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1. Calm down.
2. Morale boosters: Food variety, Winning Battles, smaller party size (larger warbands suffer a larger morale handicap. That's in all the games, FYI.)
3. Tournament Tips: When you have bad weapons, do what you can to kill somebody with a better weapon and then pick it up for personal use. Also, remember that certain throwing weapons can be turned into a (albeit rather pitiful) meelee weapon. 'Nother thing: Sometimes it's best to just let the other tourney-goers kill themselves off before you get into the fray.
4. Training time decreasers: upgrading your training skill and fighting lots of battles (big or small, there's still an experience burst for your army here and there). You can also simply wait around in a castle/town/camp and just wait while your army gets experience from daily training. Heck, if your food isn't draining too fast and you have enough cash, you could probably get away with just settling down like so when you have to go AFK.
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1) Forget Ironman (if you hadn't already). It's out of the question for story mode. You'll die at some point for sure.
2) If you're starting fresh, look up the guide here on all the character choices and their exact effect on stats. Build carefully. Having good Intelligence and Charisma can help a LOT - Persuasion gives you better options on all sorts of important story choices. It's hard to win by might alone, and IMO it's worth sacrificing some fighting skill for a more well-rounded leader. I'm currently playing a well-balanced female character (starting stats were 11-11-10-11 I think, now at 12-12-16-12)
3) Be really, really patient. Frankly, the story campaign is fun but it isn't very well-deployed: it always makes it seem like time is of the essence, but time is NEVER of the essence, and in fact there's no way you could possibly just race through the story quests without taking huge amounts of time in between. You can go ahead and do the first few quests up until it's time to defend Doccinga. Then, despite the game saying "it's under attack right now!" you should spend some time -- I mean like, several weeks -- doing quests for the king and fighting bandits. You can repeatedly do the king's Bandit Hideout quest, and it gets you a lot of XP & money every time, plus friendship with the king. Build up a nice little warband before you go to Doccinga.
4) After that, you get expelled from Friese and head to Danmark. (You get a free ship from the quest at this point, so don't buy one yet or spend money on sea passage!) The next major quest is to go to Ireland to get a book for the harbormaster. I spent a looooong time in Ireland. Like, a full year. Trading all around (you can rack up TONNES of coin just buying wheat and flax in the villages and selling it in the cities) and doing quests for a few lords until I could buy Breweries in a few towns. Make something of yourself in Ireland before taking the book (high persuasion - 6 or 7 - lets you take it without angering any irish lords) and heading back.
5) This is something I found super useful during the early days in Ireland: before you have the renown to hire high-level troops in taverns, you can get them for free by watching out for bands of vikingr/masterless men/etc. that have higher-level troops as prisoners. Defeat them, hire all the prisoners. The majority of high-level troops you get won't be from upgrading - it'll be from rescuing them as prisoners, or hiring mercs in taverns (an army of Svear Warriors and Finn Archers can kick a hell of a lot of ass). Also, the equipment drops from a lot of the renegade troops in Ireland/England are much better than those in Friese/Danmark
6) During the next several quests I went constantly back and forth all over the map, stoping at virtually every village and city to trade. It's a bit of a grind, but after a few trips all through Ireland-England-Norway-Denmark (gotta stay away from Friese for now) you'll be rich enough to buy lots of breweries and some new boats and all that. You'll catch on to the pricing patterns pretty quickly. Also, if you're running a network of breweries, you can be constantly buying cheap wheat and dropping it off with your foremen whenever you pass by the towns, which will boost your income.
7) Up to you *how* much you want to do this, and if you consider it cheap, but: save right before starting important story quest moments, and reload if your decisions went really badly. Try out several combinations in some scenes, because while the general story direction stays the same, you can get wildly different effects on relations and such. In the early game, for a much-needed cash boost, you can savescum tournaments too.
It's done by value, so taking just the first 1 or 2 pieces is usually enough to make the men lose moral - since often there's only 1 or 2 undamaged pieces of gear in the pile, and they are worth as much as the rest put together. You are much better off sharing it as common, THEN taking a couple pieces, then letting them have the rest even of that - which will get you an additional moral *boost*. There isn't lots of great miracle equipment hiding in the loot piles in the early game (or really ever) so once you have the basic gear you want, there's no need to keep claiming all the loot first, at least not with bandits and the like. The morale boost from sharing it is worth way more.
My wife and I are in story mode, Ironman, and we have not have any problems in the Reforged edition. 135% difficulty, 5 wounds so far, and we just sailed with the fleet. Good stats, sword, board, bow and a quiver make you invincible.
Once again, not necessarily. If you can take on 20 Elite Vikings and win by yourself, if every duel ends with the enemy growing arrows out of his forehead, the story comes along just fine.
One can do better. YOU probably did better than you remember. My wife rolled a 'queen type' character for our (future) storymode character. Starting stats were 10-10-15-15.
I dislike the costs of turncoat raiders and tavern elite troops. I much prefer Norse infantry and female archers. For barely half the cost of an Elite Viking, a huscarl can wipe the floor with him. As for female soldier wives, they have a ton of benefits, and support their husbands just fine.
With good relations with Norse cities, you get 15-20 Tier III sword'n'boarders at once. Those are rock solid, and with a good surgeon, they last forever as long as you maintain your shield wall.
And of course, your costs are much less, so you do not have to grind for cash, unless you enjoy it.
If you play Ironman, remember that you can command your team, and thus pretty much guarantee victories even if you have a crappy spear, because even the spear is a great weapon to poke the back of engaged enemies. Of course, in the last two fights you have to be able to win with a spear. Good stats, trained polearm skill, and undressing before the tournament to clear the gear penalty helps.
Actually, even the lowly Bandit Leaders and Ravagers sometimes drop false Ulfberth blades. Our guy got one on day 4 in Frisia. High Agility and high Looting pays off. And you can get real Ulfberths and 37/15 medium armor from any Vikings in England proper.
If you do Ironman, you have more balls than me. I certainly can't imagine doing it for your first time through the story. I would be so pissed off if I'd sunk 40 hours into the game then lost it all to one wrong move in the duel at Ulf's Farm, or just an unlucky arrow to the head.
For troops, btw: note that I wasn't suggesting turncoat raiders. I dislike the cost (especially morale and renown) of those as well. I was suggesting hiring THEIR prisoners -- the ones you rescue, who will join your party for free. I often find bands of raiders wandering around with 10+ high-level prisoners in tow -- some veteran spearmen, warrior archers, horsemen, etc. -- and that's a great way to get high-level recruited troops without having to level them yourselves, at least in the early game.
You're right, I think my stats were slightly better than I recalled - but it was definitely three 11's and a 10. I'm talking ROLL ONLY stats though - pre-assignment of starting stat points. Those I used to bring it up to 12-11-12-12. I'm now level 21 and have added four points, and have also read Paedia for the +1 INT boost, so they are at 12-12-16-12. I also maxed out persuasion to 6 very early which was enough to get the monastery book with no penalties, and I had the cash to hang on to it instead of turning it over, for another +1 Persuasion while it's in my inventory - and that was enough to get through the Assembly with success on all persuasion checks.
On the subject of tournaments, commanding your team does indeed make a huge difference -- but I still find that often enough you can get screwed over. Like in the smaller tournament arenas, with multiple large teams, often your team starts spread out and immediately splits up to go after different groups - and if the arena is too small, trying to gather them leaves their backs open to hits, while letting them split up leaves you alone against two other barely-scratched teams (which is sometimes manageable by bating them into fighting each other, though again the small arenas sometimes make this very tough).
Now, here's a fun one: WTF is an Ulthberth blade? Is that somethign new in Reforged Addition? I can honestly say I've never seen that item in any loot drop or store... I use a Tempered Nad and Blue Steel Chainmail (low strength makes that the best one I can wear -- better than Scale, and I can't wear Olvir's) and most of my companions have Rich Swords and either byrnies or chain. Clovis is my BEAST: I pushed him up to 21 strength, gave him Olvier's Armor (the best in the game i think?) and Troll's Axe. Now he just plows through enemy divisions splitting people in half from head to toe.
Here is screenshot. Unupgraded, it's not as good as Nad or a balanced Goidelic long sword, but it much easier to come by, so it has become standard equipment for our companion cavalry.
As for Ironman, it is not that hard. Brant is really, really tough, and has gone down in battle exactly once - from horseback, to a spear thrust from someone who had just found his courage back. We are paying a lot more attention now, and my wife keeps me from taking too many risks. Ranged weapons are not all that dangerous in this mod, with one exception - Brant's arrows.
When you lay claim, you're basicly saying "All this is MINE." then you take what you want and give them the scraps. They view it as getting the bone. Best to share it as if it was common. You don't lose moral and still get good stuff. Its what I always choose.
You have to walk around the city, and find the mayor. Sometimes he is called something else, like Hallvard, etc... One of his dialogue options is about purchasing a farmstead, and starting the production of one good or another.
Yeah they are mayors not guild masters in Vikings. Stroll around town, you'll usually find them chatting to at least one other person. In some cities they are on the docks, in others they are near the lord's hall in the center, and in some they are somewhere throughout town -- there's a few where it's a real pain to find them, but you'll get the feel for it pretty quick.