The Dossier page is for defining the Rangers background, look and personal details. These generally have little to no gameplay impact, and are offered primarily to help you define your characters.

Name is the characters name.

Age can range anywhere from 16 to 99.

Religion represents your Rangers spiritual or theological beliefs. The Desert Rangers are well known for their tolerant attitudes.

Smokes for the 80s cool factor: Bones, Coffin Nails, Nico-Pops, Red Rooster, Styx or if youre health-conscious, none.

Nationality is your characters background.

Biography is a blank canvas for your imagination to fill: write any kind of backstory for your Ranger that you can come up with, or leave him or her as a mysterious wanderer.

Gender makes no differences to attributes or skills, but some people in the Wasteland may treat men or women differently in certain situations.

Character Appearance can be changed, with the following categories available: hair, head, torso, packs, legs and skin tone. You can also use the Randomize button to let fate roll the dice for you.

Portrait is a pretty picture of your Ranger. You can either choose from a gallery of portraits, have the game take a snapshot of your Ranger to use as a portrait, or use your own custom portraits by putting them inside Wasteland 2s Custom Portraits folder on your computer. These are:

Windows: \Documents\My Games\Wasteland2\Custom Portraits

Mac OS X: \Library\Application Support\Wasteland2\Custom Portraits\ Linux: \Wasteland2\Custom Portraits\

Skill Use

Skills can be used by adding them to the respective Rangers Skill Bar. Skills are typically used by selecting them and clicking on the object in the environment upon which you want to use the skill, but some skills are passive or may require consumable items (like Field Medic and Surgeon) before they can be used. Using skills often takes time, but the greater your chance of success using the skill, the faster it will complete. For more details on how to use skills, see the Interface section later on.

Critical Success & Failure

With many skills, each time you use them youll have a small chance of Critical Success or Critical Failure. Critical Success may mean you succeed at low odds and complete the action more quickly, while Critical Failure may come with a penalty such as breaking the object youre interacting with and sometimes preventing you from using the object again. Be careful not to use your skills on objects you have very low odds of success with, and remember that its not the end of the world if you break a few toasters along the way.

Leveling Up

When a Ranger has accrued enough Experience Points (XP), use the Call button on the Radio to check in with Citadel Base, and Report to get a field promotion.

Leveling up grants the following bonuses:

- Increased Maximum CON (determined by Strength and Luck)
- Additional Skill Points to spend (determined by Intelligence)

To assign your new Skill Points, open up the Character screen (see the Interface section) and go to the Skills tab. Click on the skills you want to increase just as you did during character creation. Confirm your selection by clicking Commit Points.

Tip: There may be other objects or items in the world that can boost your attributes or skills keep an eye out.



While the number of Rangers in your party maxes out at four, many teams find it wise to deputize capable men or women they meet in the field. Some of these men and women may eventually become valuable Rangers in their own right. It is important to consider how well any new team member fits your team, what skills or knowledge he or she brings to the table and perhaps most importantly how much you truly know about them.

The team of Rangers can be expanded to a total of 7 individuals. For most purposes, recruits or companion NPCs (CNPCs) are treated exactly the same as regular Rangers: they level up the same, they can be equipped with new items, they can speak up in conversation, and they are controlled by you in combat.

But every so often a CNPCs personality may shine through, and they might not do quite what you planned. The most common occurrence of this is going rogue in combat, where a CNPC loses faith in your commands and decides to go out on his or her own, which means he or she will act independently of your control for one turn. They will generally still attack the enemy and engage in combat to your benefit when this happens, but it can also throw a spanner in your carefully assembled strategic plan if they run out of position or waste ammo. As described in the Skills section above, this can be offset by investing points in Leadership.

Each person you meet out on the field is not just a blank slate they are individuals with backstories, often complex ones which leave them with opinions on various actions you can take in the world. Sometimes theyll just comment, sometimes theyll like what you do, but do the wrong thing to the wrong people, and your CNPCs may well turn on you or leave you.

You can opt to dismiss a CNPC of your own volition: from their Character screen, click the Dismiss button. The dismissed CNPC will make their way to Ranger Citadel or another base of operations, waiting for you in rooms such as the Museum or Mess Hall. You can re-recruit dismissed party members there.