Recruit, ghost fight, and river crossing

[Hardcore]

Hi. Playing on hard.
1) Have had a female bomber captive for ages, does not join, just wary all the time.
2) Can handle the initial setup in a ghost fight, but the 5 reinforcement always causes defeat. Tips?
3) Any shortcuts past the rivers? Like starting region and north, or other? Thanks. Great game.

[drake_hound]

1 you probaly locked her into stocks... then somehow the satisfaction level doesn't move.
even when you do all bad things, surrounded by animals , whipped etc... when they hate your party, they can recover.. but locked in stocks they won't recover.
So find another female bomber.. they are plenty of those in the game.

2 Fighting ghost pack gather your team together , kill off the Nightmare that spawns the 3rd round asap..and clean up what is left over. ghost pack is more about watching your terror level, if the stacks hit 3 , they need to get a KILL asap. the night mare debuff will always ad 2 each round.

3 shortcuts are only used with Pitons , that are strategically placed from highground to lowground.. don't know anything that bypass rivers.

[ThiccHunt]

1. I got the same problem, already 3 months, never locked into stocks, but i did shave her twice, then a negative message show me that she feel less fear for me and she become wary, I gave her task and surround her with my mercs, but still satisfaction level never change. Hope they would fix that.

[Hardcore]

Originally posted by drake_hound:

1 you probaly locked her into stocks... then somehow the satisfaction level doesn't move.
even when you do all bad things, surrounded by animals , whipped etc... when they hate your party, they can recover.. but locked in stocks they won't recover.
So find another female bomber.. they are plenty of those in the game.

2 Fighting ghost pack gather your team together , kill off the Nightmare that spawns the 3rd round asap..and clean up what is left over. ghost pack is more about watching your terror level, if the stacks hit 3 , they need to get a KILL asap. the night mare debuff will always ad 2 each round.

3 shortcuts are only used with Pitons , that are strategically placed from highground to lowground.. don't know anything that bypass rivers.

Ok. Thanks

[blindseye]

I immediately heal captives, then during next camp i check their traits (I only keep higher level captives with 2 positive traits, and different types of soldiers than I already have (so I can try them out). If I don't like them, I release them, but if they are outlaws you could trade them in at a jail. For the ones I keep, I use barber on them, feed them, give them a job to do making wine or turning carcasses into hides, and I surround them with guards. That usually makes them gain loyalty and accept my offer of employment after 4-5 camps. However, you also need to have enough renown (or whatever it is called) to hire them, or it won't make any difference. If they do escape, when you decamp, quickly look around for them, 4 out of 5 times I find them running away near by and simply recapture them. It doesn't seem to effect their happiness. I haven't tried to capture zombies, not sure there is a good enough benefit. I have 3 Alpha wolves and Buddy the wolf, and i just captured 2 bears. So next I need to decide what I am keeping of my 3 captives and 6 war animals (I always make my ponies pack animals to carry stuff, I have 6).

[Locklave]

- Make sure they are assigned to the campfire, removes the prisoner penalty
- Don't guard them with animals, this makes them mad

Check their character page, click the social tab in the lower left and see if you are doing something to make them mad.

[drake_hound]

If you people like collecting prisoners...

Here are some good ones I found, you want
1 Blocker with their faction passive ..
Equip it with the Axe that applies mark for death, and the shield that gives Animal Deflection.
You got 1 Bear Babysitter who heals and buff the bear or any other animal. who can throw range attacks (dps is poor though)

1 level 11 Wrong doer for 30% critical damage buff to all.. equip it with a inquisition mace and a torch and it is a good DPSER too cause of 30% damage buff. (it's a zealot in fullplate)
Invest into critical , on the wrong doer.. and it can hit 50% with only 5-6 levels invested into full critical.

the rest aren't really recommended. unless you can capture reinforcement guard with passive and skill tree like Savage.. but it is totally a GLASS cannon :P

Infact the best Prisoners is when your party dislike them LOL .. so they get second line trait.

If you really want a Civilian Prisoner :P equip it with a War Bow or a Stylishe bow (bomber bow from lurden chest) and 3 slots cloth with critical..
At level 11 Civilian comes with 26% critical ... so if you find a nimble bloodthirsty one.
See magic happen :P , it still is a glass cannon, but atleast it is a glass cannon that can do magic range attacks .

[drake_hound]

Plague Zombies don't really bother with them , my Will 19 Zombie from silent village ... got ganked by guards reinforcement while having 40 poison stacks.
they are just too squishy to go into melee range.

If they ever reimplement that you can cure Madness only instead of a full cure , maybe will reexplore the Infected merc group. sounds funny a full Plague infected Merc company.
And would make the poisoner more usefull. made a poisoner for that lone zombie.
And now it's back to being a full dps Assassin again :P wow what a waste of time that Plague Zombie was .

[Ittrix]

Prisoners have a trust meter. The value of it itself is hidden, but in camp if you click on the shackle icon on their character page it'll show you a day by day of things they liked that you did and things they didn't like that you did. Once they like you enough, it's just a matter of RNG for them to join you.
They like
-Working
-Being Fed
-Having HUMAN guards/company
-being healed
They dislike
-Being in the stocks (100% decrease in recruit chance and trust afaik- you can never recruit a prisoner held in stocks and need to start making them trust you again once they're out)
-Being guarded by animals- supposedly makes them feel like livestock
-starving. Duh, but I mean. Still.
-being whipped. Duh.

As far as I can tell healing them doesn't really improve their chance to be recruited compared to feeding them working them, or surrounding them with company. So I generally advise you don't heal your prisoners, since it gives them a 20% bonus to escape when they aren't wounded.
Once they trust you enough it's just an RNG game. Could be after 30 rests could be after 3.
If you're really desperate you could save scum.

[Teralitha]

Converting prisoners is NEVER worth the time and effort. Dont bother.