Companions

Companions (also referred to as "team members") are recruited from the Hunters' Board in Dalearch and sometimes from events encountered while exploring Icenaire. There is no cost to recruit new team members from the Hunters' Board, but it does cost Hellion to recruit companions found while exploring.

There are ten types of Companions available for recruitment in Vambrace: Cold Soul. Each Companion has two Combat Skills by default: a Normal Skill and a Flourish Skill. Each Companion also receives an additional Flourish Skill that is assigned from options available for that Companion's type.

Each exploration stat(Sleight, Merchantry, Awareness and Overwatch) has a chance to get a critical, improving the results. Instead of a green text a bigger blue text will be shown. The higher the stat is, the higher the chance for a critical.

Team members also have a fixed distribution of stats based on their type in the following categories:


 * Health: The number of "hit points" a character has. If Lyric reaches zero Health, she will wake up at the Sylvani Healing Hall in Dalearch with her equipped relic, items, and companions intact. If another team member is killed, that character will be permanently lost along with any equipped relic.


 * Vigor: All characters lose one point of Vigor each time the team transitions into a new room during exploration. Vigor can also be lost during encounter events or when triggering a trap. If a character reaches zero Vigor, they are permanently killed. If it happens to Lyric, she will wake up in Dalearch as with zero Health.


 * Combat: This stat determines the amount of damage dealt by attacks that deal "Combat Damage."


 * Sleight: This stat is used to determine whether or not the team can open a loot container. The game automatically checks versus the highest Sleight in your party, so switching team members to open loot containers is unnecessary. A critical success for Sleight increases the amount and quality of loot a container has, as well as a chance for a relic. Very rarely containers(opened with critical success) will have 'Luxury items', which are worth a lot of currency.


 * Merchantry: This stat is used to determine what items a vendor will sell to the team. A success and Critical success each increases the amount of items the vendor will sell. Some of the more powerfull companion relics can only be acquired on vendors with critical access. A vendor with critical access also regularly sells relics of a higher quality than you can currently craft. This makes Merchantry a highly usefull skill. The game automatically checks versus the highest Merchantry in your party, so switching team members to shop at a vendor is unnecessary. However this does NOT apply to Dealarch, where only Lyric's Merchantry will be counted.


 * Awareness: This stat is used to determine whether or not a trap is triggered when the party encounters one. Upon a critical the member with the highest Awareness will recieve Flourish energy. The game automatically checks versus the highest Awareness in your party, so switching team members to explore Icenaire is unnecessary. Awareness is also factored into determining the turn order during combat.
 * Overwatch: When camping, the player must choose which team member to control during the camping sequence. The Overwatch stat is used to determine the success of resting and relaxing to restore Health and Vigor respectively, as well as to determine the amount of Health or Vigor restored. Criticals increase the amount of Health or Vigor restored by 1 in addition to providing a combat boost(when restoring vigor) or a damage shield(when restoring health) to all party members. If the active team member during a camping sequence is a Fencer or a Shadowmancer, the player may use the Scout action to reveal what type of Encounter (event, vendor, treasure, etc) will be triggered in any unexplored room for the current map.
 * Capacity: A hidden stat that determines how much carrying capacity a character adds to the team's total. If the weight of the team's carried loot exceeds the total combined Capacity for the entire party, then each member suffers status effect which decreases all stats by 2 making it incredibly difficult to continue exploring. Capacity is not shown when recruiting characters, but it can be determined by seeing how the team's total carrying capacity changes when a character joins the team.