Collecting Companions
We're on a quest today to collect some more companions and flesh out of Clan a bit more! We begin in Danustica. Our war against the Aserai continues, but we're ignoring that for now. Personal growth trumps land grabs.
We begin by snapping up Boscoric the Tracker - a companion that costs a whopping 440 Denars to hire. Relative to normal prices, this is pretty high, but that's actually a good thing. If we take a look at his skills, we find that he's coming to us with a bunch of stuff already above 100.
So, we hire him and officially take him in as part of the Clan. He's going to be a good member of the team going forward I'm sure! Being entirely martial-focused, we should end up using him as a squad commander, as I'm thinking he'll have some pretty decent perks for that role.
With that done, we head out to journey to another city and happen upon an ally raiding a nearby village. We've never participated in a raid prior to this, so we hop on the opportunity.
Unfortunately, we find out that this does have unintended consequences, and once the raid is over we find that our Merciful trait has been removed.
Honestly, it's not terribly surprising. It's not exactly 'merciful' of us to ride 100+ soldiers into a village and burn their houses until they give us everything they have. Who knew, right? A perfectly common mistake to make.
Our next companion is from Vostrum - a Southern Empire city where fish and salt are cheap and horses are highly sought after. We did a lot of trading here in prior episodes. The economy does wiggle some, so now and then the rule doesn't apply, but in general it's good practice to have an idea of where certain goods can be bought and sold for profits, and this is one of them. It's rare that I come here and can't offload extra horses for a fat payday.
As proof, Work Horses are being bought for 78 per horse when I arrive. Generally, I can buy these between 55 and 65 Denars, so that's a decent margin for each, and with a quick sale of 28 horses, we're 4,906 Denars richer. Not bad for a random stop!
If you're ever looking for a quick way to get a general idea about what might be cheap in a particular city, hover over the icon in the top left when you're in the trade menu - it'll give you a breakdown of what they produce locally.
Vostrum for example usually has fish - one of the villages right beside it produces it, so if you snag a bunch of fish for cheap and you know that say... Poros, as we do today, usually buys fish for a high price... well, that's pure profit and if you're going that way anyhow why not make some extra Denars for your trouble eh?
So, with that idea in mind, we set off looking for eligible companions and trading from city to city.
Zeonica, Jalmarys, Ortysia, Quyaz... and we're getting back to our original stomping-grounds now. Places we haven't been to in a very long time!
In Quyaz, we notice that they're offering Fish for 5 Denar per, which is ludicrously low... so we buy it all. 900 fish for a mere 5,339 Denars. Given that we can typically sell fish anywhere in the range of 15-32 Denars per unit, we are going to easily 3x our investment here.
It doesn't take long before we've more than made back the money we spent on the fish, and then it's just a matter of seeing if we can make back some of the money we spent on horses. While doing so, we take a moment to fill out our party roster with some Vlandian units, as these folks have some pretty decent upgrades.
We also take a moment to join a tournament, as they're offering a semi-decent weapon and we haven't done much this episode beyond trading... so a bit of a break to actually fight is in order. Of course, we win.
Break over, we go back to the trading grind. By this time, I'm not gonna lie - I've completely forgotten that our original goal was to fill up all our available companion slots. The Trade has consumed my soul.
We cap off the session by winning the best motherfucking rock you'll ever see.
17,961 Denars worth of sexy rock beast! It's supposed to be a horse, of course - but a bug I keep seeing lets this magic happen and I have to admit - I love it.
All in all, we trade our way literally around the entire outskirts of the map, ending back within Khuzait territory way up at the northern city of Tyal. From there we'll be re-joining the war on our southern front... but that's for the next session!
Until then friends, Happy Gaming!
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