How do I recruit ship lieutenants?

[Arbet]

In the first 20 hours of playtime I recruited like 10 lieutenants. But I've now done 70 hours and haven't gained any more.. maybe 1 I think. Is it just random side quests that give them and I've maybe done them all? Feels like I'm missing out a bit.

[myron]

When you fight somebody, before you kill them, give them a Spartan Kick to knock them out. Then you will be given the option to recruit them

[zarnivop]

Basically: you knock out strong enemies and recruit them.

When you are in assassination range to an enemy you get the notice "press E to knock out". It deals 100% assassin damage, but does not kill. The traget in knocked out and standing by it you press Alt to recruit it.

Polemarchs and mercenaries are good recruiting candidates. You can view what perks they will have a s lieutenants by scanning them with Icarus.

[tiger199835]

Use Icarus to scout, when scouting, hovering over enemies allows you to see their perks. Higher ranked enemies (black, blue, purple, gold) have more perks while the perk icons tell you what their perks are.

After identifying a suitable recruit, do not kill them, knock them out instead, this can be done by using the Spartan kick ability, the non-lethal arrow, knock out instead of assassination, or using fists instead of your weapons.

Once they are knocked out, stand near them and press Alt to recruit.

Once recruited, go to your ship lieutenants menu and pay a fee to assign them (lieutenants from side missions do not need this fee).

This process was taught by Barnabas immediately after getting his ship, he asked you to recruit an archer on a small island.

[TonyGun]

Just like to add that you should also consider recruiting different types of fighters.

Big guys with heavy weapons are good at area damages - strong attacks but slow.

NPCs armed with the spear (aggressive) when paired with NPCs with sword & shield (defensive) are a good combo.

Sword / dagger rogue types will throw smoke / elemental bombs.

Ranged fighters can use Spread Shot / elemental attacks.

An earlier version of the game had a bug where your player's critical % and dmg was added to all NPCs ranged attacks. so they were dealing massive arrow & bomb damages. This is now mostly fixed, but they still pack a punch.

Try to find gold-tiered Marksmen, Bandit Rogues, & Daughters of Artemis Hunters, they're very good as distractions when you use Call to Arms.

[Hotel Security]

Even if you never recruit random lieutenants, you should get enough just from sidequests to have a decent roster. Just keep playing and the game will offer you some nice ones...just always offer to recruit NPCs rather than killing them.

Once you get a few legendary ones, I find they never have problems in any ship boarding...not that it matters since I can use R2 to knock anyone into the water anyway.