Saving Your Family In Less Than 40 In-Game Days

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I don’t know about everyone playing these days, but I myself am greatly relieved that we can finally rescue our family from the slavers with the latest patches. Perhaps the single greatest reward, besides possibly securing “heirs” to replace us when we die, is getting our brother back as a Companion given that he starts off with ridiculously high stats.

Of particular note is that our brother has a Stewardship of 140 (as of patch e1.5.4) and so can increase your party size drastically if he is made your Quartermaster – thus allowing your own character to spend your precious Skill and Attribute points on other things like Vigor for hitting people or Endurance for smithing things to hit people with. Be sure to allocate his skills at the start of the game, because I believe the game allocates them automatically if you let him go without doing that yourself.

For those, like me, who just don’t want kidnapped family hanging over us while we adventure, I’ve deduced a method for saving them as quickly as possible. These steps are applicable the moment you complete the tutorial, although you might consider tailoring your character at the start to maximize progress.

Step 1 – Go to a Vlandian or Khuzait Arena

The first things you need are combat skills and shiny coins. The Practice Arena has been a staple of the Mount and Blade franchise for some time, offering a sort of “floor” from which any player can pick themselves up. Simply put, you go in and beat up some folks and get money for it – especially so if you survive until the end of the match (250 Denars as of Patch e1.5.4). You also get exp for skills used (weapons & athletics) but it's only a trickle compared to real fights - so you're not going to train a skill here past 100 unless you're very patient. Possible? Absolutely. Boring? Absolutely.

But here’s the kicker – not all arenas are made equal. Some, like the Imperial arena are difficult to grind owing to how easy it is to get surrounded and for how long matches last given the sheer size of the arena itself. For this method to be viable you need to participate in quick matches that are survivable.

You might be wondering why such matters? Well, for purposes of “technically” saving your family in a short amount of time, it bears noting that these arena fights can be done as many times as you want without the passage of time. It’s boring and I certainly wouldn’t advise doing it ad nauseam like I do, but you can comfortably make between 25,000 and 50,000 Denars after a few sittings and it will still be day three (or however long it took you to get there). Not to mention you can level up a few combat skills while you’re here for good measure (this comes in use later).

The first contender for those arenas with the two required elements (quick & survivable) are the practice fights held in Khuzait Cities at the start of the game. Little more than reconfigured square livestock pens, sitting in a corner prevents spawns from approaching from behind and with a shield makes front attacks from one or two guys quite survivable. A huge part of Khuzait Arena fights are the weighted javelins, easily the best you’ll find on such circuits. Simply put, Khuzait Practice Arenas are the best place to start getting your skill up in throwing given that it’s easy to bypass opponent shields by hitting them in the legs with a javelin from a distance (and to pick up missed shots). Javelins used in Imperial Practice Fights by comparison are garbage. The other weapon skill you can raise reliably here is One-Handed, but all other weapon pairings that don’t include a shield are subpar here. Spears here are terrible, and there's no real point waiting for the rare drop from later guys as you need consistency for this methodology.

The second contender are the practice fights held in Vlandian Cities at the start of the game. This type of practice fight is my favorite by far for one simple reason: a tree. At one end of the staple arena for such cities is a tree you can hide behind to avoid crossbow fire and funnel attacking npc from one direction (no spawns from the other end really). As long as you're covered and avoid crossbow fire you can easily survive a match. Did I mention crossbows? Yes, unlike bows which I’ve found to be garbage in practice fights, the crossbows in the practice fights are pretty darn good. Use that tree I spoke of like a Pavise and you can comfortably wrack up shot after shot. Another huge benefit of the Vlandian Practice Fights is easy access to billhooks, polearms you can swing. Again, using the tree for cover, you can from the start of most matches commence whacking people senseless with ease.

Other arenas offer different benefits based on the culture and the weapons that spawn from such. Battanian arenas offer consistent Two-Handed Weapon Skill Exp, but they aren't very survivable.

Step 2 – Tournament Circuit w/ Looter Battles

Your character now has a lot of money (25,000 Denars is good) and you are no longer a slouch with weapons or athletics. Congratulations! Now spend that money on raw recruits, supplies and some decent armor. You can’t bring your weapon to an arena fight, just your armor. Each Tournament victory gives 3 Renown, and relatively even battles with looters give about 1 Renown.

To find out where a tournament is being held, ask the arena master in each city about it and he’ll give you a heads up. Then just head to the given city, and if you see a group of looters on the way just have your recruits just stomp them and move on. This is easy to do with ranged or cavalry units, less so with infantry.

Step 3 – Complete the First Quest

In order to complete the starter quest you need to buildup you clan.

  • You’ll need 20 troops, some Denars, about 50 Renown and a companion in your roster. The instant these tasks are accomplished, an “acquaintance” will approach you when you’re in a city and tell you where to find your family. It's another bandit hideout... how original.
By this point you should actually have some high tier troops and a good equipment loadout for yourself, so you should be able to go in a murder those dimwitted thugs.

Note: Bear in mind that the location of the bandit hideout and the disposition of units will be decided by the city you start the quest in. Start in an imperial city down south and you’ll be fighting some wimpy raiders who run around naked chucking rocks and maybe the odd javelin. Start in a Sturgian city up north and you’ll be fighting a group of sea raiders who are much better equipped with shields, armor and javelins.
  • An easy way to control this is to refrain from hiring a companion until you’re ready to start and when the companion (or just some temp choice) is in the city/ares of your choice. But if you don't care who you fight, just ignore this consideration entirely.
I was able to do all of this in exactly 40 in-game days following the start of the quest but I was slouching on the arena circuits, so a committed player can probably get that number closer to 30 days or less.
 
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Also, FYI: The Steppe Bandit hideout is much, much, much tougher to clear out than the Desert Bandit hideout. Like 5x as difficult.
 
Also, FYI: The Steppe Bandit hideout is much, much, much tougher to clear out than the Desert Bandit hideout. Like 5x as difficult.

I actually thought the steppe bandit hideout was easier because they had no shields whatsoever.

haha bow go twang
 
I actually thought the steppe bandit hideout was easier because they had no shields whatsoever.

haha bow go twang


It's the fight at the end that's killer. Sometimes you'll face a boss and eight or nine steppe bandits with good armor, bows, and glaives, who will literally murder your entire nine-man entourage.


With Desert Bandits, your entourage might take only one or two losses total.
 
It's the fight at the end that's killer. Sometimes you'll face a boss and eight or nine steppe bandits with good armor, bows, and glaives, who will literally murder your entire nine-man entourage.


With Desert Bandits, your entourage might take only one or two losses total.

I only faced eight steppe bandits (T2) and the boss. The boss was the only one with a glaive.
 
The boss in the hideout with the family is always the same guy - wearing some hides and using a two-handed cleaver of some kind. So he's not going to spawn with a glaive thankfully.
 
I actually prefer to go to Vlandian and Battania towns as merchant (horse and mules) while doing tournaments and doing easiest quest I can find in the way like In Out, etc. You can get good money and renown at same time in this way.

Plus if you kill looters in the way it could be even faster and you can level up riding to get 75 skill level if you fight as horse archer the first days.

I can rescue my family at day 20-30 or so in this way without having to grind arenas which could be tedious.
 
That might work, but doing practice fights ad nauseam? That sounds really real time consuming, and boring. Besides, I dislike x-bows (unusable on horseback) thrown (too quick out of ammo) and one-handed (not enough damage). And hiring no companion? The first companion I try to get is a good medic to lower own casualities and faster recover. Without a healer, a lowtier soldier party suffers too many losses and wounded even against a same size looter groop.
My usual campaing start: grab a few recruits, check available companions, run to get healer. If suitable looter groups cross my path, do them, otherwise just run. After I got the healer, gather the other 3 possible companions - one of trader type, one with good rogue and one possible group leader (no engineer yet, no scout yet). Collect a force of 17, and now I do every available quest while looking for the nobles for the banner quest and slaughtering every stupid bandit group that crosses my path.
If I think about it while playing, I try to recruit the 20th men in an area where the hideout are mountain raiders - but in most times, I don't think much about that. Me and 9 maxed imperial bowmen cut through every type of hideout.
And I don't like the brother char in my party. He steals my xp and needs an expensive outfit (his is really poor) - and he has such many redded skills that you can hardly develop him. His quatermaster skill is quickly matched by a trader companion.
 
You can always temporarily turn the difficulty down and reduce damage for friendlies if the hideout raid is too hard.

I'm interested to see what the next quest in the story brings. Letting rhagos go at the end tells me he will be relevant again at some point.
 
My usual start:

1. Ride directly to the nearest Khuzait villages. Keep visiting villages and recruiting Khuzait nomads, until you have 5 or 6.

2. Look for villages with the "needs manual laborers" or "help train troops" quests. Do the quests.

3. Use the money from the quests to get a steppe horse for me, and a steppe horse for each nomad to upgrade to tribal warrior.

4. Replace troops that die with new ones, keeping group around 15 or so, and keep them all mounted.


5. Find another "needs manual laborer" quest, and "needs help with steppe bandits" quests, and turn in steppe bandits (NOT looters), for 15000+ denars.

6. Buy a wool workshop in one of the back (eastern) Khuzait cities.

7. Hunt more steppe bandits and buy a second wool workshop in a second Khuzait city.

8. Go to Aseri lands (NOT the Aseri city on Khuzait border) to hire first companion, rescue family, start first caravan.

9. At this point have a solid group of 20 horse archers, and positive passive cash flow/income of over 500 denars a day.
 
That might work, but doing practice fights ad nauseam? That sounds really real time consuming, and boring. Besides, I dislike x-bows (unusable on horseback) thrown (too quick out of ammo) and one-handed (not enough damage).

While I agree that thrown and one-handed weapons have limited use on the battlefield, they come up very often in a number of tournaments which means you will often be equipped with them and barely know how to use them. A nominal skill increase and accompanying perks really goes a long way to making them useful.

The companion thing was something I just observed, but I imagine few players would even care what bandit hideout they had to attack. That was just something I added in as a consideration.

My usual start:

I'll definitely steal some of your pointers for my Khuzait campaign. Thanks :smile:
 
Empire Arena is WAY Easier then Khuzait. Empire you slip out to one side of the oval and wait there and only fight the trickle that comes towards you
 
Empire Arena is WAY Easier then Khuzait. Empire you slip out to one side of the oval and wait there and only fight the trickle that comes towards you

Agreed, though I absolutely loved the pre-patch Battanian tournaments. All bows and two-handed weapons lead to some fast-paced arena chaos. The addition of the targe kits has slowed them down a bit, but I used to be able to do 5 tournaments in 10 minutes by just running from town to town with a little luck.
 
Sure, tournies a hugely different case!

I don’t understand the changes to weapon selections and consistencies. This seems like a real nominal gripe by a loud mouth or two that pushed a sweeping change
 
While I agree that thrown and one-handed weapons have limited use on the battlefield, they come up very often in a number of tournaments which means you will often be equipped with them and barely know how to use them. A nominal skill increase and accompanying perks really goes a long way to making them useful.

I've found the two skills synergize really well for me on combat-oriented characters. As far as sheer enjoyment in combat goes, I think my favorite melee character's loadout was javelins - 2hand only axe - throwing axes - and a shield. I'd pepper the infranty and/or oncoming melee cavalry with the javelins, and then switch to the 2 hander. When I inevitably lost my horse, I'd fire off the first two throwing axes to take out two of the three infantry who always seemed to be charging at me, and then switch the last throwing axe to melee mode so I could fight and defend with my shield in close quarters. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through writing it all out, but I got used to it very quickly and it had the added bonus of letting me continue to strike in super close quarters (I think because of the shortened weapon length of the throwing axe). Oh, and it was fun as all hell.
 
I was able to do all of this in exactly 40 in-game days following the start of the quest but I was slouching on the arena circuits, so a committed player can probably get that number closer to 30 days or less.
40 days is pretty slow tbh. There's nothing complicated or hard about getting it done. I would recommend goin to an easier location to instigate the rescue though, you can do this by just not hiring a companion or keep units at 19 until in a safer area. I start the game and hunt embers of the flame solo for easy money and skill ups, then buy a husband, then make the 20 men and get by bro back.

It's the fight at the end that's killer. Sometimes you'll face a boss and eight or nine steppe bandits with good armor, bows, and glaives, who will literally murder your entire nine-man entourage.


With Desert Bandits, your entourage might take only one or two losses total.
Yeah I don't know if they fixed it but steppe boss could crush through your shield with glaive. I used to always duel the boss to get easy prisoners, but it's been a real :poop: show since they got crush though.
 
I find it's handy to have Vlandian crossbows as your main force until you get approached to rescue your family. They power up to Sharpshooters really quickly when they're your only force, and tear through most bandits in bases way before they have a chance to go at melee. Their large shields also help you deal with the boss and crew at the end.

I also aim to avoid areas with Sea Raiders when I'm reaching that stage... Mountain bandits are much easier to deal with. Although I had a touch and go moment once when as above, I got stuck with a 9 on 10 situation and ended up the last man standing.

I don't recall ever having entered an arena. Not sure why. Shy of crowds?
 
Yeah I don't know if they fixed it but steppe boss could crush through your shield with glaive. I used to always duel the boss to get easy prisoners, but it's been a real :poop: show since they got crush though.

I've never noticed that my own glaive would crush through shields, but maybe that's because it doesn't work on horseback?
 
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