Hello! You may know me from the inabakumori first album upload or my mildly unpopular Steam guides, and today's topic is similar: a niche strat to get a little bit cheesy. Perisno brags about its difficulty (and its Discord) within the first few moments of playing; with this in mind, we're going to find a way to defy this difficulty from the strategic layer. Worry not if your combat skills are lackluster, because your troops will be doing most of the fighting for you.

But before you start worrying about troops, how about getting the mod first? This strat does not work in vanilla because it relies on several modded mechanics to work smoothly. So you can download from here or Google it if you don't trust me.

I can respect that. Hard to know what's real these days.
Note: This is an old screenshot. 1.5.0 is now out.



You'll see this. You want the full version.



Then you want to select Perisno from the drop-down. If you don't have a borderless fullscreen way to open Warband, you don't want to alt-tab, shift-tab, or really touch anything while it's still loading.

After you've finished with that, you can roll a new character. Pick what makes sense to you; I chose noble/scouting/physician/loved one for a well-rounded logistics background, knowing that many companions charge exorbitant hire-on fees compared to vanilla.

What you do want to care about is where you spawn. For humans, Hakkon is a decent option as humans but Drahara might be best for its easy bandits; Nephali are best off spawning in Elintor territory and giants are have a roughly equal path from both spawns (though Sut may run into Illica Falki raiders on their way to the Mercenary Guild).

If you want to be using the same strat as your own troops, and have a cheap main melee weapon to boot, it's worth picking a female character as well. More on that later.

Now onto:

Perisno allows you to outfit custom mercenaries that can be equipped with most gear in the game without needing to access it first. These are not to be confused with the household troops, which you individually outfit with gear items in your inventory. What gear is allowed to be equipped on them is decided by an automated rating system based on various factors, which can be read about here.[perisno.fandom.com] We're going to be taking advantage of this rating system to make some of the best-equipped troops with only one drawback: weapon range.

Let's get started by getting to where we need to go, the Mercenary Guild.




Situated roughly in the middle of the map is the Mercenary Guild. Once you get there, you'll have one option: to approach the castle.




From here, you enter the main building and go up the stairs to this guy.




You talk with him and he'll present you with this:




Accept his offer and you'll be presented with this menu:




You may notice these are not the female troops I mentioned earlier. Don't fret! You can change that by backing out. You'll see the menu has changed:




Then go to "Hire recruits of a different race" and select human females.




Be sure while you're here to look for interesting-looking troops; you can check on the wiki if they're rare or not. Prisoner-taking troops are naturally a bit disadvantaged against troops that are willing to kill you, so having some backup is always nice. If there's nothing worth taking, you can pad out your current army with recruits from the surrounding towns; these troops will not fill out the roles of archer or cavalry archer very well, so looking for Kuu-Lan or Elintor recruits might be a good idea.

Now pay close attention to this next part, because it's the core of the guide. There's this item in the game:




Yes, the tooltip you just read is real. This is a dirt-cheap melee weapon with gutted range in exchange for ludicrous attack speed and 60 bashing damage against most enemies in the game. Some may say this is a sexist call for women to return to the kitchen; others may say this lets queens slay. Regardless of your opinion on the mechanic, the fluff fades before the crunch, and the resultant economic transactions of human lives are already unethical, so why stop now?

The frying pan has abysmal base stats other than its speed, which tanks the rating system. On the Hired Recruits (and only the Hired Recruits), the hunting bow/blunt arrow combo also further tanks the rating. This allows you to handily equip best in slot (BiS) with some rating percentage to spare. Since the bow skews the rating system the other way further down the melee line, there will be a lot of cost-benefit weighing later on.

Gloves have a decent weighting to them, so you can generally downgrade gloves to afford a better torso piece, which should be the bulk of the budget. Infantry should have good helmets, whereas that sort of budget should be allotted to boots for cavalry. Cavalry should also slot the Jousting Lance, which does 23b but can deal couched lance damage, increasing prisoner numbers.

Both infantry and cavalry can eventually get Throwing Hammers, which despite their low capacity do a big chunk of bludgeoning damage. Infantry can also eventually get the Stone Polehammer (under polearms) which gives a much more reasonable weapon for this sort of endeavor (and it's apparently rare, too!)

Screenshots of troop loadouts will be provided, along with names of equipment, once I have a max level cavalryman and footsoldier. The time is now!

Hired Soldier:


Hired Warrior:


Hired Veteran Warrior:


Hired Foot Knight:


Hired Rider:


Hired Cavalry:


Hired Knight:


Open any of the above images for a higher-resolution version. Original resolution is 1920x1080. Note that the pan isn't necessary at higher levels, and I do eventually slot lethal weapons because the value is just too great. If you want to maximize Prisoner Management, you can sub out lethal weapons for more Throwing Hammers. Infantry can use Stone Polehammers for greater range and damage against women; cavalry can use the Jousting Lance to further tank ratings.

As for yourself, you can find a variety of weapons that deal blunt force trauma to your enemies. One of the best free options, the Hamlet's Divine Hammer,[perisno.fandom.com] requires a bit of a trek to the Realm of the Falcon. Details on how to get it are on the wiki page. Personal frying pans can be acquired from the weapons salesmen in any city, usually at the bottom of the list due to their cheap price. If you decide to get the frying pan, you can reforge it[perisno.fandom.com] to be Masterwork-tier for a nominal fee due to its aforementioned cheapness. The damage multiplier is reported to work correctly for improved versions of the frying pan.

This is the game plan for the first 150 days of your save.

Start off with a bit of trade, being sure to pick up new Hired Recruits whenever you pass by the Mercenary Guild (which should be often). You'll also have to train up regular troops. Ransom Brokers offer a unique opportunity if you aren't interested in the local troop trees in the form of purchasing slaves; the amount you can hire corresponds to your Prisoner Management level, which should already be high for this run. Aim for specialist troops; these would be the Female Assassin, Virago Heroine, Mercenary Stalker, and Mercenary Sniper for the slave troop trees. Farmers and Slaves can also be upgraded into Glory Seeking Men, which include more specialists (Sheriffs, Elite Bounty Hunters, and Captains of the Guard) that also are equipped with blunt weapons.

As with any Mount & Blade: Warband save, having an infantry line protecting archers with cavalry on the flanks is going to improve odds in battle. You can't take prisoners if you lose the battle, after all. This inevitably means you will kill some of your prospective captives; this is both unavoidable and acceptable. For this save, we won't be allying ourselves with any of the bandit factions, because we'll be reinforcing the major factions whenever they get waylaid by a bandit troupe. This is especially true when you can both choose to reinforce a party and then choose to leave; this can be spammed to max rep with a faction within a few minutes.

Why are we reinforcing the major factions, you ask? Making enemies of them may be profitable if we win the battles, but for now, we aren't strong enough. It also helps later on when we make our own faction; higher rep with the other factions makes it less likely they will send an expeditionary force to question our right to rule (and right to property). This also makes it easier to conduct trade, which is a good excuse to wander around the map and get things done. Starting with using the trade skill to identify good trade routes (silk from Elintor to Drahara is usually a good route), we can work our way up to caravans contracted from barkeeps from Qaletaqa to Tumantarhun (or if you can't handle the Qaletaqa bandits, Forniron to Tumantarhun).

While bip-bopping from town to town, try to find the cheapest companions. These are Shi Jin, Agnare Stormcloak, Fazl, and Zaira. Shi Jin has a high maintenance cost, but is a very strong soldier and trainer. Agnare can be made into whatever your party currently needs, Fazl is a trader, and Zaira is a foraging horse archer. With these, you'll have a good number of party skills present, hopefully patching any holes in your retinue.

This doesn't mean your force will be perfect from day one, though. As a rule of thumb, if an enemy army is chasing you, that probably means they'll win. Try looking up their units on the wiki to find out why. Chances are, they've 50 levels higher than you and despite their lower numbers have enough Ironflesh to soak any damage you can dish out. Yes, Ironflesh offers a percentage reduction to damage taken in this mod. At its highest, it's 45% less damage, on top of armor. Play it safe, take on what runs from you. Vulture gang!

Once you have troops, money, and companions, you can start investing in enterprises. There's an optimal list of enterprises, shown in this list:

Eriallen Tofu's Enterprise List v1.0 Revision 1 Sorted A-Z --- Works with v1.3+, average income 29000~ calculated over 5 weeks
Amarna Leather
Arendal Winepress
Arish Winepress
Bulgan Winepress
Dwallnor Leather
Elsinore Dyeworks
Forde Leather
Forniron Leather
Fountain Leather
Freising Winepress
Galwe Dyeworks
Gronzy Winepress
Grund Winepress
Karnoth Ironworks
Khul Vara Winepress
Krain Leather
Lesbere Winepress
Leuven Leather
Lille Dyeworks
Maccan Leather
Murdenholl Winepress
Qaletaqa Dyeworks
Reichberg Winepress
Sut Ironworks
Tumatarhun Winepress
Uliastai Winepress
Vellinaz Leather
Vinica Dyeworks
Voldeberg Winepress
Venetor Winepress

DISCLAIMER: THIS MAY NOT BE THE MOST PROFITABLE FOR YOUR PLAYTHROUGH, BUT FOCUSES ON BEING AS CONSISTENT AS POSSIBLE

Copied in full from the Perisno Discord, message link embedded.[discord.com]

Try to save up for the ideal enterprise per town, or if there's something more profitable in your run, to go for that rather than a budget option. As always, if a lord offers you a tax mission, take it without hesitation and then never turn it in, just like vanilla. Ideally, aim for enterprises close to your usual stomping grounds/trading routes and out of the way of the eventual Zann invasion.

What's the Zann invasion, you say? That's when we get into:

By now, you should have several steady sources of income, plenty of ways to gain prisoners, a solid army, and reputation with various factions. It's day 150, and you get a notification that the Zann are inbound. You haven't seen a ton of them other than the occasional scout party, which you summarily attacked for more prisoners. Well, now they're here, and they're right pissed.

Thankfully, everyone else is pissed at them more than they're pissed at you, and that's a good thing! This means that despite the major factions having claim to what once was their lands, they're unlikely to enforce it if you just so happen to waltz up and take a settlement from the Zann that the Zann took from them! Still following? Good. Because you're going to be following the Zann at a reasonable distance until you find a castle or town they recently took with a weak garrison. Then it's yours! The best pickings will be near Maccavia and Reich des Drachen.

From here, it becomes a long haul against the invading Zann. You should recruit as much as you can, considering that you will now have +100 party size for being king and +20 if you become marshal. You can set your policies now, which means that until you get some land for your potential vassals to recruit from you should set it to:

• Very Centralized
  
• Very Plutocratic
  
• Almost All Serfs
  
• Your choice of quality vs. quantity
  
• Very Laissez-Faire

After this, you can switch one of the five every week. Three weeks before getting a vassal, start switching the first two for their exact opposites, and the third one for "Mostly All Free".

From there, it's however you want the save to go. You can stop by the Mercenary Guild and retool your troops for killing, or you can keep making fat stacks of cash to build your kingdom tall. It's your save, after all.

I would, however, recommend converting your faction's religion to the Hakkon Inquisition, which has cavalry armed with blunt weapons for additional prisoner-taking. This can likely be done by having "non-negative relations with hakkon, high honor, high with hakkon inquisition (maybe 30+?) and maybe one that has good relations with the ruler too", according to someone familiar with Perisno religions. How to actually do it? I'm yet to find out as well.

Thanks for reading. You can rate this guide, comment it, thumb it up, thumb it down, tell me I suck, favorite it, whatever. I'm not your dad, I'm not telling you what to do. Much thanks to the Perisno Discord for answering my questions about the mod!