Develop the company before building the kingdom.
Sher’s companion-first approach is the route spine: concentrate early experience, add soldiers when they expand the fights you can win, then turn mercenary freedom into a defensible first fief. The precise relation thresholds and 3.9.5 additions below fill gaps in that sequence.
The route in six moves
Keep the party small
Let the player and a few useful companions take most early kills, experience, and loot. Add companions when you can equip them well enough to expand the set of profitable fights.
Practice before field armies
Fight bandits and practice battles, quest along the way, and build a stable roster. Sher’s practical transition marker is a combat core near level 20 with 200+ one-handed proficiency; it is a readiness marker for the core, not a requirement for every utility companion.
Add only enough troops to open new targets
Five to ten Adventurers can grow into a small Hero Adventurer reserve without turning the companion-development party into a wage-heavy army. Expand further when lord battles become productive.
Use wars for money and relations
A contract subsidizes the army while repeated allied victories build lord relations. Switch employers when war geography makes a better first fief possible.
Take a defensible first castle
Enter when war, troop capacity, a reserved Qualis Gem, and political support line up. Roughly 200 party capacity can work under favorable conditions; 300–350 is a more comfortable castle-taking range. Start the CKO training clock once the fief is secured.
Rebel with reserves and allies
Hold a compact perimeter, store recruits, develop trainers and CKO troops, and build relations with desirable future lords. Rebel when the kingdom can absorb its first concentrated war, rather than when a calendar date arrives.
Those numbers describe Sher’s optimization route. They are not hard game gates. The selected QoL Plus v2 module changes companion Prisoner Management capacity, so check the roster total before committing player skill points.
Relation targets worth questing for
| Target | First useful number | When to continue |
|---|---|---|
| Village | +10 permits recruitment while at war with its faction. At +10 an offer can reach 11 volunteers, with a 10% chance of higher-tier troops. | For villages on your repeat-use circuit, +20 can offer up to 16 and +50 up to 31, with higher-tier chances of 20% and 50%. Actual offers may be smaller or zero; renown also matters. |
| Town and owning lord | Keep both at 0 or better if you want to buy a productive enterprise. | Town relation improves prices continuously. +99 is the economic ceiling, best pursued in a town where expensive trade recurs. There is no verified +10/+20 town unlock. |
| Future honorable lord | About +25 is a community-reported initial point to try private conversation with an Upstanding or Good-natured lord. | Relation continues to help field persuasion; +25 does not guarantee conversion. Fighting beside lords and prison rescues build relations without repeated low-value errands. |
Captured-lord defection uses a different check
Once you are king, the selected QoL Plus v2 prisoner dialogue requires relation strictly greater than:
15 + campaign AI modifier + notable bonus + enemy castles + 2 × enemy towns − min(your kingdom’s castles, 5) − 2 × min(your kingdom’s towns, 3) − Persuasion
Campaign AI adds 10 Good / 5 Average / 0 Poor. The first three numbered lords of each major kingdom add 10; other lords add zero. Villages do not count. Your kingdom’s territory discount caps at 11. A calculated threshold of 31 requires relation 32. This is the installed module’s prisoner check, separate from persuading a free lord.
What fills gaps in Sher’s guide
The Old Tale stronghold
The 3.9.5 questline offers a garrison before your first castle. It changes the cost of storing irreplaceable troops during the companion phase; use it when available without treating early vassalage as the only storage solution.
Noldor end state
Elacrai opens at +30 Noldor relation. The in-game victory screen requires Favorable or better Noldor relations, so any hostile farming phase needs a planned exit before the final push.
Sher’s route supplies pacing and strategy; these additions supply later-version mechanics and explicit numbers. The static module explorer supplies troop, item, and companion details when a route choice needs them.
Sources and limits
Route synthesized from Sher’s TaleWorlds guide (sections 6, 11–13, and 16), as captured for this fan reference. The relation numbers come from the PoP wiki’s Villages, Relationship, and Persuade Lord pages, plus the selected QoL Plus v2 module’s conversation.txt prisoner dialogue. The Lords page gives a simpler prisoner formula; the installed module adds a notable-lord bonus, excludes villages, and caps the kingdom-territory discount. The +25 private-talk target remains community-reported.
This is an independent, condensed route reference. It does not reproduce Sher’s full guide or contain a personal save.