Mount&Blade: Warband/Bandit camps

Bandit camps are new places added in warband. To find them you follow a party of the bandits or raiders you want to find a hideout for and slowly follow them around until the location has appeared on your screen.

-- Quest involving camps: some lord occasionally will ask you to eliminate a bandit hideout for example.

King Ragnar want someone to eliminate bandits who have been patrolling around sargoth lately. (what you do is find a group of bandits who are patrolling and follow them around until you find the camp then proceed to killing and destroying the hideout)

Entering a hideout: clicking the hideout and choosing to attack the bandits you will be inserted in a small area with maybe  boats, caves, and huts (note you will not have any mounts). With a small group of  soldiers, you will walk around killing the bandits that inhabit the hideout which is around 15-30 bandits. The bandits periodically respawn in certain places (the caves, huts, up on the hills, or come in off the ships in the case of Sea Raiders).


 * Note the bandits outnumber you but you can overpower them. The first six men in your party list will accompany you.  Choose wisely.*

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If you take a mission from a Lord to destroy a Bandit Hideout, the reward is 4 relationship points with that Lord, 1500 denars, 3000 XP, and some renown. You usually get about 1000 denars in loot. It is lucrative.

There's really only one bandit hideout of each type (Sea Raider, Forest Bandit, etc.) that respawns periodically in a new location. They always look the same on the inside, and there's never more than one at a time.

The Sea Raider Landing is the only one that is easy to find. Start at Rivacheg and follow the coast west towards Wercheg. Unless you've destroyed it recently, the Landing is always there. Sometimes it's closer to Wercheg than Rivacheg, but it's always on the coast between the two cities.

If you're looking for other Bandit Hideouts, the place to start is in the little clumps of trees near the target city (which I will give you presently). Hideouts usually aren't out in the open; they sometimes are.

The Tundra Bandit Hideout is always near Khudan (sometimes closer to Rivacheg). The Forest Bandit Hideout is always in the woods south of Suno. Mountain Bandits north of Veluca (often out in the open). Steppe Bandits near Ichamur (often in the little forests on the steppe to the east). Desert Bandits inbetween Durquba and Ahmerrad (often out in the open).

If you'll take my suggestion, you won't waste your time looking for Hideouts other than the Sea Raider Landing. There's too much land, there's too much uncertainty about distances, there are too few rules to follow about where to find them, and I've never gotten that "follow a bandit group" thing to work (Other people have, and my hat's off to them. I haven't.  I end up getting too close them and they run from me or attack me).

But you will stumble across the Hideouts periodically in your journies. This is a great opportunity. Find the Lord of the nearest city and ask him for a task. (It's been reported to me that Guildmasters will sometimes assign Hideout-hunts, but I've never seen it. I've never gotten the assignment from the Lord of a nearby castle.)

Your chances of getting the assignment are much better if the Lord is patrolling around his city. He's been fighting bandits, and they're on his mind. If he's off on campaign, it's probably a waste of time to go find him. He'll want you train men or something else you don't want to do.

If you can't get the assignment, whether or not to go ahead and destroy the Hideout yourself is a judgement call. You could leave it in the hopes that you can get the mission to destroy it at some later date. I prefer to destroy them.

If you leave the Hideout, the bandit situation in the area will get worse. There will be more and more of bigger groups of bandits. They will kill village farmers and destroy caravans. This will inevitably make the place poor. Poor cities don't pay well for goods you have to sell and don't sell their goods cheap. Later, you may take over that city and it's much better to take over a rich city than a poor one.

It is a really good idea to avoid becoming Lord of Khudan, Veluca, Durquba, Ahmerrad, Ichamur, Suno, and Rivacheg if you reasonably can. These cities have big bandit problems and require regular patrolling. If you've got better things to do with your time, just don't take them. If you do, track down the Hideouts and destroy them. But there's no Lord to give you a mission. If you don't patrol, the place will become poor and the garrison will be a drain on your resources. You'll find yourself wondering if you weren't better off without it.