raise it.

Know Thy Foe

Enemy Tactics

How to beat bandits, Greenskins, the Undead, beasts, and every late-game crisis. Faction by faction.

Whispered in Taverns

Secrets & Edge Cases

Legendary locations, hidden mechanics, the Beastmaster trick, named loot, and the things the tutorial never tells you.

How to read this Codex

The Tier marks

Builds and weapons carry a rating from the company's own ledger:

S meta-defining, always good
A strong, reliable pick
B situational, good in a role
C niche or early-only
D bring something else

One rule above all

Battle Brothers punishes the careless and rewards the patient. A retreat that keeps your company alive beats a victory that costs you two veterans you spent forty days raising.

Death is permanent. Plan like it.

Sources & further reading

We write this Codex from experience and the game's own data. For exhaustive numbers and the references we cross-checked, these are worth a bookmark:

Battle Brothers Wiki — the comprehensive reference for weapons, perks, enemies and origins.
Steam — Battle Brothers — official patch notes, and the community build guides we drew ideas from.