Hooks in Crusader Kings 3 work hand-in-hand with schemes. In CK3, you can use hooks to increase the likelihood of someone to accept your offers or to simply blackmail them. Actions you can force with a hook include forcing a marriage proposal, causing someone to become an agent in your schemes, etc. There are 2 types of hooks in the game: weak and strong.
- A weak hook can only be used once and lasts for 10 years.
- A strong hook has an internal cooldown but can be used multiple times while it lasts which i.e. from 10 years to potentially forever.
One important thing to keep in mind is that you can also be made subject to different hooks, therefore, don’t rule out the possibility.
Since they’re incredibly powerful and can alter almost every interaction in the game, try to have hooks on as many people as you can and use them whenever you can.
Crusader Kings 3 Hooks
In order to acquire hooks, you can use your spymasters. If you’re having a hard time finding dirt on someone, you can also use the ‘Truth is Relative’ perk from the ‘Schemer’ to simply fabricate one. You’ll also obtain a free weak hook on every child you sire in your household. Lastly, your spymasters can easily find dirt on your targets using the ‘Find Secrets’ perk.
However, as we’ve mentioned in our schemes guide, a bad spymaster can easily defect to the other party and conspire against you in lieu of a small sum of gold. Therefore, it’s very important that you choose your spymasters carefully.
You can open up the hooks panel to see a complete list of all the hooks you’ve got on other characters. It’s also important to keep modifiers in mind. A weak hook can easily be countered and turned against you. The following is a complete list of all the hooks in the game:
| Hook | Weak/Strong | Duration | Fabrication | How to Acquire |
| Blackmail | Strong | Forever | No | Blackmail a character over a secret |
| Fabrication | Strong | 10 Years | Yes | Fabricate a hook |
| Loyalty | Strong | Forever | Yes | Random events |
| Threatening Life | Strong | 10 Years | Yes | Fabricate a hook |
| Blackmail | Weak | 10 Years | No | Blackmail a character over a prohibited practice |
| Favor | Weak | 10 Years | No | Random events, free a prisoner, ransom someone |
| House Head | Weak | Forever | No | Automatically acquired over a child |
| Indebted | Weak | 10 Years | Yes | Random events |
| Manipulation | Weak | 10 Years | Yes | Random events |
| Threatened | Weak | 10 Years | Yes | Random events |
This is everything we’ve got in our hooks guide for Crusader Kings 3. Feel free to check out our detailed CK3 wiki guides.