Crimson Desert: How to Recruit More Comrades in Charting the Unknown (Festivals and Honorary Greymanes)

30-second quick start (TL;DR)

• Problem: the DLC adds ships to crew and facilities to staff, but no new Greymanes. Robots cannot do either job.
• Answer: festivals. Start Festival Preparation from the camp dispatch list at Howling Hill or Pailune.
• At the festival: talk to every visitor. Those with enough trust show Recruit. Say yes.
• Who turns up: named NPCs you have already befriended, including shopkeepers. Vendors keep running their shops after you recruit them.
• Not recruitable: strangers, ogres, goblin traders, children.
• Other new comrade: Matthias, from Kliff’s post-ending quest Beyond the Margins.
• Hotfix 2.04.03 (October 31) fixed festival visitors arriving more slowly at night.

What this guide helps you do

Charting the Unknown hands you a ship that needs six crew roles, lets you lease a restaurant, a sawmill, a smithy and a tailor that all need staff, and keeps every dispatch mission you were already running. It does not hand you more people. Players with 200 hours and every base-game Greymane recruited are posting the same question: how do I staff all this? The answer is a system the patch notes mention in one line, festivals, and this guide explains how to trigger one, who shows up, who you can hire and what to do with them.

Official facts come from the 2.04.00 patch notes and the October 31 hotfix. Everything about where the festival appears, how many people come and what the recruits can do is from players’ first weekend, and we label it as such.

Why you are short of comrades

Three new sinks arrived at once. A ship wants a First Mate, Rigger, Lookout, Carpenter, Gunner and Deckhand, and the Gunner is required to fire the cannons while Deckhands are required for dispatch and island pioneering. Each leased facility wants its own staff. Dispatch missions for camp provisions still need bodies. Meanwhile the Mecha workers many veterans have by the hundred are locked to the old dispatch jobs: players report they “can’t work leases or crew ships”.

So the roster you finished the base game with is now spread across three jobs, and the only new named comrade the story gives you is Matthias, a trained-up version of your old sparring partner who joins after Kliff’s quest Beyond the Margins. Everything else comes from festivals.

How festivals work

The patch notes describe festivals as a camp mission: when you hold one, “NPCs with whom you have built enough Trust will visit your camp for a limited time”, interacting with them raises trust faster than usual, and “certain visitors can be hired as Honorary Greymanes”. Honorary Greymanes “can be sent out on dispatch missions like your other comrades, but some features may be unavailable to them”. That is the whole official description. The developer who spoke on a podcast before launch added that visitors are not only romance candidates: quest givers and other named people come too, and some may eat at your restaurant.

What players have filled in since:

• The mission is called Festival Preparation and sits in the camp dispatch list. It runs on a timer like any other dispatch.
• At Pailune, the mission only appears once the camp’s pond and insect holders are built. One player who could not find it built those and it showed up.
• When the timer ends, the game loads you to the festival ground. At Pailune that is in the upper part of the city near the player house, around the street where Oongka’s first DLC errand takes place. If you are standing in camp when it finishes, you get teleported there automatically.
• Visitors arrive in groups over the festival’s duration. Walk up to each one; recruitable visitors show a Recruit prompt next to the usual Interact, Chat and Gift.
• Recruits register in your comrade roster immediately and can be assigned like any other Greymane.

Step-by-step: hold a festival and recruit

Tick these off as you go. Your progress stays on this device.

1. 1Mark step 1 done

   Pick the people you want

   Named NPCs with a job you need: a smith, a carpenter, a cook, a sailor. Raise their trust with Chat, Gift and favours. High trust is what makes Recruit appear.

2. 2Mark step 2 done

   Build the festival prerequisites at Pailune

   If you have moved to the Pailune camp, construct the pond and the insect holders. The Festival Preparation mission does not list until they exist. Howling Hill players can skip this.

3. 3Mark step 3 done

   Start Festival Preparation

   Open the camp dispatch list and send the mission. If no timer appears, cancel it and send it again, or sleep a night; players hit a no-timer bug at launch.

4. 4Mark step 4 done

   Be in camp when it ends

   You get moved to the festival ground automatically. If you were elsewhere, ride to the upper Pailune festival site near your house.

5. 5Mark step 5 done

   Talk to everyone

   Visitors come in waves. Approach each named person and look for Recruit in the menu. Accept every one; you can always leave a weak recruit on camp duty.

6. 6Mark step 6 done

   Assign them

   Crew roles change in port, so sail there to add a Gunner or Deckhand. Facility staff are set from the Facilities map tab. Dispatch missions take them from the Comrade Dispatch Tent.

7. 7Mark step 7 done

   Run it again

   Festivals repeat. Keep befriending people between them and each one brings new faces.

Who you can and cannot recruit

Recruits inherit a skill set, and players are checking whether a miner recruited from a mine brings mining skills. That is unconfirmed. One captain’s approach is to look for recruits with the Host skill for facilities and leave sailing to the old Greymanes.

Stretching the roster you have

• Robots on dispatch, humans on ships and shops. Mecha workers still run ordinary camp dispatch. Pull every human off those jobs and let the machines do them.
• Crew only what you use. A Gunner matters when you fight; a Deckhand matters when you pioneer an island. Leave the slots empty between trips rather than parking six people on a moored ship.
• Close a facility if you have to. Facilities pay out over time and the early income is small. Two staffed businesses beat four half-staffed ones.
• Do Beyond the Margins. Matthias is a free, capable comrade at the end of it.
• Festival at night is fine now. Hotfix 2.04.03 on October 31 “adjusted festivals so that customer visit intervals no longer increase during nighttime hours”.

Troubleshooting and common mistakes

• Mistake: Festival Preparation is missing from the Pailune list. Fix: Build the pond and insect holders first.
• Mistake: The mission has no timer. Fix: Cancel and resend, or sleep. A launch-week bug, reported by several players.
• Mistake: The festival ended and nothing happened in camp. Fix: The festival ground is in upper Pailune near the player house, not in the camp itself. Go there.
• Mistake: Only merchants showed up and none would join. Fix: Their trust is too low. Build it and run another festival.
• Mistake: Trying to put robots on the ship. Fix: They cannot crew or staff. Humans only.
• Mistake: Assuming a recruited vendor’s shop closes. Fix: Players checked; the shops stay open, except the sawmill owner.

FAQ