Two ways it keeps a quarrel alive
Slow-fading bad bonds. Every bond between two heroes drifts back toward neutral, about 1% of its strength each day. Unforgiving halves that drift for negative bonds involving this hero; if both heroes in the pair are Unforgiving, a quarter. Good bonds drift at the normal rate.
Grudges that never end. A hero can carry a specific grudge, against another hero or against a rival hall. Normally a grudge eases each time something good passes between the two and is eventually buried. An Unforgiving hero never buries one. The game also treats any pair with the lowest possible compatibility (−3) the same way.
| A bond at −40, after one month | Ordinary pair | One Unforgiving hero | Both Unforgiving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Without a Peacemaker home | about −30 | about −34 | about −37 |
| With a Peacemaker home (×1.5) | about −25 | about −32 | about −36 |
That is the difference between a feud that fades over a season and one that is still there next year.
Why that costs you
Bad bonds have practical effects. In a fight, a party-mate will not cover a hero they are on bitter terms with (bond −40 or worse), so protective traits stop working between them. On pair duty a bad bond makes a rebuff more likely. Feuds feed events such as “Bad Blood” that usually cost gold or morale to settle (see the events page). With an ordinary hero, time does much of the repair work for you; with an Unforgiving hero it barely does.
How an Unforgiving hero leads
At a dungeon fork, an Unforgiving leader goes their own way: whatever the side room is, they take it half the time, whether the party is fresh or hurt. An ordinary leader would take it 60% of the time with a fresh party but only 20% with a hurt one, so the Unforgiving leader is the more dangerous of the two on a bad day.
Jobs and flavour
- Expedition jobs dislike it. Expedition postings list Unforgiving among the traits they would rather not take, which takes 6% off the hero’s suitability. Two weeks in close company is the wrong job for a hero who keeps score.
- Flavour. Quest reports have Unforgiving lines, and on pair duty the hero speaks with the “unforgiving” voice shared with Sore Loser: old wrongs brought up over the mending, card games not forgiven, small debts remembered.
The hero card links the trait to Teamwork. That link is descriptive and does not lower the attribute.
Managing an Unforgiving hero
- Avoid creating the conflict. In events that ask you to side with one hero against another, be careful when the loser is Unforgiving: a quarrel with them is close to permanent.
- Fix feuds actively. Choices that raise a bond directly matter more here than waiting.
- Keep a Peacemaker home. It speeds the fading of every bad bond by half again, which partly offsets this trait.
- Keep them out of the leader’s seat on floors where you want the party to come straight home.
Conflicts and rarity
Unforgiving can never appear with Easygoing or Peacemaker. Earning either later in a career removes it.
- Rarity: common, negative · draw weight 100 of 6,365 · about 1 recruit in 25
- Founding draft: any card, or as the negative half of the wildcard card.
- In the wiki’s archive: first present in the 2.1.8 build (absent from 2.0.7).
Recruiting
A mild negative on its own. It becomes costly on a guild that already has tensions, and matters little on a harmonious roster. Check how a recruit’s arrival would sit with heroes they might clash with.