Empire of Sin: Classes, skills, and roles guide

Empire of Sin presents you with a number of options when it comes to characters. After learning how to recruit characters and manage your crew’s relationships, it’s time for our guide on the game’s classes, skills, and roles.

Note: For more information, check out our Empire of Sin guides and features hub.

Empire of Sin: Character classes and skills guide

Let’s discuss the five character classes in Empire of Sin. You’ve got the Hired Gun, Enforcer, Con Artist, Doctor, and Demolitionist

Hired Guns

Hired Guns specialize in close to medium-range combat. Still, the class’ best perk isn’t a level-up skill; it’s actually a trait called “Hair Trigger.” This makes them automatically shoot at various targets if an ally’s HP goes below 25%.

As far as I know, you can easily get the Hair Trigger perk if a Hired Gun is using an SMG and their expertise and kills increase. For example, Maria Rodriguez got the perk quite early on. This made her one of my best characters in several Empire of Sin playthroughs.

The reason for this is that Hair Trigger activates even when Maria’s downed and bleeding. If a crew member’s HP gets low, she’ll suddenly stand up and spray lots of hostiles with her SMG. You won’t even need to waste a healing item on her.

Enforcers

The Enforcer isn’t a class I prioritized Empire of Sin. This is due to a limited selection of weapons (mostly for close-range combat) until they can get bonus training for rifles at level 2. Likewise, their skills (except for “Meat Hook” which is available at level 5) aren’t going to wow you.

Con Artists

The Con Artist class in Empire of Sin is actually fairly decent. Con Artists can readily use sniper rifles making them deadly for long-range engagements. Since enemies can shoot you across an entire room with their pistols, having a rifle or sniper rifle (and camping via overwatch) makes most encounters a breeze.

Con Artists also have a couple of nifty skills. “Flush” (level 1) can make a target move out of cover and trigger overwatch shots. Meanwhile, “Kill Chain” (level 5) lets them regain an action point if their shot eliminates a hostile. They can practically snipe their way to victory if you build them properly.

Doctors

In my opinion, Doctors are the most invaluable class in Empire of Sin. This is due to getting the “Heal” skill at level 1. Since healing items in the game disappear after a single-use, the Heal skill becomes your primary means of keeping everyone in tip-top shape. Plus, you can revive downed and bleeding characters since the skill has a short cooldown.

Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that Doctors can be armed with rifles and sniper rifles. They’re basically your sharpshooters and medics rolled into one class in Empire of Sin.

Additional skills become very helpful, too:

• Lifeline (level 2) – Nearby characters will bleed out instead of dying when they lose all their HP. Given that Empire of Sin‘s bosses (the ones in safe houses) tend to be trigger-happy folks that one-shot your crew members, having a Doctor nearby ensures that they don’t die unexpectedly.
• Remedy (level 3) – This heals characters a bit while applying a regenerative effect.
• Cold Efficiency (level 4) – A 50% chance that you get an extra overwatch shot if the previous one manages to hit a target.
• Miracle Elixir (level 5) – Your friendly target gains +1 AP and +100 HP for two turns.

Demolitionists

Truth be told, I haven’t really tested Demolitionists that much in Empire of Sin. Although they come pre-packaged with a grenade, the class’ throwing range is abysmal that you’re likely to hit your own teammates that are further afield.

Assigning roles

Empire of Sin has three unique roles that can be assigned to certain characters (four if you count another special role). You can check these out by opening a character’s panel and pressing the “R” button:

• Moles – Allows characters to infiltrate a rival faction.
• Advisor – Unlocks at 250 notoriety. This boosts the loyalty of all crew members. The value is dependent on a character’s persuasion stat.
• Underboss – Unlocks at 500 notoriety. This reduces the wages that you need to pay to crew members. The value is dependent on a character’s leadership trait.

As for moles, bear in mind that you can have multiple ones embedded in a rival faction. However, these characters are considered “out of action” for six months. They’ll still take up space in your crew limit and you need to pay their wages while they’re undercover. Likewise, a mole will only have one task that can be done that’s dependent on their class:

• Hired Guns – Assassinate the faction’s boss (very low chance)
• Enforcers – Steal some cash
• Doctors – Plant misinformation
• Demolitionists – Sabotage a racket
• Con Artists – Cannot become moles

Lastly, there’s the lieutenant role that you can consider in Empire of Sin. This becomes available once you have additional safe houses in other neighborhoods. You can pick a crew member that’ll become the lieutenant of that safe house to gain different boosts depending on their class and level. Don’t worry because that underling will still be in your active party.

Note: This can sometimes bug out. Even after assigning a lieutenant, the Empire Overview screen won’t show that a lieutenant is active.

Empire of Sin is available via Steam. For more information, head over to our guides and features hub.