Tips for starting out in WFAS 1.143:
Character build: Suggested to put it all into INT until you get it up to 26, and put all points into surgery and some other skills (pathfinding is good). Skills that go to the player should be ones that need to be raised as high as possible for the player party bonus. Suggested to increase inventory management up to at least 2 or 3. You can use a book merchant to raise INT to 27, and a book of surgery to bump your surgery skill up to 10. Trainer is also a good skill to raise. After that, bump up CHA to increase your army size. Or maybe bump STR up to 12-13 if you want black armor and the black mace. Becoming a 1 man army in this game is harder than warband due to guns, but there's some situations in the game, including in some mainline quests, where your character has to personally fight a small group of enemies. Points are valuable due to how difficult it is to gain exp in this game, and the exp costs for the next level rises each time, so choose wisely.
1. Get enough money to recruit tavern mercenaries. Halberds, marksmen, and musketeers are recommended for their price. Either solo looters (avoid all other enemies, they may have guns), or take a loan from the merchants guild. If you get attacked by anything that's not a looter, give them money and run. Recruit until you reach your party limit.
2. The next few parts involves a lot of grinding. Pick a faction you don't mind pissing off and start raiding their villages en masse. Preferably a faction with weak units. If you get attacked by a lord, withdraw and leave some of your troops behind. You can easily replace them. Repeat until you have around 100k. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for book merchants, any companions you want to hire, weapons and armor you want to buy for yourself (a pistol is a good weapon without any investments), and any missions from lords you want to be friends with. When you have 100k, deposit the money in a merchant's guild bank. Preferably in a town that's far away from the faction you've been raiding so there's a low chance that they'll take it over. After that, continue to raid villages and depositing the money once in a while. 500k is a good number to aim for.
3. Make sure you have all the companions you want to hire before doing this part. Once you have a large amount of money generating interest in the bank, start doing quests for mayors. Go for quests with quick and high EXP payoffs. Escort caravan quests are the best, delivering wine is decent, defeating troublesome bandits is decent, killing looters is bad, herding cattle is bad, rescuing girl from bandits is bad, trying to persuade lords to make peace is bad. If you get a quest to persuade lords to make peace, you can decline and talk to the mayor again until he gives you a different quest. If the mayor gives you a bad quest, go to a different city until you get a good quest. Complete quests until your INT is at least up to 26. Also, if you haven't already, visit the tavern each time you enter a city to try and find the book merchants and buy the books you need. The book for surgery and the book for raising INT are the most important ones. Your companions will also gain a few levels from this. They should be regulated towards party support skills that the player can't fill out. Note that they level up slower than the player.
4. Now you can either keep grinding for money by raiding villages (or simply waiting a while for interest to accumulate) or continue grinding levels for your other attributes. 1 million in the bank is a good amount of money to aim for.
5. Once you've decided you've grinded enough, go to a mercenary camp (Swedish camp is a good choice), disband all of your tavern mercenaries, and fill your entire party with cavalry. Give them the best armor, weapons, and horses. You can also use infantry and marksmen if you want, as they have the same armor and weapon choices. Mercenary camps take time to refill. If you're careful and you have a high enough surgery skill, you won't need to replace them too often. If you have enough trainer points in your party, you can upgrade them to elite in a few days without any battles. The interest rate from the bank can easily pay off your troop wages and replace them when they die.
6. You can now start grinding for renown. Attack a faction's lords (preferably the one you've been raiding) and use your superior cavalry to destroy them. You can go up against nobles 2-4 times larger than you. Having a high tactics skill may help. I don't know about the details, but during open field battles, only a fraction of the enemy forces participate, and you gain some renown after each round if you win, so you could probably get at least 25 renown for each lord. If you need to replace cavalry, you can use a nearby mercenary camp and buy supreme cavalry from there as well. You can also probably capture a city if you really want, especially if you can poison the city's water supplies, use some good tactics, or hit and run. It might be worth capturing a city that's isolated from most of the others so you can deposit your money there instead, which will give you a better interest rate, although that's risky because you won't be able to access the money if the enemy retakes it.
7. Now you're all set to do whatever you want.
