Suspicious man missions, with their intense combat and good money rewards, are ideal training missions for early characters. However, many aren't the best choice for starting characters.

If you are an escaped convict and need gold for a ship, then the suspicious man "beat up a noble" or assination missions are all easy, as they aren't dependent on equipment. The bodyguard and blow up the mine missions are more difficult, but doable. The take over a mine mission is very difficult without using exploits, as you need a good rifle (and the wheellock rifles you can loot off of enemies are not powerful enough to kill the other enemies in one hit). You can always run away at the start of a mission, and the supicious man will give you a new mission type. The "beat up a noble" mission is so easy it is basically 1.5k for free, so either way, earning gold for an armed boat isn't a problem.

But once you have that boat, leave the suspicious man missions alone for a bit. Instead, hit smugglers, or play blackjack, or fullfill merchant contracts.

One note: never accept a goods delivery quest unless you already have the goods to complete it already with you--instead just write down what city needs what, because the more of such quests you currently have accepted, the less you will find other good delivery quests displayed in other towns. The game hides the postings if you already have too many accepted goods quests. Instead just arrive in town with the goods, and then accept the quest, for instant success.

So use those more traditional means to make your initial fortune. While you go port to port, always check the master weaponsmith and master armorer. You are looking for a genoise carbine and a set of full-plate (can be one of the cheaper styles to start out). Check normal stores for a decent melee weapon, gauntlets of +7 or above, and boots of +7 or above, if you can find them. Get a helm from either master or normal weaponsmith, aiming for something in the mid 30s if you can find it (I think a closed black helm usually sells for around 5k, and has +35). Buy a shield as well if you prefer one handed.

You will end up spending 50-100k on this, at the cheaper end if you go for the cheaper options, but it shouldn't be hard to earn. For one thing, if you don't mind using how brokenly powerful the information disparity the game gives you in blackjack is, you can just make 10k and win the rest in one round of gambling with one of the guys who has 100k. Either way, it won't take long.

Then you are ready to undergo what in normal mount and blade I would do via arena fighting--train your character's weapon proficincies and build up some gold with the suspicious man missions. If you like combat, they are tons of fun, and I generally run several back to back everytime I pull into a town. It is easy to get your ranged and melee weapon skills up around 200 rather quickly with these missions, setting you up to do well in the combat throughout the game. And you will probably make enough gold to deck out several companions in the top gear possible. Most importantly, the missions are fun (I like to make up little storylines connecting them together for roleplaying purposes), and gold spent on companion equipment doesn't generally unbalance the game in any way, so suspicious man missions are a constant for my characters.

As for Governor missions, the one to burn enemy shipbuilding is easy right from the start, and a fast way to make 15k. The one to kill 3 officers with a bow is also easy from the beginning, so long as you have gained a couple of levels and improved your bow skill a tiny bit. Others are harder or require a decent army.

Ok, first, if all you want to do is win, it really is easy.

In the attack a mine mission, you can hide behind buildings and rely on the crappy pathfinding AI to not be able to find you, running out the clock.

In the reclaim a seized ship mission, as soon as the captain boards you can just start running away along the walls, in a different direction than the incoming troops, and run out the clock that way.

In all the missions, you can go into battle carrying 3 slots of bombs, because (at least in the current version) the game doesn't actually bother to deduct bombs used during suspicious man missions from your inventory, meaning that even if you use up all your bombs in a mission, they will be right there when you complete the mission restored to your inventory. Bombs are overpowered when you don't have to pay for them (heck, even when you pay for them--a few well placed large bombs makes seizing your first big ship with just a brig style vessel much easier, and can make the rescue a stranded crew and cargo governor mission easy as well--basically, anytime enemies bunch up, bombs are amazing). Not having to pay for bombs is crazy powerful, and until it is patched out, suspicious man missions means infinite bombs. Same thing for horse races by the way, instant win is to just throw a bomb at your opponents.

So, if you don't mind exploits, plenty are available. The following guide will assume you want to win each mission without using the exploits though.

In this mission, you and some 10 thugs have to take on waves of enemies and hold out for several minutes. This mission on first glance appears to be very difficult. If you run around with a melee weapon for example, you'll probably end up with all your helpers dead and swarmed by the enemy with only half the time remaining.

Equipment loadout: One rifle, preferably a genoise carbine for a combination of fast reloads and the power needed to kill the enemies in one hit. 2 slots of bullets. 1 backup melee weapon in the 4th slot.

When the mission starts, run with your thugs and try to snipe any of the initial opponents who have ranged weapons (your thugs can handle the melee guys). After the initial batch is dead, immediatly run back towards the starting location. There will be three big wooden buildings, you want to head to the one on your right when you are facing them.

Midway running towards it, enemies will spawn. Usually, one will spawn by the church door, which is also where your thugs are programmed to stand. They will kill that one quickly without help. 3 others will appear, one each from the wooden buildings, each one sort of coming out of one of the doors. These groups of 4 enemies will spawn all at the same time, at regular intervals.

When the first group spawns while you are still running towards the buildings, snipe them with your rifle, sidestepping while reloading (which will cause them to miss you, because at that distance they aren't accurate against a side stepping target). You will probably do most of the work, with your thugs maybe killing one of the 3 (though they will take care of the 4th guy by the church). Prioritize killing the enemies with ranged weapons, rather than the swordsmen.

Once the initial wave is done, you should have time to reposition yourself at the base of the ramp leading to the rightmost hut. Aim your gun up at the door, and the second the next wave spawns, fire, killing the first of the 3 instantly. Then sidestep while reloading, and shoot the other 2. Every couple of waves, make sure to run up to the nearby soldier's corpse you just killed, and loot his bullets to recharge your ammo.

End result, I have probably won this mission 30 times, and brought my firearm skill up well above 200 doing it. If you have fullplate armor so you can absord one or two unlucky enemy shots, then there is almost no danger, but usually they never touch you anyway. At the end of the mission usually I have several thugs left alive. On the rare occasions I do not, generally they only died towards the end, and I was able to snipe the remaining enemies or only had to run away for 20 seconds or so until the mission timed out. At that point, running in a circle to avoid enemy fire is easy, as you shift away from where the melee fighters spawn.

I regard this mission as the most profitable of all the suspiciouis man missions, as it leads to the greatest skill increase from downed opponents, and nearly the best money reward.

However, it is a mission best taken on by early but not quite new characters. Wait until you have been able to purchase a genoise carbine and full-plate armor. If you don't have a good firearm, don't try this mission.

But with the right equipment, this is the ideal training mission for early characters.

This one is actually much easier than the 5k one, once you have run it a few times.

First, equipment should be a good long range rifle, a set of bullets, and a melee weapon + shield (if you have it). A blunderbuss instead of the shield is a good alternate, and can wipe out entire spawns in one shot.

The missions works like this. You start with your sapper and thugs, and have to protect the sapper. The sapper constantly tries to run ahead of you. Keep up with him, which often means running ahead of him by knowing when he will run. This will come easily after you've played it once or twice. The first couple of times you will probably lose your sapper and just run away, consider them learning experiences.

So the mission consists of your team running along, and spawns happening. The spawns are 100 percent predictable, and after playing twice you will know exactly the part of the cave at which each group spawns.

All spawns are 2 enemies in a group. Here is the rough description of how the mission goes:

1) Starting out, you run a bit ahead along the mine, the sapper following behind with thugs. One group of two spawns ahead shortly after the bridge. You should have run a bit past the bridge, and raised your rifle. When they appear out of thin air, shoot whichever one has a ranged weapon. If both do, shoot and sidestep to avoid the enemy shot (they will target you since you ran ahead). Your thugs will overwhelm the survior, or you can with a melee weapon.

2) You and group run forward to the next room, where sapper will move to center to start to prepare explosives. Hang back, rifle aimed at the tunnel facing in the rear, from the direction you came. Two enemies will appear out of thin air, follow same tactics to kill them.

3) Run forward with group, kill 2 more spawns along way. Similar tactics, kill ranged with your rifle, but after one shot start running into close range while they reload and kill them with melee. Sidestepping should keep you safe, and always running ahead of sapper should keep them targeting you and sapper safe.

4) Sapper starts to set second explosive, same thing, guard the rear. Everytime sapper sets explosives there will be two enemies coming from the tunnel you just came from.

5) Run forwards killing two more groups, sapper sets up third explosive, kill the group from the rear.

6) At this point, when you have killed the group from the rear, set yourself up right near where they spawned, melee weapon ready. The moment sapper finishes third explosive, two more guys will spawn in exact same place as last spawn. Kill them quickly.

You could have just started running at this point, and ignored that last spawn, but then you would face the upcoming enemies alone...

7) With that group dead, your thugs should run right by as they try to exit. Run in the middle of their group, and when you come across a few groups of remaining enemies, they will shoot the thugs rather than you. Try to kill the melee enemies you see, or shoot the ranged enemies, to keep your thug group moving unimpeded as a good shield for you. Soon, you will be out of the mine.

This mission really is basically unfailable when you get the spawn timing down. It is actually one of the easiest missions, as you only ever face two enemies at once, and it pays 7k.

Equipment should be a blunderbuss, bullets, melee weapon, and shield. If you have fullplate, most of the enemies won't be able to hurt you when in melee range, and the mission is a complete joke. But even without fulplate, it is pretty easy.

This is also one of the missions easy to do with starter equipment or escaped slave equipment (just steal a better weapon from the first group of enemies).

Ok, there will be 3 groups of around 8 enemies. They spawn in predictable places based on the city style. Just run towards the front of your group and watch them to learn where the enemies spawn, but it doesn't matter if you don't know. Just when enemies do spawn, sidestep or run diagnally to avoid initial gunfire, fire the blunderbuss into the group at close range, and then switch to melee weapon to kill the survivors. Try to attack the ranged enemies if possible.

Honestly, your mercenaries could probably kill the first 2 spawned groups all on their own. You only need to help a bit to make it through 3, but the great weapon skill points from firing a blunderbuss and hitting a bunch of enemies, or watching their swords bounce off your fullplate as you don't even both to block anything but an axe while wading into melee, makes this mission easy skill points.

This mission also makes you appreciate the instant healing after every suspicious man mission, because the short length means they won't have time to whittle your armored health away and you can be slightly more reckless than you would otherwise be. If you don't have armor, just stay back and help with ranged fire or picking off the occasional guy, and your mercenaries will do most of the work.

As a side-note, the instant healing in this game from supicious man missions is what lets you chain them up endlessly. If they patch that out, you might have to visit a catholic mission now and then (catholic mission abbess will instantly heal your party, as long as one soldier is in the wounded state, for a small amount of gold if you walk around the mission and find her).

Equipment: ranged weapon, 2 slots of bullets, one melee weapon. And constantly recharge your bullets from corpses when you can. Alternate would be one rifle, one blunderbuss, one bullets, and one melee weapon (you would then need to be more fanatical about picking up replacement bullets).

As you run through, use your ranged weapon to kill off initial enemies. They come in small groups of 1 or 2, and often try to kill your thugs before they can get to melee range, and the idea is to quickly kill them and preserve your helper count. In this way, make it to the ship, taking care midway through to stay with the captain and protect him (it will be tempting to go off after stragglers--don't do it). There will be one larger group near the ship, which is where you would use your blunderbuss if you have it. If not, wade into melee and kill them.

Sidenote--sometimes even if you don't want to carry bullets, it is nice to carry a blunderbuss. There is usually one time when a single blunderbuss shot can be truly effective, and you don't need the reloads as much.

Make sure to kill the last guy in the ship (he may get stuck). Then, start advancing back the way you came, while reloading your guns and picking up bullets. Once you see enemies, start firing and sniping them in the distance, backing up as you do so to stay at long range. As they get closer, with many of them dead, your thugs should have finally caught up with you, and will run past and engage them. Continue sniping, and kill at melee if needed.

In full-plate, I never have a problem running out the clock after the captain boards the ship, though I often end with a couple of melee combats.

Well, basically nothing to add here, except aim high to avoid hitting the horse. You can actually have 2 or 3 chances to win this, because if you miss entirely but don't hit the horse, noone gets scared and you can reload and shoot again. Depends on the town and the direction the target comes from.

That having been said, this is one of the missions that you can actually fail at pretty easily, since there are no sure-fire tactics. And towns differ in difficulty based on how the target approaches. But you should succeed most of the time. Aiming a little high and a little ahead should do the trick, just not much.

Ok, so this is probably my least favorite mission for a long time. But finally I figured out how to do it with a good chance of success and little chance of getting killed.

Turn the corner, see the target group, draw your pistol, and try to hit the target. But whether you hit him or not, start backing up while reloading, and snipe his guards one by one as you back up and reload. If they are going to reach you with one or two guards left, rush forward after killing with your last reloaded shot and grab the melee weapon on the ground to fight the other guards.

Note that this works much better with a good firearms skill, which allows fast reloads and quick accuracy in dispatching the guards. It becomes much more dangerous with a lower firearm skill, where you are probably going to have to shoot one or two, then lead the enemies in a little circle running away and doubling back to get one of the melee weapons off the corpse and dispatch them in close combat. Maybe best to have a bit of athletics if you don't have firearms skill. I usually save my skill points for intelligence based captaining skills, so 0 or low athletics, and hold off on doing this mission until I've raised my firearms through the other missions, especially the take over a mine mission.

Sometimes if I miss the target I find him standing still, waiting for me, a short bit past where I killed his guards. you can kill him with the pistol or a melee weapon then. This seems to happen often in pirate towns.

I still never quite feel secure in this mission though. Not starting out with a melee weapon, and not wearing armor, makes it unduly dangerous if you have a really bad luck day or simply don't perform well. One option is to simply run away at the outset to reset the mission. I didn't like doing that mostly (felt exploitive), so I'd usually treat the nun mission as an indication it was time to move on to the next town and try a new suspicious man.

But lately, I feel like I've gotten the hang of sniping his guards, and it is fun figuring out how to make it work. It is very quick, which is a plus, and not a bad payoff.

Two notes to make it safer: If you have very good gaunlets, +10 or better, and good boots, the mission is much safer, as a little bit of armor goes a long way. Also, know your escape routes and town layout. And you can escape from the town by jumping over the battlements (at least in pirate towns, which is where I practiced this mission the most)

This one is a bit hard, in that sometimes it is difficult to identify where the enemy group is. But it is simple to do really--look for a group of guards surrounding a merchant, get a decent angle by changing from rooftop to battlements if needed, and fire at the merchant. Then whether you win or lose, reload the gun while running away, shoot the first guard to step into your way, and escape out the door into the countryside. It is a very quick mission.

I saved the easiest for last. I have experimented, and if I sit back and do nothing, half the time my thugs manage to win the entire mission without the player even moving.

In order to ensure victory, all you need to do is move around to the read of the bodyguard group, throw a few strikes their way to distract one or two from the group, and kill them. Your buddies will handle the rest.

This mission is a free 1.5k even in starting equipment or escaped slave equipment. In fullplate, because pretty much all the enemies have small swords rather than axes or other dangerous weapons, they practically can't even hurt you.

Usually I drop the clubs, and just wade into the midst of the enemy crowd throwing punches with bare fists and watching their swords helplessly deflect off my armor. Which is fun.

No strategy to this one. I do wonder why the small cudgel weapon they give you as an alternate to the club in this mission only makes an appearance in this one mission (I never found it in any shops). Interesting there is a weapon that only appears in the easiest mission in the game. Not sure of the stats, but it seems slightly worse than a club.

No seperate sections for governor missions (there just isn't as much to say about them). Here they are:

I'll say the easieast governor mission is "burning sails" destroy ships--even if you only have starting character type equipment, you can win that missions and get the 15k with no real risk. Just kill all starting enemies first, then start with the farthest away ship as your first one to burn, kill all spawned enemies before burning the second ship, and slowly work your way backwards. The idea is you want your thugs to kill the mounted opponents by swarming them when all your thugs are still alive, and the mounted opponents spawn on the farthest ship, so you go reverse order. By not burning any ships until all currently spawned enemies are dead, your thugs always vastly outnumber the opponents. Do it this way, and you and a couple of thugs will survive the battle with all opponents dead. Remember, new enemies are triggered when you burn a ship, so one at a time, and make sure to hunt every last spawned enemy before the next.

Alternatively, if that takes too long, burn the farthest ship, steal one of the horses from one of the mounted enemies, and then burn the remaining 6 one after the other and ride away. You can even do that without a horse, as long as you burn the farthest ship first, and kill that group of enemies, you can burn the remaining 6 and run away while the guards are busy killing your thugs. I run backwards through town and exit through the gate, and guards seem confused and often run right past me.

In the "deliverance" rescue a ship and cargo mission for governors, you need a decent army sure, but also make sure your own character has a slot of medium bombs equiped. Toss all 5 into the starting cluster of enemy troops (they all start clustered up), and your troops will kill the survivors no problem, almost no casulties. Only costs like 2.5k for the bombs, and the quest reward is 15k.

For the native treasure mission, just follow common sense and the above discussed principle that spawns happen each time you trigger something (ie, open a chest). As with fighting natives in general, this mission can be made pretty easy by wearing high quality full plate (which will make you nearly invulnerable to many of the melee attackers) and using a shield (to block their throwing weapons and such). A blunderbuss pistol or a set of small bombs is useful to deal with clusters that might otherwise overwhelm you, especially if you are low on troops. You will be dismounting at times to climb up the temples, so be ready for some ground combat.

For the dress as natives and attack a camp mission, do everything you can to distract enemies into focussing on you. Your troops will be unarmored practically in their native gear, and you really want to keep the focus away from them lest too many get wounded or killed.

The rescue an artilery barrage mission. Yep, this mission is hard. I like the idea of riding around in armor with 3 slots of small bombs and a long sword for swinging from horseback, keeping the enemies focussed on me but missing the fast horse target, rather than slaughtering your own limited men, while throwing bombs to kill their little packed up groups. I wish I could say I knew how to beat up by playing as intended (using the cannon you start with), but I never can get the aiming down well enough, probably because the only chance to practice it early game is this mission, and there is little margin for error in this one. So I usually go with bombs and a fast horse to distract them.

For the kill 3 officers with a bow missions, first make sure you have invested some of your levelup weapon points into archery (should be cheap to get an 60-80 skill or so, which is enough). The guards seem to detect you based on distance, rather than anything else. Just stride into camp without worrying too much, as long as you keep walking and stay a little bit away from the guards. When you find one of the three targets, just stand in the middle of camp away from the guards (really, don't worry about them much at all), and fire your bow several times until the guy dies. You will probably need 3 shots, but that is fast enough and he won't have enough time for the alarm counter to run out. And since the targets generally don't run, but instead stand still and try to fire (but slower than your bow), and you only trigger their activity when the first arrow connects, then you just keep firing at whatever aiming first hit them, and you will keep hitting them until they are dead. If they shoot faster than you draw the bow, sidestep. Really, very easy. But escape across the bridge, killing the guard with the arrows if needed (but at this point best to have picked up a backup melee weapon from one of the dead targets as well). Don't try to run away across the canyon...I tried that, and ended up so far in the distance looking down on the camp. It is a much quicker exit across the bridge.