Overview
(Almost) all powerful characters were once children. From the moment the stork visits to that final growth spurt, this guide will walk you through how to prepare you youths for a glorious future.
Introduction and Changelog
Kids and population are arguably your most precious resource in the land of Thea. As of the writing of this guide you can get up to three adults to begin the game and one child. After that, if you want to get someone new as an adult you will have to go through quests or pay through the nose or both.
But children are free, and any levels they obtain as children are basically free extra stats or skills, because once they grow up they start at level 1 again. This gives them the potential to be significantly more powerful than most starting characters.
- Humans
- Goblins (still need to update this to reflect the latest patches)
- Orcs
- 1/1/2019: Began making the guide: Obtaining children, Cheating Chance, and Human/Goblin/Orc grow up events. All text so far, will add images later.
- 1/4/2019: Added a few images for a couple ways to obtain children and a couple orc grow up events.
- 1/8/2019: Added a few more images and a new event you can obtain children from.
- 1/11/2019: Added a bunch more images, mostly of human grow up events. Learned that goblins work differently now, I”ll update that once I’ve got some images to show.
How Do I Get Children?
There are multiple possible ways to get more children. Some trigger randomly, some you can deliberately invoke. Below are all the events I have found so far that can get you a child.
The Stork will randomly show up bearing you one child to a fertile male-female pair. This means that if your party is all one gender it cannot happen, but a couple pairing up is temporary, meaning that pretty much anyone can summon the stork with anyone of the opposite gender as long as they can “breed” at all. (I make this distinction because demons seem not to be able to breed at all, and I have heard that elves have a pre-requisite to be able to do so. Of course, children cannot become parents either, nor will your beasts breed amongst themselves). The more possible male/female pairings you have, the better your chances of getting a child.
The race of the child is randomly selected from among the parent races. A stork event for parents of differing races is technically considered a different event. This means that for every new breeding race you have in your party, your chances of a stork event increase.
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The cabbage patch is an equal opportunity child event. You can have same-sex couples “discover” a child. However, they still must be able to “breed.”
Again, the race of the child depends on the discovering parents. For example if you have two goblin parents they’re only ever going to find a goblin child together. Or perhaps they just aren’t interested in the humans they find? Who knows.
Normally when you rescue a stork in trouble you get a blessing, and maybe a nice dog. But if you are very very lucky you can get a child instead.
If you choose to get drunk in a tavern you have a chance to have the stork visit you immediately. I have only ever gotten human children from this event but presumably this would also depend on the parent’s race. This event gets you only a child, no liquor or sickness or mental blessings.
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There exists a random event where you can find a nest of spiders with large cocoons. It’s rather low-level, usually 1, and after you beat them you can check the cocoons and you have the potential of rescuing a child. Supposedly you can obtain non-human races from this event too.
Once you have a village, you will sometimes get an old woman asking to spend the night. You should ALWAYS allow her to do so. She will either give you a gift of herbs and a cat, or steal at least one child if you have any in your village. Even if you have a child she’s not guaranteed to steal, but the gift is a decent consolation outcome, especially because the cat is sometimes high-level.
However she does not go far, and this will spawn several exclamation events where not only can you get your child(ren) back, but you can obtain a fat rat and/or more children and also a free dog. The challenges involved are not that high, around 2-3 level.
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If you are attacked by slavers, do not negotiate with them. Kill them and you can obtain children, including non-human ones.
(TODO: add image + confirm/test)
Have not confirmed this one myself but I’ve heard that if you de-curse the Vodnik Prince and sleep with him (you must have someone with a “beautiful” tag to unlock this option, attractive won’t cut it) you can get a kid out of it.
If you get an event where you have the opportunity to try and save some dying and/or light-cursed scavengers, and you succeed, you can obtain a new child, a new scavenger, or both.
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I’ve only gotten this event once and I never actually got new children, but if your child gets stolen by the fish dude who wants you to bring him a girl, he tells you you can also take any others he has who are still alive.
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Once you have an alliance with a human village (not counting the main-quest-related villages, which have starts floating above them rather than the shields), visiting the tavern can sometimes give you the chance to try and recruit someone. There will be several adult options such as a warrior or hunter, but you have to bribe those people to actually have them join you. If you choose the “someone is beckoning you” option you will get an orphan begging to join you for free.
This event will continue to spawn indefinitely although there might be a cooldown for it.
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If you decide to destroy a village you can get children along with your other spoils. The most I’ve personally gotten is 2, but I heard of up to 4. Of course the race of the children depends on the race of the village.
Please note that this will destroy the village in question so be very sure that you actually want to do that.
Once you find and befriend the Orcish village you can choose to rest and visit. Alongside the usual healing options, you will sometimes have an option to have a female in your party request “manly services” from the orcs, and this has a chance of giving you an orcish child. This event can happen as many times as you have the patience for, and please note that your whole party will take light physical damage from the steamy fun times.
The Growing Process
When will that child grow up? You can tell by checking the skills section of the equipment menu. Each child has an innate “Child growing up” skill that looks like a little sprouting leaf. (TODO: add image). Hovering over that skill will show you how many turns are left in the countdown. The countdown will generally start at anywhere from 25-40, and will decrease by 1 each turn.
Once the timer reaches 1, on the next turn they will get their grow up event, which is different for each race.
A couple of notes: Children, for some reason, do not grow up at sea. I’m not sure whether this is a bug or intentional, so it may be subject to change.
There also exist events that will prevent the growing up event from happening. The one I know of for sure is a stork arriving with a new kid for the party, but there might be others. In this case, the timer will go to 0, the skill will disappear (and the kid’s carry capacity will skyrocket), but the child will remain a child. However, they will still grow up on the next turn, provided the prevention event doesn’t happen again, of course.
You may also notice that this skill reduces the carry capacity of the child. For human children, they start with a strength stat of 2, so their carry capacity begins at 101. Taking strength on a level up will improve this, but not by very much.
The Goblin child skill also includes a subskill which summons a level 1 demon. This makes goblin kiddos significantly more useful than human ones should they be drawn into combat, because this skill will be available even in conceptual challenges, and it is applicable in all colors. The summon will be very weak of course, but it will still be there to take a hit that would otherwise hit someone else.
Cheating Chance
So you want to make sure little Oda grows up to be X, do you? Unfortunately, at least as of now, children growing up is almost completely dependent on random chance. So the only way to actively guarantee that you get what you want is to save one turn before they grow up, and then try again and again until you get your desired outcome.
This is one of my two biggest complaints about how Thea currently works and it’s one many people share with me.
However, there is a way to maximize your chances, and that is The Other Ring.
You will notice that this little baby is both very light and boosts every single stat. It is shown here made with obsidian, which is one of the two qualifying materials that you can get very early game. To get obsidian drops, you have to have a domain of either turmoil or magic, and choose the magical fight option when the Lightbringers random event happens. Assuming you win, you’ll get somewhere around 10-15 obsidian, so 2 such events should get you enough to start crafting.
If you have a diferent domain set and can’t get the easy obsidian, your best bet to make an early other ring is diamonds. Crows have a tendency to drop them in small quantities.
Keep in mind that this will consume your cosmic seed so making one early means you can’t make either a stronger-level one or a village until you get the second one significantly later in the game. Still, it’s worth considering, because it can significantly reduce the amount of save scumming you have to do to get your desired classes.
After you make The Other Ring, equip it to whoever you want. It doesn’t matter. But one turn before your child grows up, give the ring to them. This will ensure that you at least qualify for all the possible growing up choices you can get. Which ones actually show up is still dependent on random chance, but it at least removes one possible barrier, so you should have way more options on average per grow up event. As long as you don’t have your heart set on one class in particular, you should usually get at least one good option.
After your child successfully grows up into whatever your desired career path is for them, you can safely unequip the ring and return it to its normal owner.
Human Coming of Age
Options for a human child are as follows
Required Strength: 2-3 (TODO: test & confirm)
Successful Outcomes: Warrior, child also gets one free skill up
Failure Outcomes: Scavenger, Lose child entirely
Required Perception: 3
Successful Outcomes: Hunter, +1 hunter skill up
Failure Outcomes: Scavenger, Lose child entirely
Required Wisdom: 3
Successful Outcomes: Zerca +1 zerca skill up
Failure Outcomes: Scavenger, Gatherer, Lose child entirely
Required Wits: 2? (you start with 2 so there really should be some requirement but this one seems pretty common to get even without investing in it for level up)
Successful Outcomes: Bandit
Failure Outcomes: Scavenger, Lose child entirely
Always available
Successful Outcomes: Crafter, child learns Master Crafter
Failure Outcomes: Lose child entirely, lose child but get a goblin kid
Always available
Successful Outcomes: Gatherer, child learns Master Gatherer
Failure Outcomes: Lose child entirely, lose child but get a goblin kid
Completely random, no pre-reqs
Successful Outcomes: Vily demon, Vihur demon, Goblin of any class, Fat Rat with magic boost
Failure Outcomes: Scoundrel, Lose child entirely
Required Mysticism: 3
Success Outcomes: Witch +1 witch skill up
Failure Outcomes: Wraith, Lose child entirely
You can also get a Witch but with a mental curse and some stat loss.
Required Wisdom: 3
Success Outcomes: Healer, child learns Master Healer
Failure Outcomes: Scavenger, Gatherer
Goblin Coming of Age
You don’t actually get to choose anything for your goblin. You get a random draw. Not sure if it’s influenced by stats or not.
Gatherer/Crafter both get the same message (“capable worker”) and draw from the same images so if you get this outcome hover over their picture to see which class they actually are. This outcome is way more common than the others.
Beastmaster: The equivalent to a hunter, although in my experience they tend to have better yellow stats than red. In any case, you get a free animal pet from this. Most commonly a boar or dog.
Fighter: Equivalent to a warrior.
Orc Coming of Age
Your Orc child will have some options, but again, these seem to be partially dependent on random chance as to whether they’re actually available or not.; IE, saving and reloading will get you different options for each try on the same kid with the same stats.
I feel bad for the poor orcs. Almost every possible path leads to some form of trauma and stat loss.
This section is not currently complete but it does contain everything I’ve encountered thus far.
Send the kid to the clan to face trials. You must have another orc in your party, and it advertises that you run the risk of the kid staying with them instead of coming back to you.
I have so far gotten two possible outcomes for this. The one I got far more commonly was a crafter, but I did once get a bloodtracker. Either way, you get no stat loss from these events.
There may or may not be a strength pre-req for this option but since your orc kids start with 4 strength anyway you might have to have an event where you lose some in order for this to not be obtainable.
I have seen a total of 4 possible outcomes from this choice. Either the kid dies, comes back as a warrior or bloodtracker with some small stat losses, or comes back as a “labourer” ie gatherer or crafter but with heavy stat loss.
This option should always be available. It warns that the kid may resent you for making them be an uncool class.
I’ve seen two possible outcomes from this choice. Either they become a worker (gatherer or crafter) with some minor max sanity loss, or they go “screw you” and just leave.
This option is only available if you have a witch in the party. I’ve only seen it on female orc kids, but I’ve only ever had one male so that’s not really saying much. This is by far the rarest option even when you qualify for them all.
The two options I’ve seen for this are a successful witch with a HUGE stat loss (~9 mysticism plus other penalties) and losing the kid entirely.