Can anyone tell me the fastest way to get a leg up in Viking Conquest? Warband of course? I keep getting robbed and don't start with enough money to hire vollenteers (or how ever you spell this damn word) or I have to please village elders before I can ask for vollenterees. anyone know of a fast track to standing in this game/

Yeah not really a fast track, but a couple of things that might help. Relations in this game tend to happen over the long term (at least for friends - enemies are easy to make!).

Firstly, your idea of attempting to get recruits from villages first is a good one, because with renown < 150 that's the only way you're getting troops (apart from random and potentially expensive mercs in mead halls - and the high-level ones also require a renown > 150).

You should be able to convince the village elder that you're capable via dialogue - it might fail, if it does just try again in a day or so. If it succeeds, you'll have to pay a small sum (something like 300-500?), and then you'll finally be able to recruit from that village.

While you're waiting, either go to a different village or do menial tasks for the elder - relations are important in this game as they determine the chance of getting troops (including the number as well as type), so it's generally worth it to choose a few villages you intend to recruit from and get their relations up as high as you can. I tend to stop by certain villages/towns/forts and check for jobs while passing through, so I often have multiple jobs on the go.

Tavern recruits - if you can afford them - are often worth getting at the lower levels to supplement your team.

One thing that are definitely worth recruiting are companions - in sandbox they randomly appear in mead halls, most don't require any up-front cash (and those that do don't require more than a few hundred), and they level up similar to you (although much, much slower). You can equip them with any gear you find, so even though they may appear to be lower level than the "regular" troops, they'll generally perform much better - and they can't die, so no need to worry about replacements.

At the start of the game, it's worth trying to do missions with the minimum possible amount of troops - I've completed many missions with < 8 companions. That way you not only save on recruitment/replacement/training/weekly costs, but smaller teams means team members level up faster. Also smaller teams means you'll end up with more loot - ideally either your character or a companion will have a good "looting" value since that makes a significant difference.

Selling your loot is where I originally stumbled, since I would just sell it in towns. Ideally you want to instead sell the loot either to one of the merchants in your Refuge (which costs money, materials and time - so not something you'd do straight away), or one of the many thieves hideouts. In general, unless someone gives me a mission to destroy a robber's lair or something, I'd leave them alone and instead sell all my loot there - they pay full price (way more than towns anyway), they have unlimited inventory capacity, and their cash refreshes daily I believe. The only caveat here is that you need significant negative reputation to be able to sell loot there - but that's easy enough to get by, well, looting things... ;)

So, this is the fun part - looting things. I wouldn't do this without also (or ideally, before) doing some missions for local lords/mayors/reeves/elders, so you have some allies. Basically you need only 20+ troops, find a juicy monastery or village, and raid it. Villages tend to be more profitable without making you enemies with Christians (which can actually subtly bite you if you're not careful), and you can first steal cows, then raid the village. Also raiding caravans is very profitable too. I'd be careful about which factions/lords to annoy at the start though - I usually ensure I'm a merc with a faction so that I automatically get their enemies, so I can raid without getting blamed for starting an incident.

Note also that although you'll want to sell loot to the bandits, there's nothing stopping you from killing and looting the bandits coming out of that lair - and then going back and selling their loot! At the start of the game, bandits can be a good way to not only make money but also level up while you're at it.

At the start it can often be worthwhile to "take the first pick of the loot" instead of sharing it "as is custom", since you'll often be able to find some decent armour and/or weaponry for you and your companions. This will generally reduce the morale of your warband a LOT, but can be counteracted easily enough by just buying a round of drinks at the pub, or visiting the happy widow if there's one around (and often - if you sell the loot - this way you'll still be ahead).

Combat-wise, it's worth doing the arena fights at the start of the game. Not only can you earn some pocket money, but it's a good way to learn the combat of the game while also upping your skills (and level) for your main character.

Finally, once you have > 150 renown and +5 rep with a lord, you should be able to recruit from his town/fort. These are better for recruiting from since you're guaranteed at least level 2 troops and can get up to level 3 (unlike villages which are level 1-level 2). Also you won't need to bribe anyone, and doing missions for lords typically gets you money from the lord in addition to relations. You can also get the higher-tier tavern recruits - this is generally the best/easiest way to get cavalry in the game, although it's usefulness is still primarily for cleaning up at the end of combat.

The best advice for the start of the game is to just explore as much as possible: identify villages/towns/forts, based on culture, faction and/or religion - that appeal to you, then get a couple of them to be your best buddies (and their lords). And if you do require a larger warband for a certain mission, don't be afraid to disband them if they're costing too much, unless of course you can park them in a garrison (an option later, but likely not at the start).

This page elaborates on the above, plus goes into detail on much more than that. While the later-game stuff isn't the way I do things, the early-game tips helped me a lot (there's are a couple of "how to make money" articles there, among others): https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=323183.0

thank you so much for the advice and teaching! It helped allot and I've really improved my game and do appreciate the help. It's helped me to get a firm stand. thanks again and working ike a charm!
Sincerely,
Greyjumper

Some products can be bought cheaply in one location and sold at a much higher value elsewhere. I do that a lot, because this just turns travelling into money-making, which is useful early on.

* For small-time trading, buy food in villages and sell in towns. There are exceptions, if a village doesn't produce a particular item cheaply (e.g,fish or honey in some places), but you'll learn to spot that quickly and most of the time selling foodstuffs in towns brings at least a modest profit.
* For larger investments: buy certain raw materials (iron, wool, flax) in villages and sell in the cities. This can result in a x10 value increase (a unit of iron bought for ~30 and sold for ~300)
* If you have the cash and capacity, buy mead and ale in places where it is plentifully produced (price <200) and sell at villages (price >300)
* The two previous strategies can be combined, basically bartering cheap alcohol for village-made goods to sell in towns.
* It's also relatively worthwhile to barter some extensive goods produced by villages (e.g. amber, silver) for mead and ale, and then sell the expensive goods in town.
* Later on you will discover that certain cities have ether very low sale prices for certain goods compared too the rest of the world, or very high buying prices (e.g there's a place that buys wool, which is usually at ~350 a unit, at ~800). In those cases, if you plan to go there due to quests or conquests, you can stock up accordingly and make a decent sum of money on the side just by travelling to the right place.

Trading is less exciting than looting, but it can actually be much more profitable, if the loot you get isn't high quality.

Wow! what detailed information! thank you so much. I was wondering how to really make some money while traveling and was thinking about this today! I ran out of moeny for the cazillionth time and some of my men deserted me. I did buy some wine once and sold it at Ribe and made a good chunk of change, but I was on a mission and didn't really THINK about it. I will revisit all that you've said and incorprate this aspect of the game into my own game. Thanks so much for all the help, I really do appreciate it

There’s another option I forgot to mention. I usually don’t do this, because it’s not convenient to do, interface-wise, but if I were nearly bankrupt, this might provide some of the extra money to pay the next week’s wages:

At a friendly village, talk to the elder and ask about buying livestock. If the price is below 100, buy as many at once as you can/want (e.g, ask for five cows, not five times for one cow). The herd will appear on the map and you’ll have the option to slaughter the animals, when you ride up to it. Each slaughtered cow gives two units of raw beef, which can be sold in a town for 80-140 per unit.

Cautionary notes on trading:
- Your men eat food. So if you trade food, they’ll also eat from the same supply. They eat every type of foodstuff (indicated by morale boost stat). They will eat from the first unit of that foodstuff in the inventory (if you buy three units of fish, they’ll start eating the first one). I generally always have a diverse supply of food for them all the time, because it’s a cheap way to increase morale. But if you don’t, make sure to sell the food relatively quickly, so they don’t eat all of it on the way.
- Raw meat, i.e. pork, chicken and raw beef, spoils while in inventory. It’s valuable for approx. 2 days after purchase. Then it turns smelly and rotten. Either sell quickly, or don’t buy it, if you’re far from any friendly town.
- Your men may randomly decide to drink alcohol you have in your inventory (for a small morale boost).
- Expensive items, such as amber, silver, ivory and furs can be stolen – even in a warband that has 99 morale. I’m not sure than governs the chance that this will happen. Sell them quickly.

The safest items to trade (don’t spoil, aren’t consumed or stolen and have a high ROI) are wool, iron and flax, when bought in villages and sold in towns. The losses on other goods are rarely large, but if you're operating near zero money, you might prioritize safe items.

Keep in mind when your men will ask for their next wages. Obviously, avoid buying stuff, if you won't sell the goods before they ask for their money and you won’t have the money to pay them otherwise.

And then there’s the… other sort of trade:
Once you get up to an army size with which large-scale battles are a thing, you will be able to sell large numbers of enemies who were knocked unconscious in battle (your capacity to capture prisoners depends on the number of soldiers who are alive and well after a battle, and the number of enemies who have actually been knocked out instead of killed). There are a bunch of different traders who deal with this, with drastically different prices:

* Prisoners can be sold at mines, lumber camps and farmsteads (not villages) to the reeves or foremen, for a very small sum of money. Only worth it, if you’re passing by, have a rag-tag group of commoners as prisoners and want to free up capacity for the next battle.
* They can be sold to a stationary, named trader in one of the towns of West Saxe. He has relatively low prices, but is always there, if you need him.
* Some coastal towns have “slave markets” – look for a slave trader at the dock (no quick-travel, unfortunately)
* The highest prices will be given for high tier troops by ransom brokers who appear randomly in town taverns.

There were times when I could get an extra 6000-10000 simply by selling my prisoners off after an engagement with an enemy lord. Of course, if you can’t engage in large battles and capture high-tier enemies, the profit will be much lower, but if you’re struggling to even pay your men, that’s still some extra income to cover their wages.

Hope this helps keep you warband fed and happy.

These are definitely worth knowing, since it can be a bit of a shock to suddenly lose some silver because of some greedy git in your army!

According to what I've seen in the Vikings mod code, apparently inventory management factors in to how likely they are to steal (as well as morale), but I'm not sure if it's ever possible to guarantee they don't steal (without modding of course).

Unless of course you have over 300 troops, and get the option to accept followers. While they slow you down a lot (forget about chasing anything once you get them!), they provide a number of useful options, including:
- weapons merchant, who buys your stuff at the best possible prices. Saves lugging loot around, though he doesn't have much cash and takes 7 days to replenish.
- mules. These allow you to store a large amount of inventory separately. Anything stored in here never spoils, and is never consumed or stolen. The only problem is if you should lose your followers, everything on your mules is gone.

Of course by the time your army is big enough to support followers, you're most likely at the stage where you're getting enough income to cover your troops anyway - but I still find it handy not having to worry about my troops pilfering my silver.

The part that always makes me laugh, even while I lose money, is how unrealistic it is that someone under my command would successfully steal e.,g. a load of sliver... and not desert. What did they do with it? Put it in the ground while we camped in a field, in the hopes that they'll survive in my service, be discharged and dig it up later? Better yet - what happens to the stuff if it gets stolen while we're sailing? I'm trying very hard to imagine some dude hiding multiple slabs of sliver on an open boat without being noticed...

t would make much, much more sense to me, if they stole parts of the item instead of the whole thing in one go, the same way they consume food, or if stealing also triggered a desertion. As a personal preference I never accept followers, because I'd rather have higher army mobility - more chances to engage, to protect my cities from being taken over and villages from being razed, so I forgot that even exists.

thanks forthe heads up on that one!! I'm just now getting to the level that I had my first followers asking to join. I turned them away but almost took them in. just didn't want to deal with them at the time. I am following the story line and am at the point where i raise an army right after I pledeged alligence to the king Rangnarson. So I hope to earn more income that I have been.

Yeah I have to agree the stealing thing is a bit lame. It would probably make more sense if the game mentioned that some other people (villagers, bandits, etc.) had snuck into camp at night and stolen it. The main issue I have with it is you don't even get a chance to discipline the troops afterward! One would think a warlord would have some pretty harsh options - similar to the siege events.

I tend to only accept followers if I know I'm going on a long campaign, which involves sieging one or more forts/towns. Generally I'd also want to be marshal at the time, and have multiple lords of my faction like me enough to answer the summons so they provide a screening force.

To get around the followers issue, I modded my game so that we're given more time before followers disband - I set it to 12 (or 24?) hours instead of the default (3? 6?). What this allows one to do is when there's something one wishes to chase, one can temporarily drop off most of their troops at camp - then one can chase the enemy with the remaining troops (which should be much faster now), take them out, then re-merge the army before the followers are disbanded. You lose access to followers while your army is < 300 or so, but as long as you get back in time you don't lose them permanently.

From what I remember the storyline does a decent job of showing you most of the game's potential. Plus you get a free boat at some point during it as well (so don't go buying a boat before then).

STOP STEALING ITEMS:
Okay, now it may be different for different patches but for me I have found by trial and error that if you have <70 troops (70 will get stolen 69 won't) you will NEVER get anything stolen. Enjoy law and order!
TRADING TIPS
YOu can easily make lots of money by trade. These are some of the best routes I have found till now. I have made 150,000 penning in less than 150 days. ( my total days are 150 but I started trade much later than start.).
1. Buy Wool ( not wool cloth) for less than 300 in Englaland (Kingdom of Mierce, Kingdom of East Engle, West seaxe, Norhymbyre etc.) and travel to Dorestad. Sell all the wool for more than 700. If town runs out of money, go to salt mine and sell there.
2. Buy Wine,Salt and Jewelry at ridiculously low price in Kingdom of friese's salt mine, villages and town. Travel to East Engle and sell for hefty price.
3. Though I don't recommend it but you can continue from friese to Denmark, sell some salt and wine there and buy furs, Go to Northvegre and buy timber,tar and more furs and then go to mainland england to sell and jewelery,salt,furs,timber,tar.
4. DOn't sell all in one town. Rather you should sell some in each town o that price does not drop too much. While you sell, Continue buying wool for next cycle.
If you do 5-6 trips even the short one of just engle to friese and vice versa, you will soon be able to get self sufficient from the farmsteads that you should buy in almost every town.
Thanks and pray for me to do good in exams if it helped!