Survivors

Survivors are people you rescue and bring back to your Stronghold. They can be developed into specialists and sent on timed jobs to collect rewards, support the camp, recover, or study. Your own player character and your recruited survivors have separate levels and stats.

Unlocking survivors

Follow Quests to rescue your first survivors and introduce the system. Open Stronghold > Survivors to see everyone you have recruited.

Your survivor count is limited by your stronghold's capacity. Build and upgrade Survivor Camps to increase that limit. The top of the Survivors page shows your current count and capacity, together with the number of idle and active survivors.

Reading a survivor card

Each card gives you a quick view of that survivor:

• Level and progress toward the next level.
• Attack and Defense.
• Engineering, Charisma, and Scouting.
• Health, Morale, and Insanity bars.
• Their current status and, while working or resting, a timer.

A survivor with no current assignment is shown as Idle. A finished assignment is shown as Waiting until you open it and finish collecting the result. Survivors with no health are Injured, while survivors whose Insanity has reached its maximum are Insane; either condition prevents them from being assigned.

Select a card to open that survivor's details. From here you can set a nickname, inspect their full stat breakdown, see their current assignment or recovery timer, review missions completed, and open their personal journal.

Stats, levels, and traits

The five working stats are Attack, Defense, Engineering, Charisma, and Scouting. Jobs can require one survivor or a team and may set minimum totals for one or more of these stats. When building a team, the assignment screen compares the team's combined totals with the job's requirements.

Survivors earn XP from their work and level independently. Every level after level 1 provides an attribute point. A level-up marker appears on the survivor card when points are waiting to be spent. Open the survivor, choose Stats, then use Level Up to assign available points.

A survivor's displayed total can combine several sources:

• Their base stat.
• Attribute points you have assigned.
• Bonuses or penalties from traits.
• Magazine bonuses for Engineering, Charisma, or Scouting.

Traits can also change maximum Health, Morale, or Insanity. The detailed Stats view separates these sources so you can see why each total has its current value.

The Reset Survivor option returns spent attribute points and lets you remove eligible traits. Traits marked DNA are permanent and cannot be removed. A reset may require the resources shown in its confirmation window, or it can consume one free survivor reset when you have one. Resets are subject to the cooldown displayed on the Stats page, and a busy survivor cannot be reset.

Assigning survivors

1. Select Assign Survivors at the top of the Survivors page.
2. Choose a job. Available work is organised into Missions, Camp, Med Bay, and Library tabs. Tabs only appear when they contain available work.
3. For a mission, expand its difficulty and location, then select the job. You can mark frequently used jobs with a star so they also appear in your favourites.
4. Select the required survivor or survivors.
5. Choose the number of mission attempts, check the total time and item cost, then select Assign.

Read the job card before choosing a team. It shows the time, stat and team-size requirements, required items, possible rewards, and any location recovery timer. An unavailable job cannot be selected.

Some jobs need a team of a specific size. Survivors are grouped into teams in the order you select them, and every team must be full and meet the displayed combined-stat requirements. The team indicators turn valid only when those conditions are satisfied. You may assign more than one complete team to the same job at once.

Only available survivors can be selected. A survivor who is already active, has no health, or has reached maximum Insanity must first become available again.

Attempts, time, and required items

Mission Attempts repeats the selected job for each assigned team. Increasing the attempt count increases the total duration and multiplies consumable item requirements. Equipment with durability is treated as reusable for the assignment rather than consumed once per attempt. The selector automatically limits the number of attempts to what the job and your available items allow.

Check the final item list carefully before assigning several teams: item requirements apply to each team, while consumable costs also scale with the number of attempts.

Finishing, cancelling, and recovery

An active survivor's card shows the assignment and its remaining time. When the timer ends, open that survivor and use the job's finish button to collect the result. The Completed Jobs panel on the main Survivors page records recent results, and each survivor's Journal shows their own history. The Stats page also totals how many times that survivor has completed each kind of job.

You can cancel an active job from the survivor card or the survivor's detail page. Long jobs ask for confirmation. Cancellation completes the job early, so review the confirmation and current rewards before proceeding.

Some outcomes reduce Health or Morale or increase Insanity. Use suitable Med Bay work and recovery options when a survivor needs attention. A resting survivor shows the time until their next recovery.

Useful tips

• Rescue survivors through quests before investing heavily in extra capacity.
• Build or upgrade Survivor Camps before reaching your current limit.
• Match the whole team's combined stats to a mission instead of judging one survivor in isolation.
• Spend attribute points toward the jobs you want that survivor to perform.
• Compare possible rewards with time, item costs, and risks before repeating a mission many times.
• Check completed-job notifications and journals so finished work does not get overlooked.