Having recently played through Warband, I wanted to share the ideal strategies I learned which would have saved me a lot of time and optimized my play through.

This is aimed to be a sort of min/max guide, though I have not tried every possible strategy. It won't be for everyone, but the hope is it will help you the reader and even if you don't do everything, you can take some learnings from it which will help you!

Note: Publishing this guide a bit early because I'm not sure how to get back to edit it and I'd rather publish it early than risk losing all of it. Should have it finished by end of the first week of Nov 2021.

NOTE: I will be revamping this section in the next 1-2 days. After writing most of the guide, I looked back and realized there is a better build than the one below. So skip for now!

Following the suggested character creation will give you a character which has one of the most total weapon proficiency points, and skills and attributes fairly well aligned with ones that will serve you well all game.

Unfortunately, the game gives female characters rather weak starting stats vs a male, so it is suggested you pick a male.

Your father: Steppe nomad
Early life: Page
Adulthood: Squire
Reason for adventuring: Forced out

Assigning starting points

AGI +2
CHA +2

Skills
Leadership +1
Prisoner Management + 3
Inventory Management +1
Trainer +1

Proficiencies
Crossbows +16
Throwing +4

The game has the following in-game skill categories:

• Personal
  
• Party
  
• Leader

But these categories imply that all skills in each of those categories behave the same. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Actually several of the skills behave in a special way. In my skill guide here, I have not categorized those skills with the in-game category. I put them in a special category and explain them there.

Attributes
Skills are capped to their associated attribute / 3. So generally speaking, we want to only level up attributes in increments of 3. Leaving attribute points at a value which is not a multiple of 3 is wasteful. We will focus on leveling attributes which allow us to increase our main character party-wide skills.

Skill-up strategy
For some skills, only the skill level of the party leader is used. We will focus on these skills, and let companions cover the other skills party skills.

These skills only benefit the character with that skill and do not affect other characters or your party. I rated each on a scale between 1-5:

• Ironflesh - 1/5 - Not that great. With good play, most damage can be avoided. One hit kill damage (couched lances) still will probably kill you even if you have this leveled. I played with this at 0 my entire play and was fine. Your skill points are better elsewhere.
  
• Power Strike - 5/5 - Amazing skill. Makes a tremendous difference in melee weapon damage.
  
• Power Throw - 1/5 - Power Strike but for throwing weapons. Except throwing weapons are terrible. Only good for arena. Don't level this up ever.
  
• Power Draw - 2/5 (5/5 if you love bows) - Power Strike but for bows. If you are someone who enjoys bows, then this is worth leveling. Otherwise skip.
  
• Weapon Master - 4/5 - Determines the level cap on weapon proficiencies. Each skill level adds 40 (to a base of 60) to all weapon proficiency caps. Level 1: 100, 2: 140, etc... Always keep this high enough so you don't cap out on your weapon proficiencies. Out of paranoia, I always just kept this capped out based on how much AGI I had at the time. You don't want to cap out on weapon proficiencies and waste potential skill ups. High weapon proficiencies make a tremendous difference in damage.
  
• Shield - 2/5 - Increases shield HP, effective size, and block speed. I generally prefer Sword and Shield gameplay, so this is nice to have some points in, but you can probably get away without it. I had 2 points in it by the end of my game.
  
• Athletics - 1/5 - Character acceleration and top speed on the ground are improved. Nice to have, but points are better spent else where. In this guide you will spend the vast majority of your time on a horse. Only helpful if you get dismounted or in some tournaments. But you can get by with this at 0 all game. For it to actually make a difference in combat, you need this at 7+. Otherwise you cannot run away fast enough. This is why 0 is recommended.
  
• Riding - 3/5 - Improves horse speed, acceleration, and mobility. You need this at 4 to ride the best mounts that you are likely to find (Heavy Charger). Higher is ok, but your points are probably better spent elsewhere. Recommendation: Don't go higher than 4.
  
• Horse Archery - 2/5 (4/5 if you love bows) - Only needed if you prefer bow gameplay, otherwise it is a waste outside of some tournament play

Only the highest skill level from all characters currently in the party (and above 30% health) is applied. Having multiple characters with high values is generally a waste (except for medical). So pick one companion and have them focus on those skills. Generally, you should not take these skills since companions can and should take them instead.

I suggest having two companions with high medical skills so that if one is wounded, then you still get the bonus from the other companion. This saves time waiting around. The unbuffed heal time is pretty bad. Also if you were going to take any party skills, then medical makes a lot of sense since your main character skills are always active, even if gravely wounded, unlike companions. Tracking skills could also make sense, but I found waiting around for healing far more annoying. Note: I still generally recommend putting your main character points into non-party skills since companions got you covered here.

There is something called Party Skill bonus, where the following bonus is added to the highest skill level among the party (includes yourself, so if you have the highest level, then you also get the party bonus added to your level). This bonus only takes into account your main character skill level.


Because of the way this scales, for optimum efficiency, it is best to go for 2 skill points for a +1 bonus (though again, it is not really recommended that you put main character points into party skills).

Here are the party skills. I rated them on a 1-5 scale:

• Looting - 2/5 - Gives you better drops from loot. You can view this as a skill which makes and saves you money. Worth having a companion leveling it up. You can (and I did) largely outfit your entire party from combat drops. I read that the drop quality at the end of the battle are based on which enemy was killed or wounded first. I haven't confirmed if this is true. And frankly it sounds like too much of a pain in the ass to min/max in practice. Maybe, maybe worth it only fighting the enemies with the best drops in the game. From what I've seen: Tier 5 Elite Calvary has good drops. Outside of faction battles, Sea Raiders are the best, but they only drop mid-tier loot at best.
  
• Tracking - 1/5 - Shows arrows on the world map based on distance, party size, direction of travel, and other info. Worth leveling, but mostly not helpful. I only found it useful: 1) Doing waste of time quests where you have to hunt down enemies on the map (like the spy one) - which I recommend you skip 2) Knowing where big war parties are 3) Once at max it will tell you which party the tracks belong to which is sometimes helpful in war situations
  
• Tactics - 2/5 (depends on game difficulty) - Increases the number of troops you can start a battle with. Worth leveling and pairs well with Leadership. Also depends on your game difficulty level. The higher the difficulty level you play on, the more important this is. For low difficulty, this is rarely needed.
  
• Path-finding - 5/5 - Affects your party speed on the world map. Amazing skill and a must have. 100% a big priority. Keep it capped out and prioritize getting this to max level for the companion you choose for this. This is also one where it is probably worth getting it to at least level 2 yourself for the party bonus.
  
• Spotting - 4/5 - How far you can see on the world map. Also really good. You will want to max this.
  
• Wound Treatment - 4.5/5 - How fast your party members (and troops and lame horses) heal. Top tier skill. Allows you to get back into the fight sooner. Less time waiting around for healing. You will want to max this.
  
• Surgery - 5/5 - Increases the chances your troops will be wounded instead of killed. This is arguably the most important skill in the game. It's not uncommon to fight multiple successive battles (late-game). Troops that are wounded can quickly be healed back (you did train Wound Treatment right?). Dead troops take a lot of time to replace. First you have to recruit, which takes a lot of time, especially if you want certain faction troops. You have to run down to the faction villages, then run between villages to recruit. Meanwhile, your villages are getting raided, your settlements sieged, and your vassals killed / captured. Then when you are all done recruiting, congratulations, you now have 70 tier 1 tribesmen which are useless in combat. It takes even longer to train them back up to elite tier. You will have a very hard time running your own faction and defending it if you lose substantial numbers of your best troops every battle. The amount of time this skill saves in the long run is incredible and may even top Path-finding for total time saved. A must have for end-game.
  
• First aid - 4/5 - Heals back damage taken in a battle for party members. Another helpful one, but probably the weakest of the healing skills. Still absolutely worth leveling though. You want to keep your health up, and keeping your companions in the fight is also much desired. Saves time from waiting around to heal.
  
• Engineer - 3/5 - Reduces time for settlement buildings and siege preparations. Another time saver, but more strategic.
  
• Trade - 2/5 - I found trading not to be worth the time in this game. It takes a lot of research to find profitable routes. Lots of trading guides out there are either outdated or assume you went all-in on trade. So the only benefit you get from this skill is a discount when buying top tier equipment, and you get some extra dinars when selling gear back. But since it is a party skill, you can just train up a companion in this and you will be good to go.

Only the leader of the party's skill is used. That would be your main character. Although when you have Vassal lords, then these skills (only some of them) are used by them with their own parties they lead.

Because only your main character's skill is used, and all companion skill levels in these skills are ignored, you should prioritize these skills for your main character above all else. Get them to where you want them to be.

I've rated them on a 1-5 scale:

• Inventory Management - 2/5 - Each point adds 6 slots to your inventory. The default inventory size is quite small. But since trading in this game is pretty bad, fortunately you don't need a really large inventory. I primarily keep 3-6 horses, an extra set of gear for sieges, 9ish food for the party, and several books with active buffs. Then I keep a few slots clear for loot I find that I either want to sell or give to a party member. I think a 2 or 3 is more than sufficient here. Though you probably can get by with 1-2. The base inventory is quite small and adding even 6 more slots does a lot for you. Companions never use this, even when they are vassal lords. So this skill is a 100% waste on any companions.
  
• Prisoner Management - 4/5 - Each point allows you to keep 5 more prisoners. Mid-game when you are farming, each enemy is worth around 80-100. 112 for Sea Raiders. Much more for captured elite enemy troops (240 for Swadian Knights for example). It adds up very quickly. This is how I made the bulk of my money.
  
• Leadership - 5/5 - Increases max number of troops by 5, decreases troop cost by 5%, increases party morale by 5%. One of the most important skills in the game. Here is how you scale your army, maintain it (high morale), and save money. Hard to beat. The higher the difficulty is in the game, the more important this skill is. For easier difficulties, having a big army is not as important (though it doesn't hurt TBH). A skill that is helpful at nearly all stages of the game.

These skills, while both categorized in-game as Personal skills, behave very differently from the rest of the personal skills, so I have separated them out here to explain:

• Trainer - 4/5 - Each level increases how many XP points are granted to your party members and troops at midnight each day. Only characters or troops who are lower level than the character with this skill will be affected. This skill is special because ALL characters with this skill are taken into consideration. The effects stack for all party members which can apply XP to a certain troop or party member. As such, this is a must have skill for all party members. Rated 4/5 instead of 5/5 because later in the game, if you have high medical skills, then you will likely mostly only have high tier elite troops and in that case, this skill doesn't do anything for your troops who are already maxed out. Though it still will increase party member XP when applicable.
  
• Persuasion - 1/5 - Each level gives you +1 hidden relation, and increases your positive relation gains from quests by +10%. This skill is listed in-game as a personal skill. This is misleading as only the persuasion skill from the main character is used in any in-game dialog, which makes having this skill on party members useless. There is debatably some value in having this on vassal lords. I'll cover this in another section.

CHA > STR = AGI > INT

Always level your attributes by 3s. The bulk of your attributes should go into CHA so you can level Leadership and Prisoner Management. Then level (to levels evenly divisible by 3) STR and AGI whenever you are comfortable with where your leadership or prisoner management are. The STR and AGI is simply for making your main character stronger in personal combat and having more fun that way. INT is basically useless for your main character except for persuasion which has debatable use.

STR skills:

• Power Strike is amazing. Max this to your STR cap. This along with your weapon proficiencies will dramatically increase your damage. By late game, you will be hitting for 60-90 damage with one-handed weapons, one hit killing most enemies. If you are a bow person, then same advice, but for Power Draw.

AGI skills:

• Always keep Weapon Mastery high enough so you won't cap out a weapon proficiency
  
• Riding. You want to get this to 4 for Chargers (their armor is amazing). But you should be good for a good while at 2 (Desert Horse). If you followed my guide, you will start with this at 4 and are set for the rest of the game (unless you find a Champion Charger which requires 6 riding - I never have though).
  
• Shield - If you are strapped for skill points, then skip. Getting a better shield will probably solve most of your gripes of getting hit even though you are blocking. The Huscarl's Round Shield is amazing. Always keep an eye out for it. Lots of HP and covers a lot of your body. Maybe point a point or two into this if you are still getting annoyed by ranged shots while blocking with the Huscarl's Round Shield.

INT skills:

• Trainer - Either don't level, or level it to your INT cap ASAP. Reasons not to level it is because your party companions will also have this and thus having this lower on your main character won't make a big difference late game. The reason to max ASAP is because you won't have any or many companions very early game, so your main character trainer level makes a bigger difference.
  
• Persuasion - If you followed my guide, you will have this at 1 which will give you +1 hidden relation. No more than that is needed. If you are trying to farm relations with lords, then points in persuasion will mean you need less relation farming as each point gives +1 hidden relation, and also increases your relation increase from quests by 10%. In my playthrough I had it at 2 and was fine. Either keep it at 1 or go for 10. 10 is good if you hate relation grinding.

CHA skills:

• Leadership is super solid, and you should max it. The bigger the party, the easier time you will have late game when doing multiple successive hard battles. Also the larger the party, the less attrition (dead troops) hurts you as a % of effective strength lost. Losing 20 troops when you had 170 isn't so bad compared to losing 20 troops when you had 40. Also with a smaller number of troops, casualties will be higher. All around, this is a strong sustain skill. The cost decrease allows you to run much larger armies for the cost of one 1/2 the size. And it helps with morale to boot. Only your main character can do take this skill and have it affect your party. For these reasons, I recommend your main character take CHA to 30 and max Leadership at 10. You can put it off and take some combat skills in-between, as Leadership @ 10 is only really helpful at end-game. Find your balance.
  
• Prisoner Management. The number one money maker. Well worth taking it high. It also requires CHA which you are taking for Leadership, so getting this high is a no brainer. Once you find money is stabilizing and you think are probably good, then stop leveling this skill. Otherwise continue to prioritize and max this.

STR:

• none

AGI:

• Looting

INT:

• Trainer
  
• Tracking
  
• Tactics
  
• Path-finding
  
• Spotting
  
• Wound Treatment
  
• Surgery
  
• First Aid
  
• Engineer

CHA:

• Trade

Lots of companions don't get along together. Rather than give you an exhaustive list, and walkthrough the details, here is the TL;DR. You can have two stable groups of 8 companions. I recommend the following 8 companions as the group you keep in your party for the rest of the game. Do not make any of them vassal lords.

Combat Fighters
These all start with high weapon proficiency points and thus make good fighters / knights as their primary role:

• Alayen
  
• Baheshtur
  
• Firentis
  
• Bunduk
  
• Klethi

Support
These all start with weak weapon proficiency points and thus make poor fighters to start. Also due to specialization, they tend to have poor STR / AGI which hurts combat ability. But over time they will get a lot better if you keep using them in combat. Takes most of the game though.

• Deshavi - see below as to why
  
• Jeremus
  
• Ymira

Here's the recommended party stats I chose for each. Based on starting stats, level (which represents available / future attribute and skill points), and starting skills:

Alayen - [Combat]
Baheshtur - [Combat]
Firentis - [Combat]
Bunduk - Trade / [Combat]
Deshavi - Spotting, Path-finding, Tracking
Klethi - Looting / [Combat]
Jeremus - Wound Treatment, Surgery, First Aid, Engineer
Ymira - Wound Treatment, Surgery, First Aid, Tactics

Again, 2x companions dedicated to medical skills to help avoid situation where your medic is wounded and thus everyone takes forever to heal. By Jeremus, Deshavi, and Ymira focusing on INT skills, their combat ability is much weaker. But they can focus on more skills because each INT gives 2x skill points.

Reputation in this game is incredibly important. You want to keep it as high as possible. The reputation that is most important (most important first) is:

• Lords
  
• Villages
  
• Ladies (especially whoever you want to marry)
  
• Cities
  
• Factions

Why - Lords
High reputation helps you:

• To recruit Lords to be your Vassals when you start your faction. The best lords in the game require incredibly high reputation for them to join you. In some cases, up to 100 reputation is required (depending on Persuasion). If you have bad reputation, only the really bad lords will want to join your faction and they are generally not worth the headache. This is by far the #1 reason to have reputation and it cannot be understated. Having no vassals or bad vassal lords will make the end game very difficult if not impossible. To have a more enjoyable endgame, you must recruit lords with good personalities, which requires high reputation. Nothing else is more important than this.
  
• To marry a single lady, her father needs to sign off. You need to convince them you are worthy. High reputation helps here immensely, and sometimes they will not agree without you having really high reputation with them.

Why - Villages
Two reasons:

• Recruiting. Villages will not let you recruit from them if you have negative reputation with them. Even -1 is enough to stop them from letting you recruit. A positive, non-zero reputation will allow you to recruit from them even if you are at war with their faction. Higher reputations with villages will generally (still very random chance) give you more troops and it is more likely they will be upgraded instead of tier 0 tribesmen. Running around and trying to recruit more soldiers and spending time to rank them up to elite units takes a LONG time. If you have good reputation with villages, it can save you a LOT of time. Less villages to stop at (as you get more recruits), and more likely to skip some leveling up of troops which alone can save you a day or more of training. Super, super important.
  
• Setting fires for distractions for jail breaking lords. If you have a negative reputation, they won't help you set a fire. Towns you can usually do if you are good at combat and have decent gear and skills at combat. But Castles can be a real pain in the ass. As a rule, always set fires as a distraction for jail breaking lords out of the castle. 1-2 nearby villages will let you set a fire, but often it is just 1. If you have a bad reputation with them, then too bad for you, no fire. Now you potentially spend a lot of time save scruming to get the lord out of jail. Again, this is a big time saver.

Why - Ladies

• You need a pretty solid reputation to convince a lady to want to marry you (you still have to convince the father after this). I'm not sure of the exact score, but for me it was around 30-35 reputation.
  
• They will help you buy reputation for lords in their faction if you have something like a +2 reputation with them. Each point of reputation cost 1000 dinars. You can only do this for Lords with whom you have negative reputation with. You can buy up to 3 reputation, which can take a Lord from -1 to +2. Comes in handy when you are trying to build enterprises and one of the Lords has a bad personality and defaults your reputation to them as -1 to -3. Doing quests for them can take a long time, and they might not even offer you a quest. Buying their reputation from a Lady is far faster.
  
• They help you find Lords. They will not help you find a Lord if your reputation is too negative. Finding Lords is an amazing ability that you will use a lot for jail break quests.

Why - Cities
Cities are not as important as the others.

• A zero or positive value will allow you to buy a productive enterprise, assuming you have both a positive relation with the lord of the city, and the faction leader.
  
• You get a small discount when buying and selling goods in the city. This is NOT worth the time to grind the reputation for however.

Why - Factions

• Negative reputation with a faction means you are at war with them. You won't be able to enter their cities (unless you succeed at a "sneak" roll). Villages will not let you recruit from them unless you have an existing positive relationship with that specific village. Their Lords and patrols will attack you AND
  
• A Negative reputation with a faction when you have your own faction means they will come raid your villages and siege your settlements. You want as few wars as possible when you are starting out your own faction. Generally speaking, you ideally have no more than 1 war at any given time.

• Attacking, raiding, threatening, or stealing cattle from a village -> negative reputation from: the village, faction, and possibly the lord whose fief that village is
  
• Attacking a villager -> negative reputation from: the village the villager belongs to, faction, and possibly the lord whose fief that village is
  
• Attacking or threating a caravan for a toll -> Negative reputation from the faction
  
• Attacking a lord for any reason, even those you are at war with. When attacking lords from a faction you are at war with, you will get -1 reputation. When attacking lords from a faction you are not at war with, the reputation hit is much more severe
  
• Insulting or threatening a lord
  
• Releasing lords with bad personalities from being a prisoner
  
• Taking a good lord personality prisoner
  
• Failing certain quests (negative reputation with the quest giver, including cities or villages)
  
• Giving a fief to someone else (all vassal lords get mad except good natured and upstanding personality lords)

• Completing quests for the quest giver
  
• Joining on a lords side in a battle where the odds are close-ish. More reputation for the tougher the odds are for the lord you join in battle
  
• Joining on a villager or caravan's side in battle
  
• Joining a clan / family (via marriage)
  
• You are a vassal and your faction signs a peace treaty
  
• A weeks time has passed and you are married, you will gain rep with the family

You want this as high as possible before starting your own faction. Aim for ~40-45. Having low RTR reduces the chances that lords will want to join your faction. You can level this by two primary means (prior to starting your own faction):

• Sending companions to spread the word about you wanting to be king. Only one can be sent at a time, and each companion can only be sent once. Each time you get 3 RTR. 16 companions = 48 RTR. Cost you only time. They are gone for around a week. So get started ASAP.
  
• Each time your faction makes peace (including when you are a vassal for another faction), you get +3 RTR. This can take a while though. Companion sending is the more consistent method

More info here: https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/Right_to_rule

In some cases, your honor / 3 will be added to your reputation for lords making decisions about joining your faction.

The best way to raise honor is to refuse rewards when you complete quests. More info here: https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/Honor

In order from best to worst. Also considers consistency, side benefits, and barriers to entry:

• Prisoner farming - Find successively harder NPCs on the map (detailed in my early / mid game sections) and farming them over and over for the XP, loot, and to capture and sell to ransom brokers. Farming Sea Raiders is the fastest, reliable active method for making money. Sometimes in faction warfare you can capture high tier troops and sell them for more, but this is inconsistent and just happens by luck. Also by that point in the game, ideally money is not a concern and you've moved on from equipping blunt weapons, to using whichever weapons you like most for killing. This is a nice activity since there is a natural progression that you can follow: looters -> mountain bandits -> desert bandits -> sea raiders
  
• Productive enterprises - Great for passive money making. You want to own one in EVERY city. Expensive to get into. See below for more detail
  
• Fiefs - Once you are a vassal or you have your own faction, fiefs can bring in good passive money, especially cities. Can only do late game, when money is hopefully less of an issue. Kind of comes too late.
  
• Quests - These take too much time and you cannot choose which quests you are offered making this very inconsistent. Overall a very poor way to make money as a primary method. You should be doing quests for reputation / honor only, and consider any money you make a nice bonus. Quests for money are only somewhat nice and effective very early game. Even then, very inconsistent and probably you are better off farming enemies.
  
• Trading - I spent a lot of time on this, and concluded that it was REALLY BAD for making money. Even with Trading at 10, it is still hard to make really solid money because prices increase (you pay more per good) for each good you buy, and they decrease (meaning you are paid less) for each good you sell. Also prices are inconsistent. Sometimes certain places have good prices for iron (like Curaw), but sometimes you get bad luck and they really aren't too much better than elsewhere. Same for selling. Sometimes it is a really good price, and most of the time, it isn't. You would be pretty happy / lucky to make 1000 dinar profit on an average trade rune. I usually made a few hundred dinar and that involved a lot of effort. Prisoner farming will make you much, much more than that in about the same time and is far more consistent and has lots of side benefits (XP, leveling up your party, leveling up troops, loot, and sometimes free gear upgrades).

• First one should be Curaw, ironworks. Has the best value in the game for cost vs weekly profit. But you will eventually want to replace this with a dyeworks which has less value for what you pay for it, but more money each week which ultimately is nicer in the long run. Cost 3,500 dinars. Regularly make 500-600 / week.
  
• Second one should be a dyeworks in Rivacheg. Regular will make 800-1000 week. Cost 10,000 dinars.
  
• After that, it doesn't matter as much, but build dyeworks everywhere else except for: Yalen, Veluca, Jalkala, and Suno. For my play through, dyeworks really underperformed here. Look at which one the Guild Master will produce the most profit and do that instead for those locations.

You always want Cities as they pay the best by far. To get a city as your fief when you are a vassal, you need to be the first to attack it, and then you need to win the siege.

Quests fall into the following categories:

• Absolutely worth doing every time, yay
  
• OK - you can do it if convenient or looking for a change of pace
  
• Huge waste of time - but at least give positive rewards
  
• Never do them

Guild Master @ a city - None of these quests are good ones, mainly because they only provide city reputation which is mostly worthless

Tavern in a city

• Save the village - If the tavern has a farmer, rejoice! Talk to the farmer and agree to save his village from bandits. You will gain ~8 reputation with the village which helps you save time recruiting! Turn down the rewards (they aren't very good usually, maybe a few hundred dinars worth of goods at most), and you gain some honor as well! One of the best quests in the entire game.

Lords

• Lend surgeon - Super easy, always a success, quest completes in about 5 seconds. And you gain lord rep and XP.
  
• Kill local merchant - Never actually kill (or knock out) the merchant or you lose -4 reputation with the city which then means you need to spend time to do annoying Guild Master quests to grind it back up to 0 rep. You want to wound the merchant enough so he asks for mercy and then grant him mercy. This will avoid the -4 city rep, and give you +2 rep with the lord. Easy quest. Mid to late game you will massively overkill or knock them out in one hit. Then they can't beg for mercy and you lose city rep. So you will need to kick over and over to gradually bring their health down so they can beg for mercy. Still very easy quest to complete with good rep for the lord.
  
• Rescue prisoner - The best quest in the game for Lord rep. See my guide on this quest.

I'd recommend passing on these as they are usually not worth the effort. If it is near where you are going, then you can get some good synergy. These quests usually provide less XP or Dinars for time invested vs prisoner farming (unless you get lucky on a hunt quest).
Guild Master @ a city - they only provide reputation increases to the city which is basically useless

• Deliver Units of Ale
  
• Hunt Down Troublesome Bandits - They usually spawn within sight range of the city (if you have good spotting skill). Also it is ONE enemy group. Sometimes they don't spawn right away which is annoying enough to put this into the OK grouping. Once you find them, this is easy. Look for a blue or purple colored named enemy group.
  
• Ransom Girl from Bandits - Can take a while to do (lots of travel), but the rewards are decent for what it is. Always just kill them and keep the ransom for yourself.
  
• Deal with night bandits - Wait in town until midnight, then walk the streets. Fight some bad guys. Can be really hard if you are early game with bad equipment. Late mid-game+ and this is no problem. Sometimes they spawn and get stuck on roof tops and inaccessible areas though, so ALWAYS carry a bow or crossbow with ammo so you can snipe them.

Lords

• Deliver message to lord - +1 rep to both lords. Generally not worth doing unless it is in the general direction you are traveling or an adjacent castle or town. Sometimes the target lord leaves the city or castle and can be a pain to find. But not bad.
  
• Capture prisoners - I sometimes keep extra prisoners of each type in different castles so I can do this quest quickly. Otherwise, it's best to pass, as it can take a while to find them (you have to get in fights) and even several battles may not give you the troops you need. You also need to switch to blunt weapons which can be really annoying to do late game. Usually not worth the inconvenience.
  
• Destroy bandit lair - Easy to do if it is one which you've already found. Otherwise, this can take forever to find. I've had situations where it was one I already found and so it was really easy. I've also had ones where I thought I found all the lairs, and turned out none of them were the quest lair, and I spent forever trying to find it. Risky. Definitely don't accept if you have not been prisoner farming in the local vicinity.

I recommend you ALWAYS skip these. Your time is better spent else where
Guild Master @ a city - they only provide reputation increases to the city which is basically useless

• Escort Caravan to City - Takes forever, and way worse if it isn't to a neighboring city. Increases city reputation which is not important unless you somehow have negative city rep. Never worth the effort.
  
• Move cattle herd - Same as Escort Caravan to City, but takes about 3x longer. Even worse!
  
• Persuade lords to make peace - Takes a ton of time to find the Lords. Also you will spend close to the quest reward of 12,000 dinars trying to bribe both lords. Not worth it, especially since you don't get lord rep. XP gain is quite decent though (4,000 XP).
  
• Deal with Looters - You have to kill 5 or 6 specially marked Looter groups. Normal grey colored Looter groups don't count. They all spawn nearby by spread out quickly. I have spent more time trying to find and hunt them down than on any other quest combined probably. ALWAYS skip!
  
• Track down bandits - Better than deal with Looters, as it is one group - but they spawn pretty far from the city in a random direction and it can take forever to find them as well. Skip!

Lords

• Lend companion - You lose the companion for more than a week. Even worse, you have to track down the lord and ask for your companion to be returned, it doesn't happen automatically. In some cases, Lords simply disappear for a while (if defeated in battle or captured) and so this can be a pain. I lost a companion for weeks due to bad timing on trying to find the lord. Not worth the time, and even worse if it is one of your support companions because your party needs those party skills!

Lords

• Train troops - Usually they want elite troops which take forever to train. Like 30 days in-game or more. Also this is even worse if it is faction troops that you don't use. Even worse if they are not mounted because then it slows you down on the world map. Only accept if you already have them trained and you have a big surplus. This is likely only the case when you are in the end-game.
  
• Being a mercenary - No. Being a vassal is much better. Do that instead (when the time is right!)

These quests provide rewards which actually hurt you and make your life harder in the long run.
Lords

• Collect Taxes - Reputation hit to the village which makes your recruiting life hard since now you won't be able to recruit troops from them ever. NEVER DO.
  
• Hunt down fugitive - Reputation hit to the village which makes your recruiting life hard since now you won't be able to recruit troops from them ever. NEVER DO. In theory you can leave the town fast enough to not take the rep hit, but it's been very hit or miss for me and so overall just best to never do this one as negative village rep is incredibly bad.
  
• Bring back runaway serfs - Negative rep with villages if you catch them. Also they can be a pain to track down which wastes a lot of time. I believe only bad personality lords give you this quest, so turning it down and getting -1 rep with them is no problem.

This is the best quest in the game to grind lord reputation hands down. You won't get any negative reputation for killing prison guards or city / castle guards during this quest. So kill freely. Killing them or knocking them out is the same thing. No problem. Don't worry.

There are three ways to get this quest. I list them in order of recommendation (most recommended first):

• Method 1 - Constantly check the recent messages log to see which lords have been captured in battle and write it down to check on in 2-3 days game time. This is the best method since it doesn't rely on chance and you can exhaustively complete all chances for this quest without missing out.
  
• Method 2 - If checking recent messages log is annoying, then always check cities and castles that you pass by on the game map to see if there is a lord there as a prisoner. Takes no time since you can mouse over the settlement in the world map if it is in your spotting range. Bad since you can easily miss out on this quest since you will only know it is available by what you see.
  
• Method 3 - Asking every lord or lady you talk to and hoping you get lucky that one of them happens to have a related lord who is imprisoned. This is the worst way because you have the localization problems of #2, but worse since ladies give worse rewards, and if you knew ahead of time they had a relative lord who was prisoned, then you would get better rewards by getting the quest from the prisoner's related lord (if they have one), than a related lady. Also asking everyone takes time, is annoying, and you sometimes get bad quests instead.

You need to verify that the lord has been captured first. It can take some time between the captured lord message and when they actually appear captured in a town or castle. You can verify that you can get the quest by asking a faction member of their faction where that lord is. If they say they don't know, you need to wait more. If they say he is captured and list the city / castle, then you are ready to continue this guide.

If you are doing Method 1 (and you did the steps above) or Method 2, then go to notes, characters, find the captured lord, and look at his family members. Ideally you can find another lord who is a family member (lords give better +rep rewards than ladies). Then use notes, characters to find the related family lord (or lady). See where the lord lives (which faction). Travel to where that faction has settlements. Stop by a town or castle in that faction and talk to a lady or lord and ask where the family member is you are looking for. Follow their directions to find that lord or lady. Talk to the related lord or lady family member. For the lord ask if he has any jobs for you. He will usually give you this quest. If he gives you another quest, check to see if it is one you are willing to do, otherwise turn it down. If you ask for a quest again, he should give you this quest. If the captured lord has no related lords, then find the lady (she has to be married to find her, single ladies cannot be found waiting around in castles or towns). Ask the married lady if you can improve your relationship with her and then she will give you this quest. NOTE: You must not have this quest already active, or completed and not turned in. If this quest is still active for another lord, then the related family members will not give it to you. Even worse, it wastes their chance to give it to you. If you complete and turn in the previous prisoner quest and then talk to the related family member, I have found that they won't give this to you :( So ALWAYS be sure to fully turn in this quest before working on the next rescue prisoner quest. I've accidently done this a few times :(

If the lady is single, she can only be found at feasts and so it is best to stop trying to find the single lady. In this case, you just go rescue the lord without any quest. You will still get good rep, but a lot less than if you had a proper quest beforehand. TBH I'm not sure if a single lady can give you this quest, even if you found her at a feast. I've never been able to make the timing work and just rescue the lord directly in the rare case he only has single lady family relatives.

Travel to where the city or castle is that holds the prisoner lord. SAVE!! There are some glitches with this quest which will require a game exit, relaunch and reload if it glitches.

The next part is optional, but highly recommended if early to mid game OR if a castle: find the nearest village and talk to the village elder. Ask him to set a fire. Have him do it 1 hour from now, there is no reason to wait until midnight. Pay 200 dinars to bribe him.

Wait for the fire to appear (usually it appears in the time it takes to travel from the village to the castle or town where the prisoner is).

Enter the town. Find the prison. It has a prison guard next to it. It is usually near the entrance to the castle or keep. Arm your weapon of choice and shield before talking to the prison guard. Talk to the guard and confirm the prisoner you want is here. Ask if you can see him. Tell him that you thought he was the boss. Then I forget the exact wording, but force the issue. Don't do the bribe route. He will scream jail break. Kill him ASAP. If you have good skills, and good gear, you can usually kill him in 1-2 hits before he can react. Then immediately enter the prison. DON'T fight anyone else outside the prison. They despawn as soon as you enter the prison, so fighting them is a waste of time. Note: If your party has the first aid skill, then you will heal back some of your health by entering the prison. If your shield broke, it will be repaired as well.

Talk to the prisoner. I almost always chose for them to stay back. If they are knocked out during the jail break, then you fail the quest. In certain castles you will need to tell them to follow you, since the prison is out in the open and archers will kill them if they just stand there. But for the most part, telling them to stay back is the best option.

If the prisoner lord attacks you, it glitched and you need to reset.

Complete the quest by killing or knocking out all remaining hostile guards. If you set a fire, there should be around 2 outside the prison somewhere. If no fire, then probably around 8-10 you have to fight. Cities are much easier because you can use narrow passageways to limit arrow fire and ambush ranged units easier. Castles tend to be very open and so it is much harder to fight 8-10 enemies at once, mainly because of constant arrows or even worse, javelins. This is why I always recommend fires for castles. 8-10 enemies in cities can be pretty fun when you are later in the game.

• If you got a quest before hand, you will gain rep with ALL related family members of the rescued lord. Usually quite a lot, along with a bigger increase to the lord you rescued.
  
• Don't forget to turn in the quest, to get another boost to the quest giver.
  
• If you rescued without a quest, then smaller rep gains, and limited to just the rescued lord instead of his whole family.
  
• You also gain honor! One of the rare quests that give honor.

Prior to end-game, just use the best gear you get from looting. It's free and will save you tons of money. DO NOT spend money on equipment from the marketplace. Rare exceptions are early on when you need a blunt weapon and are not finding one, or if you only have really bad shields, and you see a decent one in the marketplace for no more than 2-3k. Then that's probably worth it. Buying cheap gauntlets is ok too since they very rarely drop as loot. But generally, it is better to save your money for end-game gear.

Once at the end-game, money should largely be no problem for you. You need around 300,000 dinars to buy the best armor in the game per character. I only recommend buying it for your main character as it is way too grindy (and will take forever to even find it) to grind it out for companions.

Chest: Lordly Plate Armor (+61 body armor, + 23 leg armor)
Gauntlets: Lordly Gauntlets (+13 body armor)
Helmet: Lordly Winged Great Helmet (+61 head armor)
Boots: Lordly Plate Boots / Lordly Iron Greaves (+39 leg armor)
Shield: Reinforced Huscarl's Round Shield (493 durability / 23 resistance / 100 size / 81 speed)
Total armor: 74 body armor, 62 leg armor, 61 head armor

Note: The above equipment is extraordinarily rare to find in the marketplace, and thus is very hard to come by. When you get rich enough to start buying this gear, then ALWAYS check the marketplace of every town you stop in. Eventually you will get lucky.

Encumbrance thoughts
It doesn't make a big difference. It's hard to tell a difference between 25 and 50 encumbrance. And in combat, it isn't enough of a difference to matter. The only thing that matters is being fast enough to run away, which you can only do with very high Athletics. Encumbrance won't save you here. So best to just equip the best armor you can and ignore it.

• Encumbrance does not affect mounts.
  
• For sieges, the castle walls have little room to maneuver and you are usually surrounded by troops. So it doesn't matter there either.
  
• Athletics only helps substantially in tournaments if you can outrun melee combat. It helps a bit in jail breaks, but as someone with 0 athletics and best armor in the game, jail breaks were no problem
  
• Running around in a city. Some cities don't allow horses. Yes, encumbrance and athletics will improve your QOL here. Thankfully you typically only need to go into them once to find the Guild Master for the first time and then you never do it again.

I prefer one handed weapons, because I love shields, and I really hate getting shot. Especially getting hit with Javelins which hurt a lot, even with god tier armor. Also a shield help protect against the random couched lance which you couldn't quite dodge (good bye shield though).

I also like axes, because fighting enemies with shields is annoying. Breaking their shields quickly is nice.

Also the game penalizes 2h weapons when used from horseback, which you will be on most of the time.

Bows / Crossbows are hard to use because many enemies are shielded. They are REALLY good in sieges though! You can usually headshot defenders or people climbing ladders and rack up a ton of kills.

For general use

• Heavy One-handed Battle Axe (Swing: 39c, Weapon reach: 76, Speed: 96, Bonus against shields) - My general go to weapon. Can be harder to use effectively from a mount though. With a good mount with lots of armor (Heavy Charger), you can usually just ride into the middle of them and kill them all in a thick melee.
  
• Tempered Long Arming Sword (Swing: 37c, Thrust: 31p, Weapon reach: 105, Speed: 96) - Much better on mounts than the battle axe when doing mounted passes because of the extra range. If in a thick melee, the battle axe tends to due better because it breaks shields quickly.
  
• Masterwork War Bow (Damage: 30p, Accuracy: 99, Speed: 85)

For Sieges

• Heavy Long Bardiche (Swing: 50c, Thrust: 19p, Weapon reach: 140, Speed: 89, Bonus against shields). This weapon is amazing for sitting at the top of a ladder just outside of enemy melee range and one shotting each defender. If they block your hit, you probably break their shield. The meat grinder. You must kill all nearby enemy archers first so they don't shoot you while you try to do this. This is really bad in close combat though. Between this and the Masterwork Siege Crossbow, you can kill 100+ defenders solo if you have some luck on your side when killing their ranged defenders.
  
• Heavy Two-handed War Axe (Swing: 46c, Weapon reach: 92, Speed: 94, Bonus against shields). This is amazing in close combat in sieges, especially if you use your troops for melee. Of all the weapons I've tried, nothing comes close. You will absolutely cut through most enemies, and break their shields if they block. Just run in and start cutting them down in thick melee combat. No shield, but in close combat with lots of enemy troops, you don't have to worry about getting shot in the face. Nothing stands a chance against you when you have this and the skills to back it up. For late game use.
  
• Masterwork Siege Crossbow (Damage: 69p, Accuracy: 99, Speed: 37) - Amazing on both offence and defense. Really slow reload speed, but one hit kills if you land it most of the time, even with lower crossbow skills. As defender, just sit where you can shoot into the side of their troops coming up the ladder. They will drop like flies. For offense, snipe their ranged units up in their towers. Most of the time, headshots. Then when they are dead, switch to the Heavy Long Bardiche to wipe out all the defenders waiting for you at the castle walls.
  

The min/max way is to figure out which lords have the best personalities, and which belong to the same family. Then find a single lady that also belongs to that family, and marry her. Every week you will automatically +1 relationship to all of the family members. Ideally, it is a big family with lots of related lords, and ideally they have all good personalities. The reason for this is because you are trying to make your life easier for when you start your own faction, so then you can more easily recruit good Vassal lords. You can figure out their personalities by what they say to you when talking to them. Check the tables here: https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/Vassals#Normal_Introduction_and_Rumor

You should make a move sooner than later. The more time that passes, the more single ladies that get married. So this needs to be a priority. Marrying as soon as possible is a good idea. Also because then you get the +1 weekly family relationship gains sooner and for longer.

Lord Personality preference ordering
Upstanding = Good natured > Martial > Cunning > Quarrelsome > Sadistic / Debauched

You should aim to become a vassal by around the late mid-game. Once you've farmed up Sea Raiders pretty good, have all companions well equipped from free drops, and have productive enterprises in all cities.

You will join a faction with the intent of seceding from them and keeping all your fiefs you earned through them. For this reason, the following properties are nice:

• They are adjacent to a faction which is in a corner of the map. You will go to war or encourage your faction leader to start a war with the bordering faction in the corner. You want this because the corner faction you go to war has your future fiefs. You just need to take them :) You want them to be in the corner of the map for easier defense when you finally start your faction.
  
• They are easy to defeat in sieges and on the field. When you secede, they will be your enemies. You want your first war to be against a faction which is easier than harder. Khergit and Vaegirs are usually considered the weakest factions both in field combat and sieges. Do not pick Rhodoks as they are the hardest faction by far to siege. Nords can be really tough as well. Swadia is more difficult in field battles. Sarranid Sultanate is well rounded, but doable. I picked Khergit Khanate to join, with the goal of taking the Sarranid cities in the SE corner of the map. This is the best defendable area of the map with only two entrances everyone funnels through. Also defeating both Sarranid and Khergits are pretty easy compared to other factions
  
• Ideally you join the faction that you already identified has having the best future vassal lord personalities
  
• Ideally this faction will be OR already are your family members through marriage. When fighting wars with your fellow faction vassal lords, you will help them win battles and they will love you for it. Who else could be better but to join your new faction? :)

• You absolutely MUST be the lord who first sieges and successfully takes the cities you have already planned as being your fiefs you keep when you secede. So time is of the essence. You don't want your fellow vassal lords attacking them first and getting them as their vassals. It isn't the end of the world since you can just take them first priority once you start your faction, but it is easier if you capture them first while a vassal and then are awarded them by your faction leader.
  
• Start building up three sets of troops: 1. A field army - all tier 5 cavalry. If you followed this guide, they will be Mamlukes. 2. Defence troops. I personally like Rhodok Sharpshooters and Nord Huscarls. 50/50 each is good. Read my section on siege combat. 3. Siege army - Nord Huscarls and some Rhodok sharpshooters are good. 80/20 composition. You want just enough sharpshooters to kill the defending ranged troops. Then the Huscarl's do all the clean up.
  
• Look for opportunities to assist your fellow vassal lords in combat, especially if they are on your list of lords with good personalities

• Only siege and attack towns which are in the corner of the map you want to take over
  
• Only take towns at first
  
• Be the one to lay siege, and win the siege battle to get the fief
  
• Let other vassal lords take it if it is not in the area you want for your future faction
  
• Equip yourself for sieges, as per the equipment I recommended and combat strategy in my equipment guide
  
• Go in with a max size army (leadership 10 helps a lot here)
  
• Ideally your army is mostly elite troops. 80-90 / 20-10 composition of tier 5 infantry (Nord Huscarls preferred) and tier 5 ranged troops (Rhodok Sharpshooters preferred). Note that if weakly defended and it is your first fief, then your field army of mostly tier 5 cavalry (Malmukes) can do the job, but probably higher casualties than tier 5 infantry.

You should have chosen Jelkala as your starting location. This is the perfect starting location because of nearby enemy units (looters) being the easiest in the game, as well as mountain raiders being a step up, but still fairly easy as well. So this is a nice area for progression.

Go to a village and recruit. You want 5-10 troops before you do your first battle. Sometimes this requires visiting 2-3 nearby villages.

Once you've collected that many, stop by Jelkala and tell the merchant from the prologue you are ready. Do the battle. If you have any blunt weapons, equip them now. If no blunt weapons from the loot, then look to buy the cheapest one at the marketplace. Even a club works.

Now your goal is to run around, getting into fights, and telling your troops F3, F3 (use blunt weapons only), and you go around and knock enemies unconscious. Rhodok troops don't typically have blunt weapons, so you will need to depend on you or your companions to do most of the work if you don't want your troops to die. If you find a companion in a tavern, recruit them and give them a blunt weapon.

Always take prisoners, and at the beginning, as much valuable loot as you can to sell - every dinar counts in the early game. Take the prisoners to town to sell them to Ransom brokers. If you go crazy looking for a random broker, then you can either:
1. Get a mod which allows you to sell to tavernkeeps
2. Enable cheats, press CTRL+T to see the whole map, and CTRL+left mouse click right next to a city. This will teleport you there. Then go check the tavern, sell, then teleport back via same method. Reminder that steam achievements are disabled when cheats are enabled.

If looking to avoid mods or cheats, then it will take much more time, but is still overall more profitable than trading, and progresses you and your troops faster for the end game. On average, around 1/3 of cities have a Ransom broker. Usually (but not always), every faction has a city with at least one broker. They change every few days.

Also check the guild master for quests. You should only do the quests listed in my quest section. Also look for Farmer's in the tavern. If one is there, accept the quest to help his village. This is a REALLY good quest. More in my quest guide.

Once you get 20ish troops, then you should start experimenting with taking on small groups of mountain bandits. They have better loot and higher ransom than looters. Farm mountain bandits and the occasional good village or guild master quests until you feel like progress is slowing.

Your goal is to get 30ish troops. Once you are feeling good on supplies, and you and all your companions have blunt weapons, then you will want to move to the Sarranid Sultanate. Luckily it isn't too far from Jelkala. Go to Shariz first.

Start recruiting exclusively in Sarranid territory from here on out. These troops are the best troops for the mid game. After winning a few battles and leveling up some of your Sarranid troops, you can consider disbanding some of your early Rhodok recruits to make room and save on coin. Sarranid troops are good because 50%ish of them carry blunt weapons. Also they make for incredibly strong calvary (Mamluke's are on par with Swarian Knights).

Always promote Sarranid troops like so: recruit -> footman -> veteran footman -> horseman -> Mamluke. Be on the look out for rescued (former prisoners) Manhunters. These troops ALWAYS carry blunt weapons and are the best troop to have at this point in the game. Promote them to Slaver Chief.

Go east from Shariz in the desert. Here you will find Desert Bandits. Hopefully you have several companions by this point who have blunt weapons. You may not want to do F3, F3 in your first few battles as they can be really hard at first. Once you got a few under your belt and stronger Sarranid troops, then you can go back to F3, F3. Often horses drop as loot which is really good for you at this point in the game.

• Keep farming Desert Bandits and selling them as prisoners. Avoid destroying bandit hideouts as they help keep a high respawn in the area. It is best to farm between Durquba and Ahmerrad. They respawn 2-3 groups every 24 hours. So if you can't find any, just camp and wait until the next day.
  
• Taking good gear from loot to equip for yourself and companions. Some decent stuff can drop if you are lucky, and it is free!
  
• Keep checking for good GuildMaster quests, and taverns for farmers for the farmer bandit quest
  
• Mix things up if you get bored of farming Desert Bandits
  
• You should be strong enough by now to do Jail break quests. Do these whenever possible as they are the best quest in the game.
  
• Build productive enterprises in all cities you visit. Check my guide on productive enterprises for which ones where and which ones to do first.

Goals

• Have 2 Productive Enterprises
  
• Have all 8 companions from my companions guide
  
• Have all companions (including you) riding Desert Horses. You frequently get these for free from fighting Desert Bandits
  
• Have all companions geared out like the following (or better): Nomad Vest (23 armor) or Skirmisher Armor (15 armor), Desert Turban (14 armor), Nomad Boots (14 armor), Leather Covered Round Shield, and Flanged Mace (24b damage), Spiked mace (23b-28b damage) for all companions
  
• 80 troops, most of them Sarranid calvary. Manhunter calvary is perfect too!
  
• Figure out who you want to marry - see marriage section

Now you will move to Rivacheg up North and rinse and repeat except instead of Desert Bandits, do Sea Raiders. The first few battles can be really hard. I recommend only taking on groups which are 1/2 your size or less. You may even want to consider not doing F3, F3 for the first few fights.

50 Sea Raider prisoners sell for 5,600 Dinars and that excludes the nice loot you can sell, usually for around 500-700 dinars total. So for each battle, you can easily pull in north of 5,000 dinars. They don't take long. Finding them will probably take about as long as fighting them.

Sea Raiders generally spawn near Rivacheg, but are up and down the northern coast between Ruvar and sometimes as far as Fisdnar. Don't destroy their lairs as they help with respawn rates. You can sometimes find them Jayek and Fearichen.

When you run out of Sea Raiders, you can farm Steppe Bandits. They have worse loot, sell for less, and sadly enough, the fights often take longer since they have horse archers that can be annoying to catch. But still better overall rewards than desert bandits, so worth doing if you can't find Sea Raiders.

Goals

• Have Productive Enterprises in EVERY city
  
• Have all companions geared out like the following (or better): Mail shirt (37 armor), Nordic Helmet (40 armor), Leather boots (16 armor), Nordic Shield, and Flanged Mace (24b damage), Spiked mace (23b-28b damage) for all companions
  
• 80-120 troops, most should be Mamluke by now
  
• Have picked out who you will marry (see marriage section) and been casually grinding some rep on her and her father
  
• 700+ reknown
  
• 70+ honor

Goals:

• Get married
  
• Start looking for and buying the best armor in the game
  
• Join a faction as a vassal
  
• Get 50+ Right to Rule
  
• Attack and take several towns and castles in close proximity to each other so when you start your faction, you can easily defend everything
  
• Build up some good defenders and troop reserves - I suggest three groups. See below.

The min/max way is to figure out which lords have the best personalities, and which belong to the same family. Then find a single lady that also belongs to that family, and marry her. Every week you will automatically +1 relationship to all of the family members. Ideally, it is a big family with lots of related lords, and ideally they have all good personalities. The reason for this is because you are trying to make your life easier for when you start your own faction, so then you can more easily recruit good Vassal lords. You can figure out their personalities by what they say to you when talking to them. Check the tables here: https://mountandblade.fandom.com/wiki/Vassals#Normal_Introduction_and_Rumor

You should make a move sooner than later. The more time that passes, the more single ladies that get married. So this needs to be a priority. Marrying as soon as possible is a good idea. Also because then you get the +1 weekly family relationship gains sooner and for longer.

Lord Personality preference ordering
Upstanding = Good natured > Martial > Cunning > Quarrelsome > Sadistic / Debauched

• You are married
  
• You have 800+ renown
  
• You have 70+ honor
  
• You have 60+ rep with lords you want as your vassals
  
• You have productive enterprises everywhere
  
• You have 10 leadership or close to it
  
• You have some or all of the best armor in the game
  
• You are a vassal, and followed the strategy I suggested in the vassal guide, and therefore have 2-3 cities as your fiefs in the corner of a map. I prefer SE corner in Sarranid (Bariyye, Ahmerrad, Durquba) are great.
  
• You have all of your fiefs well defended with good troops
  
• You have extra troops ready to defend your new acquisitions

When all the above is true, then you are ready to start your own faction. You should do this by continuing to take new castles or towns from factions you war with. It doesn't matter where they are. Once you get 2-3 major fiefs, the faction leader will not want to keep giving you more fiefs and will refuse to grant you the fief you just took. Then you can rebel and keep all your existing fiefs (and troops you already have stationed in them).

You should not defend and allow cities or castles to be taken by siege - any fiefs which are not adjacent to your corner kingdom.

• Defend against the initial onslaught
  
• Seek peace with any faction which declares war on you and is not the one you seceded from. If you follow the pre-requisites, then you should only be at war with the faction you seceded from.
  
• Take any adjacent towns or castles to your corner kingdom which you original didn't own as fiefs. These will likely be the castles, since you only should have taken cities.
  
• Faction you seceded from will seek peace after you take a few castles and cement your holdings.
  
• Now wait it out and work on getting the good personality lords to join your faction as vassals.
  
• Give each new vassal lord you acquire a castle, and the accompanying adjacent villages which belong to that castle. DO NOT give the new vassal fiefs which are not adjacent to each other. He will have a really hard time defending it and it will lower his effectiveness a lot. Vassal lords needs to quickly be able to visit their fiefs to collect money and raise troops. Separating them via distance is really bad.
  
• Only retain adjacent cities for yourself as fiefs. You can keep all towns for yourself as fiefs, or you can past a certain point give them out to new vassal lords. If you do this, remember to give them they villages which the city is over as fiefs too. This helps massively their effectiveness.
  
• Only take on good personality vassal lords. Bad personalities will fight and cause internal problems and they may secede from you taking their fiefs.
  
• Strike a balance between too few vassal lords to defend the territory (remember always only give them fiefs which are adjacent!!) and too many which means taking on lower quality lords and each lord not having enough fiefs to fund their armies
  
• Keep conquering, and only try to fight one faction at a time. Divide and conquer. Keep a conquering pace which allows you to keep pace with new vassal lords joining your faction. Don't conquer too fast and then not have vassal lords to help you defend the new territory.