Lame ones are useful because they are cheap now, but become useful as combat horses once they heal. Keep track of what place that is when you find it, as you'll be needing this later.ДЄny time you have about 200 gold spare buy extra horses, the cheapest you can find. Visit the armourer of every town you pass through looking for Padded Cloth (any quality) it spawns randomly for each new game, but once you've found somewhere to get it from that place will consistently sell it. Be especially careful of mounted enemies, as they are sometimes fast enough to catch you. Since you're not in any state for combat you should run from any enemies.

Here is one example of a simple and efficient trade route that wastes no time backtracking between destinations: Visiting all of them may get tedious later on, but with the limited cash you start with, you can only afford a few goods at a time anyway. Remember that you can slaughter cows and turn each of them into two beef - this is an excellent way to turn a quick buck as cows are often cheap and beef always commands a respectable price in the cities. Villages often even have surprising bargains in areas you wouldn't expect: sometimes Tools sell for as little as 250 dinars and beef for as low as 10 dinars. They produce only very small amounts of goods (usually the same as the closest city), but will sell them at very low prices. Either way, buy the cheapest horse available as soon as you can.Дuring the early stages of building your mercantile empire you want to focus on the cheapest products with the highest profit margin: Salt, Wheat, and Smoked Fish are perfect for this.ДЄlso, don't forget to check the villages. Alternately, you could take part in a tournament to get the money you need. If you sell everything you have (including armor and weapons) except your horse you'll have a good bit of cash to work with. The first major barrier is your small wallet. Having a merchant background is probably the easiest for being an effective merchant. This gives you a good amount of storage space. Giving your character 1 or more in Inventory Management is a must. Try to stick to goods with base value>100 if you are buying more than a few. You should be able to unload it at the next town for at least a little profit. A good rule of thumb, if you find a good at half the base cost, buy it. But how do you know when to buy? Here is a list of the base costs I lifted from 'item_kinds1.txt'. Running trade routes to farm gold is boring, but piles of denars can be made just by checking the goods merchant every time you stop by a town to sell looted weapons and offload prisoners. If you're buying horses solely to carry your gear just go with the cheapest ones, and don't just slaughter the lame ones for their meat. It doesn't matter if they're lame or spirited, saddle or hunter, all increase movement speed by the same amount. The more horses you carry the faster your world map speed is (up to a certain limit, naturally). Horses can't be traded, but are invaluable to a merchant. While regions' supply specialties will not change (Ichamur is always going to be the cheapest place for Salt), the demand characteristics are more fickle (Wercheg may start with the highest price for wine, but that it is unlikely to remain that way throughout the game). Prices change continually, with and without your influence.

Yellow labels beside the town names describe what they produce, the buy/sell prices, profit in gold, and profit in percent. Red arrows indicate the destination of each type of Goods.

Mount and blade warband trade skill