Wartalesby Shiro Games, pits your band of mercenaries against a world of warring kingdoms, bandit outlaws, and religious fanatics. You’ll frequently be outnumbered and facing uphill odds in challenging turn-based combat, testing both your tactical awareness and your ability to build a strong team.
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One morally dubious way of padding the odds in your favour is to recruit new members from these factions as you fight them. Each faction offers unique passive abilities that can strengthen your team if you manage to recruit them. This guide details how to get prisoners and which faction is best.
How To Capture Prisoners
Capturing human prisoners is much simpler than capturing animals in Wartales, as you only ever need one item:Chains. Chains can bepurchased from any of the regional prisonsacross the map.
Capturing prisoners is done in combat via a unique skill prompt that only appears when the conditions are met.The person you are trying to capture must be below half of their maximum health and be engaged in melee combat.
Approaching a weakened and distracted target in this way willshow a new prompt to attempt to capture them. Unlike melee attacks,this has a chance to miss completely, wasting the action.
In most cases, thechance to capture will be between 60 and 80 percent. Some enemies will have theleader or seasoned status, which prevents them from being captured.
TheCrime and Chaospath abilityNon-lethalgives a20 percent bonus to knock out attempts. To level it up, you must perform criminal and underhanded actions such as raiding merchant caravans and stealing from shops.
How To Recruit Prisoners
Prisoners taken will not initially be willing to join you in combat and have a chance of escaping when you stop to rest.
Right-clicking on a prisoner to examine their character sheet will show several unique stats for prisoners. The first of these is theirEscape Ability. This willstart at 100 percentand should be reduced as much as possible to recruit them.
Be careful what you give prisoners to hold. They will take any items they are carrying with them when they escape.
Thestockscan entirely prevent a prisoner from making escape attempts but will heavily reduce their trust, preventing you from recruiting them. Thiscamp toolis best used when planning to turn in an outlaw for a bounty.
The recipe for stocks can bepurchased from aprisonand thenbuilt by a tinkerer.When fully upgraded, itcan hold four people.Other actions that can decrease trust are whipping slaves and making them sleep next to animals.
Once you’ve got their escape chance as low as possible, it’s time tostart raising their trust. This is done by treating them well.Keep them well-fedwhile you travel,provide them with a barber kitpurchased from a prison or town, andtreat their injuries.
You can view theircurrent level of truston theircharacter sheet by clicking the icon in the bottom left corner.The tinkerer recipePersonal Cupprovides alarge bonus to trustwhile equipped: Who wouldn’t trust the jailor when they give you a mug with your name on it?
After gaining a sufficient level of trust, the prisoner will offer to talk, indicated by a white question mark over their head. Speaking to them with a right click will offer the opportunity to recruit them for a price in influence, the game’s social currency.
Related:How To Capture Animals In Wartales
What Is The Best Faction To Recruit From
Prisoners do not have complete skill trees like your mercenaries do. Instead, they have a set of passives that change depending on the faction they come from.
Effect
Brotherhood (rival mercenaries)
Oftenfound guarding merchants, Brotherhood members gainpowerful bonuses when engaged in melee combat. The rivalry buff is gained at level five, whichhalves the damage taken from the engaged enemy. The Duel Mastery passive at level seven blinds engaged enemies,giving a 50 percent chance for their next attack to miss.
These make Brotherhood recruits useful for frontline positions, while as archers, they will not be able to make use of these benefits.
Zealots (inquisitor faction)
Zealots make powerful assassins. At level five, they learnrelentlesswhich grants+50 critical chance versus targets engaged in combat. At level seven,their attacks apply the vulnerability debuffif they have no guard, achieved by wearing light armour.
Frontline zealots will not be able to make full use of these abilities as they will need heavier armour and will be engaged in combat too often to effectively use the Relentless passive.
Outlaws (bandit faction)
Outlaws are given a more mixed set of passives. TheOath of Cowardsat level five grants a30 percent damage boostversus targets engaged in combat. This leans into a similar backstabbing role as the zealots. Their level seven ability isDishonourable Trickwhich boosts their next attack when they are hit by the same enemy multiple times.
This ability is more useful in atanking rolewhere they can tie up the enemy damage dealers to charge up powerful counterattacks.Captive outlaws can also be handed over to a prison in exchange for a bounty.
Legion (military faction)
Legion soldiers getstrong defensive abilitiesthat are dependent on team composition and positioning. Their level five abilityMilitary Formationgreatly increases their defence when standing next to allied units. Their level seven ability,One Against Many,provides a continuous boost to damage and defence when your team is outnumbered.
This makes themstrongest at the beginning of a fight, when the enemy numbers are higher, and you can control your starting unit placement to set up their Military Formation bonus.
Guards
Guards are powerful duelists. In a one-versus-one fight, they can easily activate their level five passiveForced Disengagement,which givesan attack of opportunity if they both start and end their turn in combat. At level seven, this is upgraded withLawful Fervourwhich increasesthe damage of attacks of opportunity by 25 percentand applies the confused debuff when landing them.
In a longer battle, these abilities combined canmore than double the damagea guard deals in melee combat.Guards encountered in any region willalways match the player’s level, providing a challenging battle but a good source of recruits.
Trappers (Ludern Region)
Trappers havepowerful synergies with animal companionsbut areonly encountered in the Ludern Region. Their level five ability, Animal Unit,provides passive healing to the nearest animalthat scales with the animal’s constitution. Keep them next to a bear with aninfused collar,and the creature will become functionally immortal. Wild Opportunism, unlocked at level seven, gives aflat 50 percent damage boostagainst any enemy engaged with an animal. Since these passives don’t care about melee engagement,trappers work well in the front and back lines.
Recruiting from captured prisoners offers its own advantages and disadvantages compared to other ways of building your company. The biggest downside is they cannot generate valour points, the currency used to perform special moves.
They also do not learn any special moves themselves. This makes a recruited prisoner slightly weaker than a mercenary of the same level.
They will begin with theFreed Slavetrait, which halves the wages you have to pay them.
A mob of converted prisoners will benefit greatly fromabilities that provide buffs in a wide area, like a Protector’s Encouragement or a Sentinel’s Battlecry.
When upgraded, these skillsprovide long-lasting and powerful defense and attack buffs. A Captain’s ability,Galvanise Troops, provides a strong way ofrestoring valour pointsthat a team of former slaves wouldn’t normally have access to.
A final consideration is that thesize of enemy groups will scale in proportion to the size of your party. If you find enemy groups too large and combat takes too long to resolve, you may wish to bench some party members.
TheTravel Post buildingunlocked atlevel fourTrade and Craftsmanshipallows you tostore extra party members instead of dismissing themfrom your company.
