Collecting Companions
We're on a quest today to collect some more companions and flesh out of Clan a bit more! We begin in Danustica. Our war against the Aserai continues, but we're ignoring that for now. Personal growth trumps land grabs.
We begin by snapping up Boscoric the Tracker - a companion that costs a whopping 440 Denars to hire. Relative to normal prices, this is pretty high, but that's actually a good thing. If we take a look at his skills, we find that he's coming to us with a bunch of stuff already above 100.
So, we hire him and officially take him in as part of the Clan. He's going to be a good member of the team going forward I'm sure! Being entirely martial-focused, we should end up using him as a squad commander, as I'm thinking he'll have some pretty decent perks for that role.
With that done, we head out to journey to another city and happen upon an ally raiding a nearby village. We've never participated in a raid prior to this, so we hop on the opportunity.
Unfortunately, we find out that this does have unintended consequences, and once the raid is over we find that our Merciful trait has been removed.
Honestly, it's not terribly surprising. It's not exactly 'merciful' of us to ride 100+ soldiers into a village and burn their houses until they give us everything they have. Who knew, right? A perfectly common mistake to make.
Our next companion is from Vostrum - a Southern Empire city where fish and salt are cheap and horses are highly sought after. We did a lot of trading here in prior episodes. The economy does wiggle some, so now and then the rule doesn't apply, but in general it's good practice to have an idea of where certain goods can be bought and sold for profits, and this is one of them. It's rare that I come here and can't offload extra horses for a fat payday.
As proof, Work Horses are being bought for 78 per horse when I arrive. Generally, I can buy these between 55 and 65 Denars, so that's a decent margin for each, and with a quick sale of 28 horses, we're 4,906 Denars richer. Not bad for a random stop!
If you're ever looking for a quick way to get a general idea about what might be cheap in a particular city, hover over the icon in the top left when you're in the trade menu - it'll give you a breakdown of what they produce locally.
Vostrum for example usually has fish - one of the villages right beside it produces it, so if you snag a bunch of fish for cheap and you know that say... Poros, as we do today, usually buys fish for a high price... well, that's pure profit and if you're going that way anyhow why not make some extra Denars for your trouble eh?
So, with that idea in mind, we set off looking for eligible companions and trading from city to city.
Zeonica, Jalmarys, Ortysia, Quyaz... and we're getting back to our original stomping-grounds now. Places we haven't been to in a very long time!
In Quyaz, we notice that they're offering Fish for 5 Denar per, which is ludicrously low... so we buy it all. 900 fish for a mere 5,339 Denars. Given that we can typically sell fish anywhere in the range of 15-32 Denars per unit, we are going to easily 3x our investment here.
It doesn't take long before we've more than made back the money we spent on the fish, and then it's just a matter of seeing if we can make back some of the money we spent on horses. While doing so, we take a moment to fill out our party roster with some Vlandian units, as these folks have some pretty decent upgrades.
We also take a moment to join a tournament, as they're offering a semi-decent weapon and we haven't done much this episode beyond trading... so a bit of a break to actually fight is in order. Of course, we win.
Break over, we go back to the trading grind. By this time, I'm not gonna lie - I've completely forgotten that our original goal was to fill up all our available companion slots. The Trade has consumed my soul.
We cap off the session by winning the best motherfucking rock you'll ever see.
17,961 Denars worth of sexy rock beast! It's supposed to be a horse, of course - but a bug I keep seeing lets this magic happen and I have to admit - I love it.
All in all, we trade our way literally around the entire outskirts of the map, ending back within Khuzait territory way up at the northern city of Tyal. From there we'll be re-joining the war on our southern front... but that's for the next session!
Until then friends, Happy Gaming!
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I like these games where you can set your strategy by hiring people. It looks like a nice game but I didn't like the idea of burning a whole village, it sounds like robbing the weak.
Yeah... Generally, I don't pick on villagers like that purely because it feels like bullying weak people. This was the first raid I'd done in my play and while I see the tactical advantage of it (no income from the village, no goods being moved to cities, no extra recruits for armies) the small disruption in recruits, goods, and income didn't really feel justified. I'll be leaving this kind of action to the NPCs I don't control going forward.
So basically those villagers were slaughtered for nothing.
I think now you have the better decision not to take on them.
Thanks for the reply.
We don't technically harm the villagers (as far as I can tell their population doesn't decrease), but it does drop their Prosperity levels, which I take as meaning it burns houses and such. Outside of militia forces though, the game doesn't appear to harm defenceless folks.
But yeah, I definitely didn't like the event so won't be repeating it.
I see. Thanks for the clarification.
Keep playing.
Dude, the first companion you get is probably one of the best companions you can find in this game. Also, do you use a companion as a scout, it can increase your speed and visibility on the map. You also need a surgeon. Having all your companions as warriors will also have its disadvantages.
Yeah I think at present I'm the scout and quartermaster, but engineer and surgeon I believe I have offloaded... Or maybe I offload in one of the next videos, I'll have to check! I learned on my off-camera game that being Jack of All Trades doesn't work hahaha. Fun to try but you know what they say... master of none. My private game char will never reach 275 in any of his skills as he's such a mutt. This character will be more focused for sure.
I think the only mission you should take on yourself in this game is quartermaster. The others should be done by your comrades. You can choose your comrades accordingly.
Yeah, I'll be honest, some jobs I wasn't sure could even be done by companions but I'm learning all the time how to get them to do it. I only YESTERDAY figured out I could Smith on folks that weren't my main character! So embarrassed 🤣😳
Hahahaha it seems that you are a businessman from the middle age xd, those profit percentages are very large, only selling horses.
Right?? There's a lot of really good ways to make money but it always comes back to horse trading for me.
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