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.