Nova Aetas V5.0: Beginners Guide

This is a very unique mod. More concept than visuals. This guide is for people who want to understand how the mod works differently than other warband mods. This guide gives you suggestions on what to do on first 60 gamedays, until you become an Aristocrat. Also some tips on crafting and traits. Comment your experiences and help me to add more tips for new players to mod.
Plz refer section list for details.

Introduction

Beginner's Guide by Nilman
This mod has different approach. Normally in any warband mod, we start as a warrior or hunter and then start fighting for renown, and in a week or two we become vassal, and in a few months, start our own kingdom.
But in this mod for first month or two, you can’t just become a vassal. You have to follow the struggle of common man to rise in status and become a Noble. So let’s begin with few of the approaches I may recommend. Once you try them, you can always make your own way. I will not repeat the simple instructions which are already in the game (except when its unclear). Working and crafting has basic info in their own menu.
For first two months, Your game is to build economy. Profit and Prestige go hand in hand. There are two paths, a laborer’s path or a craftsman’s path. Both can be intertwined but focus on how you earn prestige. While economy is the goal, real estate is the backbone of the game.

Character building

1. At start of the game, The craftsman’s or laborer’s path can be mixed with two complementary Character Builds to earn money for investments; Warrior build or trader build. Eventually you can balance the skills as you level up.
2. If you want to earn money through fighting bandits and being mercenary to a faction (not up to lvl 10 maybe) and through Tournament exploits; start as a warrior build.
3. If you want to earn through trading and crafting, start as a trader build. But the twist is crafting is based on agility and trading is based on leadership. And special battle abilities need high strength and intelligence.
4. For warrior build you need good strength and agility, and for laborer’s path you need to high inventory management. So think, how you will mix characterbuild and path. I suggest Warrior Craftsman or Trader Laborer. Choose farmer option for free equipment.
5. On first day go to Ruins of Uxkhal and get all four chests. First under sword, near statue of King Harlaus [RIP :( ]. Second at the right of right gate. Third near hospital, and fourth in a ruined house in distant front of hospital. For visual delight there is a bright white spot at far right corner, outside castle walls, containing a staff. I had no option to pick it up. (I played the Pagan) Keep the sword and sell the goods whenever you need the money, or wait for higher trading skill from companions. (bug: King Harlaus’s sword works fine on the horseback but works as a short spear with shield when on foot. Two handed style works fine in both cases for it.)
6. You need Riding skill only 2, to ride an armored horse, 3 to outrun Cathars in battle. Zero to ride a camel, in version 5. So use points accordingly. Better invest in looting and crafting. (Agility based)
7. Quickly buy good food or hunt deer, get good food morale. If you do, in 2-3 days you gain good supplier trait, and if you don’t, you gain bad supplier trait. After that follow your chosen path.
8. Don’t get involved in politics, do your job, until you are an Aristocrat. Let the Crusade come, Tughlun come, Khergit loose or whatever happens. Do your daily job.
9. Keep minimum a day’s gap between saves, to reload and correct mistakes, to avoid bad traits. You can’t avoid bad trait in few hours reload.
10. Pray once everyday whenever you are near town of your religion. The mod is made in Christen region bordered by Pagan and Muslims. Praying gives you Charisma bonus for every 10 piety. So choose religion as per your choice. But as a non-christen character, Vaegir Tsar starts -5 relation with you on first meeting. So avoid him until you can please him with quests and gifts.
11. If you have –ve relation with any lord, you cannot enter his town except for praying. Like Narra, Bariyye, and Revyadin if non-christen meets Tsar. Please those lords with gifts and quests, and you can enter.
12. Tip: Before entering any tournament, set camp, go to options, change tournament design for that city, but deselect all before accepting. Set design as per your liking then save game and enter town to join the tournament. I suggest you to change weapons as per town faction, to make matches more enjoyable and different in each town. Winning is not necessary to earn money, you get paid for every round.
13. Always keep 2-3 varieties of food and 1 drink or water. Otherwise you may gain slim trait. Or fat if you carry too much food, both negative.
14. Always have more than 500ds in inventory for surprise decisions. Choose options which give good traits.
15. Always rescue and train Manhunters, because they get you prisoners. Release prisoners for prestige or ransom for money.
16. Once you have extra 15k, restore abandoned mine for free sometimes. You will get steady fixed income of 250ds weekly.
17. Canons are just for show, don’t buy them in early game, and they don’t have much range, & they only go backward, not forward. And also don’t recruit cannoneers, they are not well designed yet.

Laborer's path to Nobility

The laborer earns less money but more prestige than a craftsman. Mine for Money once a week. (Refer separate mining section below.)
1. A laborer must start life/game by investing 350ds to buy woodcutting permission from owner lord of the forest. You can earn that with warband questing. You must first reach and click the forest or mine you want to work on. Then only the dialogue option of contract will be available with the corresponding lord. (I usually use ctrl+T to find a lord faster. Because searching a lord without high spotting is annoying when he is travelling. No other cheat ever. Cheats ruin the attitude of the player, i.e. YOU.)
2. Buy a woodcutter’s axe from weapons seller if you don’t have it. Equip it and enter the forest. By cutting and sawing wood, you earn prestige. Its consumes real time but not the game time. But holding action key for long is not good for that key on keyboard. (When you do it for 100 times) This wood is better used for crafting or just sell it. In every town wood buy or sell cost is not much different. I think it slightly varies with your trade skill. But still wood is almost a fixed cost item. (Like seeds, ores) Depositing wood in restoration & construction projects is not useful until you have huge weekly income. After a day, sell the contract paper as a trash, you don’t need it anymore. You got a lifetime contract.
3. 3. Keep earning money by trading (villages to towns), questing, fighting and MINING. In laborer’s path you can go anywhere anytime, unlike in craftsman’s path. You will keep earning prestige in every gather n craft you perform.
4. Once you have 1000ds, gather 10 timbers (30 prestige) and buy 10 or 20 seeds and build a farm near any friendly town. See where you get high price for grain. I suggest near Aldeburgh. (old Uxkhal). A farms comes with a chest. Use it only for storing seeds, 2 sickles, and extra goods during harvesting.
5. For another approx 1000ds buy a shack in that town, for storage chest. All homes in all towns have a single common chest, so you can use it as a free goods transport facility.
6. Plant seeds in farm One and farm four. Don’t plant all 4 farms, as so much grain is difficult to gather, store & sell. Also farm two & three are bad designs. Wander around for 7 days, and come back once you get the harvest message. Buy n equip a sickle, save game and enter the farm. You must not exit the farm once you select harvest from workbench. Tab key marks end of harvest, and all remaining crops in selected farm are cleared.
7. To harvest, cut in sequence, remember the path to get out, as you can’t see & can’t walk over a harvested crop. That’s why I don’t plant farm 2 n 3. Hit each crop with sickle and you get grain bag, prestige, and many times seeds too. Every time, Farm 1 gives me so many seeds that I have to walk back to farm chest and store grains and seeds. Farm 4 gives less seeds. But seeds are Fixed low cost item. Press Tab, reenter the farm, plant seeds. Exit.
8. By the time you exit after first harvest and start travelling, you can get message of your rise in class. Huge gain in prestige. See the game appreciates the hard work.
9. Sell the grains and seeds. Grains will lose price as you sell it in one town. I sell in one town until price reaches 25, then take remaining to another town, and another if needed. Use free in game shack transport to reduce inventory weight and maintain travelling speed. Having a few cheap lame or swaybacked horses can help to carry heavy inventory. Keep army minimum or not at all, all for travelling speed. Stay away from cathars and bandits, because while carrying so many goods, you become slower. Anyone can catch upto you. (again Ctrl+T helps to survive) Travel behind a lord’s party going the same way, for protection.
10. If you have approx. 3000ds, buy and rent out an apartment. If you are going away for a week, rent out the shack too. You don’t lose your storage, as it can be accessed in any town property.
11. Now on for every extra 3000ds buy an apartment in every new town you go.
12. Once you start gaining 500+ weekly profit in budget, you get bonus weekly prestige. Also for the first month you gain and retain your honor, you get Honorable trait, 5 bonus prestige per week.
13. Keep farming weekly, gather wood, stones, ores and sell them. Stone is fixed low price item and Ores are fixed high price items, affected by your trading skill only, not by town. If you see a destructible stone with many white veins, it has 100% ore. Sell iron ores, keep silver and gold ores for calculative comparison. Invest the new money, your target is weekly profit, not current treasury.
14. Once you have 10k, go into dangerous territory of Rivacheg. Talk to guildmaster, Be the Dyework apprentice. Attend your master once or twice a day. Pray here or at Curaw which is within 12 hours travel, at speed of 6 or higher.
15. Now you have to raise 5k or more before making masterpiece. Say in a week or more. Fight with sea raiders, tundra bandits, get loot and prisoners. Don’t ignore looters they have good armors. Let go of prisoners when you don’t have space for them, you will gain good prestige.
16. Once you have 15150ds and 30% or more chance of success, attempt to make masterpiece. Once successful, ask the guildmaster and open dyeworks in Rivacheg. Now you are a permanent guild member of Rivacheg. You get one additional guild trader in market menu. Guild will upgrade automatically in many weeks or you can donate money to upgrade it faster, if you have any (lol). Guild upgrade will give you big prestige bonus.
17. Now spend 8-10 days as usual. Earn 5000+ in these days. Go back to your farm, harvest and sell, go to mines, gather and sell stones and Iron ores. Keep silver and gold ores to convert into ingots. Fight bandits.
18. After 8-10 days go back to Rivacheg. Meet your dyework head, invest by upgrading 5 efficiency levels, and all other upgrades. You don’t need money to hire more staff. By chance if you try this exactly on 7th or 8th day, you may get errors in hire more staff dialogue. I got such bug in Ichamur. So go after 8 days.
19. Now forget Rivacheg, it will give you 4-5k denars and 30+ prestige every week automatically.
20. With new income source of money and prestige, buy n rent apartments everywhere. More the profit more the prestige.
21. Balance your skill as you level up. Because as you are rising in class, you will soon enter politics of calradia.
22. Once you are an Aristocrat, join a faction, and enjoy the rest of the game as you see fit. Job of this guide is over.

Craftsman's path to Nobility

A craftsman earns more in a day than the laborer does in a week.
But in a craftsman’s path you can’t wander around the map, as your goal is to start n finish apprenticeship as early as possible. Attend your workplace once or twice every 24 hours, and simultaneously raising money to build that enterprise. Preferably do not wander more than 12hours distance from current apprenticeship town your working in. Be prepared to buy most of your raw materials.
1. In character building focus on Agility and craftsmanship skill. A craftsman works hard but not with huge quantity of petty things, but by making high cost items and selling them to the guild rather than market. Guild protects his crafting profit.
2. So on day 1, start apprenticeship in a town. Well but it’s not that easy. Craftsman got to use head more than hands. You need to choose a town which has cheapest raw materials for your chosen enterprise. Once decided then there is no turning back. Many people often get weekly losses in tailor, one of the most important enterprise for craftsman.
3. For starter, select a town near a forest, like Nevgered. With treasures of Uxkhal you may have enough money to start both apprenticeship and fighting. (Reserve Curaw for blacksmith and Rivacheg for dyewroks.) Meet guildmaster start apprenticeship for Carpenter. Why carpenter first? Because wood is freely available in Calradia. Other workshops need expensive raw materials. Even church needs more wine than grains.
4. Or you can start dyeworks of Rivacheg first, as explained in laborer’s path.
5. Get a good horse and some good mercenaries. Some companions are expensive, don’t recruit them now. But recruit any cheaper companion with trading skill of 3. Because you may not have it. And Start fighting bandits for money. You know the rest. As you level up, you need at least 4 points in craftsman skill (12 agility) before you build masterpiece cabinet for carpentry.
6. Attend workplace and also Pray every day. In Nevgered or Rivacheg. Attend nearby tournaments. But return in 24 hours. Don’t waste days.
7. For carpenter workshop you need to raise around 8k+ during apprenticeship. Once you have enough money, and enough chance of success (30% or more), talk to GM, and make a masterpiece. Now you are a permanent guild member of that town. You get one additional guild trader in market menu. Guild will upgrade automatically in many weeks or you can donate money to upgrade it faster, which you should. Guild upgrade will give you big prestige bonus.
8. Then ask GM to start business and start carpenter workshop. Now go get some timber, at least 6, or max 30. (You need woodcutter’s axe.) from forest or market. And enter your workshop. The weekly income starts after a week, but you can start crafting right away.
9. Craft 4 legs, 2 panels, then make and sell your first chair at the prompt. Selling later is not profitable and you can’t equip a chair. You can see how much you will get in calculated price in crafting menu. Estimated profit not what you get, ignore it. Make more chairs and sell them to the guild at the prompt. In 5 chairs you will gain almost 5000ds.
10. Buy poor n cheap flax rope, steel and linen from market. Make warbow and sell it too. Nobody got 4 power draw in early game, because you spent on craftsman skill. Make any bolts and arrows you need. Crossbows if you have 5 skill in craftsman (15 agility). Anyway, you need to earn 13k to 18k more in next 8-10 days.
11. Buy & rent apartment here, & move to new town for next apprenticeship. Go for Blacksmith in Curaw or dyeworks in Rivacheg. Or you can find where wool is cheapest and start tailoring there. But follow same schedule daily as done n first apprenticeship. Work, pray and fight. Focus on tournaments to earn 5k to 6k once in a while.
12. After 8-10 days, return to your carpentry, Meet your workshop head, invest 5k total by upgrading 5 efficiency levels first, then all other upgrades. You don’t need money to hire more staff. By chance if you try this exactly on 7th or 8th day, you may get errors in hire more staff dialogue. I got such bug in Ichamur. So go after 8 days.
13. Finish and establish your second workshop. And upgrade it after 8-10 days. Meanwhile buy apartments everywhere for weekly profit and prestige. Go for third wokshop. Until you have all 4 crafting workshops, Carpentry, Blacksmith, Tailor and Church for christens. The seals for church are available with bishops who give it only to christens.
14. For blacksmithing you need some wood parts from carpentry or market. Make best weapons for yourself and your team. Some good helmets. And armors if you have enough skills and money to buy raw materials. You can always buy poor and cheaper forms of materials and craft them into good gear.
15. To fill the need of steel, don’t buy steel, but buy some iron from Curaw. Then go to the mines, for smelting. Save before entering. Fill the cart, empty it, and minigame starts. It took me sometime to understand controls in the minigame. Its easy. Press & Hold the left mouse button, and release when pointer is between the markers. Smelt all cheaper iron into steel. Do same smelting if you need silver and gold. And go back to your blacksmith. Craft n sell items with highest calculated price with your skill level. Use this money to buy more apartments.
16. For tailor, find a good location nearby your carpentry and blacksmith. Wrong location may cause weekly losses, but you can cover it by other means. Main use of Tailor workshop is to get good or fancy armors in early game. And some intermediate components for carpentry and blacksmith. You need to buy all raw materials, so you can’t craft too much. You have to keep gathering hides, flax, wool, wool clothes, leather, raw silk, velvet etc. during your travels. And then keep them in shack storage ♥♥♥ transport. Take a day in a week, craft n sell whatever you can in tailor. The continuous in and out between tannery and tailor, and long holding action key in sewing is annoying, but well paid.
17. I equip some of my companions with colorful renaissance armors and colorful hats. They look cool. But it is cheaper to buy gloves and loot boots than tailoring them. Also as per V 5.0 best armor in tailoring is Coat of Plates (47/8) and Knight’s Armor (42/4). Sea raiders have equally good armors if you are lucky.
18. You can then make non crafting workshops in rest of the towns. Having all 3 crafting workshops nearby, helps in travelling in between for required components.
19. One more crafting workshop is Church. It is more preaching than crafting. And you need craftsman skill 10 to make skill books. The required seals can be gained from town bishops by preordering. Only christen can get that seals.
20. Almost Everything you do as work gives you prestige, except fighting. Once you have good weekly profit, you get prestige bonus with it. You can do crafting in carpentry everyday, in blacksmith and tailor twice a week, if you gather enough raw materials. See the mining tips in laborer’s path to get iron ores.
21. As a craftsman, keep joining new town guilds every week, upgrade them until you are an Aristocrat. After that join a faction and focus on politics. Come back to your meager workshops in leisure time for recreation or rehab.( ha ha ...)

Mining Tips

Mining is very profitable. But look to the roof, look at the feet, and look at the walls. Also under the huge rock in first left cabin in cave.
There are at least six products you get by mining, stone, iron ore, silver ore, gold ore, pyrite ore (fool’s gold) & precious stones like amethyst, Ruby etc. Stone & ores are fixed price items whose price do not reduce as you sell it. You just get better price for more trade skill. Following are some Tips I found:
1. Save when you get an ore, because if mine collapses on your head, you lose some good ores, while being rescued.
2. You can reduce a stone’s hp with sword or mace, but hitting slowly with mining pickaxe, you have the rare chance of getting ruby or amethyst.
3. Most important: where to find ores? Or better to say where to look for? Answer is: Look to the roof, look at the feet, and look at the walls. Gold and silver ore appear anywhere. All ore veins look different than stones. Gold ore vein can be easily recognized by its big golden color area through stone. Silver and iron ore veins look quite similar, a small stone with lots of white patches. Images are linked here:

4. Silver & Gold ores are weaker than stones. They take less hits to finish. So use only pickaxe on them.
5. In some narrow paths, ore veins appear on wall, where you can’t swing your pickaxe due to lack of space. In that case you have to use pickaxe like a spear, and thrust it in ore vein multiple times. Do this thrusting if ore appears in roof of the cave. (You can use lance for initial damage) Sometime even that is difficult, then just move around and try to find a better hitting position. I never let go of any ore even in most narrow tunnel.
6. Hit your pickaxe slowly, faster you hit, more the chances of breaking the pickaxe.
7. Selling iron ores is profitable, because you can still buy cheaper iron from Curaw, to convert into steel. Steel has no profit in selling, its only for crafting.
8. But use silver and gold ores for making their bars for crafting. Selling their Ores gives more money than selling silver or gold bars (again fix price items) but if you need to buy it, you have to 3-4 times the cost.
9. Pyrite ore are useless; they look like gold but has little value.
10. Smelting: Save before smelting. You cannot regain ores, once filled in cart. Fill the cart, empty it, and minigame starts. It took me sometime to understand controls in the minigame. Its easy. Press & Hold the left mouse button, and release when pointer is between the markers. And you get a metal bar in your inventory. 2 iron ore= 1 iron, 1 iron=1 steel (good way to convert cheap iron into steel). 4 silver ore = 1 silver (use for crafting only), 6gold ore= 1 gold (use for crafting only),

Religious Uniformity Special Case

Tip: Once you own a town, Destroy every unmatching religious place as quickly possible.

Details:
When I am playing as a Orthodox Christen, in Vaegir Kingdom, I captured Tihires from Swadia. But for first 3-4 weeks, despite giving more than 50% power to Clergies, and in process, hampering population growth; religious uniformity gradually decreased from 38% to 25% over time, No Edicts helped. Even if I built a Orthodox Chapel, still no increase. I found no clear solution by searching forums.

Finally I understood or focused on details section in town management. I was getting - 5 conversion rate from churches. I saw it many times and realised after 2-3 weeks, that something is wrong. My orthodox chapel gave me +1 rate, clergy power gave +2, but still that - 5 from churches was not vanishing.
I checked all current buildings in overview section. And found a great cathedral. I read its description 3-4 times, it said catholic. Then I realised my character was started as Orthodox, and as much as Pagan and Muslims hate me, Catholics too don't like me. (ha ha ha..) So with lots of guts I destroyed the big catholic cathedral of Tihires. Lost 500 prestige, lost some piety, but gained some town treasury. Effects in the details section was not visible quickly.

After a week I checked details again and found that negative rate decreased from -5 to -3 now. So checked the overview again, and found another big catholic church in place of the cathedral. Thanks god, I earned a lot of prestige in that week, including restoration of Minerva's temple, which I hate coz can't see the statue after restoration.. Anyway I destroyed that church, and again lost 400 prestige, 4 piety, gained some treasury. In the meantime, level 2 Orthodox Chapel is under construction too. I have 6500 prestige now (Knayaz Lord of Vaegir)
Now I have to destroy the next lesser catholic church that now appears after demolition of larger one, and at the same time keep building Orthodox chapels. But before that I need to regain lost prestige.
Slowly I have to remove all negative rate due to churches, and increase positive points due to Orthodox Chapels. This will probably solve my Religious Uniformity Problem of nova aetas gradually. After that I can focus on my town population growth too.

I hope this case study helps you all too.

Quick Enterprise guide

If you are playing as craftsman, then placement of workshops is important. For non-crafing enterprises and church, you can follow guildmaster's advice.
(Note: all enterprises of same type share common inventory.)

1. Guildmaster's advice on Enterprise profit :
It is approximately right. But you have to upgrade it completely.

2. Placement for Craftsman:
A craftsman needs many parts from each workshop, for many useful items. So we recommended having carpentry, tailor and blacksmith in three nearby towns of same kingdom.. I found one of best placement combo as:
Carpentry in Nevgered as a forest is near.
Blacksmith in Curaw, profitable,
Tailor in Revyadin, as at a days distance between both above towns. (Tailor is most volatile, but still works better in Revyadin than Ichamur.)
With that triangular placement you can craft necessary parts and quickly move between workshops. Also buy the abandoned mine near Revyadin for iron ore supply of blacksmith in Curaw. Also you can get cheaper linen from Sargoth, required for all good crafting.
Refer more details in craftsman's path.

Although we can still use shack transport, but that I mostly use to store cheap parts bought from guild traders.

3. Farm:
Prefer placing farm at equidistant point from 2-3 towns, or somewhere in Swadian lands.
Because farm can produce huge amounts of flour sacks ( even without a mill... ha ha..). And you need 2-3 town-markets to sell all of it at moderate price. I never sold flour sack below 25 denars.
And best prices for flour sack, I got mostly in Uxkhal and Suno.

4. Extra: I placed other workshops as:
Blacksmith in Uxkhal,
Church in Dhirim and Suno
Winery in Tihir.
Dyeworks in most other towns starting from Rivacheg.
Could't start enterprises everywhere, as I got busy in war and politics as highly ranked noble of our faction.

[Punished]

>they are not well designed yet.

Yet? Have they resumed development? If so that's great. I remember the mod having a few missing features last time I played

[Nil the Kind]

@Rakuray Yes, guildmaster's cost approximately matches the profit after full upgarde of enterprise. But due to continuous shifting in economics of game, it somewhat varies in 2 weeks. (i.e. time spent on apprenticeship & 7 days after buying that workshop)
For Tailoting is most volatile in profit, and never start tailoting in Ichamur. In my second playthrough I put it in Revyadin, and it worked moderately good. 3 weeks profit, 1 week loss.

[Rakuray]

Hey @NilPatriot, I just got to rush to replay this. Also, BTW do you know if the Guildmaster advice for enterprise is good? Or do you have any guide for which enterprise is better for which city?

[Nil the Kind]

Thanks. @chimchimchim, @The A Man. Yes Ruins of Uxkhal, helps for initial investment.
For a few days I was searching help for continuous decrease in religious uniformity of town. But didn't found anything. Now I found the answer. So I am adding a section on that particular case. Do review it.

[chimchimchim]

Great Guide mate

[T h e A M a n]

You can also go to the ruins of Uxkhal and sell the stuff you get from there for like 2k I think.

[Jimothy]

I stand by Nova Aetas, it's a little ambitious for its own good but there's clearly a lot of love put into it.

[Nil the Kind]

MAny people are still playing it, due to its unique gameplay. And many people will depend upon Warband mods for next 3 years, as Bannerlord early excess is too expensive.

[Imran -iwnl-]

this mod is dead