What the coefficients say
Among the negative-courage traits, Haunted is the only one that hands you something back. The datamine shows courage −0.16 and recklessness −0.10: a hero less willing to hold ground when a delve turns bad, but also one whose combat AI scores risky options lower all the time. That second number rewards a close look. A −0.10 recklessness damper is exactly what Sure-Footed and Professional carry. On those traits it’s a selling point, priced as a positive. Haunted delivers the same damper stapled to a flaw.
Position on the ladder: a shade worse than Shaken (−0.15, no rider) on raw courage, and well clear of Cowardly (−0.25) and Brittle (−0.26) at the top. Of the whole family (those four plus Superstitious at −0.10), Haunted is the only member whose rider points somewhere you might actually want to go. Cowardly’s threat reduction is compensation; Haunted’s caution is closer to a feature.
Haunted in the delve report
During a clean, well-scouted delve, the courage cut barely surfaces. Courage prices the bad moments, and a run that never sours never consults it heavily. The recklessness damping, by contrast, works every round: the hero declines marginal gambles, routes around danger, and takes the safer of two similar options whenever the AI scores them close. A Haunted hero on a routine delve reads like a careful professional: steady, unspectacular contribution, few self-inflicted disasters.
The problem is correlation. When a delve does turn, both coefficients pull the same way at once: the hero is cautious and faltering together, and recedes from the fight precisely when you need commitment. In a four-hero party that withdrawal is a quarter of your output vanishing in the rounds that decide whether anyone walks out. Conditions sharpen it. A curse or flooded hall that stretches the fight gives the courage lean more rounds in which to matter.
The report tell is distinctive and worth learning: strong, tidy rounds while things are fine, then near-absence after the first genuine crisis. If a hero’s contribution graph looks like a cliff with a calm plateau before it, you are probably reading a Haunted hero’s season.
Roles, pairings and party fit
Roles that prize caution over aggression carry Haunted best. Healers and support heroes lose little: their job is triage, and the recklessness damping actively suits the work. Ranged damage dealers behind a stable front line are similarly comfortable. The anchor is the one role where the trait disqualifies outright: courage is the anchor’s entire reason for existing, and a −0.16 lean is a structural crack in the position you can least afford one.
Pair a Haunted hero with the high-courage end of the roster. Dauntless or Unbreakable Will company holds the line through the bad moments, which keeps those moments short and the courage cut mostly untested; the caution rider then does its quiet work for free. A high-protectiveness partner (Loyal, or Field Medic at the top of that ladder) adds a second layer, since a hero inclined to recede benefits most from a party-mate whose AI prioritises covering others. What you must not do is stack fear traits. Two heroes faltering together turns a wobble into a rout. The whole family sits side by side on the trait index if you want the ladder in one view before you build the four.
Oaths, wages and the price of a ghost
Recruiters see the courage number, file Haunted next to Shaken, and price the two alike. That is a small mistake in your favour: the recklessness rider means Haunted costs less in play than its ladder position suggests, at least in the sheltered roles above. When the attributes justify the signing, buy the mispricing without apology.
There is also a permadeath argument the market rarely prices in. Risky actions are where heroes die, and a standing −0.10 bias against them, compounded across a career, is the sort of thing that keeps a hero alive long enough to retire, mentor, and found a bloodline. On a long-horizon hero that you intend to carry through multiple Sworn Oaths, that quiet survivability has real value. Just be honest at renegotiation time about what you have: a dependable second-rank contributor who will not save a crisis, and set the term to match. The oaths guide covers matching term length to role, which is exactly the discipline this trait demands.
When to pass: any recruit you were planning to anchor a front line with, and any guild plan built on long attrition delves, where the courage cut gets tested weekly instead of yearly. In those two situations the ghost costs more than the discount saves.
Version history
From v1.9.6 through v2.1.8, both coefficients are untouched: no rebalance, no rider changes. The courage-for-caution profile is stable, so a roster built around sheltering a Haunted hero won’t need redrawing after the next patch.