Residents’ needs and whims

Residents need a roof, water, food and their health before anything else. Once a house has those, it starts asking for extras called whims: you spot one by the exclamation mark over the house, click to see what the household wants, and usually fulfil it with a decoration, a pet or a service building. Each fulfilled whim raises that house’s satisfaction.

Family Wooden Cabin panel with a whim tooltip over one of five slots and a satisfaction meter — A Family Wooden Cabin panel: 9 of 9 residents, a satisfaction meter at 50/100, and a tooltip over one of five whim slots, some still locked.

The needs that come before any whim

The basics are water, food and health, and neglecting any of them has a cost: “Neglect any of these and you’ll see morale drop, work slow, and maybe even people leaving town.” Housing sits underneath all three. “Homeless residents can’t work, satisfaction drops”, so a new arrival with no bed is a mouth to feed and nothing more.

Every settlement has a satisfaction score, and it is what brings people in. Back in the demo, the publisher put it this way: “New settlers will join your settlement if you keep your settlers' satisfaction high and ensure they have a roof over their head and enough food.” Satisfaction starts at zero, with a penalty of 10 for homelessness (numbers may differ in your game). How high it has to climb before newcomers arrive, and where to house them, is on getting more settlers. How to cover the three needs in your first hour is on the first two hours page, and food chains have their own page.

When whims start appearing

Not straight away. Whims don’t start until the Residents’ Needs objective is complete. The team’s description of the rule is simple: “Every house, once its occupants have water, food, and shelter, will eventually have some kind of personal desire: a Whim.”

How to find and fulfil a whim

The game doesn’t hand you a quest for it. A house shows an exclamation mark; click it and you find out what that household wants, for example a pet. In the house panel the whim slots sit around the satisfaction meter, and the tooltip on an unrevealed slot reads (HOLD) to discover: press and hold it to see the wish.

What they ask for ranges widely. The team’s own examples are a cat for company, a fence around the yard, a visit to the saloon, a Sunday in church and a night at the brothel. Some are fulfilled on their own as the town grows; others need you. The small ones are handled with decorations: you fulfil wishes “with amenities, pets, instruments and other personal touches”. A horse, a lamp post, some fence posts or a cat placed next to the right house can each answer one. The bigger ones, the saloon and the church, mean building the service itself; see the Ideas tree for when those unlock.

A saloon lit up at night beside a lamp post and a fenced yard — A saloon lit up at night, with a lamp post and a fenced yard beside it.

Animal Lover and the whims players have met

One named whim is Animal Lover, which comes in two tiers and lets you place any decoration from the animal category. Other whims include a cat lover, a wish for sturdy fences, and houses asking for a barber, the saloon or moonshine. Whether the cat lover is an early tier of Animal Lover is unclear, so if a house wants an animal, any animal decoration is the safe bet.

When a moonshine whim will not clear

Several players have houses that keep showing the drink symbol with moonshine to spare. One described it: “Plenty of booze in storage and UI showing that the bugged houses are in range of saloon yet the whim is not satisfied”. Another player suggests clicking the house and looking at its needs: in their games, a symbol that is not red there was only the marker, and clicking the house cleared it. That is not a sure test, since the player quoted above saw the symbol red with plenty in storage. It is still worth checking you actually produce moonshine, with a distillery and potato farms behind it. Moonshine Scandal covers the license moonshine needs.

It is being treated as a bug. Another player wrote: “I actually had 100 units of moonshine in sotrage and the homes still say it's missing”. The publisher, who has the same problem, guessed that moonshine is drunk and restocked faster than the whim icon refreshes, and replied: “I have moved it to the bugs forum and we will bring it up with the devs”. Until a fix lands, a whim stuck this way is not something you did wrong.

From tent to cabin to brick mansion

Housing grows in three steps: “A few logs raise a tent. A sawmill turns those logs into planks, and planks turn a tent into a wooden cabin. Keep at it, find some clay, and the cabin becomes a brick mansion.” Better houses matter for whims too: each house upgrade brings more whims.

Tents also have their own upgrades in the Ideas tree, bought with money: one squeezes in two more residents, another widens the range over which whims are fulfilled. Cabins can go two ways: one version with five extra places, or a family cabin. Names and numbers may differ in your game.

What happens if you ignore them

People drift away. “Ignore them and folks grow restless, then leave. Tend to them and the mood lifts, until outsiders start asking about your town.” Fulfilled whims also pay journey points, so they are worth doing even when the town is calm.

Keep going with journey points and ideas, the food chains that keep the basics covered, and your first two hours if the whims have not started yet.