Crimson Desert Guide

How to recruit more comrades in Crimson Desert: festivals and Honorary Greymanes

Out of Greymanes to dispatch after Charting the Unknown? Raise trust with named NPCs, hold a camp festival, and hire visitors as Honorary Greymanes.

Mechanics · Updated

Steps

  1. Raise trust with the NPCs you want. Only named NPCs you've already built trust with come to the festival, and only some of them can be hired. Chat, give gifts and do favors for the people you want on your roster before you start.
  2. Start the Festival Preparation camp mission. Festivals came with update 2.04.00 and the Charting the Unknown DLC. Open your camp's dispatch list and send the Festival Preparation mission. It runs on a timer like other dispatch missions.
  3. Go to the festival when the timer ends. Trusted NPCs visit your camp for a limited time, arriving in groups, so be there while it's running.
  4. Talk to every visitor and pick Recruit. Walk up to each guest and check their options. The ones that can join show a Recruit option next to Chat and Gift. Pick it and they join as Honorary Greymanes.
  5. Put them to work. Honorary Greymanes can go on dispatch missions like your other comrades, though Pearl Abyss says some features may be unavailable to them.
  6. Repeat with the next festival. Festivals can be held again. Visitors who didn't offer Recruit this time may do so later once their trust is higher, and festival chats raise trust faster than usual.

The problem: Charting the Unknown gives you a lot more jobs for your Greymanes, but no new Greymanes to do them. One player on Steam counted about ten comrades tied up in a daily money run, more on building materials and schematics, and only seven left over for the ship. Mining robots and mercenaries help with some camp work, but they don’t fill every role.

The fix: hold a festival at camp and hire the visitors. NPCs you’ve built enough trust with come to the party, and some of them can be recruited as Honorary Greymanes. They join your roster with everyone else. This is the marked answer on the Steam thread, and it matches what Pearl Abyss wrote in the 2.04.00 patch notes.

How festivals work

Festivals arrived in update 2.04.00, alongside the Charting the Unknown DLC. According to the patch notes:

  • A new camp mission lets you hold a festival.
  • NPCs you’ve reached a certain level of trust with visit the camp for a limited time.
  • Talking to NPCs during the festival raises their trust faster than usual.
  • Certain visitors can be hired as Honorary Greymanes.
  • Honorary Greymanes can be sent on dispatch missions like your other comrades, but some features may not be available to them.

The mission is called Festival Preparation, and you’ll find it in your camp’s dispatch list. When it finishes, the visitors start arriving in groups.

Who you can recruit

Trust is the key. When the asker on Steam wondered whether the festival guests really add to the comrade pool, the answer was yes: once recruited, they show up on the list with your other Greymanes. Guides point out that a guest attending isn’t the same as a guest being recruitable. If someone only offers Chat and Gift, keep building their trust and check again at the next festival.

The same Steam answer gives a tip on roles: farmers are good at farming and fighters are good at security, so pick visitors whose job fits the work you need done.

If the festival seems stuck

  • Visitors are slow to show up at night. That was a bug. Hotfix 2.04.03 on October 31 changed festivals so visits no longer slow down during nighttime hours, so update the game.
  • Festival Preparation isn’t listed at the Pailune camp. Output Lag reports that players who moved to Pailune only saw the mission after building the camp’s pond and insect holders. Howling Hill players don’t need to do that.
  • Only a few people came. Only NPCs you’ve already built trust with show up. Spend some time chatting and gifting around Pywel, then hold another festival.

For more on what Charting the Unknown added, see the DLC overview. If your sawmill is short on progress too, see Timberham Sawmill popularity stuck, and if you’re trying to raise trust with gifts, read game returns to the title screen when gifting an NPC first.

Sources

This guide summarizes answers from these community threads. Credit goes to the players who worked it out.