How to make money?

Users who are viewing this thread

heckani

Sergeant at Arms
Hey everyone,

So feeling a little embarrased as a m&B veteran to go here to ask - but does anyone else have a harder time with this one? Im talking on playing on the "impossible" ofc.

Like for instance i played and realised i had to restart to get more leadership in order to beat the first attack mission on the village in the storyline. Then now alot further ahead, i find monstaries are not that rich, only getting 200-300 pennings, and a few loots. While everyone hates you. Looting villages seems to be the only way to really get a profit as slaves/trading is hard with small men on the ships but buying more ships are too expensive. I can generate money its not that, but fighting and selling slaves geta bit reptitive. And being pagan seems to be a bit worthless right now.

How do you make money in this one? Im still trying to build my refugee and not become enemies of the last couple of empires. My renown is around 200 or so. So now i can at least recruit high level troops, so prisoners are making a good profit from having more men, still the wages are very high and getting enterprices is still rough to get. It seems possible and all just want to hear what other people are doing in this one :smile:

My plan is just to get enterprices everywhere now and then it goes fine. But would had hoped for some other ways aswell as they are very slow and expensive and only cover for the payment for around 10 or so  trooper per enterprice which actually is still alright.

Any suggestions or ideas i´d really appreciate it though i´d love to learn from other of you grizled veterans out there. I only just got the game btw so noob here yay!  :mrgreen:
 
Already know those things :mad: But so far not too much of what i´d expect of profits.

Would be really nice if you could actually have slaves at salt mines, quiarries etc for a weekly profit or something or setup your own. The economical part is the most fun in m&b for me, like making caravans etc etc.
 
Trade and prisoners.

If you need money, trade. Take 27 men, not more. Note: This is with storyline in mind. If you are not playing storyline or progressed significantly, click on the spoiler for some trading even more lucrative.
a) Buy furs in the Danish villages (Hustha By, Haida By, Ribe By South, Skyffa By, Vejborg By, Ribe By North) 30 to 100 penings. Kill any thieves, who are conveniently on your way and sell them and their loot. High pathfinding helps. Sometimes you get the chance to buy amber. Buy it as long as it is under 300. Sometimes you get the chance to buy wool. Buy it as long as it is around/under 300. If the furs are around 200 penings in Ribe itself, you can buy them there, too. Sell any wool for about 400.
b) Sail to Northvegr. Buy timber and furs in the Norwegian villages. Kill any thieves conveniently on your way and sell them and there loot.
c) Sail to Alban (Scotland), the port across of Edinburgh (cannot remember its name right now). Start selling timber and furs in the cities. Fur not under 351 penings. Timber not under 260 penings. For amber you usually get around 345. Go into the hinterland and buy wool in the villages usually for 30 to 130 penings. Sail down the east coast of Great Britain. Stop at any city and village. In the villages buy wool. If you get cheese under 50, buy it. If you get dried meat under 80 buy it. If you get hides under 250, buy them. Flax bundles are ok for under 200. Sell meat and cheese in cities for over 150 (meat) and 80-90 (cheese), hides for around 400, flax for around 340. Sell fur and timber, usually one or two units, because prices are otherwise dropping too far. Go also to Jorvik, maybe Tomtun and then track back to your ship. Stop by the villages. Stop by Lundenwic, and maybe walk to Chippenham and Cirren Ceaster. Do not sell wool under 350. When you reach Cantwaraburh your inventory should be full of wool and without any timber and furs. In Cantwaraburh you should get a decent price for wool, sometimes even 500. Sell wool until the price drops to around 380. On this way kill the thieve bands or renegades, who are conveniently on your way. Sell them and there loot.
d) Sail back to Ribe. Sell the rest of your wool (around 400) and the rest of the occasional hides and flax bundles. Rinse and repeat.

Important: Whenever you want to sell prisoners, check in the tavern, whether a slave trader is there. If yes, you will get more money from him than selling your prisoners to the standard slave trader you find on the docks of port citys or to Aethelmaer in Chippenham.

This is an easy way to make lots of money. When you are getting further along in the storyline or of you are only playing sandbox Friese should become accessible again or os accessible. Then sell all your wool in Dorestad. They are paying 800 there! Even if you have sold all your wool, they will still pay over 600. Then buy salt in the villages and the city there and sail to Ribe. Sell salt around 280 +. If you have traded with villages a lot, they have lots of money and will pay even better prices for salt, up to 350 sometimes. Sell your salt also in Northvegr and Britain.

Prisoners are also a great way to get lots of money, especially if you use the slave trader in the tavern/mead hall. Bands of renegades already provide a good income and people do not start to hat you for getting rid of outlaws.
 
If you have -10 reputation or under then you can sell to bandit merchants at bandit lairs/landings.  They get more money and space every time you talk to them and their goods prices do not decrease the more you sell like normal merchants. So much profit. 
 
kraggrim said:
If you have -10 reputation or under then you can sell to bandit merchants at bandit lairs/landings.  They get more money and space every time you talk to them and their goods prices do not decrease the more you sell like normal merchants. So much profit.

Further proof that low reputation is in fact the best way to play this game, and also the most viking way to play.
 
The_Normal_Anomaly said:
kraggrim said:
If you have -10 reputation or under then you can sell to bandit merchants at bandit lairs/landings.  They get more money and space every time you talk to them and their goods prices do not decrease the more you sell like normal merchants. So much profit.

Further proof that low reputation is in fact the best way to play this game, and also the most viking way to play.


I have now played two complete storyline games. (Well, just getting ready for final battle with Sven in second), One was heroic (+100) and one was ruthless (-100). One thing you miss on ruthless is recruiting from villages, but who cares as recruits are useless since they are so hard to upgrade. Only villages you want to recruit from are ones with high relations and you can still get those villages on ruthless. The other thing is having Lords as friends, Heroic gives you several upstanding Lords who will love you due to your reputation. Definitely good balance on the Ruthless vs Heroic game play.  Kudos to the development team.
 
kraggrim said:
If you have -10 reputation or under then you can sell to bandit merchants at bandit lairs/landings.  They get more money and space every time you talk to them and their goods prices do not decrease the more you sell like normal merchants. So much profit.

I don't think I've seen these bandit merchants? Are they random spawn camps or preset locations?
 
These "bandit merchants" are just the bandit camps, like back in native.  But if you are playing a negative reputation character, you have the option to trade with the bandit camps instead of attacking them.  And given that you can recruit bandits too as a low reputation character, having these bandit camps on the map is pure winning for you since they spawn more bandits.
 
The viking way: raid villages and monasteries, then go to stone row, locAted at the west coast of alban, close to dun beeatann or something like that and sell your prisoners for +10% of their buying price
 
Qasius said:
Sell loot, sell slaves, buy farmstead in towns, do some trade.

I would like to underline that advice to buy farmsteads.  But this should go along with some sort of strategic plan.  Either buy them all over the map or buy them in areas that you do not plan to attack later on.  The farmsteads are an important source of steady income early on.
 
Ivan Khan said:
The_Normal_Anomaly said:
kraggrim said:
If you have -10 reputation or under then you can sell to bandit merchants at bandit lairs/landings.  They get more money and space every time you talk to them and their goods prices do not decrease the more you sell like normal merchants. So much profit.

Further proof that low reputation is in fact the best way to play this game, and also the most viking way to play.


I have now played two complete storyline games. (Well, just getting ready for final battle with Sven in second), One was heroic (+100) and one was ruthless (-100). One thing you miss on ruthless is recruiting from villages, but who cares as recruits are useless since they are so hard to upgrade. Only villages you want to recruit from are ones with high relations and you can still get those villages on ruthless. The other thing is having Lords as friends, Heroic gives you several upstanding Lords who will love you due to your reputation. Definitely good balance on the Ruthless vs Heroic game play.  Kudos to the development team.

Recruits are not useless.  This is where your Refuge comes in.  Build your Refuge in a central location near the water, somewhere you might land your ships often.  And put the recruits in the Refuge for Harald to train while you are doing other stuff.
 
kalarhan said:
if you want to trade: get better sea skills so you can run away from bandits/pirates and you are gold.

hey if im playing on the story mission where can i find
Helgi
since he has all kinds of
navigation
 
qmax said:
Recruits are not useless.  This is where your Refuge comes in.  Build your Refuge in a central location near the water, somewhere you might land your ships often.  And put the recruits in the Refuge for Harald to train while you are doing other stuff.

Have you actually tried doing this? As a test I just put 23 spearmen into my refuge (as the only troops garrisoned there) and told the trainer to train them. One entire game month later not a single one of them had become veteran spearmen. Either it's broken or so slow as to be just as useless as the training skill.

The only tolerable way I found to play a high rep character was by recruiting an army of mercenaries. And this is just a poor man's viking army. Forget about recruiting faction troops except as cannon fodder, or unless you can be bothered spending months and months grinding your reputation with a village up high enough to recruit elite units outright, which is something they'll probably nerf sooner or later anyway.
 
Have you actually tried doing this? As a test I just put 23 spearmen

Trainer only upgrades troops to tier3 (spearmen are tier3). That's a pretty decent troop, and you can have several upgraded per week. No he's not going to give you all the noble troops, but the base of your army should be a "spearman", not a noble.
 
Well, in that case I can't think of a single use for it, except maybe training whatever archers you manage to scrounge up into warrior archers. If all you want is basic spearmen then you can recruit them by the truckload from cities.

JuJu70 said:
the base of your army should be a "spearman", not a noble.

You should be able to effectively train your men into more effective fighters. Civilisations have been doing this for quite some time. The fact that the troop tree inexplicably turns spearmen who reach a certain level of skill into "nobles" is more of a flaw in the design of both WB and VC's troop trees than anything else. It would be better to remove any sort of caste influence from the troop trees entirely, have the elite troops simply be more skilled versions of the units beneath them and not knights/nobles/lords/whatever, and let people train their armies properly. As it is you can't even train your farmers into fighters.

Edit: You could even have scripted event popups that occur when you train a certain number of troops to the end of their tree. i.e. when you get 20 elite warriors or whatever, the game prompts you to turn one of them into a bodyguard (huskarl). Thus these units rightly become matters of rank/title rather than their existence precluding the training of highly skilled soldiers that aren't sergeants or nobles or whatever.
 
If you don't mind being hated, besides looting villages you can get lots money from the caravans. With 150+ warriors I get 1000 for each, and without any fighting.
I think it's a lot of quicker and safer than raiding.
I have only 2 friendly factions in England and Ireland, so it also helps because merchants run out of cash pretty quick, just 3-4 villages worth of loot, around 9000.

 
Back
Top Bottom