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Banished came out eight years ago in 2014. This solo dev effort not only sold four to five million copies, but also carved out a niche for survival city-building games. The modding support was added to the game only a few months after its release.
This somewhat minimalistic medieval survival village-building game still sees a healthy player base, thanks to its impressive modding community. Though vanilla Banished is fun, it gets stale after one or two playthroughs due to its limited content.
The mods for Banished add a multitude of new buildings to work with, letting players build complex production chains. The new buildings from the mods not only add depth in terms of content, but also spice up the visuals with lots of varied decoration options.
Top 5 Banished mods
The best Banished mods are as follows:
- Realistic Ageing
- North 7
- Colonial Charter
- MegaMod
- RK Editor's Choice
The fix to death waves in Banished: Realistic Ageing
Players often encounter debilitating death waves as they progress in Banished. This mostly stems from the way aging works in the vanilla game. While the Realistic Ageing mod is not a magic bullet to fix this issue, it goes a long way in making the population much more stable.
The mod makes citizens age one year per in-game year instead of the standard five, along with a bunch of other tweaks to the age limits regarding schools, marriage, child-bearing, and death.
The brutal Viking-themed overhaul: North 7
North 7 is a Viking-themed overhaul mod in a Nordic landscape with realistic climate and sunlight, new ambient sounds, wild animals and resources, a complete set of buildings, a reworked trade and happiness system as well as many small changes for a special Banished experience. The mod is well-regarded for its gritty realistic gameplay design.
The rustic-themed DLC-sized expansion: Colonial Charter
Colonial Charter: Journey (1.76) offers players a wide array of new resources and production chains. Players will get to build a truly rustic-themed settlement in its entirety or erect their own mini-empire using the new city wall kit and related new buildings. This mod truly feels like an official DLC for the game.
The largest content pack: MegaMod
MegaMod is an amalgamation of the Colonial Charter and a lot of other smaller mods. This monstrosity of a mod adds copious amounts of content to the game, giving players tons of options. While some criticize MegaMod for being overwhelming, MegaMod might be up your alley if you are looking for a wide variety of building and decoration options.
The latest MegaMod 9 Public Beta is only available on Black Liquid Software’s forums, since Steam Workshop could not accommodate the mod due to its gargantuan size.
The most balanced overhaul: RK Editor’s Choice
This overhaul mod from RedKetchup is the most balanced and well-thought-out when it comes to gameplay design. RK Editor's Choice adds a bunch of new resources and production chains, all while revamping the looks of the vanilla buildings.
These informative tooltips are a testament to the meticulous effort put into creating this large overhaul. While the amount of content in RKEC fades in comparison to something like MegaMod, the thorough and balanced nature of this lightweight overhaul triumphs over all others.
How to install Banished mods
The mods available at Steam Workshop are really easy to install, as all that players need to do after subscribing to a certain mod is to enable it from the game's main menu.
Mods available elsewhere, like in the case of MegaMod, require manual installation. You need to place the downloaded files (with .pkm extension) into the "WinData" folder of your game directory. After that, it just requires to be enabled from the in-game mod menu just like before.
