In a game like Bannerlord economics can play a key role in your success. Being well off enables you to buy amazing gear, afford giant armies, and splurge to your heart's content at the later states. There are some easy things someone starting fresh can do to get ahead.

I go over a couple of different ways. Such as using ways like questing that does not make a lot to work with other things you are doing. Farming Sea Raider patrols which are where I've earned most of my money. Finally, I go over trading for those looking for a more peaceful way to go about earning. All of these are great for those who are just starting and do not require much to get started.

Questing

If you plan on staying in an area for an extended amount of time due to farming denars (money) from other methods I’ll be listing below. It can be a good idea to check quickly with any towns or villages in that area if someone has a quest for you. This is quite simple to do as when you are in the town viewer, for instance, people with a quest will have an exclamation mark next to their names and you can click on them.

While the rewards tend to be bits lackluster like 500 denars or less in many cases. They can also provide faction reputation both positive and negative. Sometimes you luck out and you find some with the synergy of what you are already doing. So it’s like getting a bonus on top of everything.

Farming Sea Raiders

Finding a Sea Raider hideout is quite easy. I rushed all the way north up to the top of the map to find my first one. This is where they were in games like Warband. They, however, can be in a lot of different places than that so you might need to explore for a bit.

While Sea Raiders are some of the hardest to fight as opposed to something easy like pillagers. I was still able to defeat them on a fresh start. The key is simply having more soldiers than they have. As long as you overwhelm them by five or more units the fight can be won without a single loss on your side.

The Bannerlord map also has a lot of chokepoints and dead-ends in it. If you get really lucky you can farm the Sea Raiders in a part of the map they don’t have far to run. If not make sure to save any horses you loot from attacking other types of patrols as that seems to affect your overall moving speed on the map and is notated in one of the in-game tips as well.

While you are attacking the Sea Raider patrols you will also have the opportunity to capture or maybe even free some folks. Most times after raiding a couple I’ll have two or three hundred Denars worth of raiders to ransom. While it’s not a lot it adds along with the couple of thousand I’m usually getting from selling items.

When selling a stack of items like body armor or shoes make sure to hold down shift while you are doing so. They sell-off as a stack instead of one at a time. Saving you time and having to click a dozen times on single items that are the same.

At the time of writing this, you also can’t destroy by attacking Sea Raider hideouts. At least from my few attempts at doing so. You end up stuck on a loading screen. Even after thirty minutes of waiting it was still attempting to load their hideout. The only way out is forcing the game to close and losing any progress you made. If you are going test to see if they are working again make sure to make a game save first.

I have also kept my number of troops from getting too high. I don’t want my payroll to fund my army or cost of food cutting too much into my bottom line. Since I’ve been hitting other targets I have up to 30 troops now. When I was just doing Sea Raiders I found 15 to 20 to be more than enough.

This is how I got a lot of my wealth early game. It was a very low risk. After a while, in an area, they tend to stop spawning for a while. I usually take that as a sign to move on and find another hideout. Now that I know where a few are on my map I can just run over to them now.

Trading

This is simple to carry out but does require you to pay some attention. You want to buy low and sell high. A good way to do this is to keep an eye on costs in a region. The game helps out a little bit by providing some information it, however, can be outdated by the time you get around to selling.

Once you go on a bit of a buying spree from the local villages of items you know you can sell for a decent markup. It could be as simple as going to the local town to sell or just a few away. That is right you might not have to travel across the map to some far away distance land for twenty minutes to get a decent deal. Other times you might.

While getting 5 to 15 denars or more per item sold might not sound that exciting or a lot at first. If you have enough money to load up your bag space you could be seeing quite some profit.

Don’t forget to hold down shift when mass buying or selling items. That way you are not trying to sell bulk goods one at a time. In some situations, you might find yourself in the village that is selling everything you want to buy. In those instances, you can click on the double arrow at the top of the trade window to select it all to be bought.

I’ve also seen a lot of towns with 30k or more denars so sometimes you are lucky and can sit in an area for quite some time if you are feeling up for finding and selling that many items. You can extend it even further before waiting for that area's money to rest if you happen to find items you want to buy from that town.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, soon enough you will be rolling in a pile of coins, wearing shiny armor and be too fat to ride a horse! Along with a giant army to follow you around that won’t make you broke to feed and pay.

Other Content

• Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord | Level 300 Smithing Guide
• Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord | Companions Guide
• Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord | Out Now In Early Access
• Mount & Blade Warband | 7 Piece Series

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about the game Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord