Solo semi-walkthrough

[VirtualNight]

The MP takes 2-3h if self-boosted and is very simple, however the SP can end up taking some time, along with several dozens of wasted hours if you don't follow a plan, which I propose here.

Combine this with the tips from the guide as well.

 

Relation glitch: if you see a battle between a count/king and bandits (or another count, but in that case you'd need to be part of one of the factions), join and win, afterwards you will increase the relation with the count you helped. Now, pause and quit WITHOUT saving (don't be too fast or you will crash and might corrupt the save), then resume. You will notice how the battle is available again, join and it will be with 0 opponents, after few seconds you will win and gain another +1 on relation. Again, after the autosave quit without saving, and you know the drill. This will be very helpful if you manage to do this with a count you plan to marry to become a vassal.

 

Fight cancel: you will very often run into fights in the open field which are just a waste of time. Once you are in the battle, just quit without saving, and you will resume from the last autosave.

 

Autosave warning: the autosave applies to the latest save slot you had used to save/load, therefore if you make a backup save, you then want to save elsewhere to transfer the autosave there.

 

Easy siege: with a battle size of 30, as soon as you start (or once the siege tower is done moving), order your units to hold the position, charge the ladders/tower and then tell them to charge, doing so you will be the first to invade the castle/town, jump over the human walls the enemies have surely made and wipe the units so that yours can easily get in, then change the Battle Size to 100, once your new units spawn, put back the battle size to 30. You will annihilate several enemies and your own units won't take too many losses, and you will soon have a large group attacking while the AI will be stuck with the 30 battle size limit, so you can outnumber them. I only had to put some effort on 3 fiefs, everything else was very easy with this strategy.

 

Faction glitch

A very annoying glitch, more suited for the old ps3 RPG games. Once the last town/castle of a faction is taken, said faction is supposed to disband within a few hours or 2-3 days, instead that won't happen and it will remain active with no fief, most likely spamming attacks on your villages. There are several listed solutions all around internet, but none might work.

My personal route to prevent this glitch was the following:

 

• have a party member with the highest persuasion skill you can give them
• DON'T help a claimant to get the throne, I suspect this is quite a sure way to get the glitch. Whenever you help the claimant for the trophy, you shall then reload a save before joining them
• DON'T take any fief by asking any party to follow you, you must take it yourself, without any help outside of your party. It's not a problem if a count of your faction/kingdom captures it without you though
• once you take a fief (when you still haven't your own kingdom), DON'T go to capture another, defend it instead until the king gives it to you
• leave a castle, rather than a town, as last to capture, more preferably 2 castles
• a common fix states that you should keep the king in a prison tower... well, that option for me was just greyed out, which seems to suggest that you simply cannot put him there, maybe not anymore after a patch, so instead as soon as you take the last fief of a faction, immediately rush to your court and ask for peace with them (using your party member with the highest persuasion skill), then just let the time pass and the faction should disband. If in a rare case they refuse peace, try to keep asking, they might disband anyway
• save before taking the last fief of the faction, also keep separated saves for eveytime a faction disbands

 

 

First steps

 

Create your character as instructed in the guide. I'm positive that whenever you start a new game, the game randomly decides whether you can be successful to ask to become a vassal or not, regardless of your renow (as a female). Hopefully there is a plan B in case you are unlucky, so don't worry.

For the game settings, put everything on the easiest configuration, for the Battle size you should keep it at 30 for a while, this will make it way more doable to win, you should only put it at 100 once you are very powerful and confident you can handle that.

 

 

Initially, you are as powerful as a potato, so the only thing you can really do is to participate in tournaments held randomly in the towns. Do not bother to create a party yet.

You can go in a town, then if there is no tournament go into the arena and ask where the tournaments are held, if there is none then just simulate a day and check again.

During a tournament, always bet the highest you can on yourself. If you die, you have enough time to pause, quit without saving, and you can retry again, which is quite important since these tournament are also quite luck-based.

Everytime you have over 11,000 gold you want to go in a town, taking a walk around the street, and find the Guild Master, who sometimes enjoy to hide somewhere, however he is stationary. Then you want to talk to him and start an enterprise, whatever you pick he will tell you the profit so it is easy to find out the best choice, which is usually the dyework. So if it is, proceed to buy that, which will give you a weekly profit. Rinse and repeat until you have an enterprise in each town.

In the meantime, try to do tasks for the villages on the south-west of the map (those between and next to the mountains there), they will give Rhodok volunteers, who you will use for your army later on, and the higher a reputation with a village, the more volunteers will join you.

 

 

The gold grind

 

Now it's time for quite a boring step, but it will make the game super easy and won't require you to build big armies. Either find a safe spot or rest in a town, and hold R2 to simulate days. Every week, your enterprises will give you an income for about 10,000 gold, you need quite a lot of it. That is because you want to get the best gear in the game, which is listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mountandblade/comments/o288h1/best_gear_in_warband/

Personally I couldn't find the plate armor once I had enough gold (it costs 150,000 gold!) so I got something else, but you should definitely get everything else, especially the one handed sword and the shield (the Huscar), also the Bow (I think the crossbow is horrible for the player) and the 4th weapon slot for the arrows (the most powerful ones you can find). For the horse, get any armored one you can find.

Also for your stats, you should usually increase strenght and agility, maybe 2-3 points on charisma and some on Intelligence because you definitely want to raise your Trainer skill for the main character, which will give EXP to your party over time, which is super nice since it also works on the non-companion party members.

When you have some gold to spare, it can help to buy the books from the merchants in the tavern to increase some skills, also you should buy some armor for your 8 companions (no need to bother with weapons too much, give them anything that can be called weapon), needless to say you don't need to get the same gear as you did for yourself, just try to give them something decent along with any horse that they can ride.

All this will take a while, but it will be worth.

 

 

The conqueror

First of all, make a save and backup, in case you need to revert to get some miscellaneous. In fact, some are unclear and the guide is wrong regarding them.

 

You should have about 700 renow, so pick a faction, meet the king and ask to become a vassal, but if he starts with some female bullshit, your current run won't allow you to become a vassal... this way. So you need a workaround, which is marriage. Check the vassals for the faction you want to join, you need one without a wife, speak with him asking to "cement the alliance to their house", if they tell you that they might consider it, you have found your chicken. Increase your relation with him, either with the relation glitch if you are that lucky, or by doing tasks for him, but watch out: the Treasons are random and can happen to your chicken, so if that happens (if you have a task for him, it will fail automatically) quit without saving, so the treasons get randomized again.

When he finally accepts you, you gotta wait for a feast for your faction, so simulate days and check regularly the tavern for informations regarding a feast: if there is (for your faction) rush there and hopefully he will join as well eventually, then talk to him and proceed to the marriage (again, watch out if he gets out for treason before you can marry). This will automatically make you a vassal, you can ignore your chicken for the rest of the game.

 

Next, it's time to build an army. Remember the Rhodok villages? now you want to build an army, check those villages and get the recruits with you, I'd say that a party of 70 is enough, as long as you can use your own character properly. Anything higher will result in a hard morale to keep up with, and your soldiers will quit.

When upgrading your troops, I'd say make them about 70%/30% footman/archers, who will ultimately become Rhodok Sergeant / Rhodok Sharpshooter, don't bother with cavalry as they'd be quite useless on sieges and you won't fight much in the open field.

 

 

(Kingmaker trophy: make a backup save which you definitely wanna revert after this trophy!

You wanna take care of this annoyance now, for your current faction you want to take almost all fiefs of an enemy faction (doesn't matter if the king doesn't give you the fief, DON'T REBEL, also you can ask help to the lords or the king for this trophy) leaving 2-3 castles, after that i suggest to defeat the enemy king to make things easier, then ask to your king to be released from the oath, then find the claimant of the faction you almost wiped out and become their vassal, finally help them to become the king by taking all the fiefs for the faction they want to rule. Use a Rhodok army and you should be fine. After the trophy, revert the save.)

 

Proceed to get a castle/town of a faction you are at war with, and ask everytime that it is awarded to you upon victory. Once the king refuses, you can rebel and make your own kingdom, so do that (sometimes it might take quite a while before a fief is given to you. I recommend to refuse any fief the king offers you outside of the ones you captured, I suspect that accepting them might glitch something).

First thing, with your new kingdom you should go to your court and hopefully you will find some lords who want to join you, accept them as vassals, but I suggest to not take more than 7 of them or you might struggle to keep them happy. Whenever you capture a fief, give it to a vassal, trying to be equal so they don't hate you. The reason you give fiefs to them is that by doing so they will be protected by their lords, otherwise you will often be attacked and lose fiefs. Just give to yourself a castle or town for a trophy (Queen), after all you don't need much gold anymore at this point, the ones from your enterprises are way more than enough (i had over 1 million gold unused).

 

You should know what to do now: just do as the guide says on stage 4 and 5. You will most likely have to fight the king of each faction, if you can do that during a siege it will be a good way to reduce his army's size, but if you fight them in the open field... it is doable with a battle size of 30 but you need to play properly: order your troops to hold the position, and go to the enemy alone. Fight while moving around the group, using your shield very often, after some kills you can tell your troops to charge. If you can get plenty of kills by yourself while losing barely any health per battle, you can also defeat a king that has 600+ troops with your 70 troops army. Accept that it will be a long battle though, all this due to the faction glitch that prevents you from rushing to the fiefs with your lords.

 

 

At this point do any miscellaneous. As well as a fresh run for the Elope trophy which requires you to be a male.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by VirtualNight

[Axeman_Phoenix]

Loved playing this game on pc with all the mods and other things, but here on the playstation it just looks chaotic the trophy list and the game always did have the weirdest bugs.
But respect on the guide here,especially with the conqueror , i could never destroy some factions cause they would always persist on the map as a roaming army.
Do plan on picking up this game in the future so cheer bud.