Who's out there?
Your level
Biome
Difficulty bonus
Gamestage
Rebirth's gamestage = level × 2 × difficulty bonus × (1 + biome modifier) + biome bonus. The difficulty bonus depends on your game difficulty and couldn't be read from the files, so for exact results type the gamestage your character screen shows.
Weapon tiers among the survivors you'll meet here:
How hiring works. Talk to a survivor to hire them. The price is their loadout's base cost + 500 per survivor level, minus 2% per rank of Better Barter, and some loadouts need a minimum player level. A survivor starts at level 1 and levels up from kills (75 for level 2, up to 3,375 for level 10). Higher levels mean bigger magazines, better aim, and more headshots. You can have as many survivors as your Charismatic Nature rank. NPC spawns start at gamestage 10 by default.
Survivor level1
Better Barter
Show
Pets and minions come from spawn cubes you place. You can have up to Charismatic Nature rank + 1 of them, but never more than 3 dogs. The Horror Panther and Skeleton Warriors need the Witch Doctor class active, and the Rage Panther needs the Berserker. All of them level up from kills (dogs a little faster than survivors and panthers).
Your squad
Charismatic Nature
Your level
Better Barter
Mercenary contracts
Bought from the Mercenary trader (Raël). A contract summons mercenaries to fight for you for a few minutes; press Insert to call them (20-minute cooldown).
Bandits: the neighbors who went bad
Bandits spawn from the same gamestage brackets as survivors, with the same weapon tiers. Use the gamestage from the first tab: