----Work In progress. Will be updated daily, on my own pace. Once the guide is complete I'll get rid of this disclaimer----
Chapter 2:
This part was done in collaboration with Daidre so thank you to them for the help!
After you kill the Stag Lord and then turn the quest in to Oleg. A ceremony will be held in your honor. Within the the Banquet's Hall there will be many points of interest worth interacting with. I will outline the most significant points of interest:
Make sure you speak to Kassil, Shandra, and Lander. One of these characters will be an advisor to your kingdom for most of the game. So it is best to figure out which personality you like and will agree with the most. I ended up going with Lander because he is chaotic stupid, which reflects my character just fine.
General overview of the advisors:
Kassil Aldori - LG General, default envoy if you won't choose another one in Jamandi's dialogue before ceremony. Competes for this position with CN Amiri and CE Regongar and prefers pro-Aldori and martial (non-magical) choices in all Military advancement dialogues. Probably worst choice of the three since companions have better stats, do not require training and less affected by main plot C&C.
Shandra Mervey - LN Councilor. She supports Merchants (vs Peasants) in all Loyalty advancement dialogues and works nicely for not-completely-altruistic baronies. Competes with NG Tristian and CE Spoiler. Probably the best choice of the three, since some decisions along the plot line could cause issues with filling this position. She had a pretty good stats but requires training and also affected by main story C&C.
Lander Lebeda - CN Regent. He promotes Bandits and less than lawful behavior in his Community advancement dialogues. Competes for position with LN Valerie and CG Octavia and has better Charisma than the girls so he is a bit better at problem-solving. Most affected by main story C&C but funny enough to be worth experiencing at least once.
Some spoilers about the advisors:
Speak to Ezvanki next:
Speak to Joseph Sellemius if you desire. However do be aware of the proposition that he will offer you. While the proposition looks nice at first, it's a trap. The time required to pay him back in exchange for his services, is quite annoying indeed.
After you finished the ceremony and picked an advisor, you will then travel to your new found barony. And with that, the meat of the game; kingdom management.
Go to the advisor screen and assign some advisors:
Click any one of the card thingies and start assigning advisors. I suggest picking advisors that closely match your personality. For example, don't pick advisors that are altruistic, when your character is selfish. At the moment there is only but a small handful of advisors, in time you will gain more companions and more potential advisors. So, don't worry about the small selection for now.
Next, if you go to the "Regions" subsection, you will see a card to claim the "Outskirts". I suggest putting off on doing that until after dealing with the main quest of chapter 2. Generally speaking, my strategy in claiming land is to wait until after dealing with the main quest. The reasoning in me doing this is that it lowers the amount of problem cards that I will have to deal with. While your advisors do gain experience with dealing with said problem cards, It isn't uncommon for the game to spam you with ludicrous amount of problem cards during a main quest.
So to put this as succinctly as possible. Do not claim new regions at the start of a main quest. Do not claim regions while in the middle of doing a main quest. Claim regions only after dealing with the main quest.
Afterwards is the "Economy" subsection. There are some traps you need to be aware of. Ignore trade agreements or projects that require your advisors to be away for an extended period of time. So anything that requires 60 days is a big no, unless you recently finished the main quest, for doing so should usually grant you a huge amount of free time in before the start of the next chapter. Investing in BP trade agreements is usually not worth it because you can accumulate a large amount of gold during the game, but only if you loot everything and sell everything; i.e don't horde useless shit that your characters, or your main character, won't ever use.
Click the capital and enter it:
Now for buildings. The most important thing to note about buildings is this, for lawful based characters you will have access to bulletin boards. If you are lawful evil you will have access to gallows. So bulletin boards + gallows, if you are lawful evil. These buildings are important in that they grant bonuses to all card solving rolls within the region that you build them on. These are basically the only buildings worth investing BP into, during the early game. Bulletin Boards give a +2 to resolving Problems in the Region and Gallows provide a +1 same bonus for Lawful Evil. Build one of each in the Capital if available. And in every new Village later, it is the most valuable bonus in the Kingdom Management.
Here is the over all strategy for building a decent kingdom. Now, most of these goals are long term. Meaning you are not going to do everything in this list within one session. Some of these goals will take a while. Basically, as long as you are working towards these goals during your playthrough, then you should be on the path to success:
Strategy is focused on getting all available Regions, Advisers and important buildings asap. It is not a strict order of doing things but more like a priority list since it depends on Kingdom stats a lot and stat growth is pretty random depending on a Problem/Opportunity cards. Cards are a main source of stats, everything else like world map nodes or buildings are completely secondary and should not be relied upon. Building could be useful to hit some important cutoff on the stat earlier (40 or 60) when you need 1-10 points and cards that could get you there had not spawned.
So targeting some stat, like Community or Loyalty, usually means choosing its adviser at any possible cards. So in second chapter, for example, when you get Card that is solvable by Regent, General and High Priest priority order would be
Regent > High Priest > General. Stats by Adviser:
Primary, available from the beginning:
Community - Regent
Loyalty - Councillor
Military - General
Economy - Treasurer
Divine - High Priest
Secondary, open when you meet prerequisites:
Relations - Grand Diplomat
Arcane - Magister
Stability - Warden
Culture - Curator
Espionage - Minister
Things that need to be done in order for your Barony to prosper:
---After the ceremony, adviser priority in Cards and promotions: Regent = Councillor >= High Priest >> General = Treasurer---
That about covers most of the important things for kingdom Development before the Coronation. Resulting state will differ widely from player to player, however time management is much more forgiving in the second half of the game.
What to avoid:
What is okay:
Finally to conclude this part of the guide, here is a google document that identifies all the stat requirements for artisans and their associated loot tables: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...6K8weP6gMgwVv7y5pgSfHzr2T04/edit#gid=93450378
I hope this information was helpful. Once again big thanks to Daidre for all of the help!
Chapter 2:
This part was done in collaboration with Daidre so thank you to them for the help!
After you kill the Stag Lord and then turn the quest in to Oleg. A ceremony will be held in your honor. Within the the Banquet's Hall there will be many points of interest worth interacting with. I will outline the most significant points of interest:
Make sure you speak to Kassil, Shandra, and Lander. One of these characters will be an advisor to your kingdom for most of the game. So it is best to figure out which personality you like and will agree with the most. I ended up going with Lander because he is chaotic stupid, which reflects my character just fine.
General overview of the advisors:
Kassil Aldori - LG General, default envoy if you won't choose another one in Jamandi's dialogue before ceremony. Competes for this position with CN Amiri and CE Regongar and prefers pro-Aldori and martial (non-magical) choices in all Military advancement dialogues. Probably worst choice of the three since companions have better stats, do not require training and less affected by main plot C&C.
Shandra Mervey - LN Councilor. She supports Merchants (vs Peasants) in all Loyalty advancement dialogues and works nicely for not-completely-altruistic baronies. Competes with NG Tristian and CE Spoiler. Probably the best choice of the three, since some decisions along the plot line could cause issues with filling this position. She had a pretty good stats but requires training and also affected by main story C&C.
Lander Lebeda - CN Regent. He promotes Bandits and less than lawful behavior in his Community advancement dialogues. Competes for position with LN Valerie and CG Octavia and has better Charisma than the girls so he is a bit better at problem-solving. Most affected by main story C&C but funny enough to be worth experiencing at least once.
Some spoilers about the advisors:
All of them leave at the start of Chapter 5, to keep them following conditions should be met:
- Kassil Aldori always dies when you choose to investigate the Bloom at Candelmere Tower first and deal with barbarians at Flintrock Grasslands later. Also, beside keeping him alive it is crucial to choose Aldori or Neutral option in Alvori vs Surtova conflict.
- Shandra Mervey stays when you abandon Aldori at Flintrock Grasslands and follow Bloom lead first. Also to keep her you need to choose Surtova or Neutral option in Alvori vs Surtova conflict. (need to check option when you deal with barbarians first and go for Neutral path)
- Lander Lebeda attempts the coup and meets his honorless end. If you send his body to relatives he would return for short cameo in Chapter 7 but always permanently lost as an adviser at this point.
- Kassil Aldori always dies when you choose to investigate the Bloom at Candelmere Tower first and deal with barbarians at Flintrock Grasslands later. Also, beside keeping him alive it is crucial to choose Aldori or Neutral option in Alvori vs Surtova conflict.
- Shandra Mervey stays when you abandon Aldori at Flintrock Grasslands and follow Bloom lead first. Also to keep her you need to choose Surtova or Neutral option in Alvori vs Surtova conflict. (need to check option when you deal with barbarians first and go for Neutral path)
- Lander Lebeda attempts the coup and meets his honorless end. If you send his body to relatives he would return for short cameo in Chapter 7 but always permanently lost as an adviser at this point.
Speak to Ezvanki next:
Pick option 3
If you passed you get a free shrine
Speak to Joseph Sellemius if you desire. However do be aware of the proposition that he will offer you. While the proposition looks nice at first, it's a trap. The time required to pay him back in exchange for his services, is quite annoying indeed.
After you finished the ceremony and picked an advisor, you will then travel to your new found barony. And with that, the meat of the game; kingdom management.
Go to the advisor screen and assign some advisors:
Click any one of the card thingies and start assigning advisors. I suggest picking advisors that closely match your personality. For example, don't pick advisors that are altruistic, when your character is selfish. At the moment there is only but a small handful of advisors, in time you will gain more companions and more potential advisors. So, don't worry about the small selection for now.
Next, if you go to the "Regions" subsection, you will see a card to claim the "Outskirts". I suggest putting off on doing that until after dealing with the main quest of chapter 2. Generally speaking, my strategy in claiming land is to wait until after dealing with the main quest. The reasoning in me doing this is that it lowers the amount of problem cards that I will have to deal with. While your advisors do gain experience with dealing with said problem cards, It isn't uncommon for the game to spam you with ludicrous amount of problem cards during a main quest.
So to put this as succinctly as possible. Do not claim new regions at the start of a main quest. Do not claim regions while in the middle of doing a main quest. Claim regions only after dealing with the main quest.
Afterwards is the "Economy" subsection. There are some traps you need to be aware of. Ignore trade agreements or projects that require your advisors to be away for an extended period of time. So anything that requires 60 days is a big no, unless you recently finished the main quest, for doing so should usually grant you a huge amount of free time in before the start of the next chapter. Investing in BP trade agreements is usually not worth it because you can accumulate a large amount of gold during the game, but only if you loot everything and sell everything; i.e don't horde useless shit that your characters, or your main character, won't ever use.
Click the capital and enter it:
Now for buildings. The most important thing to note about buildings is this, for lawful based characters you will have access to bulletin boards. If you are lawful evil you will have access to gallows. So bulletin boards + gallows, if you are lawful evil. These buildings are important in that they grant bonuses to all card solving rolls within the region that you build them on. These are basically the only buildings worth investing BP into, during the early game. Bulletin Boards give a +2 to resolving Problems in the Region and Gallows provide a +1 same bonus for Lawful Evil. Build one of each in the Capital if available. And in every new Village later, it is the most valuable bonus in the Kingdom Management.
Here is the over all strategy for building a decent kingdom. Now, most of these goals are long term. Meaning you are not going to do everything in this list within one session. Some of these goals will take a while. Basically, as long as you are working towards these goals during your playthrough, then you should be on the path to success:
Strategy is focused on getting all available Regions, Advisers and important buildings asap. It is not a strict order of doing things but more like a priority list since it depends on Kingdom stats a lot and stat growth is pretty random depending on a Problem/Opportunity cards. Cards are a main source of stats, everything else like world map nodes or buildings are completely secondary and should not be relied upon. Building could be useful to hit some important cutoff on the stat earlier (40 or 60) when you need 1-10 points and cards that could get you there had not spawned.
So targeting some stat, like Community or Loyalty, usually means choosing its adviser at any possible cards. So in second chapter, for example, when you get Card that is solvable by Regent, General and High Priest priority order would be
Regent > High Priest > General. Stats by Adviser:
Primary, available from the beginning:
Community - Regent
Loyalty - Councillor
Military - General
Economy - Treasurer
Divine - High Priest
Secondary, open when you meet prerequisites:
Relations - Grand Diplomat
Arcane - Magister
Stability - Warden
Culture - Curator
Espionage - Minister
Things that need to be done in order for your Barony to prosper:
---After the ceremony, adviser priority in Cards and promotions: Regent = Councillor >= High Priest >> General = Treasurer---
- Claim only available region, Outskirts. First thing you should do after claiming any region without a settlement in it (unlike Varnhold later in the game) is to build Village there. It could be built at every explored crossroad (on World Map, so you need to "draw" all paths on the map to see all available locations). It would be later used in teleportation network, so chose carefully. Best place in Outskirts is right next to Oleg's Trading Post, mostly for quests.
- Visit Bokken at Oleg's Trading Post and recruit him as your Artisan, Alchemist. After it build "Bokken's Alchemical Shop" in your new village. Each Artisan has unique building associated with him - it is necessary for him to start bringing you items in the Throne Room.
(After Troll Problems are dealt with, priority is the same: Regent = Councillor >= High Priest >> General = Treasurer) - Claim South Narlmarches and build Village there. First Artisan of this Region will visit you in the Throne Room and second one will agree to work for you after short introductory quest (you need to visit new Village and talk to her). Do not forget to build "Dragn's Armor Shop" and "Shaynih'a's Shop of Exotic Curiosities" for them to start bringing you items.
- Get Community to 40 and level Regent to Rank 3. This opens the claim to Northern Narlmarches.
- Claim North Narlmarches and build Village there. Deal with Artisan's recruiting quests and build "Kimiel's Shop" and "Sharel's Sewing Shop". Kimo's (woodcutter) quest sends to Swamp Witch Hut and his early pool of items is a bit meh so it could be done later.
- Get Loyalty to 40 and Councilor to Rank 3. This opens the claim to Kamelands. BP cost becomes an issue around this time, so most useless items from adventuring and and free gold gets converted into BP. Do not fret, it would get better.
- Claim Kamelands. Create a village and deal with 2 Artisans there, they have really simple introduction. Build "Nazrielle's Weapon Shop" and "Varrask's Weapon's Shop"(Here stat focus shifts to High Priest > General = Regent = Councillor = > Treasurer, try to limit promotions with rank 3 for everyone at first)
- Get Community to 60. This opens new adviser - Grand Diplomat and Relations Stat. It usually happens naturally since you only need +20 Community from the claim prerequisites.
- Get Loyalty to 60 to open Curator (Culture stat), also tend to happen naturally.
- Claim Silverstep Region. Here some mundane adventuring required - Lake Silverstep Village location is marked on the World Map, you need to complete quest there about Ivar, the hunter. Claim is quite costly but Region is very important for father development and its only Artisan, Jewelcrafter, produces excellent items from get-go. She would visit you in Throne Room, do her quest and build "Mim's jewelry Shop". Location of settlement in this region is also important - better to place it closer to Varnhold border.
- Upgrade the Capital from Village to Town. It requires 7-8 buildings in the settlement (you should already meet +2 Villages requirement). Only buildings in "normal", not-blue (Piers, Walls) slots count. Building selection does not provide anything but minuscule stat gains, however some could be useful:
- Tavern, City Hall and Shrine in the middle line.
- Herbalist's House next to Shrine
- Brewery + Granary + Windmill, cheap way to fill slots and some stats, could be removed later
- City Hall and Tavern could be upgraded to Town Hall and Inn for a useful +4 Relations
- Build Mage Tower in separate slot for whopping +7 Arcane and Teleportation Network.
- Get Divine to 60 and High priest to Rank 3. This will open Magister and Arcane stat.
- Get Military to 60 and General to Rank 3. This will open Warden and Stability stat. General is usually way above 60 in Military here so it is a matter of finding a time for his promotions. (Stat priority shifts again, prioritize cards and promotions: Magister > Grand Diplomat > Treasurer > everyone else)
- Get Arcane to 40 and level Magister to Rank 3. Put Teleportation Circles in every Village. In Capital, Mage Tower would also serve the function. (Now when Network is up and running Grand Diplomat > Treasurer > everyone else)
- Get Relations to 40 and Grand Diplomat rank 3. This opens new Building - Aviary, allows Kingdom Management in adjacent, non-claimed regions. Could be built in Towns and Cities. Relations growths slowly in first chapters since cards solvable by Diplomat are pretty rare so pay attention to every bonus in sight.
- Upgrade a second Village to the Town, 6 buildings required. Best choice here is one in the Silverstep region. Build Aviary there after upgrade. It will cover all(!) regions in Varnhold Chapter and will help tremendously.
- Get Relations to 60 to open Minister and Espionage.
- Level up the Treasurer to Rank 5.
That about covers most of the important things for kingdom Development before the Coronation. Resulting state will differ widely from player to player, however time management is much more forgiving in the second half of the game.
What to avoid:
- BP < 0. Going below zero would drop Kingdom stability (penalty to all rolls) and should be avoided at any cost. Always keep 100-200 BP in your treasury to be prepared for -BP events in cards and adviser dialogues. Actually, in dialogues you could go into negative zone but do not forget to convert some gold into BP until the next day, so penalty is not applied.
- More costly Trade Agreement projects (>100 BP) should be avoided, early expansion strategy means you would probably be piss poor until the Varnhold chapter
- Do not waste too much BP on buildings, their BP > Stat rate is horrific.
- "Research into Nature of the Curse" projects eats away ton of time from your priest. Don't go heavy on them until the chapters 3+ when you have Magister to cover at least part of them. And only in case when you want to do all research, actually know what you need them for or just really interested in the story aspect of the game.
- Training projects for NPC advisers ("Strengthen <NPC> skills as <Role>") are 20 days + 100 BP in costs. Do not waste them on people you do not like or do not plan to use in the role this train card is for.
What is okay:
- Running out of money. Do not be afraid to convert all your "free" gold into BP when you need it, leaving only 20k-50k of pocket change. There are not many shops with items worth purchasing anyway in first 3 chapters.
- Expiring Opportunities. Cards could expire only at 1st day of the month! When you are spammed by cards and out of the people to deal with them:
- Prioritize problems
- Check expiration dates. Cards spawned in the last week of the month usually won't fail until the month after next one
- Drowning in adviser leveling cards. Having 9-10 leveling cards on your desc is completely normal situation.
- Using Crisis Points. They are most needed in the beginning of game so do not hoard them too much.
Finally to conclude this part of the guide, here is a google document that identifies all the stat requirements for artisans and their associated loot tables: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...6K8weP6gMgwVv7y5pgSfHzr2T04/edit#gid=93450378
I hope this information was helpful. Once again big thanks to Daidre for all of the help!
