The Elder Scrolls: Castles features a fun and simple romance mechanic that lets you grow your population by having two subjects—peasants, if you will—share a bed to produce offspring. This basic feature is essential for increasing your castle's workforce, as it’s the main way to get new workers. However, breeding can also spark drama, as couples may cheat, leading to the birth of some despised babies. Here’s everything you need to know about breeding in Bethesda’s castle management game, The Elder Scrolls: Castles.
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How to Breed New Subjects
In The Elder Scrolls: Castles, breeding unlocks once you reach Level 13 on the Dynasty Progress. Once this prerequisite is achieved, you will need to build a Bed and assign two people to it to create babies.
The breeding mechanics in The Elder Scrolls: Castles and Fallout Shelter are similar, but Castles allows babies to be born in just a few in-game minutes, unlike the three real-life hours required in Shelter. Additionally, in Castles, babies can participate in all activities as soon as they turn sixteen. You can speed up their growth with the Elixir of Growth, which instantly transforms babies into adults.
Assigning lovers or married couples to the bed speeds up the breeding process. Strangers may take longer to create babies.
Breeding Rules and Limitations
- Each couple can breed once every 24 hours. You must wait one real-life day before attempting reproduction with the same subjects.
- Breeding in Castles is gender-inclusive. You can pair up couples of same-sex to create babies.
- Marriage is not crucial for breeding. You can put two strangers in the bedroom and encourage them to have babies. Note that doing so will turn them into lovers. (Similar to babymaking in Fallout Shelter, you just drag and drop subjects to the Bed to have them breed.)
- Babies can inherit their parent’s traits. You can target specific characteristics by breeding couples who already have them.
- Couples can cheat on each other. You can force lovers to reproduce with strangers, which will eventually ruin their relationships.
- Only subjects who are between the ages of 16 and 64 can breed. You cannot assign characters younger or older than this to the Bed.
Tips for Making Better Babies
When trying to populate your castle, keep these key points in mind:
Breed Subjects with High Rarities
To increase the chances of getting better offspring, aim to pair subjects with Epic or Legendary rarities. While it's not guaranteed that the offspring will inherit the parents' rarity, using higher rarity subjects improves the odds.
Exile Unwanted Babies Once They’re Adults
Wait until babies turn 16 to exile them. Do so only if a subject has unproductive traits like haunted.
You cannot banish babies in The Elder Scrolls: Castles.
Codename Desired Babies So You Don’t Miss Them
Rename babies with high rarity or unique traits to avoid accidentally banishing them. Consider using codenames, like [EP] for Epic or [MI] for Mighty, to help organize your workforce more efficiently.
Traits are an oversimplified replacement for The Elder Scrolls’ races. They determine a character’s potential and weaknesses.
Don’t Overbreed
The population cap in The Elder Scrolls: Castles is 200. If you keep breeding too many subjects, you'll eventually hit this limit and won't be able to assign more workers to jobs. This happens because babies must turn 16 before they can start working. To avoid this issue, maintain a balance between your young, adult, and elderly population so your progress isn’t slowed by overpopulation or underpopulation.
The Elder Scrolls: Castles
- Released
- September 10, 2024
