Capturing enemies provides various benefits. This guide will explain everything you need to know.

There are multiple prisons throughout the world. Every prison sells Chains, Rope and Barber's Kits. Each prison will also sell unique blueprints for crafting items which synergize with prisoners. This could be camp equipment, accessories for prisoners, or items like Toothpaste which helps recruit prisoners.

You can capture different enemies. In order to be able to capture an enemy:

• The enemy must be engaged in combat
  
• The enemy must have less than 50% health
  
• The enemy must not be a named enemy, leader, Seasoned or Merchant
  
• You must have chains or rope in your inventory. Amounts required to capture:
  
  • Humanoids: 1x Chains
    
  • Small animal (wolf, boar, mole rat...): 1x Rope
    
  • Medium animal (alpha wolf, dominant sow...): 3x Rope
    
  • Large animal (bear...): 5x Rope

Once all of the above conditions are met, stand next to an enemy and a Capture icon will appear on your list of actions. A capture attempt counts as a base action, meaning you will not be able to perform a standard attack if you use Capture. A capture attempt has 50-100% chance to succeed. The lower the enemy health, the higher the capture chance.

When attempting to damage enemies to make capturing easier. Always consider the possibility of a critical hit, which will always be your weapon's maximum damage multiplied by your critical damage.

Note that capturing an enemy will not increase your troop's morale. In difficult fights it's a good idea to kill as many things as possible first and then attempt capturing as it may take multiple tries.

Captured Animals:
Will join your troop and can fight for you.
Capturing a level 3+ boar will allow you to make it into a Livestock Boar. You may execute a livestock boar for loot. Captured and executed boar will drop more loot than one killed in battle. You may also keep a livestock boar in your camp for several rests, after which they will gain the Fat trait, yielding even more loot after executing.

Captured Humans:

• Outlaws can be handed-in to a jail for a reward of gold, influence, and lowering suspicion. The gold reward scales with the outlaw's level.
  
• Refugees can be handed-in to bandits in Tiltren Lumber Mill for a gold reward (if you haven't killed the bandits).
  
• Recruit prisoners to join your troop. Every faction has different bonuses. See Factions and Special Units for a list. Most captured units will be weaker than units recruited normally as they will have fewer skills and passives they can use. However, there are some units with very strong passives and may be worth adding into your troop.
  
• Assign prisoners to work in your camp. There are belt accessories which will increase prisoners' production above standard companions' production rates. You may also whip prisoners to increase production (Warning: Whipping multiple times will result in the prisoner dying)
  
• Prisoners with high constitution and/or Stocky trait can help with carrying weight. Constitution is determined by the prisoner's main armour type and level (Heavy > Medium > Light). Look for high-level enemies wearing heavy-armor for highest Constitution. They are still slightly less food efficient than work ponies but provide the benefit of being able to work in the camp.
  
• Use prisoners for risky tasks to protect your troop, like puzzles in the tombs or profession tasks if playing on Extreme difficulty as failing can result in an injury.
  
• Use prisoners for professions which give undesirable bonuses. Such as Brewmaster which reduces willpower. Allowing you to train your companions in professions for the bonuses you specifically want

You will need to spend some gold and influence to let the bandits pay you for bringing in refugees at first. If you don't have enough at the time, you may initiate the fight and flee the battle to come back later.

Any animal you capture will immediately join your troop.
Any human you capture will become a prisoner. To recruit a prisoner, you need to increase their trust.

Every prisoner has a Trust value which may range from -50 to +50. This value will change based on your actions. A newly captured prisoner has a trust value of 0.

At trust value 40+, the prisoner has a chance to ask to join your troop after every rest. The higher the trust value, the higher the chances of prisoner asking to join your troop. At trust value 50, the prisoner seems to always ask to join on the very next rest.

When the prisoner is ready to ask to join your troop, they will have a question mark icon on them. Right-click the prisoner to recruit them. You will need to spend Influence to accept. If you don't have enough influence, you can avoid right-clicking on them until you have enough. Alternatively you can refuse them and they will ask again in a few days.

You may check approximate trust values by right-clicking on a prisoner and clicking the handcuffs icon. The following are value ranges falling within the description:

• Trust changes can apply multiple times per day (e.g. healing an injury, or using toothpaste)
  
• Trust changes from resting apply before the roll to join your troop. This means if you are at 40 trust and then assign to work (+5) with personal cup equipped (+5). The trust will increase to 50 first, and then prisoner instantly joins the troop
  
• Personal Cup blueprint is in Grinmeer jail. (Go North from Tiltren to Vertruse and then North-East to Grinmeer). The jail is close to the border past the brotherhood fortress if you just follow the road
  
• A prisoner who escapes will not be affected by trust changes from resting and instead will keep trust values from the night before the escape if recaptured.
  
• There seems to be a bug with Barber's Kit. Only the first use gives +5 trust. Subsequent uses seem to decrease trust. If you have used a barber's kit multiple times, you can still recover as the lowest trust value a prisoner can have is -50. If you really value the prisoner, you may increase their trust again
  
• See the Nearby Companions section for details about when a companion is considered nearby

You can significantly increase trust levels and recruit the prisoner even on your first rest if you get trust high enough.
- Toothpaste is the most efficient way to stack trust quickly. Toothpaste blueprint can be bought at Tiltren jail.
- To use Toothpaste, you must open your inventory and right-click on the toothpaste. Then select the prisoner you want to use it on. Do NOT feed the toothpaste during a rest as food, it will have no effect.
- You can get the prisoner injured by failing a task on Extreme difficulty or entering the wrong combination for the scholar puzzle in a tomb (any difficulty), then healing the prisoner. This can be repeated as many times as you want (although not recommended as medicine is a lot more valuable than toothpaste)
- To efficiently recruit a prisoner on your first rest, you can:

• Use 1 Barber's Kit (+5)
  
• Use 7 Toothpaste or 6 Toothpaste + Equip Personal Cup (+35)
  
• Assign the prisoner to work (e.g. Meat Drying Rack or Tannery) (+5)
  
• Put 4 human companions near the prisoner (+4). This also prevents the prisoner from escaping if they are injured. If the prisoner is not injured, use 5 companions instead
  
• Rest with enough food for everyone (+1)

This will bring the prisoner to 50 Trust and they will instantly join your troop after the rest.

Every rest, a prisoner has a chance to attempt an escape. The probability is labelled as low, average or high.
If a prisoner attempts to escape, this is checked against their Escape Ability stat. This can be viewed by right-clicking the prisoner.


If you intend on recruiting the prisoner. Never assign them to stocks.

If a prisoner successfully escapes, you will be notified by the after-rest message. The escaped prisoner will be somewhere near the camp and you can usually walk around a bit to look for them and recapture them. The prisoner will be fairly close to the camp so just look around first and if you can't see them, walk in a circle near your resting spot. You will need to have spare Chains to be able to recapture. If a prisoner escapes with an item equipped, they will have the item on them (except for Chains) when recaptured. The escaped prisoner will be alone and show up as the icon corresponding to their faction. If you don't recapture the prisoner within a few rests, they will be lost.

• Use Stocks for prisoners you want to hand-in, keep for carrying weight, or for professions you don't intend to use while resting (Like Mining or Fishing)
  
• Get prisoners injured either by whipping them (do not whip if you want to recruit them as this will ruin your trust) or bring them to a tomb, make them do a Scholar puzzle, and intentionally fail it
  
• Place your camp equipment in a way that your troop can work while next to prisoners. Place work ponies or other animals, which don't work, next to prisoners. You can rotate camp equipment by pressing R. Note that animals will slightly lower trust, so use them sparingly or only for companions you don't intend to recruit.
  
• Note that ponies show as 1x2 square size but their prisoner guarding radius is the same as for humans. Only the center 1x1 square of ponies is considered when determining if they are nearby

A companion is considered "nearby" if there is no more than 1 human-size square gap between the prisoner and the companion. Diagonal companions count as nearby. You can verify that a companion is nearby if you right-click on the prisoner and check that their "Escape Ability" has decreased. Companions can be assigned to work near prisoners and still count as nearby

The image below shows an example camp arrangement which guards prisoners while allowing your troop to continue working.

RED squares: Prisoners
BLUE squares: Companions
BLUE circle: Selected companion's radius for being considered Nearby

Units from various factions will have unique bonuses. The bonuses apply to all units within the faction. Some special units will provide bonuses to your entire troop. Consider capturing and recruiting special units for your troop for the unique bonuses.

• Attacking merchant caravans allows you to capture ponies. In late game this is the only way to get a Lvl 15 pony

These are (in my opinion) the best units to recruit

• Wrongdoer (Bandits) - I believe this to be the #1 best special unit to have as they provide a 30% Critical Damage buff to your entire troop at all times significantly boosting your damage output.
  
• Brigadier (Purifiers' Guild) - This unit seems extremely strong to have and may not be intended to be capturable. If a Brigadier is present in group, units will gain Guard equal to the highest guard within a 4 meter radius. This means that if you put a squishy unit like an archer next to a tank with 80% guard, the archer will gain 80% guard. As far as I know, there is only one instance where you can fight the Purifiers' Guild and that is at the very beginning of the game. In Tiltren, go to the Woodland Farm where you will find Torus: a plague-infected companion. Recruit Torus by giving him some meat and head south-west into the mountain near the Abandoned Tower. This will only work if Torus is still infected. If you cure him, you will not be able to initiate a fight. You should find a Purifiers' Guild group there, they will say they are looking for a plague-infected man and demand you hand him over. If you refuse, you will be able to fight them. If a Brigadier is not available in the fight or if you accidentally kill them, you will want to retreat and try later after a rest. I believe this is the only fight in the game where you can capture a Brigadier, if you fail, you will not be able to do it again.

• Arrow (Brotherhood) - Applies Vulnerability to one enemy every round. This is less effective in large groups but when fighting fewer enemies, especially champion fights, this can be a nice boost to your group's damage output. Namely if you have synergies with Critical Hit as you will have 1 guaranteed crit every round.
  
• Renegade (Deserters) - Can be a useful support unit to protect your tanks. This unit alone provides the Supported buff. This can be good for small groups or arena fights, especially if you use the Strategy Table buff for Supported
  
• Savage (Trackers' Guild) - Has Berserk at all times, boosting their damage output by 100%. Can also work well in conjunction with a tanky animal companion like a bear. The Trackers' Guild passive will also heal your nearest animal based on their Constitution. A bear will have a ton of health, making this heal very strong, healing the bear for 25% of its health every turn. An animal engaged in combat will also boost the Savage's damage output to the engaged enemy by another 50%. This makes Savages very strong glass cannons.
  
• Worshipper (Inquisition) - Prevents enemy Galvanization. This can be useful when fighting the Deserters specifically as they can easily gain Galvanization
  
• Recruit (Alazarian Soldiers): Makes for a decent support tank as they keep their full guard value even when hit from behind. If they have no guard, their attacks will apply Vulnerability. If you want vulnerability you can also keep them in light armour or go for some vulnerability-applying attacks on rounds where they are destabilized.

Emissary would be a great unit to recruit. However, unfortunately they cannot be engaged in a fight and so also cannot be captured.
Peacebearer prevents losing Morale, however this does not work with reinforcements. The morale bar will still go down if reinforcements come. This may only be related to morale drops due to units dying.