Mount & Blade: A guide to help you on your conquest of Calradia!

Mount and Blade is an amazing, one-of-a-kind game.  Nowhere else will you get caught up in medieval combat like you will by playing this game.  The world of Calradia offers a lot to do with its open-ended design.  However, Mount and Blade also offers an open-start to the game as well which can leave players not knowing what to do or where to go… how to get the ball rolling so to speak.  This can leave players frustrated at the start, causing them to put down a game long before they can truly enjoy what this game has to offer.

Here I will outline the phases toward an enjoyable experience of Mount & Blade.  It is not an in-depth guide.  If there are points raised here that you do not understand, search the rest of the forums and you will likely find your answer.  Also, this guide outlines only one way you can play this game, it isn't the only way you can play this game.  This guide is broken down into phases and the amount of time you spend on each phase depends on your ability level, the difficulty setting, and your style of play.


Phase I:  Character creation and maturation

For character creation itself, you really can’t go wrong.  The only advice I would give to you is to avoid selecting a class/background that results in party skills you won’t be using (again, check the forums for detailed guides on character creation and what each choice results in).  The party skills you want to avoid are:  all of the “medic” skills (first aid, surgery, wound treatment), the “pathfinding” skills (pathfinding, tracking, and spotting), engineering, and possibly trade.  Read on and you will find out why.  Good skills to be proficient in at the start are any of the personal combat skills (ironflesh, riding, shield, power strike and the like).  Choose skills that suit the style you want to play.  If you want to be an archer, power draw and horse archery are a must.  If you want to be more of an infantry type, then power strike, athletics, and perhaps shield will be important.

Once your character is created, the first thing you should do (especially if you didn’t go through the tutorial) is go to the training ground and learn the game mechanics.  Don’t expect to master every type of training at this time (don’t worry if you can’t hit archery targets at 100 yards, for example).  Once you have a feel for it, head to a big city near your starting point.  First order of business is to go to the arena and begin fighting in matches.  This will get you more acclimated to the combat system, but more importantly, you will be gaining experience and money with successful fights.  As your character levels up, reinforce those combat skills that support your style of play.  Since this is your first time in the game, I’d suggest you consider playing a mounted combat style of play that utilizes both melee weaponry and archery.  So I would work initially on skills like:  riding, horse archery, power draw, power strike, and shield. You have four equipment slots to use for weapons/shields.  My suggested configuration would be a one-handed weapon, a shield, a bow, and some arrows.  You start off with a crossbow, so I would suggest switching to bow and arrow as soon as you can.  As you level by fighting in the arena, distribute your weapon points into the archery skill first, then the melee (because archery is slower to level up during the course of play).  You will need to distribute ability points into those abilities that support the skills… so you will be putting points mainly in strength and agility.  Early on, however, you may want to put points in intelligence, as one point there, gives you two skill points (instead of one)  to select skills on the level up screen.  Initially, this may be a good way to go.  Finally, you may want to get a point or two in the skill “leadership” before you finish your arena training.  This is important in phase two.  Depending on how you have set the difficulty, you will probably want to do arena training until at least level 5, if not longer.  At the end of this phase, you will have accumulated some cash, use it to go to the equipment stores to upgrade your stuff.  At a minimum, you should get yourself a horse if you don’t already have one (saddle horse is fine for now).  Also get yourself some food.  With leftover money, I’d get better armor (torso) a shield if you don’t have one, and a helmet.  Leave yourself at least 300 denars.  Don’t worry if you can’t upgrade too much.

Phase II:  Out in the world, assemble your party

It’s time to venture forth from your starting city.  You have two goals:
1) get your companions and
2) work on relations with towns and cities

Assemble your party of companions.  In your starting city, go to the tavern and see if any companions are there.  Go from city to city until you find all your companions.  Each companion starts out at a given level with some skills already preset.  You are looking to find a companion for each role in the party.  I use Ymira for my  “medic” type.  Marnid starts out with some points in trade skill, you will find that handy.  You will need a pathfinder and eventually an engineer (Artemenner is a good one).  There are some great guides on the forum that discuss optimal party configurations (to ensure that everyone gets along and all jobs are filled).  Use your fledgling party attack small groups of wandering bandits, looters, and the like (they are grey in color on the world map).  Looters are the easiest, sea raiders are probably the toughest, while forest/mountain bandits are in the middle.  Be weary at first about tangling it up with deserters as they may contain high level units that will mop you up.  Use the loot from all your fights to upgrade your equipment (get yourself a bow and arrow too) as well as that of your companions.

Building town/city relations.  While you are traveling about, go to the small villages and ask the Village Elder for jobs to do.  In big cities, you can choose to "walk the streets" and find the Guild master who can also give you jobs.  These quests will help you gain experience and improve your relations with the village/city.  Go ahead and recruit a few volunteers from each village (they cost 10 denars, pretty cheap!).  You will find that villages with which you have higher relations will have more recruits available.  Be sure to leave room in your party for your needed companions!  You may need to start allocating points to “leadership” to make this happen.  IMPORTANT:  Do not join any faction at this time, save that until you have assembled all your companions.  The reason is, once you join a faction, you will loose relations with those factions they are at war with, resulting in your inability to enter their cities (although you can attempt to sneak in…).  Building up your relations with towns and cities will make life easier later in the game.


Phase III:  “End” game

Once you have your party and have figured out which faction you want to join, go talk to the King of that faction and swear your loyalty.  Immediately you will gain relations with that faction and lose it with all factions with which they are at war.  You will also gain ownership of a small town.  Go to that town periodically to collect taxes, also you will get the most recruits from there.  Talk to the nobles in your faction and they have quests for you to do as well.  Building up your relations with each noble is important.  However, some of the quests they will give you (like rounding up runaway serfs) will damage your relation with the town the serfs came from.  But since you earlier worked on town relations, you can afford this penalty now.  At some point you will be asked to be the field marshal for your faction and then you can ask nobles to do things for you.  The better relations you have the better chance they will obey your orders.  Also, if you decide to do the “claimant to the throne” quest line, you will need nobles as allies.

During this phase of the game, you will be spending more and more points on leadership so that you can command a larger and larger army.  Start off by attacking other nobles from opposing factions that are out wandering on the map.  Be sure to level up your engineer, medic, and pathfinder.  Once your army is large enough, consider laying siege to an enemy castle.  If you are successful, the king may award that castle and usually a neighboring town to you.  You can then garrison that castle with your troops.  If you have a high level engineer and loads of extra cash on hand, you can make improvements to towns and castles that you own.

Sooner or later, when your renown is high enough and you’ve taken a castle or two, your King will ask you to be the field marshal.  At this point, you can start campaigns and then go after enemy cities, which can also be awarded to you!


Closing remarks:

There is a lot more to do in Mount & Blade.  I’ve only described (superficially) one way to play.  There are many aspects of the game (like trading) that I have deliberately ignored.  Also I haven’t gotten into prisoner management, ransoming nobles, tournaments and much more.  Again there are great guides that cover these aspects of the game.  As a suggestion, I would also find a troop upgrade guide to help you select how you want to upgrade your army (they won’t stay recruits forever!).

In the end, Mount & Blade is an extremely enjoyable game to play and has grown tremendously since I first started playing it (back in beta version 0.652).  Once you have gotten your fill of the native game, don’t shelve Mount & Blade just yet.  There is a very vibrant and active mod community that has made some amazing additions to the game giving it extended life on your hard drive.

I hope this guide helps you on your conquest of Calradia!

Not horrible but could use some more detail.

Trooper5445 said:

Not horrible but could use some more detail.

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I'll second this.  There are a lot of "orders" you give that could use some explanation, so that a newcomer can understand why they're doing what they are.  A few specific points:

My suggested configuration would be a one-handed weapon, a shield, a bow, and some arrows.  You start off with a crossbow, so I would suggest switching to bow and arrow as soon as you can.

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-- This could really use some elaboration.  Why should a new player choose a bow over a crossbow, especially given the greater difficulty a low-level character has using a bow (especially using it from horseback)?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option (because heaven forbid the player might want to make his own choice)?

At the end of this phase, you will have accumulated some cash, use it to go to the equipment stores to upgrade your stuff.  At a minimum, you should get yourself a horse if you don’t already have one (saddle horse is fine for now).

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-- I am almost certain that you always start out with a horse.

Use your fledgling party attack small groups of wandering bandits, looters, and the like (they are grey in color on the world map).  Looters are the easiest, sea raiders are probably the toughest, while forest/mountain bandits are in the middle.

Click to expand...

-- I'm not really sure what you're basing this evaluation on, but it's worth pointing out that for new players, Mountain Bandits, because some of them are cavalry, can be incredibly difficult.  I would at least entertain the possibility of suggesting that small groups of Sea Raiders (around 7 or so) are good, if challenging, targets, both because they are infantry-only and because you get some excellent early-game loot from them (Mail hauberks and Nordic helmets, which sell for good money and keep you from having to buy armor for all your companions).  Of course, sea bandits in any significant number can be lethal early on, especially for a character who doesn't have a shield or respectable body armor (the armor a squire starts with will do, but most occupations won't be so generous), so caution is always advised.

You will need a pathfinder and eventually an engineer (Artemenner is a good one).

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Artimenner is the only NPC companion who already has skill ranks in Engineer.  He also costs 500 denars, so you may mention that he isn't a critical addition at the beginning.  On the other hand, he can be tough to find, so if you do find him, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity.

While you are traveling about, go to small towns and ask the guild master for jobs to do.

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Cities (Sargoth, Suno, etc.) are run by guild masters.  Villages (or small towns) are run by the Village Elder.  However, neither of these men give quests that improve your relations with a faction, so their placement under that heading seems incongruous.  Also remember that you can only recruit volunteers from villages, not from cities.

Talk to the nobles in your faction and they have quests for you to do as well.

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This has absolutely nothing to do with swearing fealty to a faction's leader.  You can get quests from all non-enemy nobles in the game regardless of whether or not you have sworn fealty to their faction.

It's also probably important to note that the "Noble's Quests" can be the most lucrative available.  If a new character is able to get the "Collect my Taxes" or "Collect my Debt" quests, he can make a lot of money (of course, the Tax Collection can also end in violence, but they're just villagers, not Sea Raiders).


Those are just a few comments on things you might want to add or should consider in more depth.  Remember: You're writing for people who are just coming to game.  Assume they know nothing.

Cheers.

I think something like this could be handy. Ive been playing for only a couple of weeks and ive had three characters so far, the third being the one where I figured out that you can upgrade your character/party, because I gave him training skill which has proved to be very valuable - I now have a good core of fighting units which I can top up with villagers when needs be and train the, along with my companions.

You mention that trading skill is not important, however I quickly made approx 7,000 money in the first few game days by assessing the trade goods, and then trading to make huge bucks... more than enough to kit out my party with decent gear. i then went to fight some sea raiders and got myself experience, went up a few levels and was then adding points to my fighting skills. I also find that entering he arena is a slow, labourious way to make money and its far easier to bet 100gold on yourself and then win a tournament or five. It takes some practice but theres 1800 money to begin with which is good if you need to pay your troops.


I know you said you were describing one way to do it, but by ruling out training and trading skills, new players could miss some lucrative opportunities.

Aye, I thought about mentioning tournaments, as well.  If you do, be sure to point out the inherent risks involved, though.  Because your equipment each round is basically random, and getting into a "X teams of 1 contestant each" round (let alone the final round) armed with a bow and arrow basically means you die, tournaments can be a risky proposition to go betting the farm on.  However, if you're willing to take that gamble and you come out on top, the payoff is outstanding.

Cheers.

Thanks for your feedback landwalker.  I'll address your concerns:

Landwalker said:

I'll second this.  There are a lot of "orders" you give that could use some explanation, so that a newcomer can understand why they're doing what they are.  A few specific points:

My suggested configuration would be a one-handed weapon, a shield, a bow, and some arrows.  You start off with a crossbow, so I would suggest switching to bow and arrow as soon as you can.

Click to expand...

-- This could really use some elaboration.  Why should a new player choose a bow over a crossbow, especially given the greater difficulty a low-level character has using a bow (especially using it from horseback)?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option (because heaven forbid the player might want to make his own choice)?

Like I said in the beginning of the guide, I did not want to go into great detail on the finer points, but more or less give a broad overview and plant ideas into the newcomer's head for how to go about tackling the game.  But to address your point, I prefer the bow and arrow over the crossbow simply because of its faster reload time.  Crossbows cannot be reloaded while moving on foot either.  I made the suggestion to move to bow and arrow, but it doesn't have to be on day one.  Keep in mind, I direct the player to get several levels in the arena and then ask them to place skill points where they will use them.  So, if they want to play more of an archer type, they will put points in power draw and horse archery.  If they are primarily melee, I would expect that they would focus there but put a few points in those skills when they can.  Basically, by the time they are done in the arena -- assuming they've gotten at least 5 levels or so and have allocated weapons points to archery, they should be decent enough at the start to take on the looters that I tell them to go after later.

At the end of this phase, you will have accumulated some cash, use it to go to the equipment stores to upgrade your stuff.  At a minimum, you should get yourself a horse if you don’t already have one (saddle horse is fine for now).

Click to expand...

-- I am almost certain that you always start out with a horse.

I haven't tried every player starting configuration, so I wasn't certain you always get a horse.

Use your fledgling party attack small groups of wandering bandits, looters, and the like (they are grey in color on the world map).  Looters are the easiest, sea raiders are probably the toughest, while forest/mountain bandits are in the middle.

Click to expand...

-- I'm not really sure what you're basing this evaluation on, but it's worth pointing out that for new players, Mountain Bandits, because some of them are cavalry, can be incredibly difficult.  I would at least entertain the possibility of suggesting that small groups of Sea Raiders (around 7 or so) are good, if challenging, targets, both because they are infantry-only and because you get some excellent early-game loot from them (Mail hauberks and Nordic helmets, which sell for good money and keep you from having to buy armor for all your companions).  Of course, sea bandits in any significant number can be lethal early on, especially for a character who doesn't have a shield or respectable body armor (the armor a squire starts with will do, but most occupations won't be so generous), so caution is always advised.

I placed sea raiders as the most difficult because, while they are infantry, they are the heaviest armored, and carry the hardest hitting weapons.  If the player gets dismounted and/or has a primarily infantry party (which they are likely) sea raiders can rip them to shreds, especially if the player is playing on a difficulty level other than easiest.  Also, sea raiders give the most experience points per kill -- further justification that they are the hardest.  As for mountain bandits being mounted.  Yes it is true that you may encounter some that have mounts, but their armor and weapons are generally weak and only a few (if any) will be mounted.  I suppose I could write another guide on combat tactics and how to deal with that.  But that is another guide.  I was simply giving generalized advice in this guide.

You will need a pathfinder and eventually an engineer (Artemenner is a good one).

Click to expand...

Artimenner is the only NPC companion who already has skill ranks in Engineer.  He also costs 500 denars, so you may mention that he isn't a critical addition at the beginning.  On the other hand, he can be tough to find, so if you do find him, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity.

Again, this is a general guide.  I mention that he is a good engineer candidate for precisely the reason you mention.  Also, I say that EVENTUALLY you will need an engineer.  I think this implies that it isn't critical at the start.  Other than Artemenner, there are several other possibilities for an engineer.  Many of the NPCs that you can pick up are essentially "blank slates" and you can then train them up as an engineer if you want.  Ayalen, Firentis, Baheshtur,  and Katrin come to mind.

While you are traveling about, go to small towns and ask the guild master for jobs to do.

Click to expand...

Cities (Sargoth, Suno, etc.) are run by guild masters.  Villages (or small towns) are run by the Village Elder.  However, neither of these men give quests that improve your relations with a faction, so their placement under that heading seems incongruous.  Also remember that you can only recruit volunteers from villages, not from cities.

Sorry about the guild master/elder switcharoo... my bad - I will fix it.  Maybe I should retitle the phase "general relations"  I suggest that players start with the village elder quests because they are generally easier to do and they improve relations with that town, which will come in handy later in the game when you take those noble quests that lower those relations.  The town relations affect prices that you get from buying supplies (I believe) and may also affect how many recruits you can get from them later. 

Talk to the nobles in your faction and they have quests for you to do as well.

Click to expand...

This has absolutely nothing to do with swearing fealty to a faction's leader.  You can get quests from all non-enemy nobles in the game regardless of whether or not you have sworn fealty to their faction.

The reason I do this is that the only noble relations that are important to the player are those gained from nobles in their faction.  So if you do a lot of quests for Swadian nobles but then join the Nords, what's the point?  The quests they give are all identical, so why complete a Swadian noble's quest when you can do the same quest AND get improved relations with a noble within your faction?


It's also probably important to note that the "Noble's Quests" can be the most lucrative available.  If a new character is able to get the "Collect my Taxes" or "Collect my Debt" quests, he can make a lot of money (of course, the Tax Collection can also end in violence, but they're just villagers, not Sea Raiders).


Those are just a few comments on things you might want to add or should consider in more depth.  Remember: You're writing for people who are just coming to game.  Assume they know nothing.

Cheers.

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Thanks again everyone for your feedback.  I didn't want to overload the newcomer with too many details but give them just enough to make sense of the game and get a good start.  I would expect new players will do like we all did and that is start playing, learn a few things, create a new character after realizing they messed up something and rinse and repeat until they get it right.  My goal is that they don't have to rinse and repeat so much that they put down the game.  There are so many styles of play and so many aspects that I could have gone into greater detail on, but then this guide would be a novel and not something a player can take 5 minutes to read and get into the game.  I personally don't do a whole lot of trading so I didn't feel I had the experise to write that into the guide. But as blueneonranbow suggested, if you want to devote time into the trading skill, you can make a killing for sure.

I didn't want to overload the newcomer with too many details but give them just enough to make sense of the game and get a good start.

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Aye, I understand where you're coming from.  Burying a new player with a wall of text wouldn't be as useful as a guide could be, to be sure.  I guess my general point, in a lot fewer words, would be this:  It's always helpful for a new player to have an idea of what they're doing when they start playing, and a good guide provides this.  A great guide ensures they know why they're doing it.  You're definitely on the right track, and I'm sure many new players will thank you for it.   

Cheers.

Perhaps you could add a more detailed section at the end, for someone who has the gist and has done a few playthroughs and now really wants to try more seriously?

Thanks for this, it helped me out, even pointed me in a few directions when I did come up with a question after reading.

Instead of expanding upon this guide, why not link it to other guides if and when you mention them (like the companion "getting along" thing)?

jrawlings said:

Phase III:  “End” game

Once you have your party and have figured out which faction you want to join, go talk to the King of that faction and swear your loyalty.  Immediately you will gain relations with that faction and lose it with all factions with which they are at war.  You will also gain ownership of a small town.  Go to that town periodically to collect taxes, also you will get the most recruits from there.  Talk to the nobles in your faction and they have quests for you to do as well.  Building up your relations with each noble is important.  However, some of the quests they will give you (like rounding up runaway serfs) will damage your relation with the town the serfs came from.  But since you earlier worked on town relations, you can afford this penalty now.  At some point you will be asked to be the field marshal for your faction and then you can ask nobles to do things for you.  The better relations you have the better chance they will obey your orders.  Also, if you decide to do the “claimant to the throne” quest line, you will need nobles as allies.

During this phase of the game, you will be spending more and more points on leadership so that you can command a larger and larger army.  Start off by attacking other nobles from opposing factions that are out wandering on the map.  Be sure to level up your engineer, medic, and pathfinder.  Once your army is large enough, consider laying siege to an enemy castle.  If you are successful, the king may award that castle and usually a neighboring town to you.  You can then garrison that castle with your troops.  If you have a high level engineer and loads of extra cash on hand, you can make improvements to towns and castles that you own.

Sooner or later, when your renown is high enough and you’ve taken a castle or two, your King will ask you to be the field marshal.  At this point, you can start campaigns and then go after enemy cities, which can also be awarded to you!

Click to expand...

Your guide up until this point is quite good but, this section is flawed.  If you go and swear fealty to a faction King before you are invited to do so you will not be given a village as your fief.  At least that's what has been said here on the forum before. 

You don't say why having a high relationship with Nobles in your faction is a benefit.  As far as my experience goes there is no benefit. 

I also don't believe in tearing down what you have built up.  If a Lord gives me a quest like "rounding up the serfs" I don't take it because it damages my reputation with that village that I will someday control.  I don't want a bad reputation with any village. 

You don't get "asked" to be Marshall.  You have to stand an election and it's already been on the forum that the election is not based on your relationship with the Nobles.

You only get one extra man for every five points of Leadership.  It's hardly worth wasting valuable skill points on it.  Persuasion is a better skill to use your points on.  With persuasion you can lower the amount of the bribe you have to pay to collect a debt for a Lord and you can also persuade a hero from leaving the party with a high enough persuasion skill. 

And, finally, you can siege a castle on your own.  You don't need the armies of several Lords to do it.  If you've got fifty good men behind you, you can take over the world.  

Really good guide otherwise.  Can't say anything bad about the rest of it.

Krobas Krunic said:

You only get one extra man for every five points of Leadership.  It's hardly worth wasting valuable skill points on it.

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Five extra men per single point of leadership, plus decreased wages and higher troop morale. Not a waste at all.

Krobas Krunic said:

Your guide up until this point is quite good but, this section is flawed.  If you go and swear fealty to a faction King before you are invited to do so you will not be given a village as your fief.  At least that's what has been said here on the forum before.

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Actually I have only once been asked by a king to join their faction, all other times I asked them if I could join and I always am given a village to start with. Didn't know it was possible to not be given a starting village as soon as you join. 

[quote author=Krobas Krunic]You don't say why having a high relationship with Nobles in your faction is a benefit.  As far as my experience goes there is no benefit.[/quote]
Having high relations with the lords of your faction can be very usefull. For one thing if they don't like you they won't join a battle with you even if you are marshal and order them to follow you around they will never join in a battle if you have a negative relation with them. Also various quests as well as the refusal to do quests, can cause your relations to drop with a lord. So to keep it in the positive you may need to do some quests for them to raise your relation again. 

[quote author=Krobas Krunic]You only get one extra man for every five points of Leadership.  It's hardly worth wasting valuable skill points on it.  Persuasion is a better skill to use your points on.  With persuasion you can lower the amount of the bribe you have to pay to collect a debt for a Lord and you can also persuade a hero from leaving the party with a high enough persuasion skill.[/quote]
As mentioned above me this is incorrect, you get 5 more party capacity for each point in leadership, you must have got it backwards. Also the increase in party morale and decrease in wages by 5% each per point in leadership make it very worthwhile for those two benefits alone. 10 points would mean 50% increase in morale and 50% less in wages and 50 additional party members.

Eh, I didn't like this part of the guide:

jrawlings said:

You will need a pathfinder and eventually an engineer (Artemenner is a good one).

Click to expand...

Not necessarily - I use my own character for Engineer and pathfinding on an Intelligence based character.

Thanks everyone for the wonderful feedback.  It seems the guide is doing what it was meant to do... that is give folks some idea of how to play the phases of the game.  Clearly, there are different ways to play (e.g. be a trader, assume engineering duties yourself, etc etc), but at least this guide will get you started and help you navigate from being a rather weak unkown character to commander of an unstoppable army!

well i would rather it was just lots of bullet points on stuff rather than the big paragraths


and no i am not retarded i can read i am just very lazy

Well, maybe you can't read. The last post in this thread was about a year and a half ago.

and there have been plenty of similar threads, but i think most stuff is also in the strategywiki