".... Take me down, to the Cataclysm City, where the Wyrdstone is green and the girls stab dirty..."

From the very first moment in Mordheim you have two things on your mind. The first one is to promise yourself once again you won't hit Alt+F4 when things get tough; then, to prevent that sinful thought by buying the best equipment and hiring the most skilled hands for your purpose. For the latter, you do need to get your people at harvesting Wyrdstone.

Wait a moment... harvesting what?

Wyrdstone. Warpstone. Those green glowing things erupting from the ground, looking like Chernobyl eggnests or phosphorescent giant artichokes. Actually, there are three types or qualities if you may:

Fragments

Shards

Clusters


They all take one full slot on your inventory, and as of now YOU CANNOT SWIPE the harvested Wyrdstone for that one on the new node, so you may always want to go for the larger pieces first*. Do you want to know why?

1. if you start with 3 Inventory Slots, all types take one slot no matter their size and...
- A Fragment is worth 1 Wyrdstone Units.
- A Shard is worth 5 Wyrdstone Units.
- A Cluster is worth 15 Wyrdstone Units

Which one do you think that would be most efficient to harvest? Exactly.


2. During the Campaign, you will have to comply here and there with your demanding smugglers at the Den. They will require (now lesser) quantities of Wyrdstone in a certain time frame and, if you do not comply, they will increase the amount up to two further times. should you didn't comply a total of FOUR TIMES, your band will be unavailable to play further in Campaign Mode, being relegated "just" to have fun on PvP Mode.

3. Looting other objects, like weapons, armor or one use items, is more suited for a quick boost on your characters equipment rather than for making profit out of it. The Shop is quite stingy with regular objects, even with Veteran Skills perks, and you won't be able even to pay upkeep and treatments. Moreover, you cannot equip the looted items right away (if they are not suited for your band you won't be able afterwards either), and they make our inventory full, denying space for our precious stones.

You can sell The Wyrdstone you have gathered and turn it into shiny, gold coins, to pay for the upkeep of your band, bandages and peglegs for your injured, and make them learn skills and spells. This is done at anytime at the Smuggler's Den, where any of the three buyers will be more than glad to take your stones and pay you a couple days after you ship the stones.


It seems fun, doesn't it? You can whack some foes, roam around the former capital of the Empire, and you get to boost your band to the highest level, wear the shiniest and most magical armors and weapons and hire the most known warriors to extend your legend... But as you will find if you read further, it is not that easy to swim in Wyrdstone.

The best things in life are free, But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees; Now give me Wyrdstone, that's what I want...


You really wish this could happen...

I am afraid to tell you, that you may have some more problems as expected with your plans to become the coolest warband in this neighborhood. When you go click on Campaign, and you see the icons for the different missions, clicking on a certain mission will seal your fate forever. Well, maybe not forever, but the decission will not be as easy as "I will take the missions where I am not ambushed or scattered so I can pack a better punch against the enemy and eventually win, whatever the reward is". You can certainly do so, but you will then increase your level slower and it will take you longer to access and then learn skills for new members. Not to mention again that, even though the shipment orders have been dramatically notched down, you still must comply with them or face game over.

That said, if your current campaign options to fish for green are not very tempting, and if you keep some money in your pocket, you can send scouts to find districts with better Wyrdstone cropfields. Each time you send a scout, the base odds you have for the new scenario, regarding Wyrdstone, are:

You gotta think big, think deep; pretty soon you'll make that quantum leap...

As we stated above, the best option is always go for the missions marked as Exceptional, if possible where the other warband's mission is to stay at the other side of the map's tavern, counting liters of ale in a barrel with a teaspoon and a Parkinson episode. And, in the meanwhile, we can quietly walk around the whole map, picking Wyrdstone like Heidi picks daisies. If we have picked some minor quality stones and we find one of those Giant Artichokes, we can simply find the nearest cart/chest/scavenge/loot spoot or return to our own, drop our lousy inventory there, and go for the larger pieces.

Maybe not. And mainly because you do not have the time and the enemy is on your face already (more on that on the forums), or you don't seem to find those juicy, big Clusters anywhere. Why?

Because even if you tried to choose the most suitable mission, the chance to actually find one type or another depends also on Warband Rank.

These are the current chances based on the mission quality and the rank, where the amount of each class is expressed as percentage of total nodes:

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in, meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin. Engines stop running, but I have no fear 'cause Mordheim is drowning, and I live by the river

So, with all this numbers in your head and no calculator around (you can always type calc.exe on Windows or use fingers, toes and mutations to keep this data), how profitable is actually every mission? When my warband is small, medium, big,... should I run with the risk to send the best troops to every mission regardless of their Wyrdstone? Too many questions, too good ones.

A usual position is send always the best and fill the gaps with newbies. At the current stage on Early Access, most of the times that will suffice if one choose always the missions where all the members are not scattered but packed around the wagon. Your newbies will give the grace shot a couple times, they will get experience and keep up with their comrades, and you will be shipping the Wyrdstone reasonably without problems. But things can go bad: sometimes you are ambushed on the way to your objective, or you just spent your last gold coins on finding safer missions and ended up with an empty bag and a dozen Brutal missions with Marked for Death on Very Poor crops in Walking in Fog scenarios. Now what? No, don't be a puss and press Alt+F4, and think a bit.

We know that every scenario have a minimum amount of Wyrdstone crops, and these crops are splitted by a non-random percentage into the three qualities (funny fact, there is also a randomized % for whether they should appear all clumped in a certain spot, clump and scattered, or only scattered. But since we cannot control that, I will not show the odds). We know as well our band rank and we have a certain idea of what is our success picking up stones (personally I'm terrible even on Wyrdstone Rush and all alone in the map against Smurfette as my enemy's Impressive). So let's do some Math:

Example:

- Band on Level 3.
- Scenario with "Average" amount of Wyrdstone.

That means, there will be between 15 and 20 Crops as per the tables provided. From which approx*:

Minimum: 9 fragments, 5 shards, 2 clusters
Maximum: 12 fragments, 6 shards, 2 clusters

Then, if each quality yields 1, 5, and 15 units respectively, I can find that for that scenario, the Wyrdstone weight is:

Minimum: (9*1) + (5*5) + (2*15) = 64
Maximum: (12*1) + (6*5) + (2*15) = 72

Average: 68 units

My average, as stated, is actually really bad... 10, 20, 30% at most? That means in that scenario I will gather, maybe, between 7 and 20 Wyrdstone units**, making it quite hard to get that secondary goal on scenarios where you must get 55% of Wyrdstone to unlock the extra XP. So, considering goldcoins being between 35 and 100 tops, one should take into account other factors, such as how much time is left for next shipment or how good is current roster or how large has the infirmary grown... not to forget, depending on character's Strength Skill you will not be able to carry as much Wyrdstone as you may wish.

The decission to bring your best combatants in or your new recruits is strictcly yours; I only give you the Math.

Enjoy!

I'm not lost, I am exploring; Mordheim is an adventure worth enjoying. Though I may not know where I'm going, I am not lost, I am exploring.

You may already know that, when you look for missions in Single Campaign Mode, you can send Scouts to find better adventures if the ones that show up do not please you. Unfortunately, that is for a price.

How much is it? In this case, it depends on two factors:

- Your warband rate
- How many times have you send your Scouts already, to a maximum of three(3) times additionally.

So, the price table is:

Here and there, the Smugglers will annoy your picnic and sightseeing tour in the City with their dumb special requests. These requests MUST have priority over almost any other activity, since once you miss FOUR DUES IN THE WHOLE GAME, not on a streak but total at any time, your band will be over. You will be able to show your skills against friends and foes, but the campaign will not be playable anymore.

All shipments will have to be fulfilled between 8 and 10 days, a few more if you have Veteran Skill perks or increase your Reputation with the Smugglers, giving you a small delay; the good thing is, that if you fill the order before the due date the time left will be added until the next request. That is, if you have 10 days for fulfilling the shipment and you make it in 4, you have 6 days "holidays" that will add to the random 2 to 4 days that the Smugglers will wait after your last shipment to order another. That added to the 10 standard days would leave you with 16 days of harvesting Wyrdstone and storing it just in case you end up being short.

Another fear from player is, to see an increase in quantity to ship with no apparent cap, thus feeding the feel of eventually gaming over. Dear harvester fellow, that is not so easy to happen: these are the caps for every Warband Rank on quantity to ship. If you follow this guide, it should not represent a real threat.