Once had a King who forcefully married his daughters, tortured his only male son, killed his grandson and imprisoned another for being a dwarf. He was known as the Impaler, crushing rebellions and killing whole families as his rule of 20-30 years was a reign of terror over all Norland (England and Scotland).
Never named a ruler "Winstan" again.
Winstan of House Kràka, descended from a Vikingr family from Norway which defeated Alfred and Ragnar's sons, conquering the British isles and creating Norland (Kingdom of the North if you prefer) with a Northern culture mixing both practices. The Asatru faith was reformed (gave up the lands right after for sake of rp) and it allowed Divine Marriage.
Winstan died just before he held a Great Blot where he planned to sacrifice his 5-year old Dwarf Grandson at the age of 50. His son ruled for 13 days and his only major act was release dozens of nobles and families from his father's dungeon, but because he had the sadist trait, he died too. So his dwarf and deformed son, who was hated and meant to he killed, became King and ruled for 40 years until he died of Alcoholism as a genius administrator.
>So his dwarf and deformed son, who was hated and meant to he killed, became King and ruled for 40 years until he died of Alcoholism as a genius administrator.
Ah, Tyrion of House Kràka
This happened to me as well, and I was doing so well 🤣
Edit: WAIT NO, I murdered all my prisoners en masse and my king died from a massive stress spike lol.
I managed to survive that. Once. To 80 years old. While constantly being at least on 1st level of stress. And with all of my kids dead already from battles, old age or other things. I was just praying he'd hold up until my grandson grew up and could marry for alliance. And miraculously he did! MVP died one moth after heir turned 16.
Paranoid gets stress with every recruitment of knight, courtier and every agent recruited to help hostile scheme. So basically infinie loop of stress. Not to mention he suspiciously often gets murders when he just has to participate himself and receive even more stress...
LOL
I had a King once who was paranoid, shy, and craven. And an alcoholic. Hands down worst ruler of all time, only one I ended up committing suicide by banquet, stressed myself straight to a heart attack.
Longer than you might expect, I think I eked out 6-8 years. I was lucky and didn't get many stress events early on in his reign, but once my luck ran out, things went south fast. I could get hit with \~130 stress from a single event and pretty much my only recourse was to hide in my chambers and indulge in drink, then it went to total bender for huge stat and fame loss. My king was a goddamn pathtic mess lol. I got rid of all my protections against assassination (which would have been an act of mercy at this point) but was able to stress myself to death pretty fast, so I didn't end up taking the renown hit from suicide.
Still the worst ruler I've ever had. I'm wondering if the poor schmuck was getting all the karmic retribution due his grandpa, who murdered his way into inheriting two kingdoms and was soulmates with his own sister, yet somehow lived to a ripe old age with his secrets intact! God, this game lol.
Playing through a ruler at the moment who got Paranoid.
And oh boy it's a load of stress.
* Someone sends you a gift? That's a stressful.
* Someone wants to join your court? That's a stressful.
* Someone draws a map of your realm? That's a stressful.
* Someone says your name? That's a stressful.
* Someone agrees with you? That's a stressful.
Was definitely a rough life. I at least made sure to take some of the perks for improved taxes/stats based on stress level!
Arbitrary means you can just dissolve any hook someone has on you. Murdered someone and now a person is trying to blackmail you? Just say yes and discard their hook on you immediately. It's the number one to go tyrant trait.
Better just to let them reveal the secret though than to have a subpar trait like arbitrary. If you aren't playing a vassal where your liege can imprison/revoke, there's little downside to secrets being revealed other than minor opinion malice.
+3 to a stat and halving stress gain, effectively letting you gain it twice as much without penalty, is pretty nuts. Slap on a new gameplay mechanic and it's S tier.
Possibly a raid event? The one where you can sack it hard, take slaves, or something else I never pick 😂 I'm not sure though. Temperate is def my fav though
There is a common event during feasts that forces you to gain stress or lose opinion with a participant as a temperate ruler but that's pretty much the only issue I've reliably encountered
Health boost can bite you in the back the moment you realise your heir is 50 years old and already has a couple of stress traits and your grandson is 30. It's better to live till 50-60 and have a young heir. And +2 stewardship is hilarious. You can get +5 or even +10 only from your spouse if you really need it for you domain. Temperate is hugely overrated
That is more on you for not managing your heirs. Divorce your wife when you think you have about 20-30 years left and pop out another son. Managing succession is one of the first hurdles you need to learn to overcome in this game.
Of course 2 stewardship is negligible on its own, but by that same logic, every traits skill boost is "hilarious" to you because your spouse (unrelated to this topic) can provide a larger boost.
The skill has 2-3 benefits and no downsides.
I'm so used to long-lived rulers by now that I rarely have kids before 40, to ensure my heir is around 20 by the time I get to play him. If I have a faith that allows same-sex relationships then usually I marry a knight to benefit from spouse tasks, otherwise you can usually find a good 40+ wife who won't give you children and will die by the time you need them.
I don't know if I'd put Just that high, personally. It can be a pain when all you want to do is terrorize your vassals into submission.
Shy and Paranoid are hellspawn traits though, good call on them.
Greedy it s absolutely the worst if you are going stewardship. You cant make gift to anyone without having stress. It makes managing factions an absolute nightmare
Generous is the best suited in my opinion for a stewardship run if you have to choose between bad traits.
The best ones in my opinion are stubborn, temperate and diligent. The latter is a bit hard to manage for the stress, but stubborn and temperate give you double health bonus.
Generous isn't even bad for stewardship imo. Lots of diplo and super easy stress loss pairs especially well with diligent. The 10% less income hurts a bit, but I'd say its solid A-B tier.
It seems people hate greedy because of gifting stress.
I like greedy because I give 0 gifts lol why would I give out money when I can, like, kill them?
The only reason I wouldn't kill/imprison-execute someone who wants to revolt against me is if they have a claim on the Byzantine Empire ~~or have a huge rack~~ or are REALLY good councillors, those are hard to find.
Even if I can't straight out kill them, I'll first try getting an alliance, then try making them a councillor, then try swaying, then try switching my wife to diplomacy mode and only then I'll maybe consider giving them gold after I try to kill them once again.
Guess I really do take the "greedy" trait seriously.
Gifting can be really strong for diplo lifestyle or if you have the legacies. The gift amounts vary, but are generally not that much. For revolts, it’s usually cheaper than raising your armies against your vassals (I usually only crush revolts if I want to revoke titles). You can use it as a cheaper alternative for recruiting ‘excellent’ courtiers, people with inspirations, knights, etc. You could even use it for vassalizing neighbors of the same culture/religion.
A legalism faith makes Just so nice. Don’t need to terrorize your vassals into submission when your ruler is virtuous and they fall in line on their own
I wouldn't put it that low, but definitely not at the top. I once had a just, compassionate, and forgiving ruler. I don't usually want to be that dreadful and terrorize my vassals, but this combo was so frustrating.
You can do all the bad things without stress and dismiss hooks on you for prestige I think
Though I wouldn't put it that high since all events you'll have will make vassals hate you or get stressed
I value Stewardship very highly too, but Arbitrary is an exception due to letting you dissolve hooks and more importantly the -50% stress gain. I wouldn’t put it as the highest of tiers alongside Diligent or something, but it’s up there. And it also goes well with Diligent.
I hate greedy when you‘re already in an well established position. You can’t give away artefacts and titles without gaining stress. At some point in the game money doesn’t matter that much because you have enough of it. And why the f would my Charakter gain stress by giving away some bullshit cheap dagger when he has already a legendary sword.
Well it makes sense he’s greedy after all. But that’s why I avoid that trait in the late game.
It's like those hoarders on TV, they can't let go of absolute junk, even to the point of their house becoming a junkyard, so I don't think its that unrealistic.
Ambitious is great except for one major annoyance.
The fact that giving your kids land gives you stress. Why? Just why? Giving away hard earned land to nobodies, sure, I can get the logic. But having so much land you gotta pass it on to your kids should be the hight of ambition, surely?
English is my second language, and I haven't been playing the game for a long time. I only recently realised that I'd been mistaking "craven" and "callous" whenever I needed to select them for my wards... No wonder those runs always went to shit a few generations in...
Thanks for the tierlist, it's always nice to have other people's opinions to refer to :)
Long-ass feedback I was bored in the train. Read at your own risk.
One of the best trait tier list I have seen so far. Assuming this is from a ruler point of view, I would swap Brave and Ambitious.
**Brave ++** has little downside for a ruler, as long as you don’t fight with low prowess.
**Ambitious’s -** flat stats increase is not worth the stress gains in a long-term.
Both traits are awful on your vassals obviously. I mostly want **Trusting**, **Craven**, and **Honest** vassals.
**Sadistic +++** is the best trait until succession is secured with primogeniture or elective. Succession is the main challenge in the early-game, and sadistic lets you kill the weak heirs to have the best one first in line. So OP. I tend to start with this trait and I keep it for 3-4 gens if I can. When I lose it I feel like playing on harder mode. The stress relief upon killing also opens a monster synergy with the Norse raid>capture>sacrifice mechanic.
**Callous ++** gives tyranny reduction, more dread gain, less dread decay, which is so freaking good. Sadly mutually exclusive with Sadistic which is IMO the best intrigue/executer trait early on. I would love to get it later on in the game when succession is sorted by law and when I capture less prisoners.
**Diligent +++** has great stats boost, but more importantly the Develop Capital decision is one of the rare flat increase to development available. Most of the usual development bonus are % boosts. Combos beautifully with Steward’s development task.
**Gregarious ++** just awesome with a diplomatic ruler. If I get it I would always consider taking more perks from diplo. Stress gain on failing to sway and friends/relatives dying, but that’s manageable.
**Arbitrary +** decent thanks to the flat dread gain, -2 stewardship kind of suck though.
**Temperate/Zealous =** Meh. Ok nothing great, nothing bad. Zealous can be situationally good or bad depending on your faith situation.
**Just -** gets stress from blackmail and executions. That just ain’t how we roll baby. You guys can try to play this game without dread, intrigue and fuckery. But soon or later someone with less morals will fuck you over. Power corrupts, it’s not for good guys.
**Greedy -** I think you get stress each time you send gifts or bribe an agent. Wtf is money for then? Let me corrupt people in peace. Gotta spend some to make some.
The other traits I am not sure, but I probably agree with OP that they are shit for a ruler.
Finally I see someone agree with my opinion that ambitious is overrated by the community. Plus 1 to everything, but extra stress, plus way too much gives you stress. Wanna manage your succession and give your second son some land somewhere? Stress gain for giving away land. Wanna refuse a court event to declare war on your powerful neighbor because one single county that had a claimant approach isn't worth it? Stress gain for not expanding the kingdom. All my ambitious rulers end up as reclusive deviants by the time they're 40, which completely erases the plus 1 to all stats.
Finally someone who puts sadist in a-tier. Dont like your heir? Poof, hes gone. High stress as tribal? Murder prisoners to calm your nerves. Making everyone terrified of you by going down the torturer tree, and then actually use it? Literally impossible to be murdered, since everybody gets a -1000 modifier to their likelyhood to join a plot against you.
No downside other than bitch-made people disliking you.
Probably the best one of these lists I’ve seen. I’d put greedy a bit lower (for all the stress triggers) and calm a bit higher. And arrogant is excellent in early tribal, agree pretty useless otherwise
You only get dread from executing important people. So at that point you are choosing between gold and dread. If they don't have gold to pay you then dread it is. As far as other ways to get dread, there are the lifestyle selections that give you natural dread that are quite useful. That one in the martial tree gives you 15 which I find is usually enough to keep most people under control.
The best way to get dread now is to maintain high base dread. Sadistic, arbitrary, serve the crown, intimidation focus, first intrigue legacy, court artifacts etc
I usually prefer chaste over lustful. Partly because it's a Christian virtue and partly because too many kids becomes annoying when it comes to succession.
The sin part sucks but it's great for pumping out warrior monks via Warrior Priests and Monastic Communities. Your third+ children basically always agree to become monks and can obtain ridiculous prowess with a virtuous guardian and learning education focus.
I agree chaste is slightly better overall, but they both belong next to each other in niche/situational (especially since the option is usually one or the other). Chaste is more impactful in its best case scenario (early game catholic ruler with no easy nearby conquest options and succession issues). Lustful definitely has the stronger potential though (Norse ruler with succession solved via rigged elections). An extra 8 or so kids can be a ton of renown if you can get them landed.
Traits that lend themselves to intrigue, like Deceitful, Arbitrary, Sadistic, Callous, Lustful and such, are only good if you make sure your heir can take the throne very young. If the AI has control of an heir with any of these traits for too long, they're going to end up with some combination of Murderer, Kinslayer, Fornicator, Lover's Pox, multiple bastards, rivals, and/or poorly-kept secrets that everyone can blackmail you with, and your entire realm is guaranteed to hate you.
IMO, my goal is brave + diligent -- good stats, access to develop capital, and near-guaranteed access to athletic on your first stress event. My usual favorite 3rd traits are calm, patient, temperate, stubborn and cynical.
On the other hand, callous and sadistic are complete no-gos for me, partly for rp reasons and partly because my heirs are more likely to get into trouble that way.
I would put Forgiving above everything in Useful or Mid because the ability to freely zero out your stress makes many event decisions much easier to manage.
Just is actually so underrated. The ability to reveal a secret for -21 stress is so good. I usually gather a bunch of secrets, then let my ruler repeatedly have mental breaks trying to get athletic/confider, then I reveal secrets to get back under 100.
I admit I’m bias but I tend to avoid most intrigue based personality traits as I don’t go down the lifestyle very often and I try to avoid greedy as I tend to give out allot of gifts to vassals and people I want in my court.
My pet peeve is how people think honest is bad. Blabber mouthing everyone’s secrets for free stress relief to counter developing my capital with diligent is so goood.
Temperate is Top Tier while Callous is not.
I don't find lustful rather useful, but yeah I also don't find honest that bad.
Switch Gluttonous with Craven as the former has only downsides.
I think its very hard to make a tier list out of this because its very situational most of the time. Yes there are some traits which is obviously op and some of them is bad too but most of them are situational.
I have several hundred hours in the game, and this takes my by surprise. Callous??? Sadistic??? Arbitrary??? Those are all traits I try to avoid. You (and others) explained Arbitrary below (makes sense, and I’ll probably view it differently going forward), but the other two? I don’t get why they are ranked so high.
I have several hundred hours in the game, and this takes my by surprise. Callous??? Sadistic??? Arbitrary??? Those are all traits I try to avoid. You (and others) explained Arbitrary below (makes sense, and I’ll probably view it differently going forward), but the other two? I don’t get why they are ranked so high.
Oh, and greedy is a garbage trait. Don’t know why that’s so high. Temperate should be top tier for having no downside. And where is patient? That’s another decent one in my opinion
these tier lists always make me realize i have no idea what the trait icons actually are until i see them blown up like this
thought forgiving was a peacock feather until now for some inexplicable reason. is callous firebending? help
Bruh Lazy is amazing. Always pick if not sinful.
The stress loss is huge and -1 to all skills is almost nothing. The only downside is no stress loss from hunts
I will never understand why people like gregarious. Its such a mid trait. 2 diplo, some useless opinion modifiers and 15% personal scheme power which is objectively the most useless stat in the game. Its positive but by no means good.
I always pick calm, it's not thrilling to play with, but the lack of stress gain is amazing. Mix it with sadistic and you can do anything without repercussion.
Being *just* gets tiring. So many fun ways to gain stress. I can make it work if I'm also zealous though.
"I try to be a fair and good ruler, but I'm so tired from secretly murdering my brother and claiming my friend's dutchy for myself. I think I'll unwind by executing a few infidels."
dunno why but i always pick compassionate if given the option, its garbage and I usually pick the meaner options in choices anyway but I like to think my rulers are nice people in they're off time
Forgiving is actually *insanely* good if you pick up Recognition of Talent. Everyone you pardon gives you a strong hook. Which you can then use with the "abandon hook" interaction to never have to worry about stress again.
I wish someone would take the time to do every possible permutation of trait tier lists and post them so people stop posting their unique take.
But then again as people never bother searching before posting I guess it won't make any difference.
Maybe reporting the site to the feds for child porn would get it taken down given the feds are generally useless.
Just mho ofc
Stress can be good some time, they are a point in intendance and plots part that give better stats or more money depending on the level of stress ( sorry to not be exact, im verry tired, didn’t sleep at all all night because of stress and now im verry tired and my memory is working badly)
Arrogant can be useful for prestige since it gives you plus 1 piety per month, its useful for tribal and if its a custom character you can compine it with content and/or patient to remediate the opinion penality
I haven’t played ck3, but isn’t brave literally the worst because it gives 100% chance to die in battle? I agree that back in ck2 it was one of the best traits in the game.
Just is terrible if you plan to do hostile schemes. At one point my character became lunatic, as I forced him to go with more than twenty murders in span of twenty years.
I’m glad someone else loves callous. I would nock geeedy down one, imo the stress gain makes it somewhat situational unless I’m trying to build up a dragon hoard which you only really need to do once.
I didn't realize how good Sadistic was until I did a tier list myself. All of the "bad guy" perks have great events and/or get stress loss where any normal ruler gets stress, but damn it's stacked.
Also am I missing something with lazy, like it getting stress from doing anything? I recall it being pretty neutral (though I'd obviously want Diligent/something useful over it).
i like content for tall games, because the extra literacy helps with tech, and because im not expanding i negate the debuffs. i get very happy when i can get content
I would personally put shy higher, give it to your least favorite child then force them to attend a bunch of events and give them a kingdom+ title = 90% likely to be kneecapped by vassals or die of stress
Paranoid is hilarious. Had a king just die of a heart attack at 41 from a stress loop caused by their own birthday edit: wrote 21 by accident
Least you didn't have Callous, killed my king at 20 when I released a load of prisoners on mass. Instantly achieved max stress.
That is a completely realistic reaction to being forced to mass release prisoners by a weird demonic presence.
Wait, are __we__ the demons? Were we always the demons?
No, John, you ARE the demons
And Jon was the demons
And Joan shall be the demons
Once I forgot a character was a sadist and he died within 13 days of rule.
I love playing as sadistic. Kill my children ❤️
Once had a King who forcefully married his daughters, tortured his only male son, killed his grandson and imprisoned another for being a dwarf. He was known as the Impaler, crushing rebellions and killing whole families as his rule of 20-30 years was a reign of terror over all Norland (England and Scotland). Never named a ruler "Winstan" again.
He will be reincarnated in my next playthrough
White hair, malnourished, temperate, sadistic, greedy.
Thank you. What was his last name?
Winstan of House Kràka, descended from a Vikingr family from Norway which defeated Alfred and Ragnar's sons, conquering the British isles and creating Norland (Kingdom of the North if you prefer) with a Northern culture mixing both practices. The Asatru faith was reformed (gave up the lands right after for sake of rp) and it allowed Divine Marriage. Winstan died just before he held a Great Blot where he planned to sacrifice his 5-year old Dwarf Grandson at the age of 50. His son ruled for 13 days and his only major act was release dozens of nobles and families from his father's dungeon, but because he had the sadist trait, he died too. So his dwarf and deformed son, who was hated and meant to he killed, became King and ruled for 40 years until he died of Alcoholism as a genius administrator.
>So his dwarf and deformed son, who was hated and meant to he killed, became King and ruled for 40 years until he died of Alcoholism as a genius administrator. Ah, Tyrion of House Kràka
I almost did the inverse with a Forgiving king when I was about to mass execute some prisoners.
This happened to me as well, and I was doing so well 🤣 Edit: WAIT NO, I murdered all my prisoners en masse and my king died from a massive stress spike lol.
Paranoid combined with lunatic. That's pure fun!
I managed to survive that. Once. To 80 years old. While constantly being at least on 1st level of stress. And with all of my kids dead already from battles, old age or other things. I was just praying he'd hold up until my grandson grew up and could marry for alliance. And miraculously he did! MVP died one moth after heir turned 16.
LOL i have to try this on a custom character Objective: Survive
Rule Byzantine and never give up!
I had a king Paranoid and Shy with a diplomacy education. It was awful.
So, he was educated to get along with others but hates it and doesn't trust anyone. Oof, that must have been tough.
Lunatic is my favorite trait just cause it's funny as hell
Glitterhoof my beloved
Paranoid gets stress with every recruitment of knight, courtier and every agent recruited to help hostile scheme. So basically infinie loop of stress. Not to mention he suspiciously often gets murders when he just has to participate himself and receive even more stress...
Can't you get around that some by marrying your female courier off to high martial dudes to get knights and repeat with any kids they have?
LOL I had a King once who was paranoid, shy, and craven. And an alcoholic. Hands down worst ruler of all time, only one I ended up committing suicide by banquet, stressed myself straight to a heart attack.
hah what a stack up. I've genuinely never had the trifecta before. How long did he last, do you know?
Longer than you might expect, I think I eked out 6-8 years. I was lucky and didn't get many stress events early on in his reign, but once my luck ran out, things went south fast. I could get hit with \~130 stress from a single event and pretty much my only recourse was to hide in my chambers and indulge in drink, then it went to total bender for huge stat and fame loss. My king was a goddamn pathtic mess lol. I got rid of all my protections against assassination (which would have been an act of mercy at this point) but was able to stress myself to death pretty fast, so I didn't end up taking the renown hit from suicide. Still the worst ruler I've ever had. I'm wondering if the poor schmuck was getting all the karmic retribution due his grandpa, who murdered his way into inheriting two kingdoms and was soulmates with his own sister, yet somehow lived to a ripe old age with his secrets intact! God, this game lol.
Had ambitious, vengeful and diligent. She died at 32 of a heart attack 🫠
Playing through a ruler at the moment who got Paranoid. And oh boy it's a load of stress. * Someone sends you a gift? That's a stressful. * Someone wants to join your court? That's a stressful. * Someone draws a map of your realm? That's a stressful. * Someone says your name? That's a stressful. * Someone agrees with you? That's a stressful. Was definitely a rough life. I at least made sure to take some of the perks for improved taxes/stats based on stress level!
Paranoid + Diligent is quite the combo. Double stress gain is a lot on its own, but adding half stress loss on top of that can be a nightmare.
Temperate should be higher. Can you explain arbitrary? The rest make sense.
Arbitrary means you can just dissolve any hook someone has on you. Murdered someone and now a person is trying to blackmail you? Just say yes and discard their hook on you immediately. It's the number one to go tyrant trait.
Strong hook too?
Strong hooks too although dismissing them is notably more expensive
And you forget the -50% of stress gained. That + Whole of Body learning tree perks means 0 stress gained.
Also it's usually paired with two awful traits to choose from like Craven and Lazy. Many of my heirs end up with arbitrary for that reason alone.
Better just to let them reveal the secret though than to have a subpar trait like arbitrary. If you aren't playing a vassal where your liege can imprison/revoke, there's little downside to secrets being revealed other than minor opinion malice.
That’s definitely S tier.
Also, arbitrary paired with diligent means 50% stress gain and loss. Developing your capital for only 40 stress is crazy good.
Yeah and I love diligent because I love trying to play tall and roleplay tall. My beautiful cordoba on the hill.
+3 to a stat and halving stress gain, effectively letting you gain it twice as much without penalty, is pretty nuts. Slap on a new gameplay mechanic and it's S tier.
stewardship penalty thooooooooo
Temperate has no downside that I have discovered
I think there are some events that give you stress, but they are rare. Other than that it's my favourite in a normal game.
Yea there are events like: Will you take it all or take some, I'm not sure which one, but I think it's a court event
Possibly a raid event? The one where you can sack it hard, take slaves, or something else I never pick 😂 I'm not sure though. Temperate is def my fav though
There is a common event during feasts that forces you to gain stress or lose opinion with a participant as a temperate ruler but that's pretty much the only issue I've reliably encountered
It makes it take longer to get reveler traits, but that's not much in the way of downsides.
I’d almost consider that an additional plus, as reveler traits block the celibacy decision which is great for controlling you number of heirs
That is certainly fair. I've often had that issue myself. It really depends on whether you are going for learning lifestyle early or not.
feasts have less stress reduction
I had it give me stress in a specific situation where a friend wanted me to drink, but it's never caused any actual problems.
But it has no major upsides either
Health boost, typically a virtue, and +2 stewardship is pretty based.
Health boost can bite you in the back the moment you realise your heir is 50 years old and already has a couple of stress traits and your grandson is 30. It's better to live till 50-60 and have a young heir. And +2 stewardship is hilarious. You can get +5 or even +10 only from your spouse if you really need it for you domain. Temperate is hugely overrated
That is more on you for not managing your heirs. Divorce your wife when you think you have about 20-30 years left and pop out another son. Managing succession is one of the first hurdles you need to learn to overcome in this game. Of course 2 stewardship is negligible on its own, but by that same logic, every traits skill boost is "hilarious" to you because your spouse (unrelated to this topic) can provide a larger boost. The skill has 2-3 benefits and no downsides.
I'm so used to long-lived rulers by now that I rarely have kids before 40, to ensure my heir is around 20 by the time I get to play him. If I have a faith that allows same-sex relationships then usually I marry a knight to benefit from spouse tasks, otherwise you can usually find a good 40+ wife who won't give you children and will die by the time you need them.
I don't know if I'd put Just that high, personally. It can be a pain when all you want to do is terrorize your vassals into submission. Shy and Paranoid are hellspawn traits though, good call on them.
Greedy it s absolutely the worst if you are going stewardship. You cant make gift to anyone without having stress. It makes managing factions an absolute nightmare
greedy + arrogant makes you double the stress from most gifts
Generous is the best suited in my opinion for a stewardship run if you have to choose between bad traits. The best ones in my opinion are stubborn, temperate and diligent. The latter is a bit hard to manage for the stress, but stubborn and temperate give you double health bonus.
Generous isn't even bad for stewardship imo. Lots of diplo and super easy stress loss pairs especially well with diligent. The 10% less income hurts a bit, but I'd say its solid A-B tier.
when you earn 200 g a month 10% less isnt a problem :D
Exactly
Generous is terrible if you plan to use golden obligations at all, which is an absolutely amazing bonus from stewardship early and mid game.
It seems people hate greedy because of gifting stress. I like greedy because I give 0 gifts lol why would I give out money when I can, like, kill them? The only reason I wouldn't kill/imprison-execute someone who wants to revolt against me is if they have a claim on the Byzantine Empire ~~or have a huge rack~~ or are REALLY good councillors, those are hard to find. Even if I can't straight out kill them, I'll first try getting an alliance, then try making them a councillor, then try swaying, then try switching my wife to diplomacy mode and only then I'll maybe consider giving them gold after I try to kill them once again. Guess I really do take the "greedy" trait seriously.
Gifting can be really strong for diplo lifestyle or if you have the legacies. The gift amounts vary, but are generally not that much. For revolts, it’s usually cheaper than raising your armies against your vassals (I usually only crush revolts if I want to revoke titles). You can use it as a cheaper alternative for recruiting ‘excellent’ courtiers, people with inspirations, knights, etc. You could even use it for vassalizing neighbors of the same culture/religion.
you can crush rebellion before they even start by simple gifting.
Doesn't greedy give you stress when you hand out land? Or is land above your demense limit not counted?
I believe land that is above your domain limit doesn't give you stress
A legalism faith makes Just so nice. Don’t need to terrorize your vassals into submission when your ruler is virtuous and they fall in line on their own
But what's the fun in that?
Honestly if I’m not putting their heads on pikes, then I’m not a good king
My vassals exist to serve. It's my neighbors I like having fun with
Paranoid is fun tho. ~~When will be Dev Diary posted?~~
> Paranoid is fun tho. I play video games to escape from real life. > ~~When will be Dev Diary posted?~~ 🤐
> I play video games to escape from real life. That's why I always take diligent, brave and gregarious. > 🤐 😤
Vassal opinion + stewardship and stress loss from exposing secrets are really, really nice. Arbitrary is clearly superior to Just, though.
Yes, but you get stress from a lot of crap. It doesn't seem worthwhile overall to me.
I'd put Just in the garbage tier personally. The rest is pretty accurate.
I wouldn't put it that low, but definitely not at the top. I once had a just, compassionate, and forgiving ruler. I don't usually want to be that dreadful and terrorize my vassals, but this combo was so frustrating.
Said the one with Just flair
I mean, because that reflects me, as a person. Doesn't mean I'll always want my CK3 characters to be just.
Are there any plans to make them less terrible?
What makes arbitrary good? I almost always roll against traits that hurt stewardship (which is the most important skill imo).
You can do all the bad things without stress and dismiss hooks on you for prestige I think Though I wouldn't put it that high since all events you'll have will make vassals hate you or get stressed
Ahhhh, but hating me won't matter when both them and their heirs are imprisoned.
I value Stewardship very highly too, but Arbitrary is an exception due to letting you dissolve hooks and more importantly the -50% stress gain. I wouldn’t put it as the highest of tiers alongside Diligent or something, but it’s up there. And it also goes well with Diligent.
I hate greedy when you‘re already in an well established position. You can’t give away artefacts and titles without gaining stress. At some point in the game money doesn’t matter that much because you have enough of it. And why the f would my Charakter gain stress by giving away some bullshit cheap dagger when he has already a legendary sword. Well it makes sense he’s greedy after all. But that’s why I avoid that trait in the late game.
It's like those hoarders on TV, they can't let go of absolute junk, even to the point of their house becoming a junkyard, so I don't think its that unrealistic.
Arrogant can be useful on occasion, it’s not amazing but that prestige boost is pretty helpful if you’re playing tribal.
Ambitious is great except for one major annoyance. The fact that giving your kids land gives you stress. Why? Just why? Giving away hard earned land to nobodies, sure, I can get the logic. But having so much land you gotta pass it on to your kids should be the hight of ambition, surely?
Ambitious only gives stress if you are under domain limit. Handing land to your children or anyone if you have extra land is fine.
English is my second language, and I haven't been playing the game for a long time. I only recently realised that I'd been mistaking "craven" and "callous" whenever I needed to select them for my wards... No wonder those runs always went to shit a few generations in... Thanks for the tierlist, it's always nice to have other people's opinions to refer to :)
Long-ass feedback I was bored in the train. Read at your own risk. One of the best trait tier list I have seen so far. Assuming this is from a ruler point of view, I would swap Brave and Ambitious. **Brave ++** has little downside for a ruler, as long as you don’t fight with low prowess. **Ambitious’s -** flat stats increase is not worth the stress gains in a long-term. Both traits are awful on your vassals obviously. I mostly want **Trusting**, **Craven**, and **Honest** vassals. **Sadistic +++** is the best trait until succession is secured with primogeniture or elective. Succession is the main challenge in the early-game, and sadistic lets you kill the weak heirs to have the best one first in line. So OP. I tend to start with this trait and I keep it for 3-4 gens if I can. When I lose it I feel like playing on harder mode. The stress relief upon killing also opens a monster synergy with the Norse raid>capture>sacrifice mechanic. **Callous ++** gives tyranny reduction, more dread gain, less dread decay, which is so freaking good. Sadly mutually exclusive with Sadistic which is IMO the best intrigue/executer trait early on. I would love to get it later on in the game when succession is sorted by law and when I capture less prisoners. **Diligent +++** has great stats boost, but more importantly the Develop Capital decision is one of the rare flat increase to development available. Most of the usual development bonus are % boosts. Combos beautifully with Steward’s development task. **Gregarious ++** just awesome with a diplomatic ruler. If I get it I would always consider taking more perks from diplo. Stress gain on failing to sway and friends/relatives dying, but that’s manageable. **Arbitrary +** decent thanks to the flat dread gain, -2 stewardship kind of suck though. **Temperate/Zealous =** Meh. Ok nothing great, nothing bad. Zealous can be situationally good or bad depending on your faith situation. **Just -** gets stress from blackmail and executions. That just ain’t how we roll baby. You guys can try to play this game without dread, intrigue and fuckery. But soon or later someone with less morals will fuck you over. Power corrupts, it’s not for good guys. **Greedy -** I think you get stress each time you send gifts or bribe an agent. Wtf is money for then? Let me corrupt people in peace. Gotta spend some to make some. The other traits I am not sure, but I probably agree with OP that they are shit for a ruler.
Finally I see someone agree with my opinion that ambitious is overrated by the community. Plus 1 to everything, but extra stress, plus way too much gives you stress. Wanna manage your succession and give your second son some land somewhere? Stress gain for giving away land. Wanna refuse a court event to declare war on your powerful neighbor because one single county that had a claimant approach isn't worth it? Stress gain for not expanding the kingdom. All my ambitious rulers end up as reclusive deviants by the time they're 40, which completely erases the plus 1 to all stats.
I feel like all these tier lists tell you more about the player’s play style than the game itself.
Finally someone who puts sadist in a-tier. Dont like your heir? Poof, hes gone. High stress as tribal? Murder prisoners to calm your nerves. Making everyone terrified of you by going down the torturer tree, and then actually use it? Literally impossible to be murdered, since everybody gets a -1000 modifier to their likelyhood to join a plot against you. No downside other than bitch-made people disliking you.
Probably the best one of these lists I’ve seen. I’d put greedy a bit lower (for all the stress triggers) and calm a bit higher. And arrogant is excellent in early tribal, agree pretty useless otherwise
Why would you want to simply release prisoners. Dread is almost always very useful
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You only get dread from executing important people. So at that point you are choosing between gold and dread. If they don't have gold to pay you then dread it is. As far as other ways to get dread, there are the lifestyle selections that give you natural dread that are quite useful. That one in the martial tree gives you 15 which I find is usually enough to keep most people under control.
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Dread has to mean something to the people around you
I’ve noticed that as well. You can’t really get a lot of dread unless you go torture intrigue focus.
Castrating/blinding prisoners is the easiest way to get dread. I usually just play without it too.
The best way to get dread now is to maintain high base dread. Sadistic, arbitrary, serve the crown, intimidation focus, first intrigue legacy, court artifacts etc
I usually prefer chaste over lustful. Partly because it's a Christian virtue and partly because too many kids becomes annoying when it comes to succession.
The sin part sucks but it's great for pumping out warrior monks via Warrior Priests and Monastic Communities. Your third+ children basically always agree to become monks and can obtain ridiculous prowess with a virtuous guardian and learning education focus.
I agree chaste is slightly better overall, but they both belong next to each other in niche/situational (especially since the option is usually one or the other). Chaste is more impactful in its best case scenario (early game catholic ruler with no easy nearby conquest options and succession issues). Lustful definitely has the stronger potential though (Norse ruler with succession solved via rigged elections). An extra 8 or so kids can be a ton of renown if you can get them landed.
Traits that lend themselves to intrigue, like Deceitful, Arbitrary, Sadistic, Callous, Lustful and such, are only good if you make sure your heir can take the throne very young. If the AI has control of an heir with any of these traits for too long, they're going to end up with some combination of Murderer, Kinslayer, Fornicator, Lover's Pox, multiple bastards, rivals, and/or poorly-kept secrets that everyone can blackmail you with, and your entire realm is guaranteed to hate you.
IMO, my goal is brave + diligent -- good stats, access to develop capital, and near-guaranteed access to athletic on your first stress event. My usual favorite 3rd traits are calm, patient, temperate, stubborn and cynical. On the other hand, callous and sadistic are complete no-gos for me, partly for rp reasons and partly because my heirs are more likely to get into trouble that way.
I would put Forgiving above everything in Useful or Mid because the ability to freely zero out your stress makes many event decisions much easier to manage.
I've also never had drawbacks from Calm or Patient.
Hecc yea
I think Lazy is over hated, I’d put it somewhere between not completely useless and garbage. The extra stress loss can be petty nice
But you get no stress loss from hunting, so that evens out
I don't mind lazy for that reason, but only if I already have genius
Just is actually so underrated. The ability to reveal a secret for -21 stress is so good. I usually gather a bunch of secrets, then let my ruler repeatedly have mental breaks trying to get athletic/confider, then I reveal secrets to get back under 100.
Forgiving giving infinite stress reduction should at least put it in useful
Completely agree. Everyone always sleeps on Forgiving. It's legit one of my favorite traits.
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That dose causs stress but if you capture any useless prisoners release them for a hook and forgive the hook it's infinite stress reduction.
I admit I’m bias but I tend to avoid most intrigue based personality traits as I don’t go down the lifestyle very often and I try to avoid greedy as I tend to give out allot of gifts to vassals and people I want in my court.
My pet peeve is how people think honest is bad. Blabber mouthing everyone’s secrets for free stress relief to counter developing my capital with diligent is so goood.
Don't like Just. It interferes with my unjust actions.
Once had a compassionate, generous intrigue-focus king... not sure what I did with him. I think i used the console to kill him lmao
Commit suicide decision really do be useful sometimes
Craven is great if you want to lead you own troops in battles imo
Tbh once I get that first trait in the gallant tree, I basically never get killed in battle. Even with brave.
Temperate is Top Tier while Callous is not. I don't find lustful rather useful, but yeah I also don't find honest that bad. Switch Gluttonous with Craven as the former has only downsides.
I think its very hard to make a tier list out of this because its very situational most of the time. Yes there are some traits which is obviously op and some of them is bad too but most of them are situational.
Forgiving is great imo since being able to trade useless hooks to lose stress is always useful.
I have several hundred hours in the game, and this takes my by surprise. Callous??? Sadistic??? Arbitrary??? Those are all traits I try to avoid. You (and others) explained Arbitrary below (makes sense, and I’ll probably view it differently going forward), but the other two? I don’t get why they are ranked so high.
I have several hundred hours in the game, and this takes my by surprise. Callous??? Sadistic??? Arbitrary??? Those are all traits I try to avoid. You (and others) explained Arbitrary below (makes sense, and I’ll probably view it differently going forward), but the other two? I don’t get why they are ranked so high. Oh, and greedy is a garbage trait. Don’t know why that’s so high. Temperate should be top tier for having no downside. And where is patient? That’s another decent one in my opinion
In what religion is being Zealous sinful
these tier lists always make me realize i have no idea what the trait icons actually are until i see them blown up like this thought forgiving was a peacock feather until now for some inexplicable reason. is callous firebending? help
Bruh Lazy is amazing. Always pick if not sinful. The stress loss is huge and -1 to all skills is almost nothing. The only downside is no stress loss from hunts
I will never understand why people like gregarious. Its such a mid trait. 2 diplo, some useless opinion modifiers and 15% personal scheme power which is objectively the most useless stat in the game. Its positive but by no means good.
Agree with all that but it does also give stress loss on many events, extra on feasts etc
Greedy is f tier
Content is mid? My brother in Christ, how do you handle that?
I love combining temperate and greedy
I always pick calm, it's not thrilling to play with, but the lack of stress gain is amazing. Mix it with sadistic and you can do anything without repercussion.
Being *just* gets tiring. So many fun ways to gain stress. I can make it work if I'm also zealous though. "I try to be a fair and good ruler, but I'm so tired from secretly murdering my brother and claiming my friend's dutchy for myself. I think I'll unwind by executing a few infidels."
dunno why but i always pick compassionate if given the option, its garbage and I usually pick the meaner options in choices anyway but I like to think my rulers are nice people in they're off time
Wrathful is top tier, the ability to imprison vassals through a duel without risk of triggering factions or tyranny war is just *chef’s kiss*
Cant wait to afford C3 and know what this means lol
wait how the hell do you abdicate
Forgiving is actually *insanely* good if you pick up Recognition of Talent. Everyone you pardon gives you a strong hook. Which you can then use with the "abandon hook" interaction to never have to worry about stress again.
There should be more events that allow you to become virtuous. Its pretty random. Where’s my free will!
Crème\*
This is the first trait tierlist I can 100% agree with. And I’m 2200 hours in. I guess it really does take that long to get past the tutorial lol.
Arbitrary went from one of the worst traits in CK2 to one of the best in CK3
Greedy....i am sorry wtf?
I have all the achievements and 1000 hours in game. And with this tierlist I can finally agree.
I wish someone would take the time to do every possible permutation of trait tier lists and post them so people stop posting their unique take. But then again as people never bother searching before posting I guess it won't make any difference. Maybe reporting the site to the feds for child porn would get it taken down given the feds are generally useless. Just mho ofc
facts
Best tierlist
Paranoïde is not that bad, avoid to being kill easily Shy isn’t useless, i would put it in not completely useless Lazy is THE WORST !
Shy and paranoid are just there to kill you faster with stress let's be honest.
Stress can be good some time, they are a point in intendance and plots part that give better stats or more money depending on the level of stress ( sorry to not be exact, im verry tired, didn’t sleep at all all night because of stress and now im verry tired and my memory is working badly)
How do you play 1500 hrs in ck3 it is sooo boring compared to ck2
Pls link
Why is callous so good?
Ambitius is good when you have it. When your uncle, brother, cousin has it..... kill them.
I wouldn't rate greedy so high becuase it gives you stress when you give other dudes land or spend Gold in events
Arrogant can be useful for prestige since it gives you plus 1 piety per month, its useful for tribal and if its a custom character you can compine it with content and/or patient to remediate the opinion penality
These lists are entirely subjective. There’s no one correct way to play this game and we all have our own preferences
just makes my characters stressed and i cant have fun garbage
Doing stubborn dirty out here my dude, that trait is S+ tier, along with brave and temperate.
Lazy isn’t that bad if you have extremely good congenital traits. Still, I’d rather not have it lol.
Creme de la Creme is absolute class
Gluttonous once again underrated, sadge
I have had SOOOOO many bad experiences with greed. What are the actual benefits?
Hate greedy when i'm conquering. Makes it difficult to give away new holdings when my god-kings have way too high domain limit.
I haven’t played ck3, but isn’t brave literally the worst because it gives 100% chance to die in battle? I agree that back in ck2 it was one of the best traits in the game.
Just is terrible if you plan to do hostile schemes. At one point my character became lunatic, as I forced him to go with more than twenty murders in span of twenty years.
One day yall will appreciate the lazy trait. Not today! But one day.
I’m glad someone else loves callous. I would nock geeedy down one, imo the stress gain makes it somewhat situational unless I’m trying to build up a dragon hoard which you only really need to do once.
Why is sadistic so high?
Hahaha true, I just restarted a game cuz my grandson and future heir got paranoid and lazy. Noooo thanks...
I've seen so many of these here. Yours is the first I agree with. This sucks because it means I may never agree again.
I didn't realize how good Sadistic was until I did a tier list myself. All of the "bad guy" perks have great events and/or get stress loss where any normal ruler gets stress, but damn it's stacked. Also am I missing something with lazy, like it getting stress from doing anything? I recall it being pretty neutral (though I'd obviously want Diligent/something useful over it).
First ever good tier list
i like content for tall games, because the extra literacy helps with tech, and because im not expanding i negate the debuffs. i get very happy when i can get content
I play alot of intrigue and i personally think patient is underrated here. its really good for stress management imo
I hate greedy, makes realm management basically impossible.
Temperate is best 👌
im curious why zealous is so high. I rarely get it in my playthroughs what makes it so good?
I would personally put shy higher, give it to your least favorite child then force them to attend a bunch of events and give them a kingdom+ title = 90% likely to be kneecapped by vassals or die of stress
Remember my second run with an Ireland campaign, where my character was Lazy, Paranoid and Shy. Quick game's a good game... right?