Followers: taming and Leadership

A follower is a creature that walks with you and fights for you. You get one by taming a wild creature with a whip, and the skill behind it is Leadership. It costs a new character nothing: the Leadership trainer on Valinor hands you the whip, one follower is allowed at Leadership 0, and what you may tame goes by your character's level, not by the skill.

Whether it is worth your attention depends on your build. This is our reading of the rules below, not something a source says:

• A mage should tame from the first hour. You have the least health of the three, and a follower gives the creature something else to hit. A follower's health grows with your Intelligence (by Dragoneer's Den), you can heal it with your spells (by the wiki), and Fortify can be cast on it (patch of 2020-11-27). One limit: the order Assist follows your weapon's target, not your spell's, so a mage uses Protect or Attack.
• An archer gains almost as much. The follower holds the creature in place while you shoot, and Assist works with a ranged target. Your Dexterity makes it harder to hit.
• A warrior gains the least, because you stand in front anyway. Your Strength makes the follower hit more often, so it is a second set of blows, and it earns its keep on the three early bosses (see A follower for the guide's bosses).

For all three the cost is one click every time the follower dies. What we could not learn is whether a follower takes a share of your experience; if you see your experience per kill drop with one at your side, dismiss it for ordinary hunting and keep it for bosses.

The Totem of the Wolf Pup, which this guide tells you to get on Valinor, is not a follower. It makes you attack faster and summons nothing.

The follower windowWiki

How taming works today

1. Get a Trainer's Whip. The Leadership trainer on Valinor gives one, and the game's Leadership Guidebook says most general stores sell them.
2. Stand next to the creature. Click the whip in your backpack, then click the creature (the trainer's own words in our chat log).
3. Press F for the follower window and give it an order.

The rules, and where each comes from:

Dragoneer's Den lists the tameable creatures in bands of ten levels (1 to 10, 11 to 20 and so on). Neither it nor the patch note says whether a level 11 character can tame everything in the 11 to 20 band or only creatures up to level 11. The tables below give each creature's own level, so they are right under both readings: tame the best one at or below your level, and try the next one up to learn which reading holds.

The game answers a failed attempt in words. By Dragoneer's Den:

What the patches changed. Older pages, Dragoneer's own skill chart among them, still describe the rule of 2020, so it helps to know the order:

We found no later patch that changes the rules of 2024-03-02.

The tools

A beginner needs the Trainer's Whip and nothing else. AE Database gives the whip 200 points of wear, so it does not last for ever; keep the free one for taming and do not sell it.

Words of Binding is the one tool worth a detour, since its quest is in this guide's Whisperdale chapter at level 20 to 24 and the Soul of Beldan is only level 10.

The follower window

F opens it. It shows each follower with its health, and a button with the orders. From the game's Leadership Guidebook, the wiki and Dragoneer's Den:

Protect is the order for everyday hunting. Use Flee before you run, or the follower stops to fight everything on the way.

One trick from the wiki: a follower on Stay that you then order to Follow comes to you at once, wherever you are. Leave it on Stay before a dangerous stretch, cross, and call it.

What makes a follower stronger

A tamed creature keeps its kind's own numbers, and your character adds to them. By Dragoneer's Den:

This holds for tamed followers only. A follower called by a totem or a weapon does not get it, and by one of the game's developers, quoted on Dragoneer's Den, your buffs skip it too.

You can heal a follower with bandages (patch of 2020-06-07) and with a mage's healing spells (by the wiki). Otherwise it heals by itself over time. Fortify can be cast on followers, and Transfusion was rebalanced in December 2021 as a heal for them.

The Valinor trainer puts it this way in our log: "As you lead creatures, they draw power from you" and "A well balanced adventurer will be able to lead the strongest followers."

When it dies, when you log out, when you change map

• It dies. It is gone, and you tame another. No source names any other cost.
• You log out. The patch of 2020-05-29 says followers stay, under a new name, with whatever they carry. The wiki's page on the game's windows says you lose your pet. The patch note is the firmer source; we have not tried it.
• You change map. A follower comes to you when you teleport, unless it is on Stay (patch of 2020-08-27). Three dungeon entrances that that deleted followers on the way out were mended on 2025-08-16; if another one still does, that is a fault to report, not a rule.
• Some places forbid them: the Halloween dungeon, the Gauntlet event, and some end-game bosses.
• Kills by your follower count for your kill quests, as far as the patch of 2020-10-12 goes ("credit for kill count"). Whether you get full experience for them is one of the things we could not find out.

The Leadership trainer on Valinor, and raising the skill

The Leadership trainers stand at 763,121 by the community map, three tiles from the stairs to the magic trainers (763,118). This is what happened to our character, from the chat log:

• The trainer asks "So, would you like training in Leadership?". Say yes.
• You receive 1 Trainer's Whip and a Leadership Guidebook, and the quest "Weapons Training - Leadership".
• The quest has the same seven steps as every weapon trainer's, by the game's quest table: gain 500, 700, 900, 1,100, 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 experience in Leadership, returning after each. That is 12,700 in all.
• The rewards are bandages and gold, by the patch of 2024-03-02. Our character never finished a step, so we cannot give the amounts.

Take the trainer even if you do not mean to use the skill, for the free whip. Since 2024 it runs beside your weapon trainer's quest.

How the skill rises. Three ways are known:

• By use. Our log shows 1 point of Leadership experience at the moment a follower joined, which gave the first level, and 1 more during a fight with the follower at our side. How much a tamed creature earns you when it fights we do not know; the trainer's steps of 500 and more suggest it is not always 1.
• From the experience pool. Dragoneer's skill chart of 2024 marks Leadership as a skill the pool can go into. As with any skill, it needs its first level first.
• From a mission. Once in our log, a Lotorian Knight's mission paid its skill experience, 14,277, into Leadership, and the skill went from level 1 to 9 in one step. Other missions paid into Bows or Large Blades. We do not know what decides it.

What a skill level costs is the same for Bows and Carpentry in our own play, and the one Leadership figure we have fits the same curve. If Leadership follows it:

A patron mission pays about 31,000 into the pool at level 16 to 18 and about 77,000 at level 23 to 27 (see The patron). So the second follower costs about six missions' worth of pool in your twenties. That pool would otherwise go into your weapon or your magic. Our reading: a mage who leans on followers should spend it, an archer may, a warrior should not. The third follower, at Leadership 60, is beyond this guide; our own play have no costs past skill level 38.

No quest in the game's quest table gives Leadership experience by name, apart from the trainer's. The guild quest "A Leader is Born" is about founding a guild and has nothing to do with the skill.

What to tame when

How the picks were made. Level and health are from the game's creature table. The damage type and the resistances are from AE Database's bestiary, which agrees with Dragoneer's Den on which creatures can be tamed for every creature up to level 50. Where a creature lives is from the game's table of what roams where, given as a point in the middle of the nearest patch; it roams some way around it. "Hit us for" is what the creature did to our own characters in our chat logs, through whatever armor they wore at the time. It compares creatures of about the same level and is not what a follower will deal. No source gives a follower's damage.

No source recommends any creature. Every pick is our reading: most health for its level, then a damage type few things resist, then how near it stands to a town. Creatures that live only in the expansions are left out below level 50.

Valinor, level 1 to 10

Every skill stops at 15 on Valinor, so you have one follower here.

Dragoneer's list for Valinor also has the Dredge Spider and Young Hobgoblin, which live only underground, and a "Green Viper" that the game's table calls Grass Viper. It puts the Rancid Zombie at level 6; the game has 7.

Below level 4 a follower has 13 to 45 health and dies to anything. Start at the goblins.

On arrival, level 8 to 10

A bear or an apprentice tamed on Valinor does not have to be replaced at once: the best creature of level 10 has 130 to 150 health against their 104 to 120. Whether a follower crosses with you through the portal from Valinor we do not know. If it does not, these are the nearest replacements.

Level 11 to 20

The Astari Spy (18, 260 to 295) and Astari Assassin (20, 260 to 300) are as good as the Goblin Warrior and the Stag, and stand north-east of Autumn and in the Temple of Sabal east of Parian.

Level 21 to 30

Also in this band, for those who are there: the Large Fire Ant (25, 325 to 375) at the ant hill south of Krog, Pirates (25, 325 to 375) south of Varg, and the Familiar (28, 364 to 420) north of Whisperdale.

Level 31 to 40

Dragoneer's Den lists the Spectral Orc Forager at 29 and the Footman at 35. The game's table has them at 33 and 37, so they belong here; they stand in Valekar's Fortress south of Dawat and are weaker than the picks.

Level 41 to 50

With Talazar's Revenge the snow north of Valmond has better ones: the Ice Golem (43, 727 to 839), the Wolverine Scavenger (45, 761 to 878) and the Dire Wolf (50, 845 to 975).

Beyond 50

From there Dragoneer's Den lists the bands up to 110: giants in the seventies and eighties, wyverns and elementals in the nineties, and the Dragon-keeping "Druid" gear at 105.

Two that are not for fighting. A tamed cow can be milked (patch of 2021-09-18), and a tamed sheep gives more wool the higher your Leadership (patch of 2021-01-31); both need the Shepherd's Staff. A tamed Wild Camel (28, in the Sands of Creation) carries your things, and a hotfix of 2021-07-06 speaks of the tamed camel's "immortal status". Dragoneer's Den lists it with the level 21 to 30 band.

A follower for the guide's bosses

Our reading throughout, from the bosses' numbers in the game's table and AE Database.

The pit, the lair and the Marsh Dungeon are entered by a hole or stairs. Tame before you go down and check in the follower window that it came with you.

Followers you summon instead

A summoned follower comes from an item, needs no whip, and can be called again when it dies. It does not get the bonuses from your attributes.

Runecrafted totems. Made with Runecrafting and a Totem Mold (Carpentry 60, from 15 Enchanted Greater Heartwood). Runecrafting is an expansion trade, and these are the work of a level 70 to 90 crafter, so a beginner buys one from a player or goes without. Health and level are the creature's in the wild, from the game's table.

None of these beats what the same character can tame for nothing, as long as the totem's creature has the numbers of the wild one. The Bat is a toy.

Helpers from quests. These do not fight. They are the reason a crafter raises Leadership.

Bought.

• VIP pets. Bought with gold from the VIP Store in Lotor's Summer Palace (763,604 on the map). They follow and do nothing else, by the wiki. Since 2021-09-18 the cow and the chicken cannot be milked or searched either.
• The Henchman. A store item: 10 tokens for six hours of a fighter matched to your level, with a totem to call him back if he dies (patch of 2021-04-08). Up to level 15 you get a level 10 henchman, at 15 to 24 a level 20 one, at 25 to 34 a level 30 one. The game's table gives them 300, 500 and 750 health, twice what the best tameable creature has at level 10 and well above it later. The Henchman Trainer stands in Lotor's Summer Palace (838,706) and in Redwake (430,2866).
• The Wizard's Familiar. A store item that adds 10% to your spells. Since 2022 it only follows.

People who follow you. Townsfolk with a golden chalice over their head come with you if you agree to help them. They are errands, not fighters: in our log a stray cat in Whisperdale followed our archer, a Green Slime killed it, and the errand ended.

Far beyond level 50, by Dragoneer's Den and the game's table:

Gear that raises Leadership

A beginner can get very little of it early, and needs none of it: the first follower asks for no Leadership at all. What exists, from the game's item table:

The game's table also holds a Bull Whip (+5), Chains of War (+15) and a Stone Stew (+10 Leadership, +10 Intelligence). No source says where any of them comes from.

Dragoneer's Den says a follower's health counts your Leadership with bonuses. Whether the second follower at 30 counts bonuses too is not stated. If it does, a Shepherd's Staff and a little skill would be enough.

What we could not find out about followers

• Whether a follower takes a share of the experience for a kill, or whether a kill made by the follower alone pays you in full. The patch notes only speak of kill counts.
• How Leadership experience is earned by use, and how much a fight gives. We saw 1 point twice and never tamed anything on our own characters.
• Whether you can tame any creature in your band of ten levels or only those at or below your own level.
• Whether taming can fail by chance, whether the creature has to be hurt first, and how fast a Trainer's Whip wears out.
• Whether the levels 30 and 60 for a second and third follower count Leadership from gear.
• Whether Leadership follows the same cost per level as Bows and Carpentry. One figure fits; that is all.
• Why one Lotorian Knight's mission paid its skill experience into Leadership.
• The amounts of bandages and gold at each step of the Valinor trainer's quest.
• Whether a follower survives logging out today, and whether it crosses the portal from Valinor.
• How hard any follower hits. No source gives creature damage; the figures here are what creatures did to us.
• What the game's "berserker" mark on the Wolf, the Brown Bear and the Brown Bear Cub does when they fight for you.
• Whether a totem's creature has the health of the wild one, and whether the runecrafted totems fall under the rule of one summoned pet today.
• Which shops stock the Trainer's Whip and the Leadership Guidebook, and at what price. The guidebook says general stores, the patch note says weapon shops, and our characters bought neither.
• Whether Words of Binding needs Leadership 35, as the wiki says, or nothing, as its tooltip suggests.
• Where the Bull Whip, Chains of War, Cruel Master and Stone Stew come from.

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