Tentacle
Recruit
The Traveller's Guide to Zendar
Book Two: So Long and Thanks for all the Loot
Chapter One: From Butterknife to Broadsword
Introduction
In this book one will learn how to fight for his faction, launder for his lord, beat for his baron and kill for his king! After all, a respectable hero needs to fight to maintain one's name... right? No-one wants to be some measly old trader. Right, anyway. So, here we are, back at Zendar. I suppose you know what a trader is and how to trade, so our first step to fighting a battle is equip one's self. If a hero is ever short of money, then you can always enter the tournaments and place a good 200 denars on yourself. If you win, you'll be 97.5% richer. Doesn't that sound great? So, buy yourself some good weapons, but don't spend all your money on weapons, because remember you might just resort to buying some more armour aswell. If you're heading for a hero-slavetrader, then I suggest using a blunt weapon. TIP! You can tamper with the game files (there are pleanty of modders/editors around) to set arrows and things to have blunt damage. Don't over do it though, it ruins it!
Damage-Type Jargon, Modifier Rubbish and Defence Trivia
I suspect there will be many a hero wondering what all this "large bag of", "watered-steel" and "blunt" treachery is. Well, there's an easy explanation to this. As one would guess, a "blunt" weapon wouldn't be as powerful as, say a "watered-steel" weapon. You can definately see the difference in damage/defence if the item has a modifier (a suffix). So, you have say a Broadsword (NOTE! This isn't the actual damage, by the way.), that does 30 Piercing damage (we'll come to this later). A blunt broadsword would do, say, 26 damage, and a sharp broadsword would do 35. Get the idea? Good. The rest seems pretty simple, since the modifiers arn't too advanced. The same applies to armour, a tattered padded cloth isn't as good as a reinforced padded cloth. Horse modifiers consist of only Spirited, Stubborn, Lame, Heavy and Swaybacked (Thanks BobG). A spirited horse being the fastest and a lame being the slowest. A horse can become lame if while in battle, the horse dies and a red message says "Horse crippled...". Crippled horses lose their modifiers, a Spirited Courser would become a Lame Courser. Horses heal if kept in your inventory for approximately 30 days. I never do this, I think it takes a tad too long. I just go and buy another from the merchants.
Damage types, on the other hand, are alot easier to understand. There are three damage types, Blunt, Piercing and Cutting. Piercing and Cutting being the most powerful, Blunt being the weaker, but Blunt damage will knock enemies out instead of killing them, enabling you to campture them at the end of the match. Slaves can be sold to Ramun the Slave Trader in Zendar, or the Slavetrader at the Salt Mine. This will be explained much more clearly in TTGTZ IV, so stay tuned. Cutting and Piercing consists of all swords and some polearms, all bows and crossbows. Blunt consists of all types of hammer and most of the polearms. Unfortunaley, a blunt sword will still kill someone, but then again, at this stage in the developement of Mount&Blade, all slaves are worth the same amount anyway, so I wouldn't bother capturing them.
Chapter Two: One's First Fight
Be Bold!
Aha! It's time to going and beat up some baddies! Remember when we first talked to Constable Hareck in TTGTZ I? He wanted us to kill some River Pirates. Well, now we're going to. If one has enough money, one can buy some Sacred Fighters of Honour, also known as peasants from the Taverns. You can sleep at the Taverns to replenish the health of you and your party members, and nurse unconscious soldiers back to health. Well, grab a few peasants, we're going Pirate Perforating. Hit the Sacred Key of Leaving (TAB) to go back to the map. For all those cheaters out there, press CTRL+T to reveal everything/everyone on the map. In big white letters near Zendar will be the river pirate spawn point.
To wait, press the Sacred Key of Waiting, AKA Space. People will continue to trot along happily around you. As you may have noticed, every time you finish moving, the world goes into pause. Space breaks that pausiness, and people continue to move, duh. How simple could it be? If you're horribly impatient, hold CTRL and Space together and time will go x times faster. There's bound to bea few river pirates around already. NOTE: If you increase Athletics, your walking speed on the map will be increased, and if you increase Riding, your riding speed on the map will increase, meanwhile Pathfinding increases overall speed ontop of those bonuses. Holding extra horses in your inventory will also mean you will go a bit faster while riding. TIP! There are plenty of modifications to download that change all this, and plenty of editors that can change every aspect of a horse imaginable. A particular favorite hourse mod of mine is the Nightmare (Kudos to n00854180t!).
Now to engage in battle. When you see a river pirate party (hold your hand over the party and information on the party will appear) click on it and you will start persuing it. The river pirates will flee if your party is bigger than theirs, or they will attack if your party is the same size or smaller than theirs. This applies to all enemies besides Khergits and Dark Hunters, I believe.
Now you have engaged eachother, you will sometimes have a choice. If your party is smaller than that of the river pirates, you can't retreat, though if it is bigger than the river pirates, you can retreat. Before this menu appears, you will go through a conversation (rather unfriendly, it seems. Such a pity, really, that those chappies can't get along, eh? Moreen, break out the teabags, will you?) Click on something that resembles Attack. You will be places on a randomly generated battlefield. Now, things start hotting up.
Battle Tactics!...?
So, you're on a battlefield in the middle of nowhere. If you have a horse and you put it in the correct slot in your inventory, you will be riding it. If you have any allies, they will be surrounding you, charging madly at the enemy with their menacing-looking butterknives and almighty pitchforks. Keep an eye on your health counter in the bottem-right corner, it is essential you keep this above zero. Of course. If you're using bow an arrow or crossbow, your missile count will be displayed. Oh, and pressing your ] key, by default, this will switch between weapons. Your [ key will switch between weapons and shields too. You can damage enemies by charging at them. You have a log at the lef tside of the screen that displays damage recieved and damage dealt, which I suppose you must have discovered while undergoing your training. Well, onward! Be warned -- stay out of rivers, for they are a huge tactical disadvantage on foot, for it is alot harder to fight in water than it is on land. These pirates are pretty inexperienced fighters, so a few peasants will keep them undercontrol, but beware, hirelings (a posh word for party members) get themselves into all kinds of predicaments, so you'll have to help them out of the grave now and then, but otherwise, they're fine. So, go and kill the river pirates! Remember, backing out of large groups and leading them over to your hirelings is a good idea, it helps break down groups, but after all, there's probably going to be four of them anyway. Watch out for stones, if you've equipped the shield, right clicking blocks damage up to a point. The shield's health will be displayed ontop of your health. Broken shields' health always reverts back to full health after every battle, snapped or not. There's no way to completely destroy shields, thankfully. When you've killed all the river pirates, there'll be a 5 second pause before a window, differing very much to a merchant's window will pop up. Take everything out of the left window and put it into the right window. The left window is what the dead River Pirates left for you after you killed them. If you were using a blunt weapon, another window will appear after this one. This will be the slave screen. On the bottom left, there will be something that says "River Pirate (X). Click ont his and then click Capture. If you have any skill in Prisoner Management, this button will appear to be clickable. If you have no slots on the bottom right, then you can't capture any river pirates. Well then, break out the champagne, you're victorious!
Chapter Three: Flogging the Loot
Well then, I think it's time we went back to Zendar so we can sell the loot. Most of the time, it won't be much, but let's be thankful for it anyway. Go through it all to see if there's anything worth using, if so, equip it and sell the rest. Once you've done that, if you read Constable Hareck's orders correctly, he will be paying x Denars for every River Pirate party eliminated, so go up and talk to him. He'll reward you with the right amount of denars. Now it's time to sell the slave(s). So, off we go to Ramun the Slave trader, all the way over there! Talk to him. If you havn't talked to him before, there'll be a frightfully long conversation between you and Ramun before you ca actually do anything useful for/with him. When the conversation has ended, talk to him again. Say you have some slaves for him. A window will open that's just like the one where you bought the hirelings and the one after the battle where you captured the River Pirates. Click on River Pirate (X) and click Sell. You will get 100 Denars for every slave you sell. Personally, I never thought that this is a good ource of income, but when the game is completed, different slaves give different amounts of Denars. I suspect that a slave trader is a very good thing to be if you're short of denars. There isn't much left to say about this really. You'll soon be in the money if you keep fighting people. Of, and at the end of every week (7 days, duh) you will have to pay your hirelings a set amount of money, which is viewable by pressing P on the Map.
Chapter Four: Faction Faffle
Lordy!
Now it's time to learn about factions. I think there'll be 3 factions in Mount&Blade, since they added Dhorak Keep. Anyway. You can find oout what faction a village is by holding the mouse over it. The two factions are the Vaegirs and the Swadians (Vaegir and Swadia). You can join a faction by talking to the Lord/Count/Baron of a faction village, and saying "I want to join the <faction> cause, my Lord". There we are, we have a faction Personally, I have taken a liking to the Vaegirs because Vaegir sounds much better than Swadia (is there such a thing as a "factionist"?). When you join a faction, you will have your relationship with the faction you joined boosted to +30 and the other faction's relationship with you wil drop to -3. Every time you commence an attack on the enemy faction's soldiers, your relationship the that faction will drop by 3 every time. Caravans have their own relation ship, you will still be friendly till them, untill you attack them, of course. If you talk to a Count of any village (of your faction) ypou can undergo a mission for them. Do enough missions and you will recieve a higher rank, which means more pay. Pay builds up overtime, and is payable by any count anywhere. If you speak to an every count and say "forgive me", you will loose your rank in your faction (I think) and you will become allies with both factions again. Well, this seems pretty simple, right? Well then.
Caravan Cwests
If you talk to a friendly caravan, you are offered an amount of Denars if you escort that caravan safely to the required village. This gets very hard about a week into the game, since there are so many enemies around. The worst place to do these quests has to be the south of the lands, with all the deserting Khergit riders and Dark Hunters. Unfortunately, Caravans are not well guarded, they have a handful of high-level fighters (exept you couldn't even fit one on one's hand, but, hey, figure of speech) and that's about it. Still, you get a phat reward for escorting them. You get alot for escorting caravans. You can enjoy your money untill you bump into a huge group of Mountain Bandits, then if you don't want to fight, you can party with your wallet to increase your relationship with the bandits from -30 to -1, but this relationship deteriorates back to -30 after a week. Nasty, nasty bandits!
Chapter 5: The Rest
This is pretty much everything else, acknoledgements, progress and all that.
TTGTZ - The Omnibus
TTGTZ I - Life, the Lands and Everything »
TTGTZ II - So Long, and Thanks for all the Loot
TTGTZ III - Mostly Harmless - A Complete Listing of Opponents and Allies
TTGTZ IV - The Village at the End of the Universe - Listing of Towns, Villages, People and Trade
More to come...
Acknoledgements:
BobG for reminding me to add Swaybacked to "Horse Modifiers"
Please ask before including this in anything (sites etc.).
Copyright Tentacle 2005 (c)
Book Two: So Long and Thanks for all the Loot
Chapter One: From Butterknife to Broadsword
Introduction
In this book one will learn how to fight for his faction, launder for his lord, beat for his baron and kill for his king! After all, a respectable hero needs to fight to maintain one's name... right? No-one wants to be some measly old trader. Right, anyway. So, here we are, back at Zendar. I suppose you know what a trader is and how to trade, so our first step to fighting a battle is equip one's self. If a hero is ever short of money, then you can always enter the tournaments and place a good 200 denars on yourself. If you win, you'll be 97.5% richer. Doesn't that sound great? So, buy yourself some good weapons, but don't spend all your money on weapons, because remember you might just resort to buying some more armour aswell. If you're heading for a hero-slavetrader, then I suggest using a blunt weapon. TIP! You can tamper with the game files (there are pleanty of modders/editors around) to set arrows and things to have blunt damage. Don't over do it though, it ruins it!
Damage-Type Jargon, Modifier Rubbish and Defence Trivia
I suspect there will be many a hero wondering what all this "large bag of", "watered-steel" and "blunt" treachery is. Well, there's an easy explanation to this. As one would guess, a "blunt" weapon wouldn't be as powerful as, say a "watered-steel" weapon. You can definately see the difference in damage/defence if the item has a modifier (a suffix). So, you have say a Broadsword (NOTE! This isn't the actual damage, by the way.), that does 30 Piercing damage (we'll come to this later). A blunt broadsword would do, say, 26 damage, and a sharp broadsword would do 35. Get the idea? Good. The rest seems pretty simple, since the modifiers arn't too advanced. The same applies to armour, a tattered padded cloth isn't as good as a reinforced padded cloth. Horse modifiers consist of only Spirited, Stubborn, Lame, Heavy and Swaybacked (Thanks BobG). A spirited horse being the fastest and a lame being the slowest. A horse can become lame if while in battle, the horse dies and a red message says "Horse crippled...". Crippled horses lose their modifiers, a Spirited Courser would become a Lame Courser. Horses heal if kept in your inventory for approximately 30 days. I never do this, I think it takes a tad too long. I just go and buy another from the merchants.
Damage types, on the other hand, are alot easier to understand. There are three damage types, Blunt, Piercing and Cutting. Piercing and Cutting being the most powerful, Blunt being the weaker, but Blunt damage will knock enemies out instead of killing them, enabling you to campture them at the end of the match. Slaves can be sold to Ramun the Slave Trader in Zendar, or the Slavetrader at the Salt Mine. This will be explained much more clearly in TTGTZ IV, so stay tuned. Cutting and Piercing consists of all swords and some polearms, all bows and crossbows. Blunt consists of all types of hammer and most of the polearms. Unfortunaley, a blunt sword will still kill someone, but then again, at this stage in the developement of Mount&Blade, all slaves are worth the same amount anyway, so I wouldn't bother capturing them.
Chapter Two: One's First Fight
Be Bold!
Aha! It's time to going and beat up some baddies! Remember when we first talked to Constable Hareck in TTGTZ I? He wanted us to kill some River Pirates. Well, now we're going to. If one has enough money, one can buy some Sacred Fighters of Honour, also known as peasants from the Taverns. You can sleep at the Taverns to replenish the health of you and your party members, and nurse unconscious soldiers back to health. Well, grab a few peasants, we're going Pirate Perforating. Hit the Sacred Key of Leaving (TAB) to go back to the map. For all those cheaters out there, press CTRL+T to reveal everything/everyone on the map. In big white letters near Zendar will be the river pirate spawn point.
To wait, press the Sacred Key of Waiting, AKA Space. People will continue to trot along happily around you. As you may have noticed, every time you finish moving, the world goes into pause. Space breaks that pausiness, and people continue to move, duh. How simple could it be? If you're horribly impatient, hold CTRL and Space together and time will go x times faster. There's bound to bea few river pirates around already. NOTE: If you increase Athletics, your walking speed on the map will be increased, and if you increase Riding, your riding speed on the map will increase, meanwhile Pathfinding increases overall speed ontop of those bonuses. Holding extra horses in your inventory will also mean you will go a bit faster while riding. TIP! There are plenty of modifications to download that change all this, and plenty of editors that can change every aspect of a horse imaginable. A particular favorite hourse mod of mine is the Nightmare (Kudos to n00854180t!).
Now to engage in battle. When you see a river pirate party (hold your hand over the party and information on the party will appear) click on it and you will start persuing it. The river pirates will flee if your party is bigger than theirs, or they will attack if your party is the same size or smaller than theirs. This applies to all enemies besides Khergits and Dark Hunters, I believe.
Now you have engaged eachother, you will sometimes have a choice. If your party is smaller than that of the river pirates, you can't retreat, though if it is bigger than the river pirates, you can retreat. Before this menu appears, you will go through a conversation (rather unfriendly, it seems. Such a pity, really, that those chappies can't get along, eh? Moreen, break out the teabags, will you?) Click on something that resembles Attack. You will be places on a randomly generated battlefield. Now, things start hotting up.
Battle Tactics!...?
So, you're on a battlefield in the middle of nowhere. If you have a horse and you put it in the correct slot in your inventory, you will be riding it. If you have any allies, they will be surrounding you, charging madly at the enemy with their menacing-looking butterknives and almighty pitchforks. Keep an eye on your health counter in the bottem-right corner, it is essential you keep this above zero. Of course. If you're using bow an arrow or crossbow, your missile count will be displayed. Oh, and pressing your ] key, by default, this will switch between weapons. Your [ key will switch between weapons and shields too. You can damage enemies by charging at them. You have a log at the lef tside of the screen that displays damage recieved and damage dealt, which I suppose you must have discovered while undergoing your training. Well, onward! Be warned -- stay out of rivers, for they are a huge tactical disadvantage on foot, for it is alot harder to fight in water than it is on land. These pirates are pretty inexperienced fighters, so a few peasants will keep them undercontrol, but beware, hirelings (a posh word for party members) get themselves into all kinds of predicaments, so you'll have to help them out of the grave now and then, but otherwise, they're fine. So, go and kill the river pirates! Remember, backing out of large groups and leading them over to your hirelings is a good idea, it helps break down groups, but after all, there's probably going to be four of them anyway. Watch out for stones, if you've equipped the shield, right clicking blocks damage up to a point. The shield's health will be displayed ontop of your health. Broken shields' health always reverts back to full health after every battle, snapped or not. There's no way to completely destroy shields, thankfully. When you've killed all the river pirates, there'll be a 5 second pause before a window, differing very much to a merchant's window will pop up. Take everything out of the left window and put it into the right window. The left window is what the dead River Pirates left for you after you killed them. If you were using a blunt weapon, another window will appear after this one. This will be the slave screen. On the bottom left, there will be something that says "River Pirate (X). Click ont his and then click Capture. If you have any skill in Prisoner Management, this button will appear to be clickable. If you have no slots on the bottom right, then you can't capture any river pirates. Well then, break out the champagne, you're victorious!
Chapter Three: Flogging the Loot
Well then, I think it's time we went back to Zendar so we can sell the loot. Most of the time, it won't be much, but let's be thankful for it anyway. Go through it all to see if there's anything worth using, if so, equip it and sell the rest. Once you've done that, if you read Constable Hareck's orders correctly, he will be paying x Denars for every River Pirate party eliminated, so go up and talk to him. He'll reward you with the right amount of denars. Now it's time to sell the slave(s). So, off we go to Ramun the Slave trader, all the way over there! Talk to him. If you havn't talked to him before, there'll be a frightfully long conversation between you and Ramun before you ca actually do anything useful for/with him. When the conversation has ended, talk to him again. Say you have some slaves for him. A window will open that's just like the one where you bought the hirelings and the one after the battle where you captured the River Pirates. Click on River Pirate (X) and click Sell. You will get 100 Denars for every slave you sell. Personally, I never thought that this is a good ource of income, but when the game is completed, different slaves give different amounts of Denars. I suspect that a slave trader is a very good thing to be if you're short of denars. There isn't much left to say about this really. You'll soon be in the money if you keep fighting people. Of, and at the end of every week (7 days, duh) you will have to pay your hirelings a set amount of money, which is viewable by pressing P on the Map.
Chapter Four: Faction Faffle
Lordy!
Now it's time to learn about factions. I think there'll be 3 factions in Mount&Blade, since they added Dhorak Keep. Anyway. You can find oout what faction a village is by holding the mouse over it. The two factions are the Vaegirs and the Swadians (Vaegir and Swadia). You can join a faction by talking to the Lord/Count/Baron of a faction village, and saying "I want to join the <faction> cause, my Lord". There we are, we have a faction Personally, I have taken a liking to the Vaegirs because Vaegir sounds much better than Swadia (is there such a thing as a "factionist"?). When you join a faction, you will have your relationship with the faction you joined boosted to +30 and the other faction's relationship with you wil drop to -3. Every time you commence an attack on the enemy faction's soldiers, your relationship the that faction will drop by 3 every time. Caravans have their own relation ship, you will still be friendly till them, untill you attack them, of course. If you talk to a Count of any village (of your faction) ypou can undergo a mission for them. Do enough missions and you will recieve a higher rank, which means more pay. Pay builds up overtime, and is payable by any count anywhere. If you speak to an every count and say "forgive me", you will loose your rank in your faction (I think) and you will become allies with both factions again. Well, this seems pretty simple, right? Well then.
Caravan Cwests
If you talk to a friendly caravan, you are offered an amount of Denars if you escort that caravan safely to the required village. This gets very hard about a week into the game, since there are so many enemies around. The worst place to do these quests has to be the south of the lands, with all the deserting Khergit riders and Dark Hunters. Unfortunately, Caravans are not well guarded, they have a handful of high-level fighters (exept you couldn't even fit one on one's hand, but, hey, figure of speech) and that's about it. Still, you get a phat reward for escorting them. You get alot for escorting caravans. You can enjoy your money untill you bump into a huge group of Mountain Bandits, then if you don't want to fight, you can party with your wallet to increase your relationship with the bandits from -30 to -1, but this relationship deteriorates back to -30 after a week. Nasty, nasty bandits!
Chapter 5: The Rest
This is pretty much everything else, acknoledgements, progress and all that.
TTGTZ - The Omnibus
TTGTZ I - Life, the Lands and Everything »
TTGTZ II - So Long, and Thanks for all the Loot
TTGTZ III - Mostly Harmless - A Complete Listing of Opponents and Allies
TTGTZ IV - The Village at the End of the Universe - Listing of Towns, Villages, People and Trade
More to come...
Acknoledgements:
BobG for reminding me to add Swaybacked to "Horse Modifiers"
Please ask before including this in anything (sites etc.).
Copyright Tentacle 2005 (c)
. And Blunt was en example, and the [EDIT] maximum tournament bet IS 200, so sorry. And I didn't say that bows use blunt damage. Heh. Thanks for pointing these out.
