Scavland Reputation Guide: Factions vs Trader Rank

The mistake this page exists to prevent

Players treat Scavland’s reputation as one invisible morality bar. It is not. There are two separate tracks, and improving one does nothing for the other.

	What it tracks	How it moves	What it buys you
Faction reputation	Standing with groups across Zalesye	Choices, and who benefits from the jobs you take	How groups treat you; which opportunities open
Trader rank	Experience with one individual NPC	Completing that NPC’s contracts	Exclusive stock in that trader’s shop

Ten factions, seven named

NoShadow states Scavland ships with ten factions, each with their own relationships and reputations. Seven are named in public sources: the Rada, the common folk, the Gunners, Kharon (whose leader is Angel), the acolytes, the mechanists and the palatines. The remaining three have not been published — see the factions page for the evidence behind each name.

You are not a member of any of them. You are a Vulture, which is a social position in Zalesye rather than a faction membership, and it is how NPCs address you.

How reputation actually moves

Ask three questions before accepting a contract:

Who gave it to you? That is the trader whose rank goes up.
Who benefits from it? That is the faction whose standing moves.
Who loses? Scavland’s world has groups in tension; helping one is rarely neutral toward another.

Achievement text confirms the shape of this: Olive Branches is earned by helping the community of Zalesye and gaining favour with the Rada (3.4% of owners), while Throwing Down Gauntlets comes from doing jobs for the Gunners and feeling “a whole lot safer” afterward (1.7%).

Damaged standing is not permanent

An NPC named Risa can offer ways to make amends with several factions — including the Rada, common folk, acolytes, mechanists, palatines and gunners. This matters more than it sounds in a game with no autosave: a reputation mistake does not have to mean reloading an hour of progress.

Why trader rank is the faster gear path

Scavland has no public stat sheet and no tier list worth trusting, so gear progress is mostly access progress — and access runs through individual traders. Concentrating contracts on one trader unlocks their exclusive stock sooner than spreading contracts thin. Note also that some squad hunts and rare item retrieval jobs pay more the farther away the objective is, which makes the highest-paying board and the most useful board two different things.

Source note

Faction count and relationship framing come from NoShadow’s pinned developer post of 4 September 2026; named factions and the amends mechanic from Steam achievement text for app 3373500 and a timestamped launch-week systems breakdown; unlock percentages from Steam’s global achievement API, captured 5 September 2026.

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