Recruiting and your roster

The short version

1. Step 1

   Open the Tavern

   Faction tab, Members, then Recruit at Tavern. Just opening it completes the First Steps objective Recruit a Member (75 gold, 2 gems). You do not have to hire anyone.

2. Step 2

   Decide what you need

   Your first free slot is best spent on a profession your next building needs, for example a Lumberer for a Lumber Mill or a Farmer for a Farm.

3. Step 3

   Hire, or reroll for the profession

   If none of the candidates fit, Seek a Profession (200 gold) rerolls them all with the profession you choose.

4. Step 4

   Give them two essences

   New recruits are Unclassed with empty essence slots. Equip two essences and the Choose Archetype picker opens.

Where the Tavern is

Do this: open the Faction tab, pick Members, and press Recruit at Tavern.

The Tavern screen lives on your roster, not on the map, and you do not need to build anything to use it. There is no chapter gate: the only thing that locks it is a full roster (the button says so). Opening it for the first time ticks off the First Steps objective "Recruit a Member" (75 gold and 2 gems), whether or not you hire.

There is also a Tavern building you can construct later (it needs a Bard or Chef on the roster). It shows more candidates at once (4 to 7 depending on level instead of 3), changes the free refresh timer, and raises the base price in the table below. How your reputation stands in the region your crew is in can also add or remove one candidate.

What a recruit costs

Do this: check the price on each card before you hire. Your first recruit costs roughly 300 to 350 gold, so it fits inside the 500 gold you start with, but it competes with your first building (a Lumber Mill or Farm is 720 gold).

Higher Tavern levels keep climbing. The Tavern building raises the base, so it is not a way to make recruits cheaper; Housing is.

Refreshing candidates and Seek a Profession

Do this: if you need a particular profession, pay for Seek a Profession rather than refreshing over and over.

• Refresh: free once per timer (one hour without a Tavern building), otherwise 50 gold. It rerolls every candidate completely, including their profession.
• Seek a Profession: 200 gold. You choose a profession and every candidate is rerolled with it; race, sex, traits and stats still roll at random. It never uses your free refresh.
• Profession odds on a normal refresh depend on race, but only slightly: every race can roll every profession. See Races.

The roster cap

Do this: treat your one open slot as precious. Once it is filled, the next member needs a higher reputation rank or a Housing building.

Your roster cap starts at 4. The wizard already gives you three members (your champion and two companions), so a new save has one open slot. Ways to raise it:

• Faction reputation rank: rank 2 raises the cap to 6, rank 3 to 7, and later ranks add slots more slowly. Reputation comes from completing quests.
• Housing: each Housing building adds roster slots on top (1 at levels 1 to 3, 2 at levels 4 to 6, 3 at levels 7 and 8). Housing needs an Architect on the roster and also fixes the population penalty on your producers; see Set up your base.
• Mercenaries do not use roster slots.

What a new recruit arrives with

Do this: equip two essences on every new recruit as soon as you can. Until then they fight with a basic attack and have no skill tree.

• Unbound (essence rank 0): you can equip and unequip essences for free until their first rank-up.
• Unclassed, with both essence slots empty. The member's Combat tab shows "Equip 2 essences to unlock (0/2)".
• A random profession (weighted by race), 1 to 3 traits, and 5 skill points that become spendable once they have a class.

Identify a couple of clouded essences on the Essences tab, equip one, then a second. The second one opens the Choose Archetype picker. The first pick is free, and you can press Decide Later if you are not sure. Full walkthrough: How your class is chosen.

Why a recruit's profession matters

Do this: recruit for the buildings you want. A recruit's profession is fixed for life, and most buildings need at least one member with a matching profession before you can build them.

Without a match, the build button refuses with "Requires a member with profession: X". A Lumber Mill needs a Lumberer, a Quarry a Mason, a Gold Mine a Miner, Housing an Architect, and a Farm a Farmer, Harvester or Cook. The full table is on Professions and the first-income plan is on Set up your base. Only your champion can ever change profession (see below).

Mercenaries

Do this: hire a mercenary when you need extra power for a few hours, not as a long-term member.

The Hire Mercenary button sits next to the Tavern button and unlocks in Chapter 2. Mercenaries join on a contract of a few hours (4 to 8 depending on tier), charge wages as they go, and leave when the contract ends. They fight at full power straight away and do not use a roster slot, but they can never equip essences or take a class, cannot be trained, and earn no skill points.

Releasing a member

Do this: release only when you need the slot. You have three days to change your mind.

Open the member, then the Release Member section. You get a small compensation in gold and essence dust. The champion cannot be released. For three days afterwards the member is listed in the Tavern under previously released members and can be re-recruited at about half price (the roster surcharge still applies at half rate). After that they are gone for good.

Members from the living world

Once you have two regions unlocked (Chapter 2), travellers start moving around your map. Some migrant families bring a named recruit with them (about 3 in 10). Accepting a migrant costs 250 gold plus half the usual roster surcharge, and if they bring a recruit you need a free roster slot. Declining lowers that region's trust in you slightly. See Living world.