M&B:W Phantasy - Naked Start Looter One-Man Army Paladin

Game:
Phantasy Calradia mod for Mount & Blade: Warband, Difficulty Settings

Restrictions:
Naked Start: Discard all starting equipment (including horse). Food and other items can be kept.
Looter: Only use equipment/mounts looted from enemies, not allowed to buy/sell equipment/mounts/books in any way. Food may be bought.
One-Man Army: Not allowed to recruit or otherwise obtain units or heroes, party must stay empty. This also means sieges are impossible, as they require one to have a party of at least 5 units.

Build/Strategy:
I'm going with a male Drow Paladin, which I will be building into a horse archer probably with 1H+Shield. Starting Skills, Starting Inventory

Drow because it gives me 5 Magic Defense without having to get 15 INT just for Magic Defense. Paladin because not only does it give me a Holy Symbol right off the bat, allowing me to use the "Heal" Faith ability and summon a Hammer as an early weapon, but it also comes with the Lay on Hands ability, a free(!) self-heal that scales with honor (2min cooldown).

This is far from my first one-man army run in M&B, but the Looter restriction changes a lot of the usual OMA dynamics. Normally raiding villages for XP and money and then buying the best possible equipment is the obvious strategy, which obviously isn't the case when you can't buy items. This makes the normally useful Trade and Inventory Management skills obsolete, whereas self-heal effects make Wound Treatment much less useful (another skill that's usually a must for OMA characters). Because I have no reason to raid villages and profit from having high honor this character is probably going to be more of a good guy.

Long-term I'll get Power Draw to 10, Weapon Master, Athletics, Riding, and Horse Archery to 4 (then I only need 12 AGI and Horse Archery 4 is enough to be a viable horse archer), Shield to 2 (unless I decide to go with 2H), Spotting and Path-finding to 3 (cus they're useful), and probably a few points into Ironflesh so I don't get bursted down before I get a chance to heal.

Goals:
For now I'll just be leveling my character and trying to get a functioning One-Man Army build together that can take on actual armies. Later I might join a faction and try to conquer the whole map as that's the closest thing the game has to a win condition. (By conquer I mean weaken the enemies and let my allies take the castles, cus I can't siege on my own.) Actually joining a faction and doing quests might be a good idea anyway cus honor and such. Not sure what faction to join though (suggestions welcome).

Let's see where this goes.

Will be posting updates in this thread as I progress.

Running into battle for the first time!

Well, technically that's the second battle. Had to re-load after my first attempt as I died because the summoned hammer can't block. Taking a Club off a Looter remedied that the second time around.

First battle won

Got some nice equipment off those Looters aswell (and a level up):

Equipment after first battle

After just a few groups of Looters I managed to take down some Forest Bandits by evading their arrow and self-healing until they ran out and I could melee them down. Being able to self-heal was the main reason why I wanted to try an OMA in Phantasy Calradia actually. Should make fighting large armies much easier. Killing the Forest Bandits got me my first Bow, no idea how I'm going to get my hands on a horse anytime soon, though.

First bow + some better armor

Trying out the 2H Axe aswell. I'm 90% sure I'll end up with 1H+Shield because Shields are great against archers, but who knows maybe I'll go with a 2H just to get another arrow slot.

Because Zombies are slow enough to kite on foot and because Paladin comes with an AoE kill spell against undead I managed to solo an army of 55, gaining 4 levels in the process.

Killed some elves too.

After like an hour of walking all over the map I finally found a Desert Bandit group small enough to solo and aquire my first horse. This is gonna make things a lot easier. Also got a shield off some mummies, 1H+Shield is definitely the way to go (though having only 1 Arrow slot is fucking painful).

Went looking for quests in villages but didn't find any of the ones that give honor.

Fought some orcs which got me a Military Cleaver (best 1H in base Warband), some better armor, and a better shield.

Already got some nice equipment, though my bow is still way inaccurate and my horse is pretty shit. Should probably join a faction sometime soon and do some quests for its lords.