Flotsam Survivors & Specialists: Birdkeeper, Chemist, Electrician & Aquaculturist

Drifters are the engine of a Flotsam town. Buildings do not produce anything by themselves; every workshop, boat and desalination unit needs a person, and every person needs water, food, rest and a reason to keep working. The 1.0 update deepened that system with specialist questlines and a Radio Signals choice, but the basics still decide whether a town runs smoothly.

Drifters and specialists

Every rescued survivor is a drifter: a worker with a name, a portrait, two story chapters and a set of stats. Specialists are drifters with a role attached. The official store description says specialists unlock new buildings, quests and discoveries, and names the Birdkeeper, Chemist and Electrician as examples.

The 1.0 announcement lists four new specialists — Chemist, Electrician, Birdkeeper and Aquaculturist — and says every specialist now has their own questline with specialist-specific quests and new buildings.Official

This page will not invent a per-specialist unlock table. The official announcement names the roles and the structure, not every building. If a guide lists exact specialist rewards without a source, treat it as a player report.

Radio Signals and quest choice

1.0 added a Radio Signals system that lets you choose which specialist or questline to pursue. That matters because specialist quests compete for the same exploration time and resources as the main story.

The practical approach is to pick the specialist whose role matches the bottleneck you actually have. If water is unstable, a specialist quest that adds water infrastructure is worth more than a cosmetic or late-game branch. If food is the problem, the Aquaculturist's line is the obvious first look. The game does not publish a recommended order, so this is a judgement call, not a rule.

Rescuing survivors

Survivors and friendly animals are found while exploring landmarks: flooded ruins, abandoned boats and forgotten islands. The official store description frames rescue as one of the main exploration rewards, alongside old technology and resources.

Rescued drifters arrive with random story chapters, so you cannot hand-pick their bonuses the way you can with your founders. That is the trade: more people means more production, but also more demand for water, food and housing, and a random spread of stats.

Public guides say rescued drifters roll random traits and that a perfect +20 single-stat combination is roughly a one-in-ten result. The 2020 Steam guide gives the same rarity estimate for version 0.3.7; it has not been re-checked in 1.0.1f7.

Story traits and stats

Each drifter carries two story chapters. A chapter can give two minor bonuses (+5 each) or one major bonus (+10), and the rarest combinations reach +20 in a single stat. Founders are the only drifters whose chapters you choose before the run.

The stats that matter in the early game, according to the two public beginner guides, are:

• Crafting — Floaters, planks and production speed;
• Cooking and Desalination — the two survival chains;
• Athletics — hauling;
• Nautics — salvaging;
• Construction — building speed.

The stat names and their exact effects come from public guides. The 2020 guide was written for 0.3.7 and the 1.0-era guide repeats the same categories, but Pajama Llama has not published a full stat table.

Drifter Duties

The Drifter Duties screen is a grid: one row per drifter, one column per job, and a priority control in each cell. It is the difference between a town that works and a town where the best crafter spends the day hauling scrap.

The 2020 Steam Quick Start Guide says the duties tab opens with Y and recommends raising every priority to 2, then increasing the jobs that match each drifter's specialisation. The 1.0-era guide repeats the priority advice but not the key. Confirm the current hotkey in Settings before relying on it.

Two habits that survive the version gap:

• Raise the baseline first. A uniform priority prevents a single job from consuming a drifter who should be elsewhere.
• Specialise on top of the baseline. A +15 or +20 Crafting drifter should be on crafting, not salvage, even if salvage is urgent.

Morale

Morale is not a hidden mood meter. The drifter panel lists every modifier, positive and negative, with its value. The official store screenshot shows a drifter at a morale score of 50% with these lines:

Read the panel literally. If hunger is the only red line, the fix is food, not decoration. If housing is low, upgrade the home. If travel is dragging morale down, plan shorter moves or accept the temporary hit. The screenshot values are from the official store material, so treat them as an example of how the panel reads rather than a universal score table.

The exact morale values shown in the store screenshot may come from a specific build. This page uses them to explain the panel, not as a permanent balance table.

What this page has not verified

Checked against public sources on 6 November 2026, not played through in 1.0.1f7:

• The exact unlock trigger for each of the four specialists;
• The full list of buildings each specialist unlocks;
• Whether the Y hotkey still opens Drifter Duties;
• The current stat effects and trait rarity table;
• Whether the morale values in the screenshot match the current build;
• Whether rescued animals such as seagulls still gather wood and what they eat.

If the in-game panel or quest log disagrees with this page, the game is right.

Read next

• Beginner guide: first-day build order: where people fit in the opening.
• How to get fresh water: the job most likely to be understaffed.
• How to get food: the other chain that depends on drifters.