Welcome to Star Trek Online!

Well, maybe you've been around for a while, but considering the theme of this guide... you might still consider yourself new, or maybe you're an older player returning after a long absence.

In any case, let's get to it!

I've phrased the rest as a Q&A. If you have any further questions after reading all the way to the end, please let me know.

A Recruitment Event is a time window (typically three weeks) during which newly created characters of the qualifying faction(s) become "Recruits".

During this time window, the faction emblem will sparkle on the "Create a Character" button on the login screen.

Recruits will be tagged with a special logo on the login screen, and provided with a special non-disposable inventory item via the tutorial. Clicking that item will open a special menu that displays a number of special tasks for which the Recruit character can earn rewards.

Well, in fact, I recommend participating in all events in STO, because the rewards are often unique and will never be available again for free... though that last part doesn't apply to Recruitment Events.

But also, some of the Recruit's task unlocks, also unlock account-wide rewards. These rewards can then be picked up from the Temporal Agent NPC vendor at your factional home base. These rewards are claimable by every character on your account, now and future.

There are three Temporal Agent NPCs:
- Philip Crey (Federation), just outside Adm. Quinn's office at Earth Spacedock
- Subcommander Kail (Romulan), near D'Tan in the back room at the Romulan Flotilla
- Commander Q'on (Klingon), to your right as you enter the Great Hall

In order to participate in a Recruitment Event, you simply need to:

- create a new character of a participating faction
- play that character until they complete the tutorial AND have received the Recruitment device
- then finish the current mission and report to your faction's home base

All of these must be completed during the timeframe that the Recruitment Event is active.

While the Recruitment device menu is how you earn the event's rewards, it is actually permanently available; you do NOT need to complete all of the Recruit tasks (or, indeed, ANY of them) during the event timeframe.

Yes, there are, in fact, FOUR Recruitment events.

By order of original event date:

Delta Recruitment was the first Recruitment Event, originally run in 2015.

- Participating Factions: Starfleet (standard / 2409 type only), Romulan, Klingon
- Device: Tesseract Communications Receiver

Temporal Recruitment was the second, originally run in 2016.

- Participating Faction: Starfleet (Original Series / "TOS" type only)
- Device: Temporal Transponder

Gamma Recruitment was the third, originally run in 2018.

- Participating Faction: Dominion
- Device: Dominion Transponder

Klingon Recruitment was the fourth, originally run in 2021.

- Participating Faction: Klingon
- Device: Encrypted Klingon Receiver

Since 2021, the developers have re-activated each recruitment event once per year (spacing them out so that there is one in each quarter of the year).

I would say, four is the bare minimum, but if you really want to maximize the Recruitment Event account rewards, you'll need six.

Why, you may ask.

The reason is that the Delta Recruitment reward device, includes a separate task with a separate reward for completing each "story arc" (the story episodes in each tab in the episode journal). All of the tasks of this type also unlock account-wide rewards.

However, the three participating factions have access to different story arcs, so each have different reward tasks that the others do not have access to.

Recruits (except Delta in a very limited fashion, for the arc rewards mentioned above) can't claim the account-wide rewards from their own event.

Also, the account rewards are a one-time unlock. Playing a second Recruit of the same event and faction, will not unlock a second set of the account-wide rewards.

So if you're going to make more characters of a particular faction, it's actually better (for them, and pointless for your other characters) that they are NOT Recruits, if you already have any relevant Recruit types.

There are some small exceptions:

- Klingon Recruits have some Recruit-only rewards (such as a special bridge officer) that are potentially needed for certain types of builds. If you are, or plan to be, pursuing one of those builds, you might want to create an additional Klingon Recruit so that they have access to the Recruit-only rewards.

- Klingon Recruits have Recruit-only rewards which contain a small number of Endeavour perk point tokens. Once applied, these have account-wide effect.

- Temporal AND Gamma Recruits have a Recruit-only reward which contains an Experimental Ship Upgrade Token. The token itself is Recruit-only, but its effect (when used) is an account wide benefit. If it is worth your time to farm these, this would be a way to do it (but you can also get them via the Zen store, the Phoenix box system, and from the Exchange).

Exactly.

By the time you've finished all the Recruitment Events, you should have the following Recruits:

- Starfleet Delta Recruit
- Klingon Delta Recruit
- Romulan Delta Recruit
- TOS-Starfleet Temporal Recruit
- Dominion Gamma Recruit
- Klingon Klingon Recruit

Note that these are by faction. You can play ANY character race, gender, and class, as long as you start within the participating faction, and thus are playing the event version of the tutorial.

Also, be warned, the Temporal Recruitment device is not given until the end of the first post-tutorial story arc (Agents of Yesterday), which is effectively part of an extended tutorial.

i think you've probably gotten it by now. If there's further questions, please let me know and I'll expand this guide (if appropriate).

In general?

I would like to take this opportunity to share links to my other Steam guides. All of these should be quite useful to newer players.

https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2735967242

https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2834935096

https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2735911494