Too few followers?

[VeraelHasta]

Soooo I heard there are 8 followers. Is it normal that I have only 4 followers and I already cleared 4 zones? I didn't refuse any of them, found 3 in first 3 zones and one showed up in my camp. Since then, nothing. It seems weird to be missing so many at this point.

[snuggleform]

I can actually give a good explanation why this is the case; first off there are two categories of followers, the "fixed location" followers and the "visit your base" followers.

The four fixed location followers are Jin, Gani, Vic, and Rhys. They show up in Flatlands, Peak, Prairie, and Pit, in a randomized order but the quest locations are always the same. They always have the same quest to recruit them (i.e. Jin is always putting out his fire, Gani the ritual, etc).

The four visiting ones are Rhyme, Tua, Issa, and Ezra. They show up in a randomized order.

You can pick up the four fixed location ones at your own pace, but the visiting ones have a cooldown system. Although I do not know the full details, there are a couple things I'm sure of:

1) the game checks every 24 hours if a "follower event" should happen or not
2) there is a priority system in place that always prefers to give you a follower trusts you event over a new face shows up event (of course provided that you meet the morale requirements).

The consequence of these two points is that the more followers you have in your base, the longer it will take to get a new face to show up at your base because you are PROBABLY doing a good job of keeping their morale up, therefore you keep triggering someone's next level of trust talk, and these talks always replace new face events. You probably as a consequence won't see a new face show up at your camp until you finish all the current ones talks (3 apiece).

The first face showing up is almost always super fast after your first follower because your first follower starts at crappy morale and takes a whlie to get to his/her first talking point, so when the game checks for a follower even it's happy to give you a new face. But after that it slows down significantly. If you've been doing a poor job oif stocking your supplies, ironically you'll see a new face sooner because your current followers won''t have high enough morale to give their talks to you.

If you want to increase your specific situations follower count, in the short run you can pick up the 4th fixed follower who shows up in the Pit zone, but you simply have to wait to finish your current set of social interactions until you will see a new face. It is possbile you will see a new face relatively soon if none of your followers happen to have a talk ready but again that is unlikely if you are stocking your base well.

To answer your question head-on, yes it is normal to have 4-5 followers for most of the game. I had 6 when I finished my first run. You really have to be patient if you want to see all 8 in one lifetime (or just spam rest a lot when you have plenty of food to do so)

[VeraelHasta]

This sounds like an annoying sideeffect of crappy design but thanks for the explanation.

Btw if I miss a recruitment event in camp, the New Face one because lets say it showed up right after I was leaving the base, does it count as "refusing" to let follower join the camp?

[DeadSilent]

I don't think it does, but you can never tell with this game. I've had this happen as well and the event stayed on the screen until I went back to base and spoke to them, which was about an hour later.