Watch Dogs: Legion guide: How to build a great team

In this Watch Dogs: Legion guide, we’ll explain how to build a respectable team of DedSec Operatives. We’ll cover the basic of how a team works in Watch Dogs: Legion, how to recruit new members, what to look for while recruiting, when to stop recruiting, and how to remove people from your team.

Why you need a team

There is no main character in Watch Dogs: Legion. The closest thing is probably Bagley, the AI that runs the hacker collective DedSec, but you don’t play as Bagley. That makes your team is a bunch of humans for Bagley (and you) to move around London.

How your team works (using abilities)

Every person in London is a potential character for you to play. Their abilities — occupation, outfit, gadgets, weapons, skills, and even unique emotes — make them different from one another. They’re also how and how you’ll decide who to play.

Think of your team as a roster of abilities. That mindset turns people into single-use methods to solve specific problems. Sure, some people will stick around for a while, and you’ll even have go-to characters you’ll keep returning to, but the people never matter as much as their abilities.

Any given person walking down the street has between zero and three of these perks. Your starting character, for example, has one. A Skilled Operative like those you get from a borough mission (after turning a borough Defiant) will have four or even five. More abilities make a character more versatile and, therefore, more useful.

Uniformed Access – clothes make the Operative

The easiest way to see this in action is when you recruit a Construction Worker early in the game (it’s part of a main story mission, so you can’t miss them). Construction Workers come with an ability called Uniformed Access – Construction Sites.

Image: Ubisoft Toronto/Ubisoft via Polygon

Scattered around your map, you’ll see some red blocks and buildings. These are Restricted Areas. If you hover over them and zoom in, you’ll see the Uniformed Access rules for that area. Some, like in the image above, will list access for Construction Workers.

A matching Uniformed Access ability means you can walk straight into these locations without raising suspicion, while someone without that ability would be attacked on sight. (You’ll still get attacked if you run or, you know, steal something.) Just because a character is wearing a safety vest, they become immediately useful in these (specific) Restricted Areas.

That’s the way to think of your team and their Abilities: Each person has specific uses matched to small tasks. Once you’ve completed that task, it’s time to look for another team member with specific and appropriate abilities to tackle the next one.

How to choose recruits

Since each person in Watch Dogs: Legion can be reduced to their abilities, perks, skills, weapons, and tech, you should think of recruiting those people onto your team as adding those skills to your roster. More importantly, when deciding who to play as or recruit, look for the skills (and uniforms) that you need for your next mission.

Recruiting a member of the public into DedSec (to make them playable) involves completing a mission for them. They’re bite-sized but could involve anything from accessing Restricted Areas to stealing cars or hacking servers.

Recruiting random people you meet is satisfying enough, but it’s a huge time sink and usually won’t help you in DedSec’s larger goals. Instead, find your next mission objective, think about what you need to complete it (you can even scout the location to see), and recruit someone based on those needs.

The other side of this is looking at your team for someone who already has the skills you need. Don’t recruit if you don’t have to.

Individual versus team abilities

Some abilities are limited to the person, while others apply to your entire team. It’s important (and easy) to know the difference while you’re looking for people to recruit.

Abilities that apply to your entire team will have the word “Team” in the description.

Image: Ubisoft via Polygon

These are passive abilities, and you’ll benefit from them regardless of who you’re currently playing as. In the image above, you can see that this Detective Constable’s Police Contact ability means any member of your team who gets arrested will spend less time in jail.

Any ability that doesn’t include the word “Team” means you’ll only benefit from that perk while playing as that character.

Buy the Deep Profiler tech upgrade

Every person you meet will have an opinion about DedSec. They’ll either dislike DedSec or be sympathetic (neutral) to DedSec. If they dislike DedSec, they’ll have a red thumbs-down icon next to their name.

Image: Ubisoft via Polygon

You can’t start a recruitment mission for someone who dislikes DedSec. You could keep looking for someone already sympathetic, but it’s much faster and easier to just buy the Deep Profiler tech upgrade (from the Tech menu) for 25 Tech Points.

This gives you an extra option when attempting to recruit someone who dislikes DedSec. Running a Deep Profile on someone gives you Recruitment Leads — a sub-mission to complete that will open up their recruitment mission.

This is extremely useful for quickly recruiting Albion Contractors or police to your team (who always start with disliking you). It basically makes disliking DedSec moot.

Recruit these occupations and abilities first

Instead of getting bogged down recruiting every person you see until you fill your team roster, you should focus on recruiting a only a few versatile people. These people might become your go-tos, but, more importantly, they’ll be the ones you use to recruit everyone else later on.

• Construction Worker. You’ll recruit a Construction Worker as part of an early story mission, so you don’t have to go out of your way to do this. They’ll give you access to Restricted Areas and a Cargo Drone that you can ride around. We’re putting this one first because Construction Workers (riding their drones) are great for completing borough uprising activities. Which leads to …
• Spy+ Skilled Operative. When you complete the three borough uprising activities (marked with a red icon on your map) in the City of Westminster, you’ll get a mission to recruit a Spy+. Do that early. A Spy comes with a silenced weapon, a kick-ass car, and a weapon-jamming watch.
• Albion. Albion employees (like Contractors or Recruiters) come with the Uniformed Access – Albion Locations ability. Since Albion goons are the big bads in Watch Dogs: Legion, you’re going to deal with their Restricted Areas a lot. The easiest way to recruit an Albion Contractor is by buying the Deep Profiler tech upgrade (which we wrote about above).
• Clan Kelley. The other goonish big bads you’ll deal with are from Clan Kelley. Find someone with Uniformed Access – Clan Kelley Locations so you can walk around more freely. You’ll want the Deep Profiler tech upgrade for this one as well.

Once you have those occupations covered, you’re free to recruit based on your whims (like haircut or clothes shops discounts).

Just remember to focus on short-term goals and look for abilities to match.

When to stop recruiting

Your team size is limited to 45 people. This number is a combination of your Operatives (people you can play as) and Potential Recruits (people you’ve saved to your Recruits list). That’s your upper limit for recruiting, but you can stop much sooner than that.

Our advice throughout this guide has been this: Recruit based on your immediate needs. If your current and immediate needs (for your next mission, objective, or goal) are met, don’t recruit anyone else.

How to remove someone from Operatives or Potential Recruits

Maybe you’ve gotten sick of an Operative or you’ve filled your Potential Recruits list with interesting haircuts instead of useful skills, and now your Team menu is full. You can remove both active Operatives and Potential Recruits, but it’s not immediately obvious how.

In your Team menu, highlight the person you want to remove and edit (Operative) or view (Potential Recruit) them. On the next screen, you’ll have the option to Retire Operative or Abandon Recruitment and remove them from your team.