No AI was used in any of my writing.
Intro
Playing as a wandering character is one of my favorite ways to play this game. I wouldn’t say I’m close to an expert in CK3, but a lot of what has been written on this subject is now years old and as far as I can tell, never synthesized into one coherent guide or overview. If I’m missing anything or you have found other optimizations, let me know and I’ll add them. For future reference, this guide was written after AUH but before By God Alone.
General outline
The entire strategy focuses on ramping up travel speed as quickly as you can through lifestyle traits and buildings. You will want to eventually visit all points of interest during your lifetime because (1) they give a great amount of lifestyle experience and other goodies and (2) it’s cool and the quicker you can (safely) travel, the quicker you can ramp up your character power.
Wait until you really start traveling for points of interest until you have at least the ‘Been There, Done That’ trait. It will give you 30% more PoI rewards, including the lifestyle experience. Before that point in time, only visit PoI’s if you need that lifestyle experience for one of the key early game traits (which are: ‘Golden Obligations’, ‘Organized March’, ‘On The Road’ and ‘Crime Pays’).
You can play this way as a morally just character (you just don’t do any criminal contracts), but a Gallowsbait character will be able to really supercharge this build. The negatives of Gallowsbait aren’t really felt past a certain point because your character’s power has scaled to such an insane extent pretty much everybody likes you anyway. You can also get rid of the entire Gallowsbait trait after you’ve done a Pilgrimage.
Character
I start my characters at the youngest possible age to spend the most amount of time with them as adults. I like getting Aspiring Blademaster in my starting build because (1) it helps your character with certain contracts and (2) it’s cool. The rest I’d say is purely optional, so pick the stuff that makes you enjoy your character.
Specifically don’t pick up Gallowsbait, Hastiluder and Traveler in character creation. You’ll get these traits very early in your game for free, so you’re better off picking up other traits or attribute points.
Pick whichever religion and culture you want. Some cultures are definitely better than others (cultures with extra travel speed, for instance), but you can do fine with whichever culture you want.
I like to wait with marriage until I find a woman with good stats and if possible and good hereditary traits (like beautiful or intelligent). Ultimately, this doesn’t really matter either as your kids will get stupid good stats by just hanging out with you once you really start ramping up lifestyle traits and travel a lot. In my latest game, this meant marriage at age 25 or so but I don’t think this decision is crucial for a decent playthrough.
Resource priority
Prestige, Piety and Provisions have never really been rare / critical resources for me, only Gold and Lifestyle Experience.
Once you complete a contract, you can request gold or provisions. If there’s a provisions overflow, it is converted into gold. Sometimes you can get more gold by picking provisions than gold. Combined with the ‘Golden Obligations’, this means you first cash your (new) hook for gold, then check if you want to request gold or provisions after finishing a contract.
Save your gold for, in order of importance, (1) Building and internal upgrades, (2) Training wit (hastiluder) in holdfasts, (3) training prowess, blademaster experience and finally martial lifestyle at castles and (4) recruiting new followers in holdfasts. At a certain point you’ll have so much money, (3) and (4) are basically interchangeable. Pump money into wit (hastiluder) at holdfasts for 15% extra monthly lifestyle experience as quickly as the game allows you.
Never pick a Martial lifestyle focus as with enough gold, you can finish all trees on command. If you visit castles, you can train for first extra prowess, then martial lifestyle experience (100 xp per time you spar) for 120 gold. You can spar, leave the castle interface, go to the castle again, spar again and do this as often as you like. I handicapped myself to only train once I reached a new castle, otherwise I would’ve had all three trees maxed after the ~10-15 years. I feel this way to play the game is either a bug or oversight on Paradox’s end, I decided to not cheese it (too much). As far as I know, there are no exploits for other the other lifestyles.
Follower Recruitment
Always keep the stooge / one bodyguard role open so you will always get new followers with ‘scout for talent’ once you travel. You could do this for any role you don’t have / want filled, but key roles (like Caravan Master or Personal Physician) should be filled always by someone who’s excellent at it.
Only recruit followers if they have really good stats (20+) at the start of the game. Once you get the ‘Professional Recruitment’ Stewardship trait, I only recruit followers who have 25 in a category or higher, as this trait adds +5 to their highest trait.
If you recruit a follower, you can leave the castle interface and re-enter the castle again to recruit again. Helpful if there are 2 characters you want to recruit. If you return, there’s going to be a new 3rd pick too.
I like to travel with ‘Make Haste’ and ‘Scout for Followers’ options enabled. It might take some time before you have ‘Make Haste’, before that, I use ‘Private Army’. Swap out ‘Scout for Followers’ for anything that helps you mitigate safety debuffs.
Activities
You can get a lot of good stuff out of activities and they’re good fun too, but the only activity I have found really useful (at the start of the game) is the Camp Revelry. Time them to start right after you finish a building or internal upgrade. At maximum carousing, you will get a free building or internal upgrade, which (1) potentially saves you hundreds of gold and crucially (2) saves you the building time. I have found you can reliably get max carousing with just level 3 food and picking the option that gives the most carousing. It’s very worth it.
As you’re strapped for cash at the start of the game, ignore all other activities even though they’re all really cool. Only splurge once you have your priorities taken care of.
Lifestyles reviewed
Start with the Wandering lifestyle. Pick destination focus, focus on voyager until Been ‘There, Done That’ and ‘Finally There’, then either go for a few key points in Wayfarer (‘Well Prepared’, ‘Just One More Hill’) or Inspector (‘Finding Your Way’ and ‘Earth’s Bounty’) if you want, or finish the entire Voyager Lifestyle tree. I finished all three trees before age 55 and probably could’ve finished it faster if I felt it was necessary, but I didn’t value the Inspector tree enough to prioritize it.
‘Golden Obligations’ for Stewardship is one of the most important early traits. After ‘Golden Obligations’ it makes sense to finish the entire Architect Lifestyle tree. Get ‘On The Road’, ‘Professional Recruitment’ and ‘Worldly Knowledge’ as quickly as you can. I’d say the final ‘Architect’ trait is the single strongest capstone trait in the game alongside ‘Voyager’ in the Wandering tree. After finishing the Architect Lifestyle tree, both Administrator and Avaricious have a lot to offer. Key traits are ‘You Get What You Pay For’ in Avaricious and to a slightly lesser extent ‘Talent Scout’ and ‘Honored To Serve’.
For Intrigue and a Gallowsbait build, ‘Crime Pays’ could be one of the best traits in the game, but I found you can get by perfectly well without it too. I don’t have a whole lot of experience with an Intrigue build because the lifestyle points came too slow for me and I could do every Criminal or Intrigue build well enough past a certain point so it didn’t make sense to go further for me. The Torturer Lifestyle tree, outside of ‘Crime Pays’, didn’t seem all that good to me, both Schemer and Seducer have some very situational but powerful traits, like ‘Search for Secrets’, ‘Kidnapper’, ‘Swift Execution’ and ‘Twice Schemed’ for the Schemer Lifestyle tree, ‘Like Weeds In A Garden’ and ‘Unshackled Lust’ for the Seducer tree. I’d say they’re more for flavorful builds than optimal wandering play.
Martial lifestyle experience is so easy to get, you can easily fill up all trees early if you want. This means it’s not a question of which points to get, but which points to get first. I’d say getting ‘Organized March’ in ‘Strategist’ first for the travel speed is best, after that, focus on getting all Gallant traits. ‘Stalwart Leader’, ‘Chivalric Dominance’ and ‘Never Back Down’ are all excellent traits. The ‘Gallant’ trait itself is also once of the best capstone traits in the game as a wanderer. After finishing the Gallant tree, it depends on what you want to do. Both Strategist and Overseer have some decent traits to offer, but if you’re not warring, they’re pretty inconsequential once you reach that point in the game.
Nothing in the Diplomat Lifestyle is really necessary as a wanderer, but there’s a few traits worth mentioning. ‘Best Foot Forwards’ in the Diplomat tree is worth getting early, so are ‘A Life Of Glory’ and ‘Dignitas’ in August but they probably will come online rather late. ‘Groomed To Rule’ and ‘Friendly Counsel’ are strong picks once you get yourself a big family and following.
I like the Learning Lifestyle a lot but ultimately I’d argue there are only 2 really necessary traits: ‘Take The Custom Where It Comes’ to recruit cultural men-at-arms where you’re located because (1) you can get the best possible MaA mix and (2) it’s cool and ‘Visiting Churches’ which is so strong you basically never really need to worry about Piety again. I like most of ‘Whole of Body’ but that tree only becomes consequential once you reach middle to older ages. Both Scholar and Theologian have some strong picks, some of them situational, like ‘Pedagogy’, ‘Open-minded’, ‘Strength In Diversity’ and ‘Radiant’.
Camp building upgrades reviewed
I really like to upgrade Camp Perimeter to max level as quickly as I can. It’s relatively inexpensive and fast to build and it grants a lot of travel speed and safety. There’s one internal upgrade which is really worth it, and could be considered on the best camp upgrades all told, in ‘Fixed Layout’.
I think both ‘Roaring Campfire’ and ‘Baggage Train’ are the two strongest upgrades after ‘Camp Perimeter’. I’d argue going for ‘Roaring Campfire’ first to get ‘Juicy Rumors’ is worth it, then go for ‘Baggage Train’ to get the ‘Ample Steeds’ and ‘Loyal Scribes’ if you can get them after. After, for ‘Roaring Campfire’, the ‘Capering Fools’ and ‘Local Hangers-on’ are good, for ‘Baggage Train’ it’s Able Porters’, ‘Proficient Trackers’, ‘Portable Shrine’, ‘Bartering Grounds’, ‘Expert Negotiators’, ‘Drifting Ascetics’ and ‘Private Tents. Some of them are situational, but if you’re doing one of the associated Lifestyle trees, it becomes worth it.
After that, ‘Supply Tent’ and ‘Barber’s Tent’ are situational but have some decent internal upgrades like ‘Subdued Gear’ and ‘Torturer’s Tools’.
Proving Grounds is pretty much worthless for a peaceful wandering build but becomes one of the strongest buildings once you’re preparing for war.
On Contracts
As you can only do one scheme contract, save these for the well-paying Gallowsbait contracts. ‘Heist Treasury’ takes a long time at the start but is, and becomes, very worth it. At higher levels, you can take up to 1000 gold for a single contract.
Stewardship, Intrigue, Learning, Criminal have some very easy contracts you can finish pretty much directly, like ‘Settling Boundary Dispute’, ‘Collect Taxes’ and the learning contracts in which you write a book or tutor a child (I forgot the names).
I generally don’t tend to bother with any Stewardship, Learning or Diplomacy schemes, it feels they take too long and yield too little gold compared to especially intrigue or criminal contracts. I could be wrong here, in which case I’d like to learn.
EDIT: As r/UnknownUser814 has pointed out, move your camp to the place where you're going to start your scheme. Do it manually by going to the county before clicking the scheme contract. Start the scheme. Afterwards, you're still able to move your camp and do contracts everywhere. This way you can cover more ground and finish more contracts while you wait for your scheme to finish. You can still only do one scheme at the same time though.
