Adventurers are fellow journeymen (not really - they're just randomly generated NPCs) running around Tyris. They can be talked to, traded with, be hired as a seven day mercenary, or be solicited to join your party. They appear randomly in towns or in your home as visitors when you have a maid where they will either just be dropping in, have a drink with you, train you, or give you a gift or token of friendship. The informer can give you a list of the ones currently in your game and their locations, although no one has ever actually found one anywhere but in towns. Sometimes new adventurers will be added to the list.
If you get a message that starts with "[News]", that refers to an NPC adventurer in your game, rather than to another human player like the death messages you sometimes get.
Trade[]
Adventurers carry randomly generated equipment, the quality of which is affected by their fame rank and/or level. As a result, they often carry rare equipment such as speed rings, high level monster balls, rare scrolls, ridiculously strong armor and just about anything you may want. These items can be traded for if you have an appropriate substitute, or be stolen if you are a good enough pickpocket. See the article "Trade" for more details.
Adventurers will periodically find new artifacts if their inventory isn't full. To ensure that they have empty inventory slots, you can trade for cheap items with a stack of booze, then Give them the same type of booze to have them guzzle down the whole stack, thus freeing up a slot in their inventory.
Training[]
Adventurers with high impress status can train attribute potential for 6 platinum coins in your home. If you don't know the skill already, they will offer to teach it to you for some amount of platinum coins (not sure if based on regular cost to learn, but was offered a new skill for 26 platinum coins, whereas learning a new skill would cost 39 platinum coins).
Hiring[]
Adventurers can be hired for periods of seven days. A high affection value reduces their hiring fee. During this time, they will act like semi-ally. Like pets, they will fight by your side, can be given equipment, will pick up ores, gold and food from the ground, will gain affection with kills, and can be emotionally manipulated with love-potion-drugged food and engagement jewelry. Unlike pets, equipment cannot be taken back unless you trade with them, they talk as normal citizens do instead of usual pet talk, and they will not use their spare gold to visit a trainer to increase their potential.
When your seven day contract with them is over, they will no longer follow you. If you're on the world map, they will disappear. If you're not, they'll become a normal adventurer NPC and can be hired again.
- At times, adventurers whose contract expires on the world map will remain, and wander about on it just like they would in town. This allows them to be interacted with normally, but one should be aware that you are still on the world map.
- The price to hire adventurers seems to be related to their fame. The amount is never too close to this number, however, and it bears further investigation.
Skills[]
Adventurers are of the Norland race, and may be Warriors, Archers, or Wizards:
- Warriors will fight with their melee weapons. (They may rarely shoot at close range instead, especially if fighting a hedgehog, slime, or other creature that would damage them or their weapons.)
- Archers will shoot, if they have matching ammo for their ranged weapon.
- Wizards will attack with Magic Dart and Nether Arrow, buff themselves with Holy Veil, and debuff enemies with Slow and Mist of Silence.
Recruiting[]
Adventurers can be recruited into your party. However, in order to recruit them you must have equal or greater strength than them, and your relationship with them must be at least Soul Mate. When recruited, they act just as pets do. And, due to the high level of affection required to recruit them, they can automatically be married once made pets.
- Note that there is an unseen counter which tracks the amount of times they're hired as well. It seems they must be hired at LEAST three times, only once for Elona+ as of 1.55. To make this process less painful, try and find the target NPC a few days before Etherwind, or hire them during bad weather (a single dungeon hop afterwards should be the end of that.) This way you get them 'hired' at least 2 times each time you meet. If you have pickpocketing and are going this method, you can ensure they're at Soul Mate or Love by throwing engagement rings/amulets or gifts at them just before the contract expires, stealing them back, then hiring them and immediately giving it right back. This will nullify the karma hit from using a love potion, obviously.
- Similar to the above, if you have the goods, you can trade for the engagement jewelry, then retrieve your valuables after recruitment, netting you the pet for nothing. This doesn't work after recruitment, obviously. Be wary when trading valuable potions.
- If you want to raise their affection but are unwilling/unable to give them engagement jewelry or pickpocket, just remember that you can get them drunk like any other NPC... and that prostitution will raise affection levels with the person in question. You even get gold out of it! However, unless you've used the Secret Treasure of the Wicked, you'll get a -1 karma hit for each time you have sex, plus there's the chance that you'll get sick. Also note that this most probably won't work with any adventurer wearing equipment which sucks blood, since the bloodsucking will interrupt the sex before it can complete.
- In Elona+ you can give them gift items (a type of furniture) to increase your relationship level. These can be bought for a lot of gold at souvenir shops (like at Larna), and sometimes at general good shops if the shop rank is high enough.
- If you've gotten your relationship with the adventurer up to at least Friends, you can increase it further by giving them tokens of friendship.
- Finally, a simple (but boring and expensive) way to increase your relationship level is to hire the adventurer for a week, send all of your other pets back to town, then grind through the Puppy Cave, letting the adventurer kill all the monsters.
Precious Items (Special Artifacts)[]
It's possible that an adventurer may acquire a Precious Item special artifact. If this happens to be an item you want, trading with them for it may be very expensive (12 potions of cure corruption for the Zantetsu, negotiation does not affect this). Precious Items cannot be pickpocketed either, remember. A solution would be to trade or pickpocket the rest of their equipment. A killed NPC will always drop whatever Precious Items they're carrying, however they will not drop them if they're in your party, so hiring them first to avoid them getting furious and attacking you back will not work.
Hostile[]
If an adventurer (or any NPC) is hostile to your character, use a disguise kit or scroll of incognito and then talk to them. After a chat, their hostility should disappear.
Each time you chat, the attract meter in the bottom left of the talk screen goes down. Once the meter is emptied their speech will become less friendly, This, however, has no significant impact on gameplay besides a minor relationship penalty each time you talk to them.
Death[]
Adventurers who die in battle, whether by your hand, while hired by you, or in battle with monsters in town, will be sent to a place called the hospital, which, like the stable your pets wait in when sent to town, does not seem to be anywhere in Tyris. After a period of some days, they will return to circulation. Your contract with them keeps running down during this period, and if they return before its end, they will still be in your service.
Sometimes adventurers in the Hospital will "realize their limitations and leave North Tyris". This removes them permanently from the game.
There are a set number of spots for adventurers in your save file, which are all filled at the start of the game. If there is an empty slot, a new adventurer will eventually start taking up arms.