Wartales: Best Knowledges To Unlock First (2024)

Wartales is one of the most immersive mercenary sims available, and like most games of its kind it drops you in and leaves you to fend for yourself. As you explore the world and make new discoveries, you're rewarded with Knowledge, which can be used to unlock abilities for your troop or crafting recipes that will help you throughout your adventure.

There are a lot of basic Knowledges that you'll want to get right away upon starting a new game. Here's the order that we like to use whenever we assemble a fledgling company in Tiltren.

1 Cooking Pot

One of the very first things you'll need is a Cooking Pot. Your soldiers, pack animals, and war beasts are going to eat a lot of food, and without a cook to churn out meals they're going to go hungry. Always have at least one companion with the Cook profession, and have your Tinkerer build a Cooking Pot the first time you camp.

Not only is the Cooking Pot required to craft meals, but you can also slightly reduce the amount of food your troop eats by assigning a Cook to tend the Pot while you're in camp. This is different from actually crafting food, so don't forget!

2 Bread, Braised Chicken, and/or Medium-Rare Mutton

Of course, your Cooking Pot won't do you much good if you don't actually know any recipes. Bread, Braised Chicken, and Medium-Rare Mutton are all great choices because the ingredients are readily available at Three Hares Market in Tiltren.

Braised Chicken and Medium-Rare Mutton are slightly more filling than Bread, but using meat and grain in conjunction with one another can help you meet your troop's food requirements exactly without going over. There's no benefit to overfeeding the company, so try not to waste food if you can avoid it.

3 Smooth Talk

Now that you can actually feed your troop, you'll probably be at the point where it's time to start bringing on new hires at the Inn. Smooth Talk reduces the recruitment cost of new companions by ten percent. It's especially useful at the beginning of the game when you have to pinch every krown to get by, and the savings you'll make in the long run really adds up.

4 Rationing and/or Frugality

Rationing and Frugality are two different Knowledges, but you should take them one right after the other. They reduce the troop's food consumption and wage requirements, respectively. The earlier you unlock them, the more you'll save... and the less likely it is that you'll come up a few krowns short on pay day or have to deal with empty stomachs.

5 Career Plans

Career Plans is an advanced Knowledge that requires you to save up two Knowledge Points to unlock. Try to get it early, since KP are easy to come by during your initial explorations.

Career Plans allows you to trade Influence for extra stat points when leveling up a companion. This helps reduce the level of randomness that goes into character growth, and makes it much easier to give your soldiers the builds that you want them to have. An archer who just can't get a decent bonus to Dexterity is going to have a rough time, after all.

6 Grilled Carp and/or Pike Soup

Sushi isn't known to the people of Wartales, so you're going to have to cook the fish that you catch. Most of the early fishing spots are abundant with carp and Pike, so Grilled Carp and Pike Soup are the ideal starting recipes for your pescetarian menu.

You can learn to fish by interacting with the rod at the pier in Old Wilbert's Fishery. This unlocks the Angler profession. Be sure to craft Fish Hooks at Camp!

7 Medicine

Visit the Apothecary in Tiltren to unlock the Alchemist profession; this gets you immediate access to the Medicine recipe, which lets you craft your own basic healing draughts instead of paying nearly forty krowns apiece for them.

Medicine is used to heal injured companions after a battle, and some quests require it for specific dialogue options. Never set out without a good supply of Medicine!

8 Weighted Training

The best way to expand your carrying capacity is to hire more companions or purchase more ponies, but that increases your costs. You can get more out of your existing party by taking Weighted Training, which increases the team's overall weight capacity by ten percent.

Carrying more weight than your current capacity slows movement on the map to a crawl, essentially forcing you to drop unnecessary cargo if you want to get anywhere. By raising the cap, you reduce the risk of this happening.