As an alternative to this section, you can regularly save & reload your game, however this can be seen as a less immersive experience

Recruits will naturally cycle if given enough time, but it can take a while. You can speed up the process by hiring & disbanding squads you don't want. Note that you should remove all but one unit from the squad before hiring it to save money.

A town will not be able to spawn new quests if it has quests that have not been accepted yet. To combat this, you should always accept all quests that a town offers, and then abandon the ones you are not interested in.

As soon as you start your game, you should assign all of your skill points to Marksman, and all of your weapon points to Rifle. Then, sell all of your items except food, your pistol, the ammo it holds in its holster, and 2 medkits (If you find a town with Flour, sell your food and buy 2 bags).

After selling your items, buy a KA13 Rifle and some ammo.

Now, to set up your party. You won't need any Female Militia for money farming, so disband all but 2 of them. For your top squad, put Anna in the first slot, and your 2 remaining Female Militia in the last 2 slots. Put all of your Militia in another squad. Note that these squads should travel together in combat until they are both full.

Your first phase is Marksman Training, you should be fighting small Bandit squads.

While fighting bandit squads, you should be training Militia for Train Soldiers quests. When you have extra funds, buy a squad of Militia (Remove the females first!) and level them up to Freedom Fighters, but DO NOT upgrade them to Freedom Sniper / Veteran Freedom Fighter until you have enough to turn in a quest.

With your extra funds, buy yourself the best armor in the game. I'm not going to list what that is here, that's for another guide entirely, just compare the numbers yourself for now.

Once you've reaches Level 12 Marksmanship [Should be at Level 7], buy the VIM Marksman Rifle (And ammo!) and equip it. Your marksman training is now complete!

Before we move ahead, I want to note that you will be doing the Train Soldiers quest for the rest of the game. Some people get confused because I put it in the first section.

Now, this phase is essentially the same, except since you have the VIM, you can engage Vehicle-Only squads by yourself (It gives good XP). Some vehicles can be hard to take down, so you should train on squads with just PA64 Assault Cars first (They're the easiest).

Everything else is the same, except your points should go into Intelligence until it reaches level 12.

During this phase, you're going to be taking on your first other faction, I reccomend CFR, since they're usually the weakest.

When the opportunity arises, you should attempt to take generals from a faction. Note that you should only go to war with ONE faction at a time (Excluding Bandits & Uman).

You'll also be setting up your first combat squads during this phase. A combat squad consists of a General, 6 Ponza Sharpshooters, & 2 Combat Medics. As you can afford it, you should give your combat units the best armor in the game & fully upgrade their Health & Accuracy. Your Generals & Combat Medics will also need guns as well, so pick up extra VIMs when you can.

During this phase, you should be putting all of your points into Leadership until it reaches level 12.

Just keep doin' what you're doin', there's not a lot of advice I can give you here because it doesn't matter too much what you do now. Personally, I like to get my Constitution up to Level 12 so that I can max my inventory space.

I guess you could wipe out the other factions, get their commanders for your squads, and take all the towns? All I can give you from here is good luck!

Thank you for reading, and thanks for any feedback you give me! I wish you the best of luck with the game.

If you'd like to show me any support, I do stream on Twitch[twitch.tv], or you can say hi in my Discord[discord.gg]

Should I earn some early Rifle levels before assigning my Weapon Points?
No, because before these points are assigned, your accuracy with Rifles will be very poor.