MOUNT AND BLADE WARBAND IS SO ADDICTING SEND HELP
NO. YOU ARE ONE OF US NOW. WE WILL ASSIMILATE ALL.
But seriously, Warband is pretty awesome. Wonder how M&B2 is getting along in development. Though I must admit, I can't go back to Native after downloading the Phantasy mod. It adds a lot of...well, phantasy elements. Magic, Necromancy, Lichdom, Dwarves...Heck, you can (in addition to hire mages who can) throw fireballs with a large AOE. During Sieges. Mwahahahahahaha.
That mod is too frigging hard. I guess just getting a fireball spell could allay all of my problems with bandit encounters, but I can't raise an army quickly enough without having the incompetents killed and me captured because they can't get a frigging kill in. Seriously, I would merge freelancer with it, but all of the sources on the internet say "you need to know how to mod to merge mods" without actually saying how to do it, which is about as useful as me going into the DF modding questions thread when someone asks a question and saying "yeah you need to be as l33t as I am to do that, bro, just give up".
M&B modding is brutal. I couldn't even get the damn toolset thing to install right. I understood HOW it should work, and I understood all the concepts it talked about, but for some reason it just inexplicably failed every time.
As for how to survive in Phantasy, its pretty much either "be bard, get money, hire mercenaries" or "obtain horse, stab looters from horse while avoiding any other encounter for 10 levels, hire mercenaries with stab profits"
That or use dwarves. Dwarves are crazy awesome in that, they get useful armor after the first upgrade, and the skirmishers end up with guns.