Is it just me, or do you have to start a completely new game to play the War Sails expansion?

When I try to load my existing saves, it says they were created without War Sails and I have to
turn it off to load them... What gives?

Yeah I take that as them deliberately telling you it won't be compatible with the DLC.

How is War Sails an "expansion" if you can't use it with your existing game?

The map was changed for War Sails, some cities have there location changed a bit, rivers are wider and skills were added. I understand that it is incopatible with old saves.

I would recommend you to wait for a mod that lets you edit your character to at least "import" your character. You will be able to edit your companions' stats, too. It might just need some days until the devs update their mods to be compatible with War Sails.

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3700

Besides this saying "Attrbutes" this has always worked flawlessly. And it is even almost up to date. Maybe they even fixed that typo.

Thank you for this. It would at least let me restart a campaign with a "finished" character...

Core issue remains, though. If you make an "expansion" it's meant to be compatible with the base game. What
TaleWorlds have done, it seems, is gone the same route as CDPR: use ongoing (free) feedback to change their
game into something new. Which, of course, they are free to do. But it doesn't mean I have to like it :)

Imagine, back in the day, putting in 100 hours into Dragon Age: Origins, buying and installing Awakening and being
told "sorry: we've changed our game in the interim and your save no longer works; you'll need to start a new one."

It's nice modders exist to pick up the slack for devs jerking us around, but -- ideally -- they shouldn't have to.

Oh I agree with you. I love this game but they've made questionable decisions for sure. Not to mention I bought day one, and there was 2 patches on the offline files within 16 hours... it's not ready yet. I crashed every time I rammed a boat in the custom battles, but I'm on Linux so I can't be sure it was just the game. Oh well, no one releases a product FINISHED anymore.

At least now we (sorta) know what lab mice feel like :D

I ended up refunding War Sails and thought I could just keep playing my saves in Bannerlord, but they borked those as well. Something in the last patch made every weapon I've crafted unable to render (they showed up as that "hey, I'm loading here" spinning wheel); and if I tried to walk around town or go into battle, the game CTD'd...

Oh, well: nice way to wrap up three years of gameplay. Time to move on.

I feel your pain man, sorry. I also refunded. They probably released (too early) for holiday sales.

I have the old versions of the game backed up with my old saves, so it's easy for me to revisit and play. At the time I did this I thought it was overkill and stupid, now I'm glad I did it lol. I'll check back maybe in a few months to see if the DLC is finished.

Just because you are paranoid, does not mean they're not after you =)