Revision 4

Citizens (also called survivors or artisans) are the workforce of a settlement in Romestead. Without them, most production buildings sit idle. They are recruited from the wilds, housed in homes, kept happy with food and decoration, and assigned to specialized jobs.

Finding and Recruiting

Citizens are found in two main ways:

• Sheltering in camps, outposts, and ruins in the wilds. Approach and talk to them to recruit.

• Rescued at the end of Challenge Dungeons, often inside a chest-room near a powerful enemy. The 0.23.1_8 patch made Wild Gravesite entity spawns stop after the Guardian of Minerva is defeated, which calms ambient horror around the rescue spots.

Once recruited, a citizen needs a place to live and a Food Storage stocked with provisions. Without either, the citizen leaves.

Housing

Citizen Stats

Poorly fed citizens incur happiness penalties and stat reductions. Gifting food to a citizen (right-click since patch 0.23.3_1) heals them to full health and improves loyalty.

Traits

Citizens spawn with optional positive or negative traits. Multiple traits can stack on one citizen.

Assigning Jobs

Each crafting building hosts one citizen as its assigned worker. The Carpenter can additionally help complete buildings under construction (Early Access addition). A Merchant citizen can level up and unlock new stock at the Market. Citizen max-level indicators were added in patch 0.20.2_2. The Logistics Tent that drives town automation is unlocked by defeating the Guardian of Minerva.

Launch-Week Citizen Changes

• Damage immunity: citizens were made immune to damage until their pathfinding system can be improved, so they no longer die to hazards while navigating a busy town.

• Lower early hunger: early-game citizens consume less food, easing the pressure to stock Food Storage immediately.

• Protected walls: walls newly built by a Carpenter citizen can no longer be damaged by players (walls already constructed before the fix are unaffected).

• Dungeon recruiting: citizens found in dungeons are now recruited to the nearest town correctly.

• Trait balancing: citizens can no longer spawn with only negative traits. A negative trait now appears only when the citizen also has a positive one, and negative-only traits were stripped from existing citizens.

• Stuck citizens: a citizen that gets stuck now teleports home, and you can move through a citizen by walking into them for two seconds.

• Eating fixed: citizens that would not eat until full were fixed, and early-game hunger was reduced again to ease solo play.

• Carpenter range: Carpenters reach construction sites more reliably and now have a maximum range of 90 tiles from their building.

• Raid death penalty removed: citizens no longer take a death penalty when a raid is failed, so a lost raid no longer thins your settlement's workforce.

Sacrifices and Worship

A citizen can be sacrificed at the Altar for Worship Points: +5 base across all gods, +10 per level of the citizen's aligned skill to the matching god. This is the heaviest source of Worship Points for late-game players. See Worship and Blessings.

Tutorial

Citizen tutorial improvements landed in patch 0.23.1_8 to clarify the recruitment-and-housing flow. New players should follow the Populating Your Town tutorial quest at the Altar.

Related Pages

• Settlements and Buildings: housing and production buildings.

• Food and Cooking: what to stock in Food Storage.

• Decoration and Furniture: decorations that increase Happiness.