Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

• You can make infinite money via crafting. In my experience specifically with the 2 handed swords. You don't even need to make the grade 5 swords which require a rare crafting material. Its a bit of an effort at the start because you will have to make swords just to smelt them to unlock more recipes but when you can make like 8 swords that sell for 30k a pop and hit the next city to sell more of them its free real estate. I didn't really push the limits but having a million currency is easy. Oh and tribal daggers or throwing knives will give you all the mats. You can force the crafting onto a companion but then you need to keep that companion around. I would advise just do it yourself although you can make companions turn wood into charcoal.

• You want levels in leadership and steward to push the party limit. Reknown is the base thing covering though so winning fights helps a lot too. Just attack bandits with numbers greater than 20 and auto resolve it to level the troops and do any tournament you come across. Stewardship can be leveled by just having different food types and leadership counts just using the in battle commands and riding around with people in your army (army formed on the kingdom tab)

• The best weapon is the one with the longest reach and fastest swing speed. Usually the damage will keep up. Maybe not with some spears. With 2 handed axes and 2 handed swords for sure.

• Bows are better than crossbows because you can reload while on a horse. Shooting with bows is easy and will help your bow soldiers. And its handy when you're low hp after your killing guys with some monster weapon for a while. Throwing weapons are super strong each shot you have but you have a very low number of shots so kind of a trap option. Crossbows are actually viable

• In terms of troops I think anything on a horse is good. Kuzait get them at the lowest level. A horse is like a second hp bar. The Kuzait get a lot of horse archers though. Aserai and Vladians get heavy cavalry sooner. 1 or 2 crossbow men are garbage. 20 crossbow men+ are a killing machine.

• If you want to make your own kingdom I would join a faction, get a fief and leave the kingdom with the fief. Maybe more than 1 fief. The most important thing about the fief is getting one that can only be hit by so many factions. Like in the bottom right of the map there is a city called Husq Fallun or something like that. And there's a castle in front of it. If you got both of those only like 2 factions are going to want to fight you because you aren't near anyone else. Getting fiefs in the middle of the map would suck because multiple AIs will want to attack you.

• Going to the tavern district will show you who is in the tavern district on the top right. You don't have to manually walk around the tavern looking for a potential companions.

• Trade has the best endlevel ability. You can trade fiefs with people. The odds you are getting to it are low though. The first 2 levels of trade will give you a very good idea of are you going to make profit or loss on buying or selling. Prices increase or decrease based on the amount you sell so keep that in mind. When the green on a sell goes to a lesser green you aren't making as much of a profit. Before those levels you're trusting trade rumors or keeping track with notepad. Overall its miserable to level.

• Buy horses. You always need more. They make the party move faster and they are a leveling requirement for a lot of units.