Welcome to the grim and grounded world of Wartales, where survival, strategy, and smart company management define your path forward. If you’re looking to sharpen your mercenary band into a disciplined, gold-churning, battle-ready machine, you’re in the right place. These ten essential tips—rounded off with a powerful bonus—will help you navigate the low-fantasy challenges of this turn-based tactical experience.
1. Unlock Career Plans Before Leveling Anything
Let’s get straight to the point: Career Plans is the most vital early-game investment you can make. Found in the Knowledge Compendium and costing two Knowledge Points, this perk gives you direct control over your units’ stat growth when they level up. Without it, stat gains are random. With it, you get to choose and maximize the most beneficial attributes for each unit.
Don’t waste those hard-earned aptitude points on random rolls—hold off on assigning them until you’ve unlocked Career Plans. It’s the difference between a mid-game slog and a powerhouse party that scales beautifully into the late game.
2. Movement Is King
Positioning is everything in Wartales, and movement governs your battlefield control. Enemies have fixed movement ranges that increase slowly over time. Staying just outside their range means you can avoid damage altogether—no need to burn resources healing or repairing.
Aim for at least 16–18 movement across your units, especially in smaller parties where mobility often equals survivability. Investing in mobility lets you kite, bait, reposition, and dominate from a distance. In short: if they can’t catch you, they can’t kill you.
3. Capture Outlaws for Profit and Utility
Outlaws aren’t just enemies—they’re assets waiting to be exploited. Capturing outlaw faction units while exploring or questing offers a side hustle with real payoff. Yes, prisoners do increase your food consumption during rest, but they also provide manpower and can be assigned to camp jobs or professions.
Need to reduce food costs? Assign one to your cooking pot. Need gold? Turn them in at jails across the regions for a bounty—the higher their level, the higher the reward. A flexible, lucrative strategy that adds flavor and function to your campaign.
4. Exploit the Tilt Lumber Mill
Once you’ve uncovered the Tilt Lumber Mill, you unlock a whole new prisoner exchange route—but there’s a twist. You’ll need to capture Refugee units roaming Tiltren roads and free some prisoners from a basement before the mill opens up as a drop-off point. Yes, this might clash with your moral compass—but Wartales is all about hard decisions.
In return, you’ll gain crowns, influence, and wood, expanding your economic options and pushing your mercenary enterprise to the next level.
5. Optimize the ALT Key
Navigating the game’s visual landscape can be tricky, especially when interactables blend into the scenery. Holding the Left ALT key outlines everything you can interact with. But here’s the trick: go into your settings and tweak the outline’s color and thickness.
Set it to a bright, obnoxious color—like neon blue—and crank the thickness. You’ll never miss a hidden item or clickable object again. An accessibility feature that doubles as a gameplay optimizer.
6. Underpowered? It Might Be Your Gear
If enemies suddenly feel overwhelming, the issue might not be your tactics—it’s your equipment. As your units level up, the enemies scale exponentially, and outdated gear will leave you severely disadvantaged.
The fix? Crafted gear. It’s easy to produce in a pinch and bridges the power gap when high-tier loot is scarce. One or two underperforming units can turn into key players with just a few stat-boosting pieces.
7. Profession Multipurpose Units
In smaller groups, you can’t afford to dedicate a unit to every single profession. Luckily, units retain all levels in previously trained professions—so you can switch freely without losing progress.
Use this to your advantage by creating multipurpose workers: one unit might serve as your blacksmith, cook, and alchemist. But avoid spreading your entire squad too thin—higher profession levels unlock stronger recipes, better crafting outcomes, and more efficient gathering. Specialize where it counts.
8. Hunt Down Golden Border Bounties
On the bounty boards, you’ll notice contracts with golden borders. These are Community Bounties—difficult encounters that reward you with some of the best weapons in the game.
These weapons, once leveled up at the Brotherhood Training Grounds, sit on par with legendary purple gear in functionality. They begin with stats like rare weapons, but unlike standard fare, they scale. Don’t miss these.
9. Master the Brotherhood Training Grounds
The Brotherhood Training Grounds aren’t just for flexing your mercs’ biceps. They offer key utility through skill books—starting skills like Taunt, Aim, or First Aid—and upon reaching level 4 in the Power and Glory path, you’ll unlock Mastery Skill Books.
These upgrade your class skills significantly and allow deeper specialization. Keep an eye out—these Masteries can transform how a unit performs.
10. Survive Cursed Village Fights
Struggling with cursed villages? These fights are nasty—but manageable. First, move your team to a corner and find an escape route with any mobile units. Meanwhile, backliners should spam First Aid to cleanse poison stacks off the frontliners.
Valor Support perks can boost your Valor point economy while staying near allies. And yes, you can use “Find a Way Out” multiple times, but it has diminishing returns—limit it to three or four uses per round for best results. Want to make it trivial? Equip a Swordsman tank with poison immunity or hardcore training. Suddenly, the poison isn’t a problem—it’s just noise.
Bonus Tip: Cook Special Foods for Combat Buffs
Don’t overlook food as a buff engine. Special recipes like Culture Shock, found in the Tiltren bar, provide massive campaign and combat benefits. It boosts your strength by 20% and slows down fatigue gain while traveling.
The result? Fewer rests, more efficient travel, and stronger offense—especially for strength-based units and crit-boosting dex units. In the long run, this saves you resources and boosts overall momentum.
That wraps up our core 10 tips and bonus strategy for dominating Wartales. The road is harsh, the choices are often bleak, but with the right knowledge and a little bit of ruthlessness, your mercenary company will thrive. Now get out there, build your legacy, and may your contracts be rich and your enemies ill-equipped.
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