"Every man is a lord for himself in our Commonwealth, if he has a sabre in his hand and can gather any kind of party."

Forget caravans - You need a lot of money to start them. You may want to use them when you already have tens of thousands of thalers, but until then, you have to build your empire from scratch.

The best way to make money is good old fashon manual Trade! It's simple, buy low and sell high.

But isn't the buying price higher than the selling price with all items ? you may ask. If we are talking about weapons, armor, horses or food then yes. But that's not the case for some other items known as goods that have no other purpose in this game except trade and production. I'll list them below.

Thus, when you create your character invest 3 points in trade, you won't regret it as the higher your trade skill, the lower the prices you buy items and the higher the prices you sell items. Which means you get to make more profit faster.

Here are the average prices:


Can you notice the most profitable deal ? Powder. While Velvet is a luxury item, it is not the most profitable business because the buying price is too high. You probably cannot afford 700 thalers when you start the game and even if you could buying 2 Powder and getting a double profit is a much better choice. That and velvet is harder to find thus to buy.

There are of coruse many other goods such as Russian Water Vodka, Ale, Tools, etc. Feel free to experiment with them if you want. But you can make a lot of money with Powder alone completly disregarding everything else.

So where can you find the most Powder ? You can find it everywhere but mostly in Ukraine, the Cossak Hetmanate. Start the game, do the introdaction quests of the Zamoshye village until you get 300 thalers, then go to the Ukrainian cities of Kiev, Korsun, Cherkassy, Sich (they are cities very close to each other thus less travelling distance), find Powder, buy it and then sell it to another city who has no Powder.

I haven't played With Fire and Sword in a long time but I think with a trading skill of 6 I was buying Powder for 200 and selling it for 800. And if you've found a city who happens to have 5 Powder then you've hit the jackpot.

Besides the 3 main quests the game is full of random quests.
You can get them from Village Elders, Guild Masters, Lords, Monarch, Ladies, etc.

But the ones that are most important here, because they can be abused and profited from, are: "Collect taxes" and "Collect Debt from a Lord" both of them are given by Lords.

Go to any random lord you encounter in your journey, no matter the faction (unless you're at war with them) and ask them if they have any quests for you. If you get lucky and they hapeen to ask you to "Collect Taxes" or "Collect Debt from a Lord" don't hesitate to accept it because you can make a lot of money out of this.

Collect taxes: You have to collect taxes from a random town or village that belongs to the random lord (usually about 5000 thalers). Make sure you have a decent army before you being as the villagers can revolt against you. About 25 soldiers should do it.

As you collect taxes, the villagers will become angry and you'll be asked if you wish to continue collecting or to halve the taxes. If you continue collecting, the citizens/villagers may revolt and you will be forced to fight them, losing relationship with that town/village in the process. If you decide to halve the taxes, the lord who gave you the quest won't give you any reward. Click on continue and collect all the tax but don't return them to the lord who gave you the quest.

Collect Debt from a Lord: You will be asked to return some money lent to one lord on behalf of another lord. To convince the lord into giving you the money back (usually 3500 thalers) you can sacrifice your relationship status with him (don't click that button if you don't have any positive relationship with him) or pay him one fifth of that amount (you will need to have 1/5 of the thalers, if you don't have that much money you can come back to him later). Whether you sacrifice your relationship with him or give him 1/5 of the money doesn't matter, after you get the money don't return them to the lord who gave you the quest.

For both of these quests, after you collect the taxes/debt, the quest is marked as completed and the time limit is removed so you can keep the money for yourself and use them however you like. You won't lose relationship with the lord and you can still talk with him.

There is no penalty for not completing the quest, except that you can no longer get quests from that one lord until you've given him his money. This means that the only time it is problematic to not finish the quest is if you need your relationship with the lord to be increased. You can always finish the quest at a later date if you want, because gaining this much money earlier in the game is more beneficial than doing so later.

Both quests are a great method of getting a lot of thalers early on and with ease, you can use those thalers to buy Powder and get even more thalers.

Buying and selling Powder is still the best technique (until you get enough money for investing), but if you want to use Caravans here's how you do it:

First you need to have money and a good army (if you're not at war about 40 units should do it).

Use the Assess Prices in the market of any city to see where you get the best prices. This will give you information about where you can make profit.

Then go talk to the Mayor. Talk about Trade. Say that you want to send a caravan. You'll choose what type of good you want to buy and the place the caravan will go to sell that good.

If you want to escort the caravan yourself and keep bandits away on the road, 2 guards is enough. If you want to do anything else in the meantime (although it can cost you more) buy more guards.

The more distrance between the cities the higher the threat of the caravan getting robbed by random NPCs and you losing all your investition.

If you want to use the caravans a lot buy the trade permit. After you use a caravan for the first time talk to any Mayor about trade and there should be a option for a trade permit. It costs 2500 thalers but with that you don't need to pay the 5% tax for the caravan. It's a good long-term investition worth taking when you're making a lot of use of caravans.


Once of get a lot of thalers, about 10.000 or more. Go to a town (that is friendly to you, or better yet, one you own), go to Town Square, Merchant's Guild and invest your money there. Money will grow with 14% interest (20% if you control the town or have good enough relations with the town) every week without you doing anything.

For example in the case of 10.000 thalers, you'll get 1.400 a week for free.

The more you invest the more you get weekly.

You can always come back and add more to the sum.

But remember to protect that town like your mother.


Pillaging is not recommended because you will ruin your relationship with a village and faction (but most important the faction, let's be serious who cares about villagers they are powerless and if you really were the moral type we wouldn't have this conversation to begin with), unless you wanted to play a bandit all along.

The loot from fighting and conquering are gives you a good start. But on the long run you'll never be able to make as many thalers as you are able to make from the trade and investing. Turns out brains can make more money than steel, kind of like the real life.

There are 2 companions in the game whose armor worths a lot more than their hiring cost.

You can hire him and steal their armor early game. It's a powerful boost.

Those 2 companions are Victor De La Buscador and Karlson.

With Victor De La Buscador having a slightly better equipment and a helmet but Karlson is not to be overlooked either.

You can find them at random times in random taverns, just like any other companion. Victor De La Buscador costs 500 thalers to hire while Karlson costs 400 thalers to hire.

So when you visit any city, make sure to check the tavern as well.

Also, Karlsson dislikes Victor De La Buscador. So if you have both of them in your company one of them will be dissatisfied based on whose side you pick nevertheless. And at one point if you're having a lot of bad luck and lose a lot of fights the dissatisfied one can leave the party filthy traitor.

Either way, you can keep them both and none may leave the party depending how you play, or you can take their equipment and send home one of them, so you remain with the equipment of both. You're the moral one here, stealing is not bad when you do it, and its for a good cause I'm sure of it.

If you're heading multiplayer you'll find that factions are not equally powerful due to equipment as well as character skills. Which I believe is something made to recreate historical accuracy as the real life factions were not equally powerfull as well.

If I were to make an overall top the rankings would be:

1) Sweden - Kingdom of Sweden "We have better armor, better equipment, face it, you're dead"
2) Poland - Polish Commonwealth "Then the Winged Hussars Arrived! We have good guns too."
3) Russia - Muscovite Tsardom "Meh, we're pretty average in everything, balance is the key"
4) Ukraine - Cossack Hetmanate "Outlaw style, Pistols, Speed, Spears and a fast Cavalry wins."
5) Tatars - Crimean Khanate "Forget Guns, Agility and Archery can make or break a battle"

But each faction has their own strengths and weaknesses.


These strengths and weaknesses generally apply to the singleplayer as well.

For making a lot of money remember: early game powder, late game investing, collect tax/debt quests can help.

The most overpowered weapons are the rifles, they work like the Crossbows in Warband but they can cause 1 shot kill (depends a bit on armor and distance, but for 90% of cases / armors it's instant kill) and can reload just as fast.

You can make your whole early game in the campaign using just Riflemen and a few Cavarly to engage the enemy at a safe distance.

As soon as the battle starts select your whole army, tell them to hold postions, then select the cavalry and when you see that the enemy is getting closer tell them to charge.

If the enemy engages your Cavarly while in sight of your Rifleman the battle is won.

Right after Rifleman in terms of being overpowered are Shock Cavalry, which means Cavalry with a Lance, out of which the most powerful are the Winged Hussars.

Shock Cavalry are very good from the Horse if you can hit well with the Lance, but if you're down they are clearly at a disadvantage if the enemy has a Sword. Cavarly with Swords are good too since other Infantrymen or Riflemen can hardly protect themselves against a Sword/Lance charge.

I find that a good combination of Shock Cavarly with Good Riflemen are enough to win the game.

In Singleplayer you almost need no Infantry.

In Multiplayer however, although also dominated by Riflemen with shock cavalry on the 2nd place (the less players are the more powerful the cavalry is, in a 5vs5 game the Riflemen are already more powerful, the more open field there is the better the Cavalry is etc); a good infantry man may emerge from time to time.

Especially when the map is anything but an open-field as the Riflemen need a safe distance and the Cavarly isn't exactly the most manuvrable unit on close quarters, although sometimes Cavarly can have better equpment than the Infantry and the Cavalry player can simply dismount so it depends. And the Rifleman can shoot the Infantryman before he gets to it but he if misses or reloads... then he's a rape victim for the Infantryman unless he runs.

Also Grenades... in Singleplayer they are expensive and don't regenerate. But in Multiplayer, where a kill is worth a lot more, if you made enough money, especially on short range, they are an instant kill with little effort, but learn how to throw them first, it can be difficult.


Have fun!