Sidekick
Your Sidekick is a permanent NPC partner you recruit, name, and grow through a deep skill tree. Unlike Pets — which fight, and can be replaced — your Sidekick is a support companion that never leaves and never goes obsolete. It backs you up in combat, and it works for you all over the city.
Sidekicks unlock at level 25. One per player, and the partner you pick is permanent.
The roster
Sixteen partners, eight on each side. Anyone can recruit anyone — a Hero can run with a Villain and nobody in the city will stop you. Each starts with one signature skill already unlocked, which is the only thing that separates them mechanically: every partner grows into the same tree, so the choice is about who you want standing next to you.
You can rename your Sidekick at any time. Their portrait and their starting skill are fixed; everything else is yours to build.
Energy and training
- Your Sidekick has its own energy bar — 100, refilling at 20 an hour (30 for Donators). Nothing it does costs your energy, with one deliberate exception noted below.
- Train spends 10 of that energy for 10 XP. Your Sidekick also earns XP passively just from you playing — fighting, working the Street, running the Wire, exploring.
- Every level grants one skill point. The cap is level 50.
The skill tree
Skills are tiered — spend a point to add a rank, and each rank makes the skill a little stronger. Higher ranks need a higher Sidekick level (rank 5 needs level 40, capstones need 45).
You will not max everything. Fifty levels means fifty points, and the full tree costs well over a hundred — so a Sidekick is a specialist you shape, not a checklist you complete. Respec refunds every point for a Points cost, keeping your starter skill, so a build is never a life sentence.
- 🛡️ Vanguard — what your Sidekick does in a fight, fired from whatever you have unlocked: a Cheap Shot off the enemy's blind side, a Trip that costs them a swing, a Taunt that pulls the next hit onto your Sidekick instead of you, a Whistle that calls the enemy's pet off, and a Patch Up mid-fight. It never buffs your own stats, and a Cheap Shot can never land the finishing blow — that stays yours. It fires more abilities as it levels: one at first, up to three by level 30+, each a distinct ability, so more unlocked means more variety. The On Cue capstone stops the randomness — abilities fire when they matter instead.
- 💰 Racket — income: more Street cash, more Wire payouts, a safer Wire run, and the whole junk trade — a Hauler who lets you pawn more items a day, an Appraiser who squeezes more Pawn Points out of each one, and a Salvager who sells your scraps for more at the Junkyard. Topped by an all-income capstone. It deliberately does nothing to combat cash — losing a fight costs you half the cash on hand no matter what you have trained.
- 📈 Mentor — faster gym gains for each combat stat, more EXP, and a Tutor who does two things at once: +100 to your Intel training cap per rank (1,000 → 1,500 — nothing else in the game lifts that ceiling) and +3% Intel gym gains per rank to get you there. The Drill Sergeant capstone makes gym momentum build twice as fast, so the full +30% lands in about 50 consecutive trains instead of 100. It will not hand you all three combat stats at once — you still pick one and commit.
- 🌆 Envoy — reputation from wins and better Exploring rewards, capped by Wander: send your Sidekick out to work the city for an hour and they come back with cash, scraps, gold, pawnables and — rarely — a Point. A wander costs 20 Sidekick energy, so it is a Train you did not do. By the time you unlock it at level 45 there is little levelling left, and your partner stops training and starts earning.
- ⚙️ Operator — the errands below. This is the branch that works while you are not looking.
Operator errands
Every errand spends Sidekick energy, so the real limit is how often you check in: at two logins a day your partner banks roughly 200 energy, and a full Operator build can comfortably spend it. Each one is bought or claimed by hand from the Sidekick page — nothing here fires without you asking for it.
- Alarm Clock 10 / 15 / 20 energy — once a game day, your Sidekick hands you the same amount of your energy back. Three ranks, and the bigger cup is strictly better. It is allowed to push you over your maximum; the next regen tick settles you back down.
- Sparring Partner 10 sidekick + 10 yours — the one thing that costs you energy too, because you are the one in the ring. Pick the stat, and the session pays the same as a full-momentum gym train, with no momentum to build and no gym fee. Repeatable, not once a day. It never touches gym momentum, and Intel is not a sparring stat — it is sparring.
- Dispatcher 50 energy each, hold 2 — Wire check-in cover, bought in advance. Miss a beat on a Wire job and your Sidekick answers it for you, so the job pays in full instead of dropping to the floor. It is all or nothing: one cover against two missed beats saves neither and is kept, not wasted. Unused cover expires at reset.
- Sim Scout 30 energy each, bank 3 — banks Mirage signups. Your Sidekick enters you into a simulation roughly once an hour, online or not, following every rule you would: an equipped avatar, a ticket to spend, and only ever one open entry at a time. A full bank covers three hours, not three simultaneous entries.
- Pet Trainer 25 energy — once a day, on demand, your Sidekick puts every living pet you own through a workout: +1 to one random stat (speed, attack or defense) and +1 meal, life and EXP each.
When your Sidekick does something while you were away — enters you into a sim, answers a Wire check-in, comes home from a wander — you get an event telling you so. If they are holding banked signups but cannot act, because you are out of Mirage tickets or have no avatar equipped, they will say that too, once a day, rather than sitting on your energy in silence.
Bond
Your Sidekick has a Bond meter, 0 to 100, that scales every bonus they give you — half strength at 0, full at 100. It drops by 6 at every reset — midnight and noon, so 12 across a full day — and training restores 10. At level 50 training gives no more XP, only Bond, so once Bond is full the Train button rests (it says "Bond full") until Bond drops below 100.
Two trainings a day holds it level. A full energy bar is ten of them, so one proper session refills it from empty, and from full it takes 17 missed resets — about eight and a half days of ignoring them — to bottom out. Even then they are still working at half strength, never nothing.
Bond scales percentages, never counts. The Intel cap from Tutor and the extra Explore turns from Long Legs stay exactly as advertised no matter how neglected your partner is — a stat ceiling that drifted with a mood meter would be cruel.