Exploration Assignments and Explorers

This is a compilation of all the exploration assignment traits in No Haven as of version 0.7032. There are five total exploration assignments currently in the game. They are Plains, Ever Forest, Dreadsea Coast, Deep Mountains, and City of Aversol.

Universal Positive Traits
The traits in this section show up in every exploration assignment with the same effect listed. When looking for traits in a scout these ones are desirable since they will provide a bonus regardless of assignment type.

Psionic (Spy) and Sneaky (Sne) both provide a critical for the any of the five exploration assignments.

Loner (Lon), Peaceful (Pea), Perceptive (Pcp), and Stubborn (Stb) all provide a success to any of the five exploration assignments.

Ethereal (Eth) is a very strong exploration trait. It provides an exceptional bonus to both the Ever Forest and City of Aversol assignments while providing a critical to the remaining three assignments.

Universal Negative Traits
The traits in this section show up in every exploration assignment but provide penalties. When recruiting scouts these traits should be avoided.

Aggressive (Agg), Beautiful (Bea), Feminine (Fem), Unhinged (Unh) will all provide a failure penalty on any of the exploration assignments. If the scout has heavily weighted positive traits such as being both a psionic and sneaky one these would not be detrimental.

Bimbo (Bim), Exceptional Beauty/Femininity (Exc), Sex Addict (Sex), Thug (Thu) will all provide a disaster penalty on any of the exploration assignments. These should be avoided on your scouts at all costs since they hurt a lot.

Flip Flop Traits
The traits in the section provide positives on some of the assignments while providing a negative an usually only one of the other assignments.

Cowardly (Cdy) is actually a decent trait to have on your scouts. It will provide a success bonus to every mission that is not in the Deep Mountains. If a scout with cowardly goes to the Deep Mountains this usual success will be turned into a disaster penalty.

Flying (Fly) is an amazing trait to have on your scouts. It will provide an exceptional bonus to every exploration assignment that is not in the Ever Forest. If you attempt to scout in the Ever Forest with flying, the exceptional bonus will be turned into a disaster penalty. This trait is also very good because it reduces all scouting assignments, with exceptions of the Ever Forest and City of Aversol ones, time to complete by two days. Ever Forest is not reduced because you are harmed by it, and the City of Aversol instead reduces the time to complete by three days.

Fleet (Flt) will provide a success level bonus to all assignments except the Deep Mountains. In the deep mountains this success bonus will be turned into a failure penalty. Fleet further reduces all exploration times tom complete by one day with exception of the Deep Mountains and City of Aversol. Deep Mountains does not reduced the time, and City of Aversol instead reduces the time by two days.

Heroic (Her) will incur a failure level penalty to all assignments but the Deep Mountains. A Deep Mountains assignment will change the failure penalty to a success bonus. It is most likely not worth it to get Heroic on a scout since it will harm you in four areas while only slightly benefiting you in one.

Situational Positive Traits
The traits in this section generally only provide their bonuses on a few or just a singular mission. They are worth noting though for completeness.

Connected (Con) and Magic: Summoner (M:Su) provide a critical bonus in only the City of Aversol assignment.

Corrupt (Cor) and Eleementalist: Lighting (E:Li) provide a critical bonus only in the Deep Mountains assignment:

Herbalist (Hrb) and Magic: Nature (M:Na) provide a critical bonus only in the Ever Forest assignment.

Elementalist: Earth (E:Ea) provides a critical bonus on the Plains assignment.

Elementalist: Water (E:Wa) provides a critical bonus on the Dreadsea Coast assignment.

Tracker (Tra) and Resilient (Res) will provide a success bonus to every assignment but the City of Aversol. This makes these two traits almost fit into the universal positive section but they don't quite make it.

Tactful (Tac) and Persuasive (Per) provide a success bonus only in the City of Aversol. These two traits replace Tracker and Resilient in this particular assignment when comparing it to the others.

Honourable (Hon) provides a success bonus only in the Deep Mountains.

Situational Negative Traits
There is currently only one trait that provides just a failure on assignments.

Reserved (Rvd) will contribute a failure penalty to the City of Aversol Assignment.

What to Look For
Ethereal is very powerful with it providing either a critical or exception bonus. If a character has this trait and none of the disaster traits they will most likely make a very strong trait. Ethereal is very rare though so do not wait for one to show up.

Despite that will provide a disaster penalty in the forest, flying is arguably the most powerful scout trait. It will provide an exception bonus on every other mission and reduce the time to complete by roughly 1/3. An experienced enough scout with more positive traits and none of the negative ones can still safely explore the Ever Forest with flying.

Fleet can be argued for in the same way but its penalty is worse in the Deep Mountains since you will see it more late game. Again though fleet in the Deep Mountains only provides a failure rather than a disaster, which an experienced and otherwise well traited scout will shrug off.

Cowardly is a hard trait on a scout. Yes, it will provide a success bonus on every mission but the Deep Mountains. Problems will arise later though when you have experienced slavers. The Deep Mountains are where you will be sending those veterans and above for gold, supplies, and experience. So come late game, you will be hurting if your scouts all have this trait.

On the subject of Tracker and Resilient versus Tactful and Persuasive, it is better to pick up Tracker and/or Resilient because those two traits show up in four rather than one of the assignments. Tactful and Persuasive will provide no direct penalty but if there are two similar individuals go for the Tracker and/or Resilient individual.

For a scout aim for the universal positive traits while avoiding the universal negative ones. The situational traits are probably not worthwhile but could be beneficial for easing the leveling process in a certain area or if you wish to build a power region scout.

The only region that requires a truly unique scout would probably be the Ever Forest and/or City of Aversol. City of Aversol becaues the entire tracker/resilient problem. The Ever Forest because the usual flying exceptional bonus becomes a disaster.