Featured as a part of the Remastered Wave 1 (2025) a.k.a. the Adversaries and Allies bundle, Candy was one of the first 4 stand-alone Wanderers released outside of the GCE.
All 4 of them are individual power houses in their own rights, each with more or less devastating quirks to them to balance out the fact that they are much stronger than your average run-of-the-mill-survivor, some of them even able to kill monsters almost single-handedly.

Generally speaking, Wanderers are outsiders, each with their own unique stories to tell. They travel to your settlement, often by pure happenstance, become part of the community for a while and will typically move on eventually to continue their journey through the unbroken darkness.
During their stay however, they will influence your settlement with their foreign ideas and customs, whilst the way they feel towards your community will have an influence on their stories at large.
And trust me, you will want to be on good terms with them. Having a high positive Disposition with them will usually make rolls on their story events easier, which can grant you various different boons and bonuses, such as “not getting eaten” or permanent stat boosts to the Wanderers or even other, regular survivors. They might also find new gear – which you may even be allowed to keep after they are gone – gain innovations or allow for more interactions with their unique core mechanics.
Just be mindful that each and all Wanderers have their fair share of baggage you will have to deal with.

On a side-note: all Wanderers are Arc-Survivors and thus interact with the Knowlegde system from the GCE. Subsequently they will work best in arc settlements.
However if you do not own the GCE: fret not! It will be fine! They all come with a Fighting Art version of their personal Knowledge to share with your survivors.
These Fighting Arts are a bit weaker than the final rank of the Knowledge, and seem to correspond more to its Level 2 version. Not having to level them up first will make up for that a bit during play though.

At this point, I have had a chance to experience Candy’s storyline to varying levels of depth, and I feel like I saw a decent amount of variance with how her time with the settlement might play out.
Candy has also been a part of Season 3 here on the site!
She is as cute as a button, actively looking to make new friends or even a forever-home, her hair indicates either her mood or the levels of sugar in her bloodstream (I’m not sure) and the perhaps-real-ish dog-fox does indeed bite if you try to pet it whilst it gives you the side-eye.

This will contain spoilers, though I will try and keep them fairly light.
I do not consider cards posted on the shop page as spoilers – just to be clear.

Candy is the Wanderer that arrives the earliest in the settlement out of all 6 we have gotten so far. She arrives in Lantern Year 2 having just fled from a life of perpetual combat in what could possibly have been the Wandering Colosseum we have been hearing more and more about recently, though, depending on how well you roll on her introductory event, she is likely not going to be able to hunt until Lantern Year 3 – which actually would be preferable in most cases.
Stat-wise she has +1MOV and +1LCK, so she is set up decently well right from the get go with a chance at some extra STR in her introduction!

Whereas Goth and the Death Drifter each had their own personal milestones for courage and understanding, Candy has the same ones as your regular survivors and can thus gain some extra stats by rolling on Insight or Bold and she will also develop the related abilities like Tinker or Stalwart.
This also gives her a chance of getting something like .. let’s say .. Ageless.

Every Wanderer so far has had a unique ability and, of course, Candy is no exception: her ability is called Candypop.
This ability gives her a special interaction with the Phantom Friend Fighting Art – which she also starts with and cannot lose by the by!
Candypop enables her to draw a random unique soda gear card and gain a permanent affinity of your choice when you archive a resource with Phantom Friend (FA). Obviously being able to stack extra affinities like this can be really powerful, even if it is just to activate a Monster Grease or Lucky Charm more easily! And with her extra LCK and the Sharpened Heel she uses as a weapon she should be dealing critical wounds to the monster on a fairly reliably basis as well, cutting off a Pelt or a piece of a Beast Steak to feed to her furry friend, Cola!

Speaking of her weapon, she arrives with both her Sharpened Heel and Gladiator Garb. Both of these pieces of gear can be incredibly powerful throughout all stages of your campaign, partially depending on who might be allowed to use them.
The Sharpened Heel is a 3/7+/3 dagger with savage and the ability to, once per round, take a bleeding token to increase the roll result of a wound attempt by 2. This is not just +2STR .. this increases the result of your roll – meaning she will be able to turn what would have been a wound into a critical!
The Gladiator Garb item has a similar effect. This glorified metal bikini allows you to, once per round, take a bleeding token to ignore a hit. And whilst the dagger will eventually fall off outside of pure LCK builds, this items will likely be relevant for the whole time you are allowed to use it.

Working in tandem, her stats, the Candypop ability and the gear she comes with set her up to be a true powerhouse in the early game, ready to kill low level monsters handily or shoot for an early mid-game if you are willing to risk her for it.
And she is not limited in regards of what armor she can wear either for protection. Just be careful when close to holes or when your insanity drops too low.

But there is always a catch.
Candy, you see, is traumatized from a life-time of fighting in the arena. And whilst she does try her best to not let it show, hiding it beneath her cheerful demeanor, sometimes it all comes rushing back to her.
Usually at the start of battle.

Her custom Neurosis has her gain a random disorder on Arrival to a fight.
As you can image there is an incredibly high amount of range in magnitude to this depending not only on your draw, but also what monsters are in your campaign to begin with.
You will both have moments when this hardly matters at all and only helps with progressing her Knowledge ranks and other times when it basically turns her into a sack of bricks instantly.

The ray of hope in all of this is that her tenet knowledge Reframe plays into this ability rather nicely, progressing the knowledge naturally alongside of it.
Whilst at first rank it only collects observations for gaining disorders (only twice, luckily) it will soon offer you a chance of removing disorders from Candy at the cost of 2 survival – which can be fairly expensive for this stage of the campaign. In turn this makes new observations for progressing towards Rank 3 by removing disorders as well. (Note also that it does not actually matter how the disorder is removed for the observation to be made at this rank.)
And eventually you will end up with a really powerful knowledge that GIVES you survival for removing a disorder during combat.

But wait! There is still more!

If you progress far enough into her story you will eventually find yourself in possession of a new Innovation: the Soda Fountain.
This does happen fairly late during her stay and it should also be noted that the innovation only stays for as long as Candy is alive and still in the settlement.
But whilst you have this unique innovation, not only can you make more soda gear by spending Candy’s disposition, but you can also use all of Candy’s gear – including the Sharpened Heel, Gladiator Garb, and of course, the sodas with every survivor in your settlement!

Sodas all have interesting effects, some of which being pretty powerful, whilst others are more of the “novel” variety. And they all have the new Trinket keyword on top of that.
Whilst we still did not encounter this keyword anywhere outside the box at this point in time, it will likely make a return with new content releasing in the future. A survivor may carry up to 1 piece of gear with the Trinket keyword outside of their gear grid.
And that is pretty awesome!

In conclusion: Candy arrives very early into the settlement’s life cycle and is set up to shape it not only by bringing a lot of immediate power to the table, but also cheer, items and permanent stat-upgrades via story events.

The one thing that caught me off guard a little, I will say, is how much her disposition can fluctuate not only between campaigns but also depending on how readily you employ her abilities.
But, just to give a quick example without too much natural variance included: after her introduction and the first story event, i.e. at age 2, her disposition could sit anywhere between -2 and +4!
And that is without anything catastrophic/incredible happening during her first hunt either!
On the other hand, it does fit both the theme of her story and gameplay, how you use the Soda Fountain (I) to both decrease and increase her disposition as well.

Overall, even if Candy should be struggling to get along with your people, she will still be able to easily carry her weight and help out wherever she can with no major hidden pitfalls for you to stumble into.
She also requires only fairly little maintenance overall, if you are able to keep her disorders in check.

At the end of the day, Candy & Cola are just looking for a safe place that will take them in and allow them to make a couple of friends.

Of the 4 initial Wanderers and what I have seen of them, all of them are decent purchases in my opinion and Candy has probably become the poster child of the bunch for me as I enjoyed having her in my campaigns quite a lot.
She isn’t very demanding, struggles a little with the past and is able to dish out a hefty blow if backed into a corner. Once she feels like a part of the settlement, she will try to fit in and spread her inherent cheer by upping your survivor’s blood sugar levels with her beverages if you let her.
But don’t let yourself be fooled, the story she tells is one of lingering sadness, the hope to push on and how one might hide their grief from the world.

So, if you are looking at picking up a Wanderer and are on the look-out for recommendations for which one to get, with the 5 currently available you could approach them by asking yourself how you want the Wanderer to impact the overall difficulty of your campaign.
With Candy specifically, she will make your campaign easier, especially any combat she partakes in during the early years. This will last into the late game if Candy stays alive for long enough and/or once you have fully leveled Reframe (K).

Without going into too much detail – as today was meant to be about Candy specifically – if you are looking to make your campaign strictly easier, you could also consider the Death Drifter as an alternative.
For a slightly more balanced experience of push and pull reflected in the mechanics, Goth might be more interesting for you.
But if instead punishment is on the menu Aeneas would be the one for you to have a look at as she can be quite demanding to keep around.

I did also mention a 5th Wanderer this time: Preacher has been officially released during last month’s sale (01/26).
However, not much has been seen of her out in the wild just yet and I do not feel able to make an informed recommendation in regards to her just yet.
I do believe she will make the game harder in some areas though, based on what can be seen of some of the Innovations associated with her.

***

I do hope this look at Candy (& Cola) gave you an idea of what she is all about and helped you form an opinion on whether or not she would be the right fit for your games.
You can also read about my opinion on Goth here and about the Death Drifter here.

Will you offer Candy a home where she can rest, relax and make some new friends?
Let me know!

As always, thank you very much for your time, don’t drink too much soda!
Amathul