CK3 1.19 "Scribe": what changed, and what came after

Release date and version line

Update 1.19 "Scribe" went live on 20 Apr 2026. Paradox released it the same day as the Chapter V expansion pass, and the update carries support for Chapter V content. Its free features reach every owner of the game. See Chapter V for what the pass holds.

An open beta came first. It opened on 27 Mar 2026 on the open_beta branch in Steam, and a first beta update followed on 1 Apr 2026. Paradox called 1.19 a Realm Maintenance update: long-standing bugs, quality-of-life changes, and the health of the base game.

Three numbered fixes followed on Steam: 1.19.0.4, 1.19.0.5, and 1.19.0.6. Then 1.20.0 "Crozier" shipped with By God Alone on 30 Sep 2026. The newest patch on Steam news as of 9 Nov 2026 is 1.20.1.2, from 21 Oct 2026.

As of 9 Nov 2026, the default Steam branch is 1.20.1.2. To see which branch you have picked, open the game's Properties in Steam and the Game Versions & Betas tab. The section on mods and saves below shows that tab.

Official (Paradox announcements on Steam, CK3 news hub)

• Chapter V
• By God Alone

The Ledger

The Ledger is a new window of world statistics. You open it from the HUD, next to the date, or with a shortcut. It has nine pages: Ongoing Wars, Artifacts, Characters, Houses and Dynasties, Holdings, Counties, Titles, Faiths and Religions, and Cultures.

Characters has three tabs: richest, strongest, and most famed. Titles has four: duchies, kingdoms, empires, and hegemonies. Most pages sort and filter, and one filter is by player, so a multiplayer game can use it as a leaderboard. You can favorite an entry, such as an artifact you plan to steal. The top three entries stand on a podium.

It is more than a list. The Holdings page lets you build. Artifact interactions work from the Artifacts page. Wars now count losses, and the war overview shows them too. Court artifacts are easy to find there, and dynasty renown can be compared across houses.

A modder built it. In the Realm Maintenance dev diary, Agami, a UX designer and CK3 modder, describes building a ledger mod first and being hired by Paradox to make it official. By God Alone later added Ledger filters for rites, holy relics, and artifact types.

• Court artifacts
• Dynasty renown
• Warfare basics

The accolade rework

Accolades belong to knights. An accolade turns one of your knights into an Acclaimed Knight, with attributes that grow as the accolade gains glory. 1.19 rebuilt the system. The old primary and secondary attributes are gone. An accolade now starts with one attribute and unlocks more. Dev Diary 192 caps it at three in total.

Only dukes and above can hold accolades now. You can no longer have more accolades than you have knight slots. Some attributes unlock from what the ruler has done, through battles, activities, and schemes, not only from the knight.

You no longer pick a successor by hand. Each accolade has a Squires value. When the knight dies, a suitable courtier takes the accolade, or a new knight is generated, and Squires adjusts that knight's traits and skills. Dev Diary 192 says glory is the main driver of Squires. A knight who dies honorably, in battle or in a duel, no longer costs the accolade glory. Accolades are now either active or retired, and Acclaimed Knights are less likely to die or be captured in battle.

Knight Permissions came with 1.19 too. You set a minimum prowess, and you can forbid your heir or your councillors from serving, so your heir need not ride into battle as a knight. The tours and tournaments guide covers where knights earn glory. Warfare basics covers knights in battle, men-at-arms timing the regiments an accolade can unlock, and the succession crash course who inherits if the heir falls.

• Activities and tours
• Warfare basics
• When to raise men-at-arms
• Succession crash course

Domain limit moved onto education

Before 1.19, Stewardship granted domain limit directly. Now it does not. Every education trait grants domain limit by its tier, whatever the skill. Dev Diary 194 gives the steps: tier 1 is -1, tier 2 is 0, tier 3 is +1, tier 4 is +2, and tier 5 is +3.

A tier 5 Martial or Learning education now adds as much domain limit as a tier 5 Stewardship one. The trait pages show it, for example Indulgent Wastrel at -1, Fortune Builder at +1, and Golden Sovereign at +3. Domain and economy adds those steps to the title-rank table.

The lifestyle trees changed too. The Architect tree's domain-limit bonus fell to 1. The rest moved into four trees: Patriarch, Theologian, Torturer, and Overseer. The Theologian trait lists +1 domain limit. Regencies no longer raise domain limit.

Your heir's education now sets how much land they can keep. A badly taught heir can end up over the limit. Education and guardians is where you fix that early. Surviving a partition covers the grants that keep the core intact.

• Domain and economy
• Education and guardians
• Surviving a partition
• Succession crash course

Elder traits and fewer events

Old characters now pick up tiered ailments. 1.19 adds four elder traits: Faltering Heart, Fragile Bones, Clouded Eyes, and Withering Mind. Infirm became a tiered elder trait too. They worsen over time, and you can act to slow them.

Dev Diary 194 says Faltering Heart worsens with stress breaks and kills at rank 4. Infirm is now much rarer and no longer lowers intrigue or learning. A game rule brings back the old Infirm-only model. In beta update 1, the Cultivation tradition gained a 50% cut to the chance of new elder traits.

1.19 also cut the number of events. Travel events dropped from 1 in 5 to 1 in 20. Coming-of-age events now fire only for your heir, your favorite child, or your three oldest living children. The rest become feed messages. Cancer is now more likely with a family history or elder health traits.

• Infirm
• Withering Mind
• Culture traditions

Other notable changes

The Situations tab now shows Stories: personal event chains such as a pet dog, being a Conqueror, or El Cid, with their decisions and modifiers. Event Nameplates, based on a community mod, show a character's name, relation, and opinion in events. Most tabs gained hotkeys, and event options take Shift plus a number, except dangerous red options. The Barbershop gained a color picker with up to 16 clothing colors.

The Royal Court gained a Court Visuals tab and a new Chinese court type, Dragon's Mandate, which exists only if you pick it by hand. Hegemonies now expect more grandeur than empires; see royal court. War losses now appear in the war overview and war results, counting battle deaths, attrition, and fallen knights, commanders, and rulers. Warfare basics covers those screens.

A Kingdom Come: Deliverance tie-in adds an adventuring Henry in the 867, 1066, and 1178 starts, Trosky Castle as a special building in Bezdez, and 19 tracks from Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Nomads got an Overrun Duchy casus belli for duke-tier rulers. Maim Co-Emperor became Remove Co-Ruler, Form Portugal now needs control of its duchies, and Saxon Elective was added to the relevant titles. See disinherit or elective for elective law.

Alp Arslan now starts 1066 with extra prestige, so he is no longer negative. Lethal tournament events now give a chance to escape with wounds or disfigurement, and Rites of Passage lost its gold cost and prestige scaling. A Community Fix Day list fixed many reported bugs, such as faction wars that broke when the leader was jailed. Intrigue and hooks covers the schemes those factions grow from.

• Royal court
• Alp Arslan
• Disinherit or elective
• Activities and tours

Hotfixes 1.19.0.4 to 1.19.0.6

1.19.0.4 came on 23 Apr 2026, three days after release. It fixed out-of-sync errors in cross-platform multiplayer. It also stopped trait events, such as those for Lunatic and Depressed characters, from firing too often.

1.19.0.5 came on 7 May 2026. In 1.19, your infidelity was announced to everyone as it happened. Paradox fixed it with the line: "It's the Middle Ages, not a Coldplay concert." Pregnancies that began in 1.19.0.4 can still trigger the message.

1.19.0.5 also fixed the Legendary Hunt and Song of El Cid stories, an endless renown loop in the Iberian Dominance ending, Purchase Land for landless characters, AI characters who could not upgrade knight accolades, and Rites of Passage refunding its cost on cancel.

1.19.0.6 came on 25 May 2026. It made it possible to invite agents to schemes by hand again. It also made epidemics and natural disasters as lethal as intended. Both matter in intrigue and in your first hundred years.

• Lunatic
• Intrigue and hooks

1.20 "Crozier" and 1.20.1.2

1.20.0 "Crozier" came on 30 Sep 2026 with By God Alone. Part of it is free for everyone: rites, heresies when faith fervor falls below 40, reworked excommunication, personal tenets and spiritual fulfillment, monastic and military orders, eminent holy sites, and antipopes.

The Excommunicated trait now halves one-off piety gains as well as monthly piety. A Form Knightly Sellsword Band decision turns an accolade knight into a mercenary company that stays allied to you, and the AI now spends accolade level-ups. Faith and conversion covers rites and orders in play.

Two hotfixes followed. 1.20.0.3 on 1 Oct 2026 fixed elective titles and a crash in the Fourth Crusade story. 1.20.0.4 on 6 Oct 2026 fixed a bug that blocked educating your children. 1.20.1 on 13 Oct 2026 was the balance pass. It halved the Religious Scholar lifestyle bonus, from up to +50% to up to +25%, and made the Monk trait selectable in the Ruler Designer.

1.20.1.2 on 21 Oct 2026 is the current patch. It fixed portrait crashes, monasteries that could not be bestowed, and an adventurer game over. Paradox says further changes go into 1.21, which comes with Silk & Silver. Paradox dates Silk & Silver to 17 Nov 2026. Chapter V holds both expansions.

• By God Alone
• Chapter V
• Silk & Silver
• Faith and conversion

Mods and saves after updating

Paradox's advice after 1.19: if something breaks, start a new campaign and disable your mods. If it still breaks, report it on the official bug forum. The 1.20.0.3 post asks you to disable all mods before filing a report.

Within the 1.20 line, Paradox says 1.20.1.2 should be fully compatible with existing 1.20 saves and mods. The 1.20.0 notes make no such statement for 1.19 saves.

Steam can hold older versions. In Properties, the Game Versions & Betas tab lists branches set up by the developer. Paradox's own screenshot from March 2026 shows old-version branches for 1.18.1.1, 1.18.2, and 1.18.3 (Crane), plus open_beta. Pick the branch that matches your save or your mods before you load it.

Moving a finished campaign to Europa Universalis V is a separate step. The EU5 converter guide covers that.

• EU5 converter
• CK3 FAQ

Why the hub's numbers say 1.20.1.2

The game data on the Guide Annex CK3 hub, such as trait effects and domain limits, is read from patch 1.20.1.2. The trait index holds 306 trait entries recorded for that patch. The trait calculator adds those recorded modifiers to the base skills you enter.

That matters for anything 1.19 or 1.20 touched. The education domain-limit steps, the elder traits, and the Excommunicated trait, at -50% monthly piety and -50% piety rewards, are 1.20.1.2 values on the trait pages. The domain-limit rank table in domain and economy comes from the same patch.

If your game shows a different version, trust the tooltip in your game. When 1.21 arrives with Silk & Silver, some values may change, and the 1.20.1.2 label tells you which patch a number came from.

• Trait calculator
• Trait index
• Sources