Nightingale: How to recruit Survivors
Here's how to recruit NPCs in Nightingale and where to find them
Want to know how to recruit Survivors in Nightingale? Survivors are NPCs that you can acquire in Nightingale to help you at your base and gather materials. These loyal recruits will also lend a hand in combat and can be a useful deterrent against Bound enemies.
Although these fellow Realmwalkers can occasionally get in your way, they are valuable assets to accrue, especially early on in a Nightingale game and if you are playing solo, rather than multiplayer. Below, we've detailed how to find these recruitable NPCs in Nightingale and how to add them to your party.
In this guide:
- How to recruit Survivors in Nightingale
- Where to get Survivors in Nightingale
- Gathering Essence as a Nightingale beginner
How to recruit Survivors in Nightingale
Survivor NPCs will have the word 'Recruitable' in orange text above their heads. Simply approach and talk to them and choose the option to add them to your party. Once they're allied with you, they'll have Recruited above their heads instead.
Some Survivors will require you to do a favour or task for them before they become recruitable. These tasks are usually relatively easy, and typically require you to gather materials or help them finish a nearby structure. For instance, you might have to built a Campfire and three Bedrolls before a Survivor will join you.
Where to get Survivors in Nightingale
As you move across your Nightingale map, you'll run into several symbols representing different points of interest. These include Defense, Aid, Bastille of Intellect, Essence Traders and Occupation events. You can reveal all points of interest on a map by completing the Fae Tower of the region, and we suggest prioritising this whenever you hop into a new realm.
Survivors can often be found wandering around the Aid symbol, as well as by NPC Essence Traders or Defense encounters, which usually see you defending a base against hordes of Bound enemies. Whenever you're in need of a companion, try travelling to one of these map locations and you're sure to run into an NPC that can be recruited to your base.
What can Survivors do in Nightingale?
Survivors are great for aiding in combat, especially if you're playing solo and dealing with a few too enemies at once. Depending on the weapons that you give them, they can hold their own when it comes to tanking large groups of Bound - but be wary of their Health. As of this writing, you cannot transfer Healing Salves to Survivors. You can, however, revive them if they are downed during combat. As such, it's worth keeping an eye on them during encounters, as they will generally jump right into the thick of fighting even if they only have rudimentary tools equipped.
Other than combat, these trusty NPCs can also help you gather building materials and will default to gathering Wood or mining Stone whilst you meander through the Faewilds. They don't seem to have the same status conditions or hunger meters as the player, so you won't have to worry about cooking meals for Survivors as well as yourself.
Finally, you should be a tad cautious if your Survivor takes on a big task like chopping down trees while you're standing nearby. While friendly fire does not exist in the world of Nightingale, you can take damage from falling trees. The RPS Treehouse discovered this during a pre-Early Access multiplayer excusion into a magic wood when a Survivor named Joe decided to go wood chopping and promptly killed News Editor Edwin.
Can you have more than one Recruit?
In terms of multiplayer, every player can bring one Survivor along with them to a session and it does not count towards the party limit.
For solo players, as far as we've experienced, you can only have one active Survivor at a time.
That rounds off our guide to everything you need to know about recruiting Survivors in Nightingale. For more Nightingale coverage, check out our guide on how to fast travel as well as our peek at how to destroy and move structures. And if you've just logged into Nightingale for the first time and are wondering where to begin, we also have a guide to the best starting biome in the game.