Characters & Comrades

1. The Three Playable Characters

There are exactly three. The starting kit described by weapon type follows below the table.

Starting kit by type, and attributes

By weapon type, the starting kit is: Kliff with sword, shield, bow and dagger; Damiane with rapier, pistol, greatsword, dagger and shield; Oongka with greataxe, hand cannon and riteblade. Only one source puts numbers on the starting attributes.

Starting attributes as given on that source's characters list; its own Kliff page gives him different ones (Health 100, Spirit 50, Stamina 130, Attack 16, Defense 14). Damiane and Oongka join later than Kliff, which is the only context the page gives for the gap.

2. Kliff

The protagonist, and the one character you always have. He becomes the leader of the Greymanes, whose surviving members are scattered across the continent, and he is rebuilding the faction after the Black Bears took it down. He starts with the Sword of the Wolf and the Grey Wolf Wooden Shield.

How he fights

Three points about his play. He is built to weave unarmed strikes into weapon combos, which is where his stagger damage comes from: the way he opens bosses up. He is strong with a spear as a secondary weapon for punishing a vulnerable enemy. And dual-wielding two one-handed weapons speeds his attacks up and raises his damage, with free choice of the pairing. Two abilities are his alone: Force Palm and Axiom Force, which serve both traversal and combat.

His skills sit in three trees, named after the stat each raises:

• Stamina: weapon combinations and unarmed combat, so the two can be mixed without a seam.
• Spirit: the Force attacks: lifting objects, extra jumps, manipulating enemies.
• Health: Axiom Force for exploration and combat, and the elemental imbues Lightning Surge, Frost Mantle and Flame Strike.

Skills worth singling out: Force Palm and Focused Force Palm, Axiom Force and Winch, Pump Kick, Dropkick, Vault and Storm Veil. Kliff builds (Sword and Shield, Longsword, Dual-Wield, Spear, Unarmed and Infinite Arrows) are on the builds page.

Why he is the one to invest in first

Some parts of the story can only be completed with Kliff, and skill points do not transfer between characters (each character has their own skill tree), so pouring everything into Damiane or Oongka leaves you short when the story locks you to him.

3. Damiane

The second playable character. She is not a Greymane, but a guest of the Marquis who stays with the group and helps it rebuild; Barden Middler insists she remain with them for her own safety. She is a descendant of the Spencer family who fled to Hernand for refuge. The Chapter 5 page carries what the quest text adds later: a Demenissian in hiding whose swordmaster has vanished, now a fugitive.

When she unlocks

Chapter 3, at the Greymane Camp, once the camp at Howling Hill is established. On the exact quest: Game8 says she can be switched to from the Homestead quest; Fextralife, after a quest it calls "Howling Hill". The Chapter 3 page places the moment at Howling Hill, after speaking with Marshal Middler. From there she has her own selection of weapons and skills and quests just for her.

What she fights with

She starts with the White Wind Rapier and the Absolute Justice Greatsword (by type: rapier, pistol, greatsword, dagger and shield). She is a versatile damage dealer with two things Kliff does not have: she can summon a flying turret that deals ranged damage while she keeps fighting with her weapons, and she can break off from melee and switch to her musket to keep dealing damage from any distance. Her trees:

• Stamina: ranged options and manoeuvrability: Smiting Strike, Sword Flurry, Piercing Light and the archer skills.
• Spirit: focus-enhanced attacks, counterattacks, and a sentinel helper in combat.
• Health: jumping and gliding, plus the elemental powers Flame Rush, Frost Mantle and Lightning Strike.

Damiane builds (Fire Gunslinger, Rapier and Shield, Dual-Wield, Greatsword, Spear) are on the builds page.

Where the story takes her

• End of Chapter 4: she becomes unavailable to play or summon at the start of the next chapter, for a considerable amount of time, for reasons in the main story (Chapter 4).
• Chapter 5: she turns up in Hernand before the banquet, which looks like her return, but only in the story: she leaves again, and she cannot be played or summoned until Chapter 8 (Chapter 5).
• Chapter 8, Traitor: Kliff is out of action and the whole quest (the prison in Demeniss and the Bastier fight) is played as Damiane. She stays available afterwards, and the Bastier fight is harder for being locked to her (Chapter 8).
• Chapter 12, The Final Battle: the chapter's quests are played as Kliff, and from the start of the chapter neither she nor Oongka can be played or summoned (Chapter 12).

4. Oongka

The third playable character and, unlike Damiane, a Greymane: an orc ally of herculean strength and a straightforward personality, the Greymanes' powerhouse, born to an orc tribe. He is in the story long before you can play him: at Calphade Castle in Chapter 6 he is waiting inside with his axe, and you cannot control him yet (Chapter 6).

When he unlocks: twice

There are two stages.

• 1

  Chapter 7, temporarily

  After Kliff's encounter with Myurdin at Ashclaw Keep you control Oongka for a brief time, until One-Armed Ludvig is defeated, after which he becomes unavailable. Those are the two Twisted Fate quests, Ludvig's Whereabouts and Time to Face Justice, on the Chapter 7 page.

• 2

  Chapter 8, for good

  Completing the Greymane faction quest "Words Left by the Riverside" unlocks him for the rest of the playthrough. Where it opens: after Ludvig's defeat you meet a recovered Kliff in Pailune and go to the vigil for Jian, and the questline becomes available after that cutscene; finishing it makes Oongka playable and summonable at any time.

What he fights with

He starts with the Dekarr Greataxe and the Orc Blaster (one list adds the Silverwolf Axe; by type, greataxe, hand cannon and riteblade). He is at his best dealing heavy damage and clearing groups quickly: dual-wielding two-handed weapons to cleave through enemies, and using the Hand Cannon for mid-to-long range. The Oongka Dual-Wield build is on the builds page.

Where the story takes him

• Chapter 12, The Final Battle: the same warning as for Damiane: from the start of the chapter, neither can be played or summoned (Chapter 12).
• After the credits: Oongka is the one who finds Kliff, and the Epilogue's first stop is following him to the docks in Pailune (Epilogue).

5. Switching, Summoning and the Party

Three different things: changing which character you control, summoning another character to fight beside you, and a party of all three.

Changing character

Hold F1 on PC, or hold Up on the d-pad on PS5 and Xbox, to open a radial menu; hover over the character you want and release. A character can be switched to as soon as they are unlocked (Damiane from Chapter 3, Oongka from Chapter 7), with no stated restriction beyond that.

Summoning

Once Damiane is playable she can also be summoned to fight alongside you and help in combat, provided you summon her ahead of time, which makes clearing large groups a lot easier. Oongka, once Words Left by the Riverside is done, is "playable and summonable at any time". How the summon is performed is not described, so this page does not say.

Party mode

You can form a party with all three unlocked characters (the key is W), after which they fight alongside you and you can switch to any of them seamlessly. Patch 2.00.00 reduced the damage taken by the characters accompanying you. One caveat: character-specific quests cannot be completed in party mode. Only one source describes a party in these terms.

When the story takes a character away

6. Comrades and Freeswords

The Greymanes were based in Pailune before the Black Bears displaced them, and regrouped at the Greymane Camp in Hernand. The people there are of two kinds. Freeswords are the comrades you can send on Mission Dispatch. The rest (Marius, Carl and Ross among them) are story characters who run a camp feature each and are not Freeswords.

No levels, and no experience

Comrades have no experience bars, and dispatching them does not level them up, because the reward for a mission is camp provisions, not experience. What stands in for progression is the camp itself, upgraded mostly through the Grounds of the Sunrise faction questline, which is also what unlocks new comrades and vendors and, eventually, physically expanding it. Each Freesword has unique skills that affect how a mission goes (section 7).

Who is at the camp

The Greymanes at the camp, with each one's role and, for the vendors, their job title.

One thing to do with them: once you reunite with the Greymanes at Howling Hill, each has a small request for you. Send them out on a job through Ross, go to wherever you sent them, and you can talk to them there and complete it.

Recruiting more

More comrades come from the Greymane Faction Quests. By camp upgrade, with the rumours that lead to them:

Workers who are not Greymanes

• Contribution workers. Temporary workers without individual profiles, hired with the Contribution Points you accumulate in a region, for missions too taxing or too simple to spend a comrade on. Unlocking them takes the Seal of Devotion, which drops from Tristan in the House Azerian faction quest "Flame Knights" in Demeniss. They cost 4 tokens each, refunded when the mission completes, with no cap on how many you hire; get the Seal before mid-game.
• Mecha Workers. A "Craft Mecha Workers" mission opens after completing Chaya Research at Dewhaven Keep. They are permanent, can be sent on any task, and are proficient only in mining.

7. Mission Dispatch

Sending Freeswords out on missions is how the camp is fed.

• 1

  When it opens

  During Pioneering, in Chapter 3. Luke and Ronald become your first Freesword Comrades, and the quest has you dispatch them on the "Howling Hill Camp Expansion" mission to progress.

• 2

  Where it is

  Open the map from the pause menu, hover over the Greymane Camp in Howling Hill, press the inspect button shown at the bottom of the screen, and pick the Missions tab. In the camp itself it is Ross, the Dispatch Coordinator.

• 3

  Pick a mission, pick who goes

  Choose a mission from the list and send whoever suits it. Some missions need two or more comrades. They take time to complete, so go and do quests meanwhile, and to keep missions running constantly, because the more comrades you have out, the more camp resources come in. You can also deploy Freeswords to fight in blockaded regions, to reduce the enemies there.

• 4

  What it costs and what it pays

  Missions are paid for in camp provisions and reward camp provisions. Pearl Abyss's patch 2.03.00 (18 September 2026), recorded in the FAQ, fixed a dispatched combat mission being cancelled by a save and reload; on that version or later it survives.

Camp provisions

Provisions are resources you donate to the camp, spent on dispatching comrades. There are five categories (weapons, minerals, timber, food and funds) shown on an overlay in the top-right corner, and when you dispatch through Ross. They come two ways: donated from your inventory to Carl, or brought back as mission rewards. Donate only what you no longer want (obsolete weapons, excess materials), which also frees inventory space, and not to hand over large sums of funds early, when money is scarce; let the missions build the stock instead. Patch 2.01.00 (4 September 2026) raised the Camp Funds gained from donating Silver tenfold, and fixed camp donation missions asking for less than the amount they displayed. Funds have had one more use since patch 1.18.00 (15 August 2026): research at the Research Institutes is paid for in Camp Funds instead of Silver. Patch 2.00.00 (25 August 2026) made Demenissian Chainsaws donatable as camp weapons. Donating to Carl also raises a donation level that pays out items placed at the camp.

Mission types

Missions divide into those that pay the camp (where a worker's matching skill improves the yield) and those that pay you personally, where it does not.

The personal-reward missions, with no skill bonus: Exploration, Crafting, Jewelcrafting, Engineering, Weaving, Calligraphy, Ritual, Construction and Recapture Stronghold.

The Gold Bar Investment missions came with patch 2.01.00 (4 September 2026): six of them, in the Funds tab of Camp Management, graded Conservative, Active or Aggressive like the bank's investment strategies. Each needs three members, one of them with the Accountant skill, costs between 1.9 and 3.1 million Camp Funds and takes three days. Even at the tenfold donation rate they are expensive, so the advice is to leave them until near or after the end of the main story, when spare funds pile up; there are easier ways to get gold bars.

Yield bonuses

• Skills: a worker whose skill matches the mission type raises the yield; only the highest bonus in the group counts.
• Extra hands: each worker beyond the mission's minimum adds 20%, to a maximum of 40%.
• Church donations: 2% per blessing level, worth the high cost. VULKK caps the bonus at 150% at level 75; SlashSkill at 200%.
• Golden Beer: doubles every dispatch reward.

A simple approach, with the caveat that none of this needs optimising unless you want to: put the workers with Tier III Expert skills on the highest-yield missions and everyone else on escort jobs. Apart from the Investment missions above, no source gives mission durations, provision costs per mission, a cap on simultaneous missions, or a way for a mission to fail, so none of that is here.

8. The Camp at Howling Hill

The Greymane Camp unlocks in Chapter 3, after the Homestead main quest, with more of it opening through Pioneering and the Greymane Faction Quests. Upgrading is quest-driven rather than a menu: the Grounds of the Sunrise questline (talk to Marius about recruiting Greymanes and expanding the camp) runs into Expansion Missions that raise the camp's level, and those missions demand a lot of provisions, which is what Mission Dispatch is for. Other faction quests add single features, for example Brice's Request, which teaches you to build a wagon and opens trade.

The expansion missions

Expanding is done by selecting the mission at the Howling Hill Camp (on the map, or through Ross) and sending Freeswords to complete it; each expansion lets more Greymanes appear and opens more quests. Four quests have an expansion objective:

The first step: the camp reaches Level Two after "Expanding the Camp", the seventh and final mission of the Embers of Return questline. Other tips for the early camp: the Timberturner Wainright missions unlock the wagon, and "A Rumor at Glenbright Farm" unlocks the Cook and the Quartermaster together. The Greymane faction quests file Embers of Return, Gathered Will, Land of Dreams, Solid Foundation and Reuniting with Comrades under Grounds of the Sunrise, and Reconstructing Pailune and For a Better Tomorrow after them.

What each stage adds

The camp stage by stage, with the vendor each one brings.

On storage the sources do not match: Game8 gives the private storage chest a maximum of 230 slots; VULKK, 240 at the start rising to 1,000, as in the table. This page does not choose. A few smaller things: a bed for passing time, Carl holding any item you dropped and did not pick up, an anvil and grindstone for temporary stat boosts, a well giving 5 water a bucket, a training dummy that comes with the ranch, house decoration, and free pickups around the camp (weapons, 270 arrows, food, flowers, stone). There is also a Broken Abyss Nexus at each camp (east of the house at Howling Hill, behind the farm shed in Pailune) that needs an Abyss Transporter (from Muckroot Ranch on the Lion's Path of Return, or Karin Quarry's Hidden Ruins after "Stolen Quarry") and Focused Force Palm to break the Bismuth walls.