Delve marks and form
After every delve each hero gets a mark: Heroic, Inspired, Steady, Shaken or Unstable. The mark does two separate jobs.
It moves morale straight away. Heroic is +2, Inspired +1, Steady nothing, Shaken −6 and Unstable −12, before scaling. The swing is halved for Steady, Iron-Willed, Cool-Headed and Stalwart heroes and increased by half for Vain, Glory Hunter and Arrogant ones; Greenhorn and Rising heroes feel every mark half as much again, and Veterans take bad marks at half.
It feeds form. The game keeps a hero’s last five marks. Three Heroic or Inspired marks among them put the hero in form; three Shaken or Unstable marks put them out of form. Crossing either line is worth +2 or −2 morale on the day it happens. Form also follows the hero onto the market: in form, rivals value them about 25% higher, and big bids and successful sales come far more easily; out of form, about 20% lower.
What Consistent changes
When a Consistent hero earns a Shaken or Unstable mark, there is a 50% chance it is written into their form record as Steady instead. Good marks are recorded as they are.
Two things follow from where the swap happens:
- The immediate morale hit still lands. The −6 or −12 for a bad delve is taken from the real mark, so a Consistent hero still feels a poor run.
- The slump arrives much later. An ordinary hero drops out of form after three bad marks in five delves. A Consistent hero needs about twice as many bad delves before three of them stick, and one or two poor outings almost never tip them over.
Their good runs still count in full, so a Consistent hero can get into form just as quickly as anyone else.
Why that is worth having
- Fewer slump penalties. Dropping out of form costs 2 morale, and morale never recovers on its own.
- Stable value. If you might sell the hero later, their price does not crater after a bad fortnight.
- A clearer read. Because form stays put, the hero’s form badge tells you more about their real level than it does for a volatile hero.
It does not make them fight any better. A poor delve is still poor for the guild.
The opposite trait
Streaky writes every mark into the form record twice, so two bad delves are enough to put a Streaky hero out of form and two good ones to put them in. The two traits can never share a hero, and neither can Consistent and Gambler, which doubles down on variance in skill rolls.
Small hooks elsewhere
- Forks. Consistent gives no lean at a dungeon fork; a Consistent leader uses the default odds (60% to take a side room with a fresh party, 20% with a hurt one).
- Flavour. Quest reports have Consistent lines, and on pair duty the hero speaks with the “exacting” voice shared with Exacting, Methodical, Professional, Diligent and Traditional.
The hero card links Consistent to Composure and Discipline. That link describes the trait and does not change the attributes.
Rarity and history
- Rarity: uncommon, positive · draw weight 45 of 6,365 · about 1 recruit in 57
- Founding draft: any card.
- In the wiki’s archive: first present in the 2.1.8 build (absent from 2.0.7).
Recruiting
A mild positive. It is worth a small premium on core starters you plan to keep for years, where steady morale over a long season matters more than a quick sale, and on heroes you may want to sell later at a fair price. Pair it with Cool-Headed or Steady if you also want the immediate morale hit from bad delves halved.