How to get followers

[DizzyCrash]

Okay so I just started this game and I don't know anything.. I wanna recruit a few buddies.

I briefly did a water ritual with a salt encrusted lump of leaves and flesh warden ( also curious what the hell that was.. it didn't give me any information on his species of anything like it did with the camel men.. is it human? )
And it briefly said for 300 reputation he might join me.

But I think there is probably another way to fet Allies right?

[Karma Chimera]

Recruiting legendary characters by spending reputation with their faction is only one of several follower mechanics, yes. Some of the others:

If you recruit a legendary you find surrounded by their own followers, those followers of the legendary will join your party as well, though they won't technically be *your* followers, and will be focused on the legendary.

If you have the Beguiling mutation, you can make a psychic mental attack on creatures to force them to fall in love with you. Because this counts as an attack, doing it at a neutral creature and failing will turn them hostile. You can only keep one creature in love with you using the Beguiling mutation. Creatures who are in love with you will follow you and fight for you. If you beguile another creature while you have one beguiled, the first creature gets jealous and turns hostile.

If you have the Temporal Fugue mutation, you can summon time clones of yourself who exist only temporarily. They will try to fight for you, but you can't control exactly what they do, so be careful if you have really dangerous mutations or weapons, because they will often start throwing that stuff around without concern for hurting you.

If you have the Proselytize skill, you can talk to neutral and friendly creatures to attempt to convince them to join your party. This does *not* count as an attack, so failing does not turn them hostile. You can only keep one creature as a Proselytized follower at a time; additional creatures will refuse to be proselytized while an existing proselytized creature is following you.

There are other ways to get followers of various types, play around with the game and you'll discover them. The Apostle calling for Mutants and the Consul caste for True-Kin specifically focus on the follower gathering gameplay style.

[glass zebra]

Creatures do not refuse to be proselytized while you already have a follower from that skill. They will also just stop being your follower if the roll succeeds and you have the new follower instead. The command to "stay", will be remembered though and you can park followers somewhere to temporary take another one for reasons and then take the old one back.

I would definitely add Rebuke Robot to the list above and Proselytize, Beguile and Rebuke all have specifics for targets:
- Proselytize works on every kind of target* in the game
- Beguiling only works on those with a "conventional" mind
- Rebuke Robot only works on robots

As said above those can only give you one follower each at the same time, though there are ways to boost this (especially for true kin). Water ritual followers do not have a cap and you can just get them on top of your other followers.

Apart from Temporal Fugue there is also Burgeoning which grants you plant followers (though very few of those can move and follower over screens), the tinker skill to place turrets and you can get temporary followers with a love injector.


Playing with allies can get weird, though Proselytize is a skill available to everyone and can give you any type of follower that complement your build - or just carry your water. I would not suggest to make a full follower build when you are just starting out the game, but getting someone to help you out in combat is pretty good. Just don't get too attached to them.

[Karma Chimera]

Originally posted by serikos:

Creatures do not refuse to be proselytized while you already have a follower from that skill. They will also just stop being your follower if the roll succeeds and you have the new follower instead. The command to "stay", will be remembered though and you can park followers somewhere to temporary take another one for reasons and then take the old one back.

Apologies, I haven't played a proselytize build in ages and ages and I've just forgotten how it works. I should have checked the wiki before writing that out and posting it.

[Obsidious]

Originally posted by Karma Chimera:

If you have the Temporal Fugue mutation, you can summon time clones of yourself who exist only temporarily. They will try to fight for you, but you can't control exactly what they do, so be careful if you have really dangerous mutations or weapons, because they will often start throwing that stuff around without concern for hurting you.

Originally posted by serikos:

Apart from Temporal Fugue there is also Burgeoning which grants you plant followers (though very few of those can move and follower over screens), the tinker skill to place turrets and you can get temporary followers with a love injector.

Word to the wise, from someone who's spent the last couple weeks learning this fabulous game and trying to paint the starter zones a violent shade of green:
If you're planning to play with both of these and aren't set on Esper, also pick up Thick Fur and/or Carapace, find yourself an Issachari veil, and don't dump Toughness no matter how much you need the points.

You'll know when you know.


(The spoiler is just in case you don't want mechanical advice about these mutations in particular; I keep getting so sidetracked by all the ways to play the game that I couldn't actually spoil anything if I wanted to. One day I'll make it back to the village to finish a quest. One day. Maybe.)

[I blame Earthshaker]

Originally posted by serikos:

Playing with allies can get weird

That's basically half of what you need to know about followers, and the other half is that the only means of getting "unlimited" followers requires spending rep and finding legendary faction members (extra points for finding a legendary mechanimist paladin!). Every other method is limited.

Also watch out for inter-faction violence involving followers that inevitably get left behind, fun times in Grit Gate with goatfolk...