Mount & Blade new player guide

I am not the most experienced Mount and Blade player on the planet right now and there is still much I do not know and am looking forward to learning. But after spending 19 hours learning the reasons why I was not doing so well in the game before starting again with a more successful character have having a good 55 hours of successful game play, I believe I now know enough to get you noobies started in the game with your own successful character. Since you will be eager to play, I'll try and cover the basics in this guide and will probably revisit more advanced topics in other guides after I master them my self.

Steam users can get some great advice from the Steam Mount and Blade Forums where vastly more experienced players than I exist, and they are friendly too :D
Things to know before you start.

First point, Mount and Blade Warbands reveals its features slowly as your reputation with a faction increases and your power grows. So if some features cannot be found right away, do not worry about it, that is normal.

Second its tempting to try and make your player character all things to all men, but forget about doing that. Instead specialize, make your player character as good as you can be in a specific area and hire companions in the game to fill the skill gaps in your warband. This will allow you to be very good with specific weapons early on and give you the edge you need to survive those first 2 days playing Mount and Blade.

Before you start playing, add at least 1 point to spotting, training and first aid skills. These allow you to see the enemy around you as you approach them (spotting), train your men up to be better fighters outside of the battlefield (training) and recover some health lost between multipart battles (First Aid). All 3 are vitally important early on for a warrior and you will need them. Traders may favour a slightly different skill set, but I would still take spotting and training, perhaps add more points to them. You can add these skills to an companion later rather than specialize in them your self. But until you get some companions, you need a point or two in each.
The basics

Early on you are given a choice to do a quick quest in order to get a bit of money behind you. They expect you to spend some of that money hiring troops which are available from any village that likes you. So head towards a village and recruit some men. Then do the mission and get paid for it. Recruit some more men with that money and you will have your self a little warband.

When you travel around a message saying some of men are ready to be upgraded will appear in the text that scrolls by on the lower left if you have the Training Skill. Click on the Party Icon from the main world screen where you move around the map and and select members of your company and see if any have any upgrade options. Better men cost more gold so watch the wages info, make sure you can afford to upgrade them.

If you or a companion upgrade, you get a leveled up warning which can be seen on the character screen for you or by selecting the companion and clicking on talk from the party screen. That screen allows you to change your companions equipment and assign skill points. So make heavily use of it, you will need it. A ballanced party will complete your skill set nicely.

Looting a village lowers your favour with that village, a negative favour means they will not supply troops to help you when you need to recruit men. A positive favour increases the number of troops you can recruit from a village. So before looting everything, understand, you will not be able to recruit from them for a long time until you improve your relations with that village. Looting denies the ower of that village any gold that week. So it can be a good strategic decision to loot villages simply to cut off a Nobles funds.
In or out of Favour

The key to the game is being in somebody or something's good books or bad books. This is measured by how much they favour you, usually around 20 means they are becoming friends with you and open up to you a little more. Every aspect of the game is influenced by this and its important you understand there are many different groups to please and many different ways to please each group.

Some groups you can gain favour with are

Cities and villages
Lords
Ladies
Kings
Whole Factions

For cities, you win a Tournament or do a Guild Master Quest.

For Villages, you simply do a quest offered by the Village Elder.

For Lords you do jobs for them or help them in battle, you can also gain favour by releasing them if you capture then after winning a battle.

For Ladies, you can dedicate a tournament victory to them, express your undying love or read them a poem.

For Kings you can do quests for them or help them in battle pretty much like a Lord.

For Whole factions, if you help one of their lords in battle, your favour with that lords faction increases greatly. One for all and all for one sort of thing.
Rising up the ranks.

Every battle awards you Renown and Moral if you win. The more renown you have, the greater your reputation and more of the game you unlock. A high renown means you have been noticed by other lords and kills and will be offered vassalage's by Kings, assigned villages and have the chance to get some power within somebody else's realm. You can also win over lords you helped and set up your own kingdom if your renown is high enough to but that's a little more complicated than simply using renown and not covered in this guide.

You can gain Renown completing quests and winning tournaments too, all are important and usually the greater the odds against you, the more renown you earn.
Honour and Dishonour.

In the Medieval age in which Mount and Blade Warbands is set Chivalry is the key to gaining friends, helping out lords in battle, releasing them when captured, helping villages that are being attacked by bandits and then refusing the reward. When given a choice to do the right thing, your often chosen between getting honour or losing it.

Running away from battle is considered a dishonourable act, looting villages is considered a dishonourable act, though I have not noticed if honour is actually removed because I do not do those things a lot. But as you discover new ways to gain honour, you will learn how to increase it and make new friends in the process.

In game terms, every time you gain honour, your also making new friends, every time you lose honour, your losing friends, thats roughly when it amounts too in the end and its usually linked to what ever you where doing at the time.
Making new friends.

When a friendly lord is locked in battle and likely to lose the fight, helping him win will improve your relationship with that lord greatly. If he needed no help, and you help him, you will still get a small boost to your rating with that lord. The same is true when you do quests for them or answer a call to assist in a campaign. After you have completed those tasks and attend a feast at some castle, further points are often earned by talking to the lords you encountered previously. They enjoy talking about past glories and it helps raise your reputation with them.
Companions

Companions are individuals that hang around Taverns until you recruit them. Once recruited they are very much like you, they level up, they can have their equipment or skills adjusted by talking to them. You can specialize them in areas that your own character is no good in and plug any gaps in your skill set. They are found in your party tab and they always have their name rather than a unit displayed.

Companions also have ideas of their own and may leave your company if you do things they dislike. Who you take on as your fellow companions matters, any friction between 2 companions can cause one to leave. So hiring some that work well together is important. Even the best companion can sound like a prick if you have people they dislike in your party.
Prisoners.

Taking prisoners is a primary source of income in the game for warriors and you need a point in the Prisoner management skill before your allowed to take any. Every point lets you take 5 prisoners and every prisoners value increases if they are skilled and decreases if they are not. So capturing a knight gives you a decent amount of gold when sold on. Usually early on you will be facing Tundra and Sea Bandits which are with about 100 gold each (roughly, its actually more than that).

You need to order your men to use blunt weapons to take prisoners, so if your after making money from prisoners, make sure your companions all have blunt weapons in their equipment. I should warn you here that any NPC that does not have a blunt weapon when this order is issued will stand still and not fight back.

Taverns are where NPCs that sell prisoners for money or ransom can be found, they travel between cities so you have to go looking for them, once found you can sell your prisoners on to them.

Castles also have prisons and when you capture your first Castle, you can put your prisoners in your dungeon for safe keeping and then make improvements to reduce their chances of escape. Lords tend to escape from time to time and this is especially true when your carting them around with you. Locking them up in a dungeon, lessens that affect. But if you capture a lord and put them in your dungeon and the war with that lords faction ends, they will be automatically released without warning along with any troops from that faction.

Interestingly, if your beseiging a castle when the war ends, there appears to be no penalty for continuing the siege.

Whilst captured, you can ransom off lords for a fair amount of money, just put them in your castle and wait for a ransom offer. If you refuse a ransom, your reputation with that lord drops and you lose honour.
Villages, Castles and Cities.

As your favour with a faction increases, the king your serving will offer you villages to rule and those villages can have certain improvements built in them if you wish. These villages provide you with a steady income that allows you to fund a larger army. Castles and Cities offer the same benefits if you own them. But I found Castles tend to be captured by you rather than awarded. And you have to assign men to defend a castle after i is captured and those men cost you money to maintain. Though the price of maintaining a garrison of men in a castle is a lot less than maintaining them in the field as part of your army.
Industries

You can establish industries in cities to help you raise even more money. Checking what each city has in stock first will tell you what the local supply of raw materials for that industry is like and give you an idea of which is the best industry to set up in any particular city. Of course supply changes over time, so profits will rise and fall with those changes.

You can set up industries in any friendly city but if you go to war with a faction that owns that city, the funds you would have gotten from it stop until they are at peace again with your faction. The money earned from industries helps you maintain a larger army.
Trade

You will quickly notice villages and cities sell products, if you go to the market in a city and assess local prices, it will tell you where the cities goods can be sold and how much profit you can make. But be warned, the place that needs a product changes over time as supply improves so the trade routes change too. But it does mean you can make a living as a trader if you wish.
Armies

The size of your army is linked to your renown, as that increases, so does the number of troops you can control. A high CHAR stat gives you a moral boost and high leadership skill lowers the cost of such an army. The game gives you read out on what factors affect your current moral. Just go to reports from the world map screen and take a look at the moral. It will give you all the details.

CHAR, Leadership and Moral are important unless you like men deserting from your army.

The Tactics Skill gives you your starting advantage in battle. I believe this effects how many men you can field compared to the enemy because the game caps the default battle at about 70 men I think unless you change it to something higher. So I believe the tactic skill allows you to have more of that 70 cap for your forces. Every battle has a battle advantage assigned to the battle anyway, so using tactics to modify it in your favour is a good idea. It can often correct any in ballance caused by taking on a much larger force.

Armies skills go up during battle and whilst traveling around with you if you have a training skill. Depending on how much income you have, you might want to maintain a small or large army.

Also remember armies need to be fed, so buy supplies from a city market for your army. Bread is a good product for an army and you will notice food offers a moral bonus for your army too. Villages tend to be a little expensive when it comes to buying supplies, so avoid buying from them if you can.

If your chasing down bandits, the number of mounted men in your warband determines the speed you travel at. The Path Finding Skill will increase your speed on the world map by 3% per point too.

I found when hunting bandits it is better to have a 50 man well trained and very fast army than a 100 man poorly trained and slow army. Or even a 100 man well trained army, because I simply could not catch anything. Large Armies are better for attacking static targets or other large armies as a rule.

Speed is the key to success early on in the game and better men do make a big difference to a battle. As you will find out the first time you try and take a castle, a topic for another guide.
The Battle Ground.

Strategy is key here and deserves a guide of it is own but here is a quick look at how to win battles.

First the F key is used to get on or off your horse or change equipment from your supply box during the battle, thats the box near where you start next to the flag. Also you can use the F key to pick up equipment dropped on the battlefield. Loot is assigned at the end of the battle, so picking stuff up is simply a way to get better equipment whilst the battle is in progress, so you can use it in that battle. It is also a good way of getting more arrows.

When facing a greater number of enemy troops, press F1 and F2 to get your men to follow you and charge up the nearest high hill and once at the top, press F1 and F1 again to hold that position. Climbing a hill slows down cavalry and infantry, gives your archers greater range and accuracy (I think, need to confirm it) and generally improves your odds of winning considerably. The enemy tends to disperse as it climbs hills so when it gets to the top, you have all your men ganging up on a couple of enemy units. I beat 500 enemy with only 100 troops doing this.

The keys are used to choose categories of troops and you can create your own from the party tab, but the default ones are as follows.

1 = infantry
2 = archers
3 = cavalry

I set 4 to companions and I use them as shock troops during sieges by sending them in first to break though the initial defenders.

Backspace brings up a menu with tick boxes that lists all those but it forgets which boxes you ticked when you close the menu, so instead use the numbers.

To select more than 1 group, press the number for the first group you want, then hold down shift and press another number for the second or third group you want to select. You will see the icons above their heads turn green as you select them and you see a message telling you which groups have been selected in the lower left corner.

Now you can use the F1 to F3 keys to give the selected troops orders, best experiment with these.

Generally, to defend against cavalry you need a tight formation of men, to take on a dispersed enemy, you need a formation that's more spread out. These is found in the F2 menu.

Also by default your troops will try and charge at the enemy the moment the battle starts so pressing F1 and F2 sets them to follow you and stops a charge that might lose you the battle. Its generally best not to charge an enemy until you can see what your up against.

Also as a rule if your character is mounted and has a lance, take out anything shiny on the enemy side first, they are probably the hardest troops they have and a lance can take them out in a single charge if your lucky.
Some other considerations.

Assuming you have decided to go the warrior route and hack your way to victory, you will want to check the Taverns in all large cities, you will want to speak to the Guild Master in those cities, found by walking around the city and finding him, and you will enter villages to talk to the village elder. These are all sources of jobs, opportunities, information or NPCs and are an important part of the game.

Focusing on Fighting is only one way to play even if it is an important way to play. You can run around defeating everything but never increase your standing in a faction, or you can run around helping everybody and be very popular but not very highly ranked. These locations allow you to balance the combat against the need to make friends and rise up the ranks. Only when you use them in conjunction with each other does your character develop fully.
Final thoughts.

Mount and Blade Warband is a rich, highly detailed game that on the surface does not look like much, but once you start playing you see layers upon layers of game play revealing it self to you as you rise up the ranks. What we have talked about in this guide is merely the first layer. So do not be surprised when you no longer consider your self a noobie and start having questions about the game that this guide does not cover.

Enjoy.

Mount and Blade is an amazing, one-of-a-kind game. Nowhere else will you get caught up in medieval combat like you will by playing this game. The world of Calradia offers a lot to do with its open-ended design. However, Mount and Blade also offers an open-start to the game as well which can leave players not knowing what to do or where to go… how to get the ball rolling so to speak. This can leave players frustrated at the start, causing them to put down a game long before they can truly enjoy what this game has to offer.

Here I will outline the phases toward an enjoyable experience of Mount & Blade. It is not an in-depth guide. If there are points raised here that you do not understand, search the rest of the forums and you will likely find your answer. Also, this guide outlines only one way you can play this game, it isn't the only way you can play this game. This guide is broken down into phases and the amount of time you spend on each phase depends on your ability level, the difficulty setting, and your style of play.

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Phase I: Character creation and maturation

For character creation itself, you really can’t go wrong. The only advice I would give to you is to avoid selecting a class/background that results in party skills you won’t be using (again, check the forums for detailed guides on character creation and what each choice results in). The party skills you want to avoid are: all of the “medic” skills (first aid, surgery, wound treatment), the “pathfinding” skills (pathfinding, tracking, and spotting), engineering, and possibly trade. Read on and you will find out why. Good skills to be proficient in at the start are any of the personal combat skills (ironflesh, riding, shield, power strike and the like). Choose skills that suit the style you want to play. If you want to be an archer, power draw and horse archery are a must. If you want to be more of an infantry type, then power strike, athletics, and perhaps shield will be important.

Once your character is created, the first thing you should do (especially if you didn’t go through the tutorial) is go to the training ground and learn the game mechanics. Don’t expect to master every type of training at this time (don’t worry if you can’t hit archery targets at 100 yards, for example). Once you have a feel for it, head to a big city near your starting point. First order of business is to go to the arena and begin fighting in matches. This will get you more acclimated to the combat system, but more importantly, you will be gaining experience and money with successful fights. As your character levels up, reinforce those combat skills that support your style of play. Since this is your first time in the game, I’d suggest you consider playing a mounted combat style of play that utilizes both melee weaponry and archery. So I would work initially on skills like: riding, horse archery, power draw, power strike, and shield. You have four equipment slots to use for weapons/shields. My suggested configuration would be a one-handed weapon, a shield, a bow, and some arrows. You start off with a crossbow, so I would suggest switching to bow and arrow as soon as you can. As you level by fighting in the arena, distribute your weapon points into the archery skill first, then the melee (because archery is slower to level up during the course of play). You will need to distribute ability points into those abilities that support the skills… so you will be putting points mainly in strength and agility. Early on, however, you may want to put points in intelligence, as one point there, gives you two skill points (instead of one) to select skills on the level up screen. Initially, this may be a good way to go. Finally, you may want to get a point or two in the skill “leadership” before you finish your arena training. This is important in phase two. Depending on how you have set the difficulty, you will probably want to do arena training until at least level 5, if not longer. At the end of this phase, you will have accumulated some cash, use it to go to the equipment stores to upgrade your stuff. At a minimum, you should get yourself a horse if you don’t already have one (saddle horse is fine for now). Also get yourself some food. With leftover money, I’d get better armor (torso) a shield if you don’t have one, and a helmet. Leave yourself at least 300 denars. Don’t worry if you can’t upgrade too much.

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Phase II: Out in the world, assemble your party

It’s time to venture forth from your starting city. You have two goals:
1) get your companions and
2) work on relations with towns and cities

Assemble your party of companions. In your starting city, go to the tavern and see if any companions are there. Go from city to city until you find all your companions. Each companion starts out at a given level with some skills already preset. You are looking to find a companion for each role in the party. I use Ymira for my “medic” type. Marnid starts out with some points in trade skill, you will find that handy. You will need a pathfinder and eventually an engineer (Artemenner is a good one). There are some great guides on the forum that discuss optimal party configurations (to ensure that everyone gets along and all jobs are filled). Use your fledgling party attack small groups of wandering bandits, looters, and the like (they are grey in color on the world map). Looters are the easiest, sea raiders are probably the toughest, while forest/mountain bandits are in the middle. Be weary at first about tangling it up with deserters as they may contain high level units that will mop you up. Use the loot from all your fights to upgrade your equipment (get yourself a bow and arrow too) as well as that of your companions.

Building town/city relations. While you are traveling about, go to the small villages and ask the Village Elder for jobs to do. In big cities, you can choose to "walk the streets" and find the Guild master who can also give you jobs. These quests will help you gain experience and improve your relations with the village/city. Go ahead and recruit a few volunteers from each village (they cost 10 denars, pretty cheap!). You will find that villages with which you have higher relations will have more recruits available. Be sure to leave room in your party for your needed companions! You may need to start allocating points to “leadership” to make this happen. IMPORTANT: Do not join any faction at this time, save that until you have assembled all your companions. The reason is, once you join a faction, you will loose relations with those factions they are at war with, resulting in your inability to enter their cities (although you can attempt to sneak in…). Building up your relations with towns and cities will make life easier later in the game.

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Phase III: “End” game

Once you have your party and have figured out which faction you want to join, go talk to the King of that faction and swear your loyalty. Immediately you will gain relations with that faction and lose it with all factions with which they are at war. You will also gain ownership of a small town. Go to that town periodically to collect taxes, also you will get the most recruits from there. Talk to the nobles in your faction and they have quests for you to do as well. Building up your relations with each noble is important. However, some of the quests they will give you (like rounding up runaway serfs) will damage your relation with the town the serfs came from. But since you earlier worked on town relations, you can afford this penalty now. At some point you will be asked to be the field marshal for your faction and then you can ask nobles to do things for you. The better relations you have the better chance they will obey your orders. Also, if you decide to do the “claimant to the throne” quest line, you will need nobles as allies.

During this phase of the game, you will be spending more and more points on leadership so that you can command a larger and larger army. Start off by attacking other nobles from opposing factions that are out wandering on the map. Be sure to level up your engineer, medic, and pathfinder. Once your army is large enough, consider laying siege to an enemy castle. If you are successful, the king may award that castle and usually a neighboring town to you. You can then garrison that castle with your troops. If you have a high level engineer and loads of extra cash on hand, you can make improvements to towns and castles that you own.

Sooner or later, when your renown is high enough and you’ve taken a castle or two, your King will ask you to be the field marshal. At this point, you can start campaigns and then go after enemy cities, which can also be awarded to you!


Closing remarks:

There is a lot more to do in Mount & Blade. I’ve only described (superficially) one way to play. There are many aspects of the game (like trading) that I have deliberately ignored. Also I haven’t gotten into prisoner management, ransoming nobles, tournaments and much more. Again there are great guides that cover these aspects of the game. As a suggestion, I would also find a troop upgrade guide to help you select how you want to upgrade your army (they won’t stay recruits forever!).

In the end, Mount & Blade is an extremely enjoyable game to play and has grown tremendously since I first started playing it (back in beta version 0.652). Once you have gotten your fill of the native game, don’t shelve Mount & Blade just yet. There is a very vibrant and active mod community that has made some amazing additions to the game giving it extended life on your hard drive.

I hope this guide helps you on your conquest of Calradia!

There are some very good tips in here dude cheers!
I knew you could control your army in battle and tried the drop down box but didnt like how it worked, using the F keys and numbers is much better!