Along with its brutal and complex medieval melee combat, one of the highlights of Mordhau is its lute. The string instrument of choice for many medieval bards, Mordhau’s lute lets players wander the horrific battlefield strumming songs to accompany the fighting.

But in August 2018 some brave modders chose to ask why Mordhau’s lute players should be limited to the confines of medieval tunes and basic strumming. Why shouldn’t we be able to play Darude’s “Sandstorm” on a lute, they asked? And so, LuteBot was born. Now that the game has actually launched, a new version of the mod has been released. The mod has been updated, renamed LuteBot 2.0, and even added a few new features.

The earliest version of LuteBot was designed to transpose MIDI files into something that was playable in-game. You downloaded the file and pointed LuteBot to it and LuteBot would let you play whatever song you downloaded in the game in lute form. The mod was made with the support of Mordhau’s developer Triternion, which helped out with the mod and promised players that it’s one of the few third party add-ons that won’t result in a ban.

The new 2.0 version of LuteBot updates the add-on for the game’s official release and adds a few quality-of-life improvements. More importantly, it gives players new ways to use the in-game lute. While you can still use it to play songs from a playlist of files you’ve downloaded, you can also now play the lute in real-time with a MIDI keyboard. If you have a MIDI keyboard connected, LuteBot will take the notes you play on the keys and translate them directly to Mordhau’s in-game lute.

LuteBot 2.0’s installation is fairly complicated, but the mod team behind it has put together detailed instructions of how to use it. Now the only thing left to see is how creative Mordhau players can get while they’re trying to add soundtracks to the game’s massive battles.