[Up to Date] New Player Guide - In Progress! (2024)

WHAT NEXT

1 MONEY

There are few good ways to earn money in Bannerlord Online, and all of them unfortunately involve some tedious grinding. But it cannot be underestimated how important it is to have some money behind you before you do anything else. If you run out of money, you can no longer recruit troops, upgrade them, or pay them, and they may desert if you miss too many payments. You can make money currently by doing: Farming, Arena "farming", Cargo, Killing Bandits.

FARMING: ~10k an hour

If you want to make the maximum possible profit while farming, it is recommended to find a village on the fringes of the map, where no one else will be coming or going to, and doing the entire process yourself. It is 200 possible nodes at once, you must hoe, water, seed, water again and then finally harvest. This can be faster with friends, and while you might think it makes more sense to delegate jobs to each other, certain jobs pay more, so someone will end up worse off. The best way to farm with friends is to finish each stage together, so hoe together(NO NOT THAT TYPE), water and seed together and then harvest together.

Pros
-Safe, you cannot be harmed here
-Reliable, farming's profit does not change

Cons
-Crashing while farming right now can seriously set you back because you lose all progress when this happens
-Personally find it very tedious and boring compared to all other methods

ARENA "FARMING": ~6k an hour

Arena farming is basically just finding an arena with no one else in it, and farming against the bots. It's not actually a surefire way of earning money as even the bots can quickly kill you, and the current arena is full of desync bugs. I include this method as it's usually more engaging than farming and it's what I personally do when I'm low on money as I disconnect frequently, which compromises farming. I personally use Battanian cities as they are usually more forgiving.

Pros
-More engaging
-Levels up skills
-You'll learn how to cheese the AI quickly

Cons
-Probably the slowest way to make money right now
-It can be hard to find an empty arena at peak times
-Have to be competent in the combat

CARGO: ~20k an hour

This is by far the fastest way to earn gold right now, but it takes some work setting it up. You first need to get the trade skill up to 40, by doing small cargo runs between towns, and then purchase 3 "Mules" to boost your carrying capacity by 150. This will allow you to carry either more small cargo or the big massive profit 150 weight cargoes. Not only this, but you'll need enough men in your party to protect your cargo from bandits, or you'll find yourself constantly sidelined instead of delivering cargo.

Cargo tutorial: First thing you need to know, is that Cargo has 2 numbers e.g. 500/200. The first value is your deposit, the second value is your profit from selling the cargo. You pay 500, deliver the cargo, and receive 700, hence a 200 profit You must also pay attention to the weight of the cargo as well, if you buy too heavy a cargo you will not be able to move and will waste your money as you'll have to drop it. Cargo also has an expiry of "2d" but it is closer to 3 ingame days that it will expire, so about 2 and a half hours of real time. Yes, this expires offline too.

The best thing to do once you have completed the tutorial in fact,(currently) is to move to Aserai lands, which is devoid of trees(which is where bandits currently spawn from) and use a short route like Iyakis to Qasira(There are a few different runs you can do in Aserai), to run back and forth with small weight cargo until you have enough trade skill and money to grab yourself 3 mules and then you can start buying more cargo per run. You can either continue doing this sort of run or look to upgrade your troop capacity to allow you to go through more dangerous areas with cargo e.g. Rhotae forest, Amprela forest etc.

Pros
-The most profitable way to make money once everything is set up
-Can be done totally AFK, allowing you to catch up on your favourite netflix show on the side!

Cons
-A lot of investment and work must be done first

BANDIT KILLING: Variable Profit

In the recent patch trading license was finally added, and actually the gold for killing bandits was increased to a good level to sustain your troops. This makes killing bandits for profit a very real way to make money now. It's quite simple, you need troops, and lots of them, and some decent equipment of your own to kill large bandit parties, who will give you a lot of money and exp by themselves, and possibly will drop good loot which you can sell at towns to other players.

Looters: All looters contain only one type of unit: Looter. This is an unarmoured, poorly equipped unit that quite frankly is stronger than it looks. Stones can interrupt your block in the middle of combat which gets you caught by surprise. Pitchforked Looters can easily dismount you or even one shot you if you ride at them. Even your tier 5 units can sometimes be randomly killed by these guys. The best use of Looters is actually to level up recruits but they still give some decent gold and a ton of loot that although worthless, can be sold to junk dealer for some cash. There is no need to use special tactics with looters, but if you come across a particularly big group, it might be worthwhile for you to go ahead of your troops and take some aggro then run off so it splits the group.

Sea Raiders: You are looking for stacks with Sea Raiders Chiefs in them, those drop the most profitable loot. Sea Raiders will spawn in forested areas near large rivers or coast. The biggest dangers with attacking Sea Raiders is the massive Javelin volley at the start, which will quickly kill any troops without their shield up, or any shield at all. This is why the first thing you should do is have your men hold fire, and put them into shield wall formation(Unfortunately this also bugs them and tries to have them to a position behind you with their backs turned, so you must also manually make them hold position in front of you again), this forces the "special" AI to put their shields up, otherwise they will just stand and take javelins to their faces. Once their javelins are expended(they carry about 5) they will start to charge forward, as some of the AI will throw slower this causes Sea Raiders to charge forward in sporadic groups, which you can then quickly mop up with superior numbers.

Forest Bandits: You are looking for stacks with the actual "Forest Bandit" troop in them, these drop the most profitable loot. Forest Bandits spawn ANYWHERE there is Forests, which is why they are so numerous. These are fortunately, not as strong as Sea Raiders can be, and the same tactic can be applied versus them as you did with Sea Raiders. Even so, if you don't have shielded troops, these guys can 100% ruin your day with how much damage they can put out in a short time, so do not underestimate.

Pros
-Levels up skills and troops
-Loot that you can use or sell
-The most fun way to earn gold right now

Cons
-You can be screwed over by thinking your only attacking a small party of 15 and then a 60 party joins the fight after
-Other players can join your fight and steal exp and gold
-It is completely reliant on actually finding said bandits and getting good loot from them, which is all completely RNG