I tend to use them with basically every character that makes it into the late/endgame.
To have a functional militia, all you need to do is build a billboard/sign somewhere at your base and then you can tell NPCs that are friendly to wait there when you are near it and they are following you.
You are able to do this whether they trust you or not, all you need to do is get them to follow you.
The most reliable NPCs are ones that are already armed with a good weapon, as they tend to carry a good amount of ammo for weapons they spawn with. If you can complete a task for them (they’ll tell you what it is if you as) then you can get their trust, which gives them a 100% chance to follow your orders.
If you get two or three of these guys, you have yourself a solid raiding party.
I will say to make sure you leave all of your valuable gear hidden in a locked room, a safe, or a basement that is difficult to reach for them so that they won’t randomly come in and steal EVERYTHING VALUABLE THEY CAN CARRY. It’s terrible, and it’s happened to me quite a few times.
Building wooden walls is a good way to zone them out and fortify a small base. I tend to build wooden walls around a small area of houses (2-4) with connecting wooden walls and then board up windows and doors that I’m not using for entry and exit to make a small survivor’s town. It’s cool to demolish the internal walls too, so you have a large indoor area inside your base.
NPCs will use wooden doors for entry, but if you mess up the angle of entry, they can try to smash through windows, doors, wooden walls, cars, ect. If they are following you, it’s good to keep an eye on them and not leave them just roaming around outside to get killed while you sleep.
Also, NPC running speed varies by a lot, so if you do have a party with you, you may need to wear some kind of armor that encumbers your legs and therefore slows your running speed so that they can keep up. For me, unfitted hard leg guards and knee pads on top of my pants usually do the trick, but holsters, sheaths, scabbards, and drop leg pouches all work for this. This prevents them from getting lost, or from you having to run ahead and wait every few minutes for them to return to you.
Also, always change NPCs engagement rules as soon as they join your party. Setting them to engage enemies that you attack is usually the most reliable setting, so that they don’t go attacking every squirrel that they see.
It is possible to arm them with weapons that you find in the world, but for projectile weapons, they don’t have a tendency to use ammo wisely and they fire a lot of shots. Generally, I only do this if I have a huge armory, and even then, I usually just arm all of my general NPCs with .22 rifles and ammo, which isn’t that great, but will suppress zombies when everyone is shooting.
For NPCs that have skills in marksmanship or a particular branch of firearms, I try to give them weapons that suit their skills. You can find this out by asking to know more about them and then examining their skills on the left. This is best used with NPCs that trust you 100%, otherwise you may get rejected and then lose some trust from them.
I generally don’t give good gear to any NPC that doesn’t trust me 100%, as they are the most reliable NPCs and the least likely to do stupid s*it or try to leave your party.
NPCs in your party will pick up gear in the world, and any gear you leave lying around your base in the open. They don’t consider it stealing, apparently.
Having an NPC party helps a lot for robbing other NPCs. NPCs are a must-have for raiding military outposts, FEMA camps, and for attacking roadblocks, as there is a bug that makes NPCs invisible to turrets, and if you fire a single rifle round at a turret, all of your NPCs will attack it. This works also for high level zombies, robots, and basically any enemy that you would have difficulty fighting alone.
NPCs take less damage than hostiles from molotov cocktails, which is useful as they can pretty reliably run through fire to attack an enemy, which helps for defending your base and also zoning zombies when clearing out a town.
A well-armed NPC will expend all their ammunition before attacking with a melee weapon (when they are set to use firearms), and NPCs that have skills in melee will attack with the best weapon in their inventory, so it’s a good idea to give a secondary weapon like a sword or a baseball bat to an NPC in your party with high skills.
NPCs are pretty buggy, but I’ve never had problems with a 100% trusting NPC crashing my game or doing something crazy that killed me, and when used correctly, they can be a valuable tool in your arsenal.
Go conquer!
