Mount And Blade Warband Follow Spy
Create a Faction
We have established the basic process of how to create your own faction. In simple terms you simply have to seize a town or city as an independent. The problem is keeping your empire and avoiding a crushing attack from the other factions. Obviously you have to be levelled up, kitted out and in command of a large, well trained army. Making friends will also help because there is a greater chance that other lords will stay neutral when you rebel. Now we’ll have a look at recruiting lords, marrying ladies and increasing your Right to Rule.
- Mount & Blade: Warband is noted to be the first sequel and exclusive expansion for the acclaimed action RPG title. Medieval warriors can up the ante by employing a few interesting mods to their.
- Just got it, my first mount and blade experience, enjoying it so far, but I kinda have no idea what to do, after freeing the merchant's brother, I'm just wondering from city to city, buying and selling stuff, fighting occasional forest bandits.
Follow spy: You will be asked to follow a spy who is trying to meet with his accomplices. Since the spy is fast, you must rely on your Tracking skill (it doesn't need to be good, level 2 Tracking will suffice). After you have found the spy and his accomplices, you'll have to confront and fight them.
Recruiting Lords
You can also improve your chances of victory by recruiting lords to your cause. This will make your faction more powerful but it will also decrease your chances of grabbing land for yourself. If you persuade a lord to defect or you make a companion into a vassal you will need to grant them lands of their own to keep them happy. If you make a companion into a vassal make sure they are levelled up with good armour and weaponry first because you won’t be able to change it afterwards.
You’ll need to talk to them in private if you want to recruit them. Make sure that you have a decent relationship before you broach the subject so as to avoid trouble. You can also question the competency of the current king and suggest you would do a better job. It is a smart idea to survey the scene before making any moves and make sure you approach the disaffected lords.
You can find out the situation by observing messages, talking to lords and ladies and sending your companions to gather intelligence. It is important you recruit lords and promote companions with similar ideas or you’ll end up with a hopeless kingdom.
Marriage
Another new option in Mount & Blade: Warband is to woo a lady with poetry and marry her. You can do it in secret or you can get her father’s permission (sometimes brother). It takes several visits to worm your way into a bedchamber and it’s not a good idea to rush. You can learn poems in taverns and there seems to be a limit of five in total.
The benefit of marriage is that it gives you the ability to hold feasts and increase your standing. It also brings you closer to the family, provided the marriage was sanctioned. Be warned though, if you elope and marry without the permission of the male relative then you’ll be making an enemy for life.
In order to meet eligible ladies you should win tournaments and then visit the feast and dedicate the tournament win to the lady you fancy. Once you declare an interest you’ll get summons occasionally or you can go to the city where the lady resides and you’ll see Attempt to visit a lady as a new menu option. When the relationship gets advanced enough and you’ve tried out all your poems on her you can pop the question.
Right to Rule
An important new concept in Mount & Blade: Warband is Right to Rule. You can check your Right to Rule rating in your Character Report. When you think you are ready to create your own faction you should start to build up this rating by talking to your companions and telling them you want to be king. You’ll get an option to send them out on missions. Each of your companions will have a different idea about how to improve your chances of becoming king. You’ll only be able to send one or two at a time and they’ll be away from your party for a few days while they complete the mission. Each time they return your Right to Rule will increase by 3.
If your Right to Rule rating is too low and you try to start your own faction you can expect serious opposition from all factions because they’ll regard you as a rebel bandit. To be taken seriously you have to have a good rating in terms of renown, honor and Right to Rule (just over 50 worked for me).
Mount And Blade Warband Meet Spy In Rivacheg
Making Peace
You can’t afford to be at war with everyone so you’ll want to make peace with some factions. If you are on friendly terms and you have a good standing in Calradia then you should be able to get peace. You can also use your companions as diplomats for your cause and send them to visit factions in an attempt to get treaties. You can do this by talking to your minister and asking him to dispatch an emissary. You want to send someone in your party with good persuasion skills to increase your chances of success.
Don’t be Controversial
There are various things that will make your standing suffer and so you must avoid them if you want to be taken seriously as a king. If you have a high Controversy rating you run the risk of incurring the wrath of everyone. You can check your Controversy by selecting Notes then Characters.
- Always make sure you take care of your lands. If you don’t protect them and develop them your reputation will suffer.
- Be careful who you make into a vassal. Some lords will get upset and outraged if you grant status to a commoner. You can afford to promote companions like Alayen because they are of noble blood.
- Get permission for your love affairs. If you sneak around behind the backs of male relatives or worse elope with a lady then you’ll anger people.
Build a Solid Foundation
The gold doesn’t always flow very easily and since you’ll be engaged in major warfare when you begin a new faction you’ll want a solid financial base behind you. It is ideal if the first target you take is rich. It is also a good idea to target the weakest faction and scoop up their lands as quickly as possible.
Remember that in order to attack a faction you need to have a negative relationship with them.
If you plan well you should be ruling an empire in no time. If you have any suggestions for good tactics to use then please post a comment.
This post is part of the series: Mount & Blade: Warband Guide
This is a Guide to the Mount & Blade Viking Conquest (VC) mod. I'm assuming that anyone playing VC already has a basic knowledge of Native.
Character Creation:
In a general sense, character creation in VC follows the same general rules in Native. There are two key differences, however. Firstly, while your starting attributes are much higher, you only gain a new attribute point every five levels. You get your first point at level 6 and will get an additional point at levels 11, 16, 21, and so on. Secondly, you can raise a skill up to half of the value of the relevant attribute rather than the one-third in Native. You will also gain two skill points per level instead of the single point you would receive in Native.
This means that your starting attributes matter much more than they do in Native while your starting skills won't make any difference past a certain level. As such I recommend using this guide to optimize your character.
The most important attribute in VC is charisma. You don't need an absurdly high charisma to be successful but having a reasonable amount will greatly improve your quality of life. You will need to have a big army in this game and that requires persuasion to build and leadership to maintain. I personally would never go under 12.
Strength and agility are more of a toss up. Having a strong combat character is both useful in that you can heavily influence the outcome of a battle and generally makes the game more fun. Strength is better for combat overall but VC differs from Native in that agility builds can also be quite useful. Weapon speed has a higher impact on damage in VC than it does in Native. As a result athletics and weapons mastery will have a very noticeable impact on your damage output, particularly with pierce weapons. It isn't as high as strength, but also allows you to get some top-tier party skills really high. Namely looting and path-finding. I'd say strength is slightly better but it's not your only option. Getting 9 riding and zooming around on a horse is quite fun.
Intelligence is the worst stat but it's still more viable than in Native. It's weighted a little less heavily in character creation meaning that you can get a couple more 'free' points of intelligence than you can of the other stats. Companions still are your best option for all the intelligence based party skills.
At level 13 in VC you will gain a trait which will is essentially an extra ability in battle that you can activate be pressing 'T.' Which trait you get depends on which skill of the four trait determining skills is the highest and they are as follows:
Power Strike: Berserker, you temporarily gain more power strike and athletics after which you will be temporarily exhausted and only inflict half damage.
Ironflesh: Strong, you gain the ability to start a shield taunt in battle. Additionally, your men become harder to wound in battle.
Athletics: Tough, you gain the ability to start a shield taunt in battle. Additionally, your men become faster in battle.
Inspiring: Leadership, you can shout a warcry in battle. Your men fight more fiercely (I'm not sure if this improves moral are makes then do more damage).
Which one is best really comes down to personal preference. I'm inclined to dislike berserker as I think the bonus is overkill so it's a net loss to use it because the drawback is so annoying. Keep in mind that wearing heavy equipment (i.e. mail, helmets, etc.) will reduce athletics and power strike and does have an effect on which trait you get. For example if you had 7 power strike and 8 athletics and wanted tough but you were wearing a scale lorica which reduces athletics more than it does power strike you might end up with berserker instead. This can be avoided by taking off stat reducing gear right before you reach level 13.f
Getting Started:
The goal at the beginning of the game is to only rise through the social hierarchy but to build a solid foundation for your future kingdom. This foundation must be made of money. VC is much more expensive than Native and you will need money to do literally anything and lots of it. The only way to fund your future conquests is with productive enterprises. Breweries in particular serve as the best economic cornerstone. However, you're going to need a 8000 peningas to open one, not to mention the money you'll need for a ship to move around the map and get a party together. As such, your first step will be to get some cannon fodder together to mug some bandits and take their stuff so you can make some money.
I see a lot of people asking how to recruit early in VC so here is a complete list in order of best to worst:
Old Sea Captain: One of these can be found in every port city intuitively right next to the port. You can recruit sailors (tier 2 skirmisher) from him for 40 peningas a piece. Sailors are trash but they're your best and cheapest early option and enough of them will do the job against even mid-tier troops.
Farmstead: These are neutral locations that are spread around the map. You can enter them and talk to the reeve to recruit a random number of farmers (tier 1 skirmisher) for 100 peningas. Farmers are even more trash than sailors but these are a steal price wise and you don't have many options.
Villages: Unlike in Native you have to pay to play to recruit from villages. Depending on the disposition of the village elder this will cost you 400-600 peningas up front. You then have to pay for each individual troop, which will all be tier 1 skirmishers. Only use this if you're desperate.
Freeing and Recruiting Prisoners: This works just like in Native except you have to pay prisoners to recruit them.. and they still might run off. However, you can use the troop quarters feature unique to VC to quarantine them overnight to make sure they stay. Freeing prisoners is cheap AND you can get great troops. The only problem is that it is unreliable (very few parties will have prisoners early in the game) and you already need to have some troops to win the battle.
After you get 150 renown and 5 relation with a lord you can recruit in his castle or town. You will recruit tier 2 spearmen unless you have a high enough relationship with it in which case you can recruit tier 3 infantry or spearmen. You can also recruit troops in mead halls (aka taverns) with 150 renown but it is expensive and most of the troops you can recruit are total trash. I would only consider Svere warriors. Veterans and spearmen are okay if you really need them.
Keep in mind that in VC moral requires more micromanagement than in Native. Don't let your army get too big or they will start to desert. I don't let my army get over 130 unless I am going to be winning a lot of battles because they become to hard to keep happy. Also, your religion (christian or pagan) affects your troops moral. Christian troops won't like an disreputable pagan commander and vice-versa. For reference:
Pagan Troops:
Norse faction troops
Vikingr
Berserkers
Old Captains
Sea Captains
Svear Warriors
Finnish Archers
Mount And Blade Spy Quest
Christian Troops
Irish faction troops
British faction troops
Pictish faction troops
Saxon faction troops
Angle faction troops
Troops from the bandit troop tree
Bandit Leaders
Frankish Horsemen
Aquitanian Skirmishers
Neutral Troops:
Troops from the mercenary troop tree (upgrades from farmer)
Female troops
Ulfhedinn (maybe this only applies to the ones that you can get from the random event where they ask to join your party)
Once you have enough men to win fights just hunt bandits and sell their stuff. Get a shield and a one handed weapon for yourself ASAP as they will help you win early fights. If you win a battle against opponents wearing mail I highly recommend taking the 'take first claim on all the loot option' moral penalties be damned as you have a high chance score really good gear early on.
Investing Your Capital:
Once you have a nice stack of peningas saved up you have a few options to start making real money. It all depends on your current situation. You may want to just keep grinding and buy a productive enterprise and keep grinding. However, trading is extremely powerful in VC if you know what to do. The first thing you need to do is make you way to Friese. If you have trash troops you don't care about just disband them. It is much cheaper to travel alone. If you have some decent dudes you can stash them in troop quarters until you need them. Travel across land as much as you can as paying for passage is expensive. Once you get to Friese your trade route should be as follows:
(the number next to each good like so: Wine(800) is a rough estimate as to its average value. Try to sell it close to this number or higher. If you can't get a good deal you might want to peddle it somewhere else)
Buy Jewelry(1000), Wine(800), and Salt(300) in Dorestad.
Travel to Ribe and sell some of what you bought in Dorestad. Don't sell so much that you significantly devalue your product however.
Travel to Tunsberg. Sell some more of what you bought in Dorestad. Buy Tar(450).
Check in the villages around Norway for Iron(500)
Travel around the western coast of England/Scotland. Stop in every village and check for Wool(800). This is how to make BIG money.
Keep an eye out of any random good deals such as Honey(250)
Stop at any towns along the way to sell and of the leftovers from Dorestad as well as what you bought in Norway/Tunsberg if it's at an acceptable price. It's fine to save the Iron and Tar but you should offload everything you bought in Dorestad.
Return to Dorestad and sell ALL the Wool you bought and any leftover Tar and Iron. I normally buy Wool at about 20 (from villages) and sell it at around 800 which gives and insane profit. Best of all Wool doesn't change in value as easily as more expensive goods like Jewelry, it just has an insanely inflated price in Dorestad.
As soon as you can I would buy a ship so you don't have to pay so much for travel. Just continue to do this trade route and open as many productive enterprises as you can. Once you have a stable network you are ready to become a vassal!