Overview
This is a guide of the game that contain the maximum skill available (NOTE THAT THE NUMBER I’VE WRITTEN IS THE STAT MAXIMUM, BUT IT CAN START WITH 0 IN THAT SKILL) of the characters that can be recruited. Also there are some tips to help recruiting some of the “hard to recruit characters”, the characters that are hard to recruit have their name underlined and the tip to recruit them at the end of the guide. I also have marked the recommended characters and have written the reason which makes me recommend them next to the marked name. I have also written some general tips for recruiting.
Skill maximums of the characters and character list with some notes of them.
(Note that the stats are in the same order than the game:
5 4 3 2 5 means 5 fitness, 4 firearms, 3 construction, 2 farming, 5 medical)
Basics
Joe Wheeler 5 5 5 5 5 IS THE MAIN CHARACTER (Also has the top stats available).
Alice Ivers 5 5 5 5 5
Isham Seely 5 5 5 5 5 TOP STATS. Very useful.
Connie Reed 3 5 4 3 4 5 starting firearms skill. Hard to recruit.
Jim Gallager 4 3 3 3 3
Bat Jacobs 2 5 3 5 4
Tom Catt 5 5 3 5 4
Butch Billington 5 3 3 2 2 Tom and butch are very easy to recruit and have good stats. Also their place is near the military vehicles with one very useful magic item. They are in my opinion good starting partners.
Los Ceros
Juanita Baca 4 2 2 5 5 5 starting skill points doctor. Always is useful to have one doctor in your community with 5 medical training skill points.
Em Arcine
Elfego Arcine 5 5 5 5 5 Maximum Stats.
Fort Kohai
Sarah Slaughter 5 5 5 4 4 Good help in early game because of her high stats both the maximum and the starting ones, also easy to recruit after dealing with the desert raiders.
Nat Alison 3 3 5 5 2
Ed Hutchinson 4 2 4 5 4 Free watering can and a good farmer for early game.
Santa Maddalena
Cathay Starr 4 5 5 2 2
Bridget Cassidy 3 5 5 2 3
Augustine Franklyn 3 2 4 5 3 Free watering can and a good farmer for early game. Also easy to recruit.
Hiram Parker 2 3 5 4 2
Dorcas Williams 3 5 3 2 3
Amelia Murphy 3 2 2 5 4
Eleanore Williams 4 4 5 2 2
Eliza Bishop
Jack Vermillion
Luke Bishop
Sam Deetz
Maud Gilbert
Al Martin
Mccoys
Camila Aird 4 5 5 2 2 The boss of mccoys has good stats, both the maximum and the starting ones.
Connie Murphy 3 4 4 5 4
Felipe Hutchinson 5 3 4 2 2
Johnny Casey 4 3 5 2 2
Manuel Gregg 5 2 4 4 4
Mollie Taggart 2 3 4 5 3
Fat Neils
Robert Simpson 5 4 3 3 3
Tiloukait Chacon 3 4 3 4 3
Lola Yantis 4 3 5 3 2
Dorcas Longabanaugh 4 5 3 5 3 The boss of the fat neils has good stats both starting and maximum.
Jane Leroy 3 3 4 4 3
Joshephine Jackson 3 3 2 2 4
Desert Raiders
Jacob De Vere 4 3 5 2 3
Billy Taggart 4 3 4 5 2
Jesus Davis 4 5 5 4 4 Good maximum stats and easy to get in the early game.
Cinthia’s gang
Will Schieffling 3 3 5 4 3
Tom Tubbs 4 5 4 4 3
Bob Doyle 4 4 3 5 4
Cynthia Rogers 3 2 2 2 4
Devil Gulley
Augustine Riddle 4 2 3 5 3
Lucretia Hicks 4 5 4 2 3
Mollie Anderson 3 5 4 2 4
Tom Fimbres 2 2 4 3 2
Seth’s gang
Seth Plummer 4 2 4 5 2
Isham Montez 4 4 3 3 4
Jim Silva 2 3 2 4 2
Jesse Doolin 3 4 4 2 2
Billy’s Gang
Billy Champion 4 3 3 5 4
Sally Short 3 5 4 5 3
Harry Scull 3 5 5 3 3
Vincent’s Gang
I recommend to get the whole vincent’s gang because of their proximity to your bunker they are a good adittion to your early community and also have good stats generally. Also easy to gain respect sparing with stockton and intimidating him so you haven’t got to kill them all.
♥♥♥♥ Stockton 4 3 5 5 2
Pearl Silva 3 5 3 3 2
Vincent Sontag 2 3 5 4 5
Highway Gang
The whole gang has more or less great stats (ESPECIALLY LAWRENCE BRADSHAW WITH 5 5 5 5 5 MAXIMUM STATS) and is easy to recruit them by sparing with lawrence. Also they are near the bunker and are a very good adittion to the early game.
Lawrence Bradshaw 5 5 5 5 5
Jesse Bradshaw 5 3 5 3 4
Wyatt Holiday 5 5 2 4 4
George O’Kelly 4 4 2 2 3
Marion’s Merry men
Sam Sontag 2 5 4 4 2
Alonzo Doyle 4 4 2 5 3
Marion Miller 3 4 3 2 3
Ollie Ford 2 2 5 3 4
Willard West 5 4 5 4 2
Dune raiders
Miles Oakley 4 3 3 3 3
Ned Dodge 5 3 4 2 5
Butch Dart 3 4 3 3 4
Bill Kinney 3 4 5 2 3
Nat Powers 5 4 5 2 2
Sontag’s Raiders
Joe Sontag 3 5 5 3 2 Starts with a 4 firearms skill from a 5 maximum.
Butch O’Kelly 4 4 2 4 4
Rosseta Silva 4 3 4 4 2
Rebeca Bridger 4 3 4 5 3
Grand Army
Carrie Standish 3 4 3 3 3
Frank Howe 3 3 3 2 3
James West 4 5 5 5 4
Frank Brooks 2 3 4 4 3
Ike Huddlestons 3 4 3 5 3
Lillie Kinney 2 3 3 2 4
Gas Station Mafia
Luke Holliday 4 3 2 5 2
♥♥♥♥ Bellonger 3 4 3 3 2
Jonh Bullock 3 5 4 3 4
Dan Adams 5 5 4 4 2 Good Firearms and Fitness maximum.
Alfrida Randolph 2 3 5 3 3
Cassidy’s gang
Cassidy McCleland 3 5 5 3 4
Ashley Barlow 3 2 4 4 3
Felipe Baca 5 3 5 3 3
Lou Bebee 4 2 5 5 3
Mike Day 3 5 3 5 3
Juanita Huddlestone 2 2 2 5 3
Charlie Midkiff 4 3 2 3 2
Jonh Kinney’s Gang
Jonh Kinney 4 5 2 3 5 Good starting firearms hability (4).
Butch Billion 3 4 3 3 4
Augustine Ruggles 2 3 4 2 2
Dan Basset 2 5 5 3 5
Sam Doherty 4 4 2 5 4
Mahalia Winema 2 4 5 2 2
River’s gang
Jacob Bullock 3 3 4 3 2
Vincente Ruggles 3 4 4 5 3
Jesus Daly 3 2 4 3 3
Ed Tubbs 5 4 3 5 2
Charlie Howe 3 2 5 5 3
Tom Rogers 5 4 3 2 2
Jim Barnett 5 2 5 4 4
Graybill Family
Alice Graybill 4 2 4 3 4
Lou Graybill 4 5 5 2 4
Cornelius Starr 3 5 4 4 4
Jacob Cermeno 4 5 4 4 4
Ned Bridger 4 5 3 5 3
Will Graybill 4 4 5 5 3
General recruiting tips.
RESPECT AND APPROVAL: The characters will join your community depending on these 2 stats. This stats are earnt by the different actions you carry out towards them. The most they like you, the less respect you need to get them, the most they respect you, less approval you need from them. This gets easier to understand when you get an item called neural scanner with which you’ll be able to see a graphic with the approval and respect you have from a character and what amount of respect and approval you need to get the character join you. Also allows you to see with what amount of respect or approval he’ll leave your community if the character disagrees with you.
Sparring: The community will lose respect for the loser of the fight and win respect towards the winner of it. Be wary that when you fight with someone someone of his community has to have bandages so that someone can heal him, if not the character will go out of his community safety and has the chance to die from zombies or bleeding before he can get bandages. The same goes for you and your character: your character can bleed too.
Don’t fail: If you fail somehow you will lose respect and appreciation from the people, if you do things right you’ll get people’s respect and appreciation. For example, when you go to rachel scull’s quest you have to support her or menace bat jacobs, if you menace jacobs you’ll win jacobs’ respect and lose rachel’s approval, if you support rachel you’ll get her approval and lose his respect. Another example: The character that completes the quest from toby reed will lose the respect from connie reed, and that character can even be attacked by connie if his personality forbids him to apologize properly.
Gifts: EVERYBODY LIKES GIFTS!! Gifts raise people’s appreciation and the envy (lose of approval) of those who doesn’t receive it and presence the gift being given.
KILL ZOMBIES! (or people): Killing zombies raises respect (THE FINAL BLOW ONLY I mean) but if you attack the zombies when they are attacking someone and are about to bite them this will raise a lot of respect and approval. This approval and respect will be won also if a character presence you saving someone else from being bitten. For example, if you are with Alice Ivers near Connie Reed and a zombie attacks Alice and has her in the ground and you hit the zombie so that she can stand up your approval and respect will raise both in Connie and in Alice.
Trading: Trading raises approval when buying things from a character and raises respect when selling items to them.
Quests: Doing a quest improves respect and approval from all community members of the character who gives you the quest.
Don’t Need to kill: All the gangs and raiders have usually some members less susceptible to fight than others, so when you arrive to their base, just save before talking to them, and try talking to the diferent members of the gang once and again until one scares from you facing their menaces. Sometimes the same character can give you different answers (scares or fights) randomly. So if all they fight you just try again until someone scares.
I am not able to win respect?: Some gangs haven’t got characters that can spar and so wining respect is very hard. So one option available in this case is run near the gang’s camp looking for zombies and attract them to the gang’s camp (this just means: run with them following you till the gang’s camp) so that you can kill them there with the correspondant respect bounty.
Hard and special recruits
Connie Reed: To get connie you’ll have to complete the mission for his husband (A photograph in sundance). After that her husband will die, and as her husband is the one that farms the crops she’ll go on adventure to get food in the town called Monkey Wrench Gulch (WHITE STAIN). As soon as her husband dies just wait until she goes to the town and accompany her so that you make sure that the zombies don’t kill her. After killing some zombies your respect will go high and with a few gifts she’ll join you. (Kill them when they are attacking her so that your respect goes even higher yet). Be sure you don’t use Joe to complete the quest from toby reed: because of joe’s personality connie reed will attack him in response to toby’s death and you won’t be able to recruit her, and even if she wouldn’t attack, you’ll lose respect because of the failure that provoked the death of Toby Reed.
BE CAREFUL! If she goes alone to Monkey Wrench Gulch (I’ll say it again: WHITE STRAIN) she’ll die for sure. SHE NEEDS YOU TO ESCORT HER.
Tom and Butch: They’ll ask you to give them green antigen, tell them you haven’t got and then they’ll give you a quest to get them antigen from a car in the north (You can give them any green antigen, you don’t have to go till the car). Then give them the antigen and complete the quest for free (this is, DON’T ACCEPT THE PAYMENT), so that the respect goes even higher and you can recruit them with no effort. If you don’t have antigen, you’ll find some in the military vehicles west of tom and butch’s house (RED STAIN, BE CAREFUL IF IS EARLY GAME). Don’ t forget getting the magic item those military vehicles got waiting for you either 😉 .
Bat Jacobs: Bat Jacobs is hard to get because he has no community you can help with him and he doesn’t move so the zombies attack him and you can save him. To get him you’ll have to answer as an evil person in the quest “eldorado” when you go there with rachel scull. Rachel will hate you but you’ll get respect from bat, and you can restore the respect from rachel by helping fort kohai’s people. Also you can use the general tips to get him.
Juanita Baca: Juanita Baca is easy to get, but you’ll have to help her by doing her quest first, she’ll ask you to fake her death with los ceros. After the quest is completed, she herself will offer to stay in your community. BE SURE YOU DON’T USE JOE TO INFORM OF THE DEATH OF JUANITA WHEN FAKING HER DEATH. REMEMBER THAT THE CHARACTER THAT INFORMS OF HER DEATH WILL LOSE RESPECT WITH ALL LOS CEROS CARTEL AND WITH SOME MEMBERS OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITY.
Elfego Arcine: Elfego will join you if you choose his sister to go top of the los ceros ranks, if you do so, the sister will be killed and he’ll ran away to join you help defeat los ceros. If you forgive Felipe Espinosa (Los Ceros boss) he’ll leave.
Mccoys and Fat Neils: To get them you’ll have to make them fight, if you choose to stabilish the peace between them then you won’t be able to recruit them. Remember to protect the characters (Selling them kevlars or helping that character’s side during the fight) you want to recruit in the fight between them, if not that character can die during the fight.
Jim Gallager: To recruit him you’ll have to complete the 2 quests related to him: the one that makes you kill her zombie friend and the one that makes you build his community camp. After that he can join you. (His stats are ♥♥♥♥, but you can later use him to be killed by kate barlow in El Dorado quest).
Some notes
As all of the readers can see, los ceros, F.E.M.A and some of the fort kohai and santa maddalena residents can’t be recruited at first. But in the wars that happens if any of these cities lose the war the survivors will ask to join you. I still haven’t got this happened so the stats of the citizens that can’t join at first are unknown to me. That’s why I don’t have them added to the guide