Recruiting NPC after healing them from KO. How does this mechanic work?

[kid_caulfield]

I recently came across a video on youtube where a player witness's the holy nation troops KO a Escaped Servant. After looting there body they carry the Escaped Servant to their camp and heal them. The servant eventual escapes again and gets KO'd one more time and the play rescues the NPC a second time and heals them in their camp.

Finally the NPC offers to join there party and the character creation screen is triggered.

Do this mechanic work with any NPC in Kenshi?

Here's is a link to the video: https://youtu.be/HSCCiIzIukI

[Shidan]

No, this dialog is unique to Escaped Servants. There are other wandering NPCs that can be recruited, but they all have their own dialogs with unique conditions.

In this case the conditions are:
1. They must be heavily injured, either a broken limb or a nearly KO critical part.
2. Not met the person before, in this case it would generally mean YOU didn't fight them previously.
3. They must have no squad mates.
4. You must not be in an NPC town (player towns are fine).
5. They must not be hostile to you.
6. Neither you nor them can be imprisoned.
7. You must not be in combat.
8. They must have the dialog available (30% chance, and you have no way to know ahead of time if they do have it. It will either trigger or not.)

So of note the healing the youtuber did is not required. If they're just wounded on their own it will also work. But healing them up from KO is a reliable way to trigger it, since they will obviously be nearly KO'd when you do so.

[kid_caulfield]

Thanks For the Knowledge Shidan. Do you know some other NPCs types that wander Kenshi with hidden recruitment mechanics?

[Shidan]

Off the top of my head there are 4 main others.

Travellers (random name in-game). No major conditions, beyond that you have a base of at least level 2 (watchtower icon).

Lost Drones. Similar to the travellers in that you need a base, but you also need to have a hiver to talk to them.

Holy Nation Robots. North of the main HN lands you can find skeletons wandering around, they have a rare dialog to join you if they are alone and you're a human.

Escaped Slaves. In UC lands you can sometimes find escaped slaves wandering around, if they are alone you can initiate dialog with a chance to recruit.


There could be a few more obscure ones I'm forgetting, those 4 alongside the Escaped Servants are the most common ones for sure.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

I'm not sure the escaped slaves need to be alone, I have recruited one that was in a squad with two others before, also had an empire peasant do the same. Possible that a mod I have changes that secretly though.

[Shidan]

Idk, their talk to me dialogue very clearly has a "T_ME DC_SQUAD_SIZE == 1" condition on it. So it shouldn't be possible to trigger if the slave has squadmates. But I've also not thoroughly tested it, could be some odd dialog bug that leads to an exception.

[kid_caulfield]

It's mechanic's like this that make this game amazing. I've been having a ton of fun making it my mission the last couple days to accomplish this mechanism of recruitment. This goal led me to a Holy Nation mine in Okran's Gulf. Where I knock-out Holy Nation merchant, disguised myself in their clothes and snuck into the mining camp. I then proceeded to lock up solider 's in cage's stealthily and free some slaves. One two made it free and one "Lower Level Servant" joined my team. And they came with decent stats for early game, however this did not trigger the character customization screen.

Tho this is not exactly what happening in the video I posted with the "Escaped Servant" it was still super satisfying to accomplish.