Welcome to my Spoiler-Free Simple Guide!

This guide is intended for players who want questions answered without story or gameplay being spoiled. It will contain information and advice not immediately obvious just from playing the game.

For specific help, I recommend one of the other great guides already available on Steam. Most of them contain spoilers though.

Bastard Bonds has a Debug Mode accessible by pressing the tilde (~) key. If you accidentally open Debug Mode, type a period (.) in the debug console box and press Enter. A series of less-than/more-than symbols will appear over your characters head. While the symbols are printing out, you can press tilde (~) again to close the Debug Mode.

Bastard Bonds does not have difficulty settings per se.

However, In the Options menu there is a setting called Difficulty Progression. Instead of choosing Easy/Medium/Hard mode, this setting determines how the game will be challenging rather than how much the game is challenging.

Band mode is easier in terms of battle, but harder in terms of stronghold & party management. You will almost never die in Band mode, but you will have to make difficult choices regarding who to recruit and how to spend your resources. Band mode is the default setting for the game and may make getting cetain achievements more difficult since you won't have the resources necessary to get them.

Leader mode is easier in terms of resources, but harder in terms of battle. However, the game auto-saves before your fatal battle if you die, so don't worry about losing much progress. Overall, Leader mode is more forgiving of mistakes but more random in terms of whether or not you will win.

You can switch between modes at any time, though doing so may make your gameplay experience unbalanced.

To receive all achievements, multiple plays are required. You do not have to fully finish the game more than once to get 100%, but you will have to create and play more than one character at least a little.

Most of the achievements are well hidden and won't be received just for playing through the story. You can get clues on most of the achievements without spoiling them by looking at their names, descriptions, and icons. There is more than one ending possible, depending on certain sidequests completed. You will have to get all endings to receive all achievements. You can reload a save after getting an ending and acheive another ending on the same character.

Bastard Bonds can take between 20-40 hours on first playthrough, depending on how much you like to explore. Once you know the story progression, subsequent playthroughs can be much shorter. The game is flexible enough to have plenty of replay value.

A talented speedrunner could probably complete the game in under 2 hours.

There are other great guides available here on Steam to tell you how to fully customize and maximize your character stats. This guide will just cover some of the basic tips the game doesn't fully explain.

Your character's gender/appearance only have mild affects on the story. Your main character cannot be switched out of the party, so create whatever look you want to stare at during the game.

Any Crime/Plea/Guilt combination can win the game. The combo you choose affects your alignment and your first party member.

First Party Member

Your first party member is chosen somewhat randomly from a pool. If you didn't get a specific first party member, you will be able to recruit them later.

Only two combinations will receive unique party members unrecruitable by any other. They are:

• Guilty Malediction
  
• Guilty Necromancy

Neither unique party member is required for 100% achievements, though picking Guilty Necromancy will lock out getting one achievement in that particular save game. Since getting all achievements requires multiple save games anyway, just don't pick Guilty Necromancy for every character you make.

Alignment

The tutorial does not explain this, but a character's alignment is displayed via an icon next to their name.

• Lawful: A yellow square inside another yellow square
  
• Neutral: A gray yin-yang-ish symbol
  
• Chaotic: A red star/asterisk shape

Class Symbol

The little gold symbol displayed beside a characters name and crime in some menus indicates their strongest stat. E.g., a sword = Fight is the highest stat, a boot = Dodge is highest, etc. This can be a useful reminder if you like to switch party members often and can't remember what everyone is best at.

Skill Points

Again, there are other guides available to tell you better how to maximize your skills.

HOWEVER. You only receive a Game Over if you your main character dies. Anyone else can be revived later. Therefore, I would recommend putting at least a few points into Guard and/or Ward to keep your main character alive.

It is not possible to recruit everyone in a single playthrough. Some recruits hate each other and you must choose between them. This is the primary reason you will end up needing to make more than one main character to get 100% achievements.

If you encounter a possible party member but don't have a Vacancy slot open in your Stronghold, you will be unable to recruit that character. Most characters only ask once and will be unavailable the rest of the game if you turn them down.

Servants do take up slots, even though they will not be added to the "Band of X" totals visible underneath Secured location descriptions. To double check your available slots, enter your Stronghold and click the Base menu in the upper left. Your vacancy will be listed on the right side.

To avoid this missing recruits, I recommend saving before entering each new area. You can always reload and come back later with a vacant slot.

Some recruits require additional steps or story progress to appear, even if you can access their location beforehand. It is also possible for characters to disappear if you progress too far in the story without recruiting them. Other guides are available to tell you specifics; for this guide I will be vague to avoid story spoilers.

Here is a list of all locations that contain a party member. Make sure to have at least one vacant slot before entering them. Keep in mind that since your first party member is chosen at random, one of the locations below may be empty during your playthrough.

• Ash-Caked Archive
  
• Blackspire Oubliette
  
• Brad'uk Labour Camp
  
• Burnt Earth Coven
  
• Caldera Skyway
  
• Crumbling Ziggurat
  
• Dusklight Grotto (this recruit is not missable)
  
• Emitt Manor
  
• Forsaken Hideaway
  
• Hayill
  
• Knightwood Detour
  
• Logging Camp
  
• Luntime Lighthouse
  
• Overgrown Highroad
  
• Pumphouse Brewery
  
• Ramshackle Commune
  
• Secluded Commune
  
• Stewpot Reststop
  
• Stillwind Abbey
  
• Young Trail

Since Bastard Bonds is a strategy game, it is possible to play yourself into a corner and be unable to finish if you don't plan certain things. Here are some tips to help you along.

• Character's skill points can be reset for free by having that character talk to the Struggle statue at the Fundamentals Shrine. However, resetting skill points also resets a character's disposition/friendliness towards the main character and may make obtaining certain achievements extremely difficult.
  
• The absolute minimum Manpower required to beat the game is 3,403. You will be unable to hire servants or have any extra vacancy slots with this amount.
  
• The Quartermaster in your Stronghold will always state your next story objective if you speak with them.
  
• CERTAIN ACHIEVEMENTS/EVENTS REQUIRE YOU TO HAVE LESS THAN FOUR PEOPLE IN YOUR PARTY WHEN VISITING A LOCATION.
  • It is not enough to have the right characters with you to activate events, sometimes you must have only the right characters with you. It is common sense to keep your party full at all times (especially since having less than four will flash the message "Party is Shorthanded!" at you), but many of the achievements will require you to either have only two or three party members when you enter a location. Or even just the main character by themselves.
  • Don't worry about this the first time you enter a location. You can reenter the location with the correct party setup later.
• If you get to a point where you just can't progress, don't worry about having to start a new game. Previous characters you make will show up as recruitable party members on your new characters!
  
• If you are having trouble with the final boss of the game, there is a hidden sidequest to weaken it. You will have to beat the boss's strong form to get all achievements, though.
  
• In addition to manual saves, the game makes a temporary auto-save before you enter any area, including the final area. So don't worry about getting stuck at a difficult location. You will be able to go elsewhere and level up or change party members before trying again.