System mechanic — not covered elsewhere

Marriage

One of nine, drawn at random. You do not get to pick — and losing her, by choice or by chance, is meant to actually cost you

A chapel — its own building, green spire and lawn, north of the Faction Hall — lets a character get married at its altar for a flat fee. Doing so binds you to one of nine possible spouses, chosen completely at random, who then follows you and fights at your side for the rest of your time together. She isn't a cosmetic follower: she has her own health and damage, builds a levelled bond with you over time that makes her hit harder the longer you stay together, can be knocked down in a fight (never killed for good), and can be lost entirely if you choose to divorce her.

Getting married

Marrying costs ¤800 at the altar. Which of the nine spouses you get is rolled the moment the ceremony completes — there is no way to choose, reroll, or influence the draw. There's also a real gamble attached: a 10% chance of contracting "ligma" on your wedding day, an in-universe joke ailment that's purely a running gag rather than a debuff — it actually makes the game's urine-stream weapon devastating instead of weak, and can be cured at a clinic if you'd rather not carry it. If you remarry a spouse you've been with before (see Bond level, below), the game remembers her and your bond resumes exactly where it left off rather than starting over.

The nine

Each of the nine possible spouses has her own name, a one-line personality, and her own combat stats and dialogue for being married, knocked down, recovering, and being left behind:

Bond level: hers, not yours

Time spent married builds a bond level, capped at 20, on its own curve rather than the game's ordinary skill curve — reaching level 2 takes 160 bond XP, level 20 takes 16,000, deliberately reachable by actually playing with her rather than grinding at her. In the current build, talking to her raises bond by 5 points, once per minute (a genuine conversation cooldown, not a button to spam). Every bond level raises both the damage she deals and the health she has by 6% — level 20 means she hits and survives at ×2.14 her base numbers.

Critically, the bond belongs to her specifically, not to you as a stat. Divorce and remarry at random and your new spouse starts at bond level 1 regardless of what you'd built before — the game keeps a separate bond record per spouse, so the only way to keep a high bond is to keep the same spouse, and the only way to get it back after losing her is to be redrawn her again by chance.

Keeping up with you

A married spouse's follow speed rises the further behind she falls, rather than being one fixed speed — she holds a steady few metres back at a walk, but closes the gap on her own once you stop sprinting, and a 150m leash snaps her back to your side outright if she's ever left stranded far enough behind. That catch-up only exists because her base speed used to be a flat pace slower than even an ordinary walk, with nothing to close the gap once it opened — measured before the fix, sprinting for six seconds left her over 140 metres back with no way to ever catch up again.

In a fight

A married spouse spawns beside you and fights automatically. If her health runs out she's knocked down, not killed — she recovers on her own after 90 seconds and there's a UI readout showing how many seconds remain while she's down. Nothing about marriage in this game can be lost to combat by simple bad luck; the only way to actually lose a spouse is to choose to divorce her.

Stationing her to defend a settlement

A married spouse can be posted at a settlement instead of following you, where she gives that location a head start against an assault — covering one attacker on her own at bond level 1, plus one more attacker for roughly every four further bond levels, capped so she can never hold a settlement entirely by herself. It's framed as a real bet rather than a free bonus: if the place falls while she's posted there, she's down for a much longer 240 seconds instead of the usual 90, and the posting itself is cleared.

Feeding

Ask a married spouse for food and she'll hand over a piece of cooked meat, on a cooldown that starts at five minutes and shortens as her bond level rises, down to a floor of one minute at bond level 20. An earlier version let you hand her items to carry as a second inventory, but that option was removed from the game entirely once unlimited personal storage made a second inventory pointless — feeding is what's left of that system today.

Divorce

Ending a marriage costs ¤1,200 and is permanent for that relationship — her bond level is preserved under her own name for if you're ever randomly matched with her again, but your current bond is gone the moment you divorce, and a new marriage always starts over at level 1 with whichever of the nine you're given next.

Version history

• Marriage introduced. A random draw from nine spouses at the chapel altar, with knockdown (not permanent loss) built in from day one, and the explicit design rule "she CANNOT be lost" to simple combat bad luck.
• Bond levelling added, on request: "you should also be able to lvl up your marriage with your wife." Its own curve, capped at level 20, paying out in combat stats, carry capacity, and a shorter food cooldown.
• The bag was removed. Handing a spouse items to carry as a second inventory was cut once unlimited personal storage made it pointless ("useless anyways since u can have unlimited items") — what's left is the food-on-a-cooldown perk described above.
• Settlement stationing added, letting a married spouse defend a location instead of following the player, with its own longer knockdown if the posting fails.
• Bond level was rebuilt to belong to the specific spouse, not the player. A defect meant a level-20 marriage's entire bonus — more than double damage and health — could be kept by divorcing for a flat fee and remarrying a totally different, randomly-drawn spouse, since bond XP was stored as one player-wide number rather than tied to any one person. Rebuilt so the bond record is kept per spouse: a new marriage always starts at level 1, and only remarrying the exact same spouse again resumes her level where it was left. An existing save's single bond number was migrated onto whichever spouse it actually belonged to, so nobody lost a marriage they'd already built.
• Three "Bond" achievements were fixed. The tiered Bond 10 / Bond 50 / Bond 200 achievements had kept reading the old, single-number bond field straight through the per-spouse rebuild above — a field the game had stopped writing to entirely — so no save could ever unlock any of the three, regardless of actual bond level. Fixed to read the highest bond level recorded across every spouse (current or past) a character has ever had.
• Fixed a spouse being unable to keep up with the player at all. Her follow speed had always been a single fixed pace slower than an ordinary walk, with nothing to close a gap once it opened, so sprinting for even a few seconds could leave her far enough behind to never catch up again for the rest of the session. Speed now rises with distance and a 150m leash recovers her outright if she's ever left truly stranded.
• Divorce now asks for confirmation first. Every other permanent, no-take-backs action in the game (deleting a character, breaking a certain permanent seal) already asks before going through with it; a single, un-confirmed click was the one place that convention was missing, despite spending real cash and permanently ending a relationship and its bond level in the same instant. The prompt now names the level actually at stake before anything is spent or lost.

Trivia

• "Ligma," the wedding-day gag ailment, doubles as the unlock condition for its own dedicated achievement, and is purely comedic — its only mechanical effect is making one specific weapon, otherwise weak, genuinely strong.
• Getting married at all is its own separate achievement, filed under the game's "Life" achievement category alongside pets, cosmetics, and the skill tree.
• Because bond level is tracked per spouse rather than per player, the game is, in effect, quietly keeping a separate relationship history with each of the nine — including with ones you haven't seen in a very long time.