Population & Growth

Population in Wanderfolk is a dynamic system where villages grow by 1 NPC after 7 consecutive days above 65 prosperity, and decline through starvation (3 missed-meal days) or sustained low prosperity (below 35 for 5 days). The prosperity formula weighs food surplus (40%), morale (25%), gold reserves (20%), and resource diversity (15%), creating cascading growth or death spirals.

Village Size Tiers

Population determines a village’s tier, which in turn affects territory radius, available buildings, and military capacity:

Losing population can drop a village down a tier, shrinking its territory and locking out buildings it previously had access to.

Population Growth

Villages grow when times are good. The mechanic is straightforward:

• Prosperity must stay at 65 or above for 7 consecutive days
• On day 7, one new NPC spawns
• The counter resets and begins again
• Growth stops at the village’s maximum population cap (62 for cities)

Growth is slow and deliberate. A village needs more than a brief spike — it needs sustained prosperity over a full week. A single bad day resets the counter.

Population Decline

Population shrinks through two paths:

Starvation Deaths

When NPCs go hungry for too long, they die:

• The village tracks consecutive days with missed meals
• After 3 consecutive days of any NPC missing a meal, the village loses 1 NPC
• Deaths continue at 1 per day until food supply stabilizes
• The counter resets as soon as every NPC is fed

Starvation is the fastest killer. A village that runs out of food in winter can lose several NPCs before spring harvests arrive.

Prosperity Decay

Even without outright starvation, prolonged decline erodes population:

• Prosperity must stay below 35 for 5 consecutive days
• On day 5, one NPC leaves (or dies)
• The counter resets and starts again
• This continues until prosperity recovers or the village is abandoned

Prosperity decay represents NPCs leaving a failing village — they drift away to find better opportunities elsewhere.

Abandonment

When population hits 0, the village becomes abandoned. Abandoned villages leave behind empty buildings, unclaimed territory, and no services. They’re ghost towns — useful only as scavenging opportunities.

The Prosperity Formula

Prosperity is a 0–100 score calculated daily from four weighted components:

Component Calculations

Food surplus score = days of food remaining per NPC, scaled so that 10 days of supply = 100 points. Formula: min(100, (food / population) x 10).

Gold reserves score = gold per capita, scaled so that 50 gold per person = 100 points. Formula: min(100, (gold / population) x 2).

Morale score = the village’s current morale value directly (0–100).

Resource diversity score = percentage of the 6 stockpile categories (food, wood, ore, herbs, crafted, luxury) that have any stock. A village with 4 of 6 categories stocked scores 67.

Smoothing

Prosperity doesn’t swing wildly day to day. The new score is blended with the previous day’s:

Blended prosperity = (previous score x 0.3) + (new score x 0.7)

This 30/70 rolling average prevents a single great or terrible day from dramatically shifting the score, while still allowing multi-day trends to push prosperity up or down decisively.

Health Status Thresholds

The prosperity score maps to visible village health:

See Village Economy for how these statuses affect labor directives and daily operations.

Morale

Morale reflects how happy the village population is. It ranges from 0 to 100 and shifts daily based on diet, food security, and environment.

Daily Morale Changes

Biome Harshness

Not all environments are equally pleasant to live in:

Desert and mountain villages fight a constant morale headwind. They need excellent food supply and a high cooked-food ratio just to keep morale stable.

Why Morale Matters

Morale accounts for 25% of the prosperity formula. A village with perfect food supply and gold reserves but zero morale caps out at 75 prosperity — not enough for population growth. Conversely, high morale can keep a village in the “stable” band even during a temporary food shortage.

The Cooking Pipeline

Raw food keeps NPCs alive. Cooked food keeps them happy. The cooking system converts raw ingredients into meals that boost morale and stretch food supplies further.

Cooking Roles

Four NPC roles are dedicated cooks, each performing 3 cooking actions per day:

• Baker — specializes in bread (wheat-based recipes)
• Innkeeper — general cooking
• Barkeep — general cooking
• Brewer — general cooking

Cooking Recipes

Recipes are processed in priority order — the most valuable conversions happen first:

Notice the yield multiplier — 2 wheat produces 3 bread. Cooking doesn’t just improve morale; it stretches your food supply by 50%. A village with active cooks feeds more mouths from the same raw inputs.

Emergency Cooking

During labor directives, cooking capacity scales up:

• Concern: 2x cooking multiplier, 30% of harvesters redirected to kitchen duty
• Rationing: 3x cooking multiplier, 60% redirect
• Crisis: 3x cooking multiplier, 80% redirect

Redirected harvesters contribute 2 cooking actions each (vs. 3 for dedicated cooks). The village sacrifices food production for food conversion — a desperate gamble that only works if there’s raw food to convert.

Raw Food Backlog

When raw food stockpiles significantly exceed cooked food and population, the kitchen automatically adds bonus cooking actions. This prevents raw food from piling up unused while NPCs eat poorly.

Foraging Expeditions

When stockpiles run critically low, villages dispatch foraging expeditions — NPC teams sent out to gather scarce resources.

Dispatch Conditions

Expeditions trigger at 7 AM when any resource falls below its threshold:

Team Composition

Each expedition assembles a team from available NPCs:

• Protectors (warriors, guards, captains, scouts) — defend against monsters
• Healers (priests, herbalists) — keep the team alive
• Gatherers — role depends on expedition type (miners for ore, farmers for food, etc.)

Risks

Foraging teams can be intercepted by monsters in the wild. A team without adequate protectors may return empty-handed — or not return at all. This is why military NPCs matter even during peacetime: they protect your foraging teams.

Inter-Village Trade

Villages with trade partnerships automatically exchange resources daily, smoothing out regional imbalances.

How It Works

• A village with surplus (stockpile > 20) in a category can export
• A village with deficit (stockpile < 5) in a category needs imports
• When a surplus village is partnered with a deficit village, resources flow automatically
• 30% of the gap is transferred per day
• The receiving village pays 2 gold per unit

Trade Categories

Five resource categories are tradeable: food, wood, ore, herbs, and crafted goods. Luxury items are not traded automatically.

Stabilizing Effect

Trade is the main reason resource-poor villages survive. A desert village with terrible food production but rich ore deposits can trade ore for food with a neighboring meadow village. Without trade partnerships, biome disadvantages are often fatal.

See Caravans for how physical trade routes work and how you can interact with them.

Warfare and Population

War is the most sudden way a village loses population. Battle casualties directly reduce the garrison, which weakens military power and lowers prosperity.

Cascade Effects

1. Battle casualties remove military NPCs (warriors, guards, captains)
2. Fewer military NPCs means lower military power
3. Weaker military means less effective foraging protection
4. Unprotected foraging teams fail, worsening resource shortages
5. Resource shortages drop prosperity, triggering population decay

A village that loses a war doesn’t just lose territory — it can enter a decline spiral that continues long after the fighting stops.

Cultural Assimilation

When a village is conquered, its territory undergoes a 28-day cultural assimilation period. During this transition, trade routes may be disrupted and NPCs may resist, further stressing the economy.

Off-Screen Simulation

Villages don’t pause when you leave. The economy simulation runs catch-up ticks when you return to a region, processing one full daily tick for each day you were away. This means:

• A village you left thriving might have grown by several NPCs
• A village you left struggling might have collapsed into abandonment
• Seasonal changes are accounted for (a village you left in summer processes fall and winter while you’re gone)
• Inter-village trade continues between all partnered villages

The world evolves in your absence. Returning to a region after a long journey always carries an element of surprise.

Death Spirals and Recovery

The most dangerous aspect of the population system is cascading failure. Here’s how a village dies:

1. Food crisis — bad harvest, winter, or war disrupts food supply
2. Missed meals — NPCs go hungry, morale drops sharply (-2 per missed meal)
3. Morale collapse — low morale drags down prosperity (25% weight)
4. Prosperity drops below 35 — decay counter starts ticking
5. Population loss — fewer NPCs means less labor, less food production
6. Fewer cooks — less raw-to-cooked conversion, morale drops further
7. More starvation — 3 consecutive hungry days trigger deaths
8. Spiral accelerates — each lost NPC makes the next loss more likely

A village caught in this spiral needs outside intervention to survive.

How to Save a Dying Village

You can reverse a death spiral through direct action:

• Trade food — sell or gift food to the village to break the starvation cycle
• Defend foraging teams — escort foragers to ensure they return with supplies
• Complete jobs — earn reputation while injecting labor into the village economy
• Eliminate threats — clear nearby monster spawns so foraging is safer
• Establish trade routes — connect the struggling village with a prosperous neighbor

The earlier you intervene, the easier recovery is. Once a village drops below 5 NPCs, it often lacks the labor diversity to recover on its own.

Related Articles

• Village Economy — stockpile categories, production rates, and labor directives
• Farming — player farming as a way to rescue starving villages
• Conquest — how war casualties trigger population decline
• Buildings — village tier determines available buildings and storage capacity
• Foraging Expeditions — how villages self-repair resource shortages