All Solo Hunters NPC Locations

Every Solo Hunters NPC lives in one of four fixed hubs — Ashfall Camp, Verge Outpost, the Drowned Quarter, and the Hollow Spire — plus one roaming trader that follows the Drift caravan route. You can hit the entire roster in a single loop that takes roughly 14 minutes once the Verge and Drowned Quarter fast-travel points are unlocked. The three NPCs players miss most often are exactly the three the map refuses to mark until you have spoken to them once: the Fence (Drowned Quarter, south stairwell), the Field Surgeon (Verge Outpost clinic, second floor), and the Caravan Trader (rotating, Drift route only).

All Solo Hunters NPC locations at a glance

Level gates and restock timers above are read straight off the in-game vendor panel. Role names are the labels the game itself uses in that panel — if a patch renames a hub, the landmark and the level gate stay the same, which is why the landmark column matters more than the name column.

Ashfall Camp: the four starter NPCs

Ashfall is the level 1–14 hub, and it is the only hub where every NPC sits within about 60 m of the spawn point. Nothing here is hidden; the difficulty is that two of the four are easy to walk past because they are inside buildings rather than out on the yard.

Quartermaster

Spawn facing north and walk to the gate at the far end of the yard — roughly 45 m. The Quartermaster stands on the right-hand side of the gate beside the ammo dump, recognisable by the stacked crates and the single floodlight. This is your armour and consumables vendor, and its stock rolls over every 20 minutes, so it is worth re-checking after a run rather than before one.

Bounty Broker

From the Quartermaster, turn around and look for the water tower on the west side of the yard. The Bounty Broker is the NPC standing at the notice board directly beneath it. Contracts refresh on the daily reset, not on a timer, so there is no point revisiting it mid-session. If you can see the tower but not the board, you are standing on the wrong side of the yard — the board faces the motor pool.

Gunsmith

Walk past the motor pool (the row of parked vehicles on the east side) and look for the corrugated shed directly behind it. The Gunsmith is inside, at the bench. This NPC unlocks at level 3, so a fresh character will see an empty shed on the first visit. Its 30-minute restock makes it the slowest-refreshing vendor in Ashfall.

Skill Trainer

Enter the barracks — the two-storey building on the north-west corner of the yard — take the stairs to the second floor and turn into the east room. The Skill Trainer unlocks at level 5. There is no restock timer here because respecs are unlimited, but the respec cost scales with your level, so the practical advice is to bank your points rather than spend them at 5.

Verge Outpost: two NPCs, one of them hidden indoors

Field Surgeon

Fast-travel to Verge Outpost and head for the clinic, the white building on the north side of the courtyard. The Field Surgeon is not on the ground floor — the ground floor is the respawn point. Take the stairs at the back of the building to the second floor. This is the NPC most players report as “missing” because the map marker sits on the building’s footprint rather than the room itself. Unlock level is 12, and stock refreshes every 15 minutes, the fastest of any vendor in the game.

Armorer

Cross the courtyard to the east side and enter the loading dock. The Armorer is inside the fenced cage on the dock floor, which you reach through the gate on the left of the dock entrance — the right-hand gate is scenery and will not open. Unlock level 15, 30-minute restock. If you are under level 15 the cage is empty and the gate stays shut.

Drowned Quarter: the Fence

The Drowned Quarter holds a single NPC, and it is the one that causes the most search traffic. Spawn at the Quarter’s main fast-travel point and walk south along the flooded street until you reach the stairwell at the far end — about 110 m. The Fence is tucked behind the crate stack at the bottom of that stairwell, out of line of sight from the street. It unlocks at level 20, buys contraband that no other vendor will touch, and restocks every 45 minutes, the longest timer in the game. Bring everything you want to sell in one trip; there is no reason to make two.

The Drift: the Caravan Trader

The Caravan Trader has no fixed location. It spawns with the caravan and moves along the Drift route, spending roughly one in-game day at each of the route’s four stops before moving on. It will not appear on your map until you have interacted with it once — after that first conversation the marker persists permanently, which is the single biggest quality-of-life unlock in the NPC system. The Trader unlocks at level 25 and restocks every three in-game days, so checking it more often than that is wasted travel.

Running the full loop in one trip

Once Verge and the Drowned Quarter are unlocked, the whole roster sits on a straight line: Ashfall → Verge → Drowned Quarter, with the Drift checked only when the caravan is due. Here is the arithmetic that decides whether fast travel is worth it.

• Walking Ashfall → Verge is about 1,400 m, or roughly 3 min 10 s at sprint speed (7.4 m/s).
• Verge → Drowned Quarter is about 2,100 m, or roughly 4 min 45 s on foot.
• Fast travel costs 250 credits per hop and loads in about 8 seconds.
• Three hops therefore cost 750 credits and save roughly 7 minutes 45 seconds of running.

A typical vendor-flip loop — buying restocked consumables in Ashfall and Verge and selling contraband at the Fence — clears about 1,200 credits. That means fast travel pays for itself in under one full loop as long as you are running the loop for profit rather than for a single item. If you are only visiting one NPC, walk it; the 250-credit hop is not worth it for a single purchase.

Which route fits your situation

What actually goes wrong with NPC locations

Three things account for almost every “the NPC isn’t there” report, and none of them are bugs.

• Event despawns. During a live world event, hub NPCs are pulled from the map for the duration. Per the game’s official patch notes, vendors return within 30 seconds of the event ending — waiting is faster than re-logging.
• Level gates, not empty rooms. A gated NPC still renders its building and furniture. Players see the empty shed or locked cage and conclude the NPC moved. Check the level column before you re-route.
• Stock depletion looks like absence. Once a vendor’s stock is bought out, the NPC stays but the inventory panel is empty until the restock timer fires. Track the timer rather than the NPC.

The thing that wears out first is your patience with the Fence’s 45-minute timer. Everything else in the system refreshes in 30 minutes or less, so the Drowned Quarter is the one leg of the loop worth planning a session around rather than squeezing in at the end.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many NPCs are there in Solo Hunters?

Nine interactable NPCs across four fixed hubs and one roaming route: four in Ashfall Camp, two in Verge Outpost, one in the Drowned Quarter, one Caravan Trader on the Drift route, and the Stash Keeper that appears in every hub. The Stash Keeper is the only one that duplicates across locations.

Where exactly is the Fence in Solo Hunters?

The Fence is in the Drowned Quarter, at the bottom of the south stairwell, hidden behind the crate stack. From the Quarter’s main fast-travel point, walk south along the flooded street about 110 m to the end. It requires level 20 and will not appear on your map until you have spoken to it once.

Why can’t I find the Caravan Trader?

The Caravan Trader has no fixed tile — it moves with the caravan along the Drift route, spending about one in-game day at each of four stops. It also stays unmarked on your map until your first interaction with it. If you are under level 25, it will not spawn for you at all.

Do NPC locations change between patches?

Hub assignments have stayed stable, but the game’s official patch notes have moved individual NPCs indoors or behind level gates in past updates. Because of that, the landmark and the level gate are more reliable identifiers than the NPC’s name or the hub label — those can be renamed, while the building it stands in usually cannot.

What level do I need for the Field Surgeon?

Level 12. Until then the clinic’s second floor is empty, even though the stairs are walkable and the building renders normally. Once unlocked, the Surgeon restocks every 15 minutes, which makes it the most frequently refreshed vendor in the game.

Is fast travel worth it for an NPC loop?

Only if you are running the full loop. Three fast-travel hops cost 750 credits and save roughly 7 minutes 45 seconds of running, and a full vendor-flip loop clears around 1,200 credits, so the cost is recovered within a single trip. For a single NPC visit, walking is cheaper in every case.