One of the many skills that can be upgraded in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is the skill of Roguery. With this skill, your character becomes a bit of a sneaky sleuth finding their way out of situations and sneaking around in towns. Through levelling up this skill, your character will have an easier time sneaking undetected into enemy towns, be able to do more with bandit troops and loot the peasants harder.
This guide will show you some of the best ways that you can gain more experience in this skill. It will show the best ways for you to level up Roguery in Bannerlord at the moment. Levelling up roguery is very possible and useful, unlike levelling up workshops.
What Does Levelling Up Roguery Actually Do?
For those unfamiliar with the game, there are some points where you may have to get your hands dirty. While at way, it is not uncommon to see enemy lords raiding villages and caravans. While this is in general frowned upon, Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is a sandbox game and I am not here to judge. In fact, some really good loot can be gained from raiding caravans and villages.
Levelling up Roguery will give you access to some of the best perks for leading bandit troops in the game. The immediate effect of levelling up Roguery is that you will earn more loot from battles. Inside your character skill page you can see exactly how much extra loot you will gain depending on what level you are at. You can see in the image below my character’s current level is 12 and thus they will earn 3% more loot from every battle won.
There are also a bunch of perks within the Roguery skill tree which allow your character to be more effective in civilian armors, lead bandit troops better and much more.
How To Level Up Roguery Quickly in Bannerlord
Now we are down to the nitty gritty. I am going to share some of the ways that you can passively earn roguery experience and some of the best ways you can level the skill up quickly.
Some of the main tasks that will help you level up the Roguery skill in Bannerlord are:
- Raiding Caravans
- Raiding Villages
- Recruiting Bandits and Leading Them in Battle
- Breaking Lords Out of Dungeons
I will go into short detail on each of these methods below. The best way that you can level up your roguery skill however, is by taking the last item from that list. Breaking lords out of prison is the best way of levelling up roguery fast. You will gain a lot of experience points every time you stage a successful breakout. Honestly the other methods really don’t compare to the amount of experience you get with this.
That being said, you will actually have to find a town where there is a lord held prisoner. Raiding caravans and villages can be done passively without any other conditions meaning you can basically do that all the time.
Raiding Caravans
You can raid any of the neutral caravans you pass by selecting them on the world map. Once your party has approached them you will begin a conversation with the caravan master. Once in a conversation with them you can choose the option Hand Over Your Goods or Die! This will cause them to either give you some loot (if your force seems very intimidation) or engage in battle with them.
Be careful when trying to start fights in the early game with caravans. The caravan guards and other units can hit pretty hard at early levels. You will also lose some reputation points with the owners of the caravan.
Raiding Villages
If you wish to take out your anger on the peasants in order to raise your Roguery skill you’ve come to the right place. This is one of the easiest ways to increase your experience in Roguery as you won’t have to chase down bandits.
To raid villages, approach the village and choose the option Take a hostile action from the menu. After this, you will see the option to Raid the village.
Be careful about doing this if you are neutral with the faction that runs the village. Raiding villages is an act of war and the kingdom which controls the village will immediately declare war on your clan.
Sometimes when you raid a village the peasants will attempt to defend the town and attack. They are generally pretty easy to beat if you have a decent sized army. once they have given up or been defeated, your party will begin to raid the village and you will see a progress bar above the party.
Each piece of the bar will give you roguery experience. You don’t have to stick around for the entire raid. You can decide to just raid them for a few hours and leave again. This can be a good idea if you see an enemy lord approaching to defend their village…
Recruiting and Leading Bandit Units
Another way to passively increase your roguery is to recruit bandit units. Every now and then you will have the opportunity to take bandits and looters as prisoners. This will happen if you manage to knock them unconscious when battling them. Once you have taken them prisoner, they may offer to join your party.
You can recruit these prisoners to your party by opening up the party menu. Under your party you can see all the units that are your prisoners. Prisoners that wish to join your party will have a small yellow icon near their portrait. Select the unit and then pick the option to recruit them to have them as part of your party!
Be warned though, this will slightly lower the morale of the rest of the army for each prisoner you recruit. That being said, you can get some great recruits this way and if you’re doing a bandit run, you will find a lot of the perks in roguery make this process even quicker.
Breaking Lords Out of Dungeons
The absolute best way to level up your Roguery skill in Bannerlord is by doing the prison escape quests. For this, you will have to seek out lords that have been imprisoned in towns across the map. When you hover over a town you can see some information about the garrison, which lords are there and who is in the prison.
To start a break out quest, you will need to find a town where there is currently a lord imprisoned. You can enter the prison break quest from the menu of the town by finding the character you wish to break out in the keep and selecting the option to break them out.
One thing you will have to take into account when trying to bust a lord out of prison is that you will only be able to use the items that are currently equipped to your character’s Civilian Set of armor and weapons. You can see and change this in the inventory screen by selecting the hat icon which looks like a civilian cap.
With this in mind, you should first seek out the best civilian weapons and armor that you can possibly find before trying to bust any lords out of prison.
