Village Economy

The village economy in Wanderfolk is a real-time simulation that tracks 6 resource stockpile categories, biome-based production rates, labor directives, and a prosperity score (0-100) that determines village health. Villages autonomously produce, consume, trade, and dispatch foraging expeditions to survive shortages.

Stockpile Categories

Villages track 6 categories of resources:

Resources are stored in buildings with limited capacity. A granary stores primarily food, a blacksmith stores ore, and a great hall stores luxury goods.

Biome Production Rates

Different biomes have vastly different production capabilities:

Meadow and farmland villages produce the most food. Mountain villages produce the most ore but struggle with food. Desert villages have it worst — low production across the board, offset by higher starting gold from trade routes. These disparities drive inter-village trading and caravan routes.

Labor Directives

When a village’s food supply drops dangerously low, it triggers labor directives — emergency measures that redirect the population toward food production:

What Happens at Each Level

None — business as usual. NPCs follow normal schedules.

Concern — 30% of cooking capacity is redirected to food production. NPCs stop socializing and relaxing during breaks to focus on work.

Rationing — meals are cut to 1.5 per NPC per day. 60% cooking redirect. Emergency harvest teams are assembled from non-essential roles. Shopping and leisure activities are suspended.

Crisis — survival mode. Meals drop to 1.0 per NPC per day. 80% cooking redirect. All available NPCs are pulled into food production. Only essential activities continue.

Seasonal Effects

Seasons have major economic impact:

• Winter doubles wood consumption — villages burn 2x wood for heating
• Snow stops crop growth — no food production during snowfall (30% of winter days)
• Rain boosts food — spring rain (+50% crop growth) is the best farming season
• Summer is most productive — clear weather means maximum harvesting efficiency

Villages that enter winter without adequate food and wood reserves risk cascading into rationing or crisis. A bad winter can reduce a thriving village to struggling.

Ore Depletion

Mining gradually depletes a village’s accessible ore deposits. Each biome has a depletion threshold — the amount of ore that can be extracted before production slows:

Once a village exhausts its depletion threshold, ore production drops to 10% of the base rate — enough to trickle but not sustain heavy smithing. Mountain villages can mine the longest before depletion, while enchanted grove villages exhaust their limited ore quickly.

Village Health Tiers

A village’s overall health is measured by its prosperity score:

You can influence village health by trading valuable goods, defending against raids, and completing jobs. A healthy village has better shops, more NPCs, and stronger defenses.

See Population & Growth for how prosperity drives population changes — including the growth threshold (65+ for 7 days), decay conditions, and death spirals.

Prosperity Formula

Prosperity is a weighted average of four components:

The score is smoothed daily — 30% of the previous score blended with 70% of the new calculation — so prosperity trends over days rather than swinging wildly. For the full breakdown of each component and how morale is calculated, see Population & Growth.

Food Production

Villages produce food through two systems working in sequence: harvesting (gathering raw ingredients) and cooking (converting raw into cooked meals).

Harvesting

Every NPC with a food-producing role (farmers, farmhands, fishers, gardeners, and others) contributes raw food daily. Output depends on the NPC’s role, the biome’s food production rate, and the current season. Farmers are the most productive harvesters; combat roles like warriors and guards produce very little.

Cooking

Dedicated cooks (bakers, innkeepers, barkeeps, barmaids, brewers) convert raw ingredients into cooked meals — bread from wheat, stew from meat and carrots, fish from raw catches. Cooking is critical because it stretches food supply by 50% (2 inputs typically yield 3 cooked meals) and boosts morale. NPCs eating only raw food suffer a morale penalty.

Barmaids now contribute to food preparation alongside the traditional cooking roles, giving tavern-heavy villages more resilience during food shortages.

During food emergencies, labor directives redirect non-cooking NPCs to the kitchen, dramatically scaling up cooking capacity at the cost of other production. See Population & Growth for the full cooking recipe table and emergency multipliers.

Village Renown

Beyond individual NPC reputation, each village tracks your civic standing — a cumulative renown score earned through deeds that benefit the community.

How Renown Is Earned

• Defending the village against bandits or monsters
• Completing bounties posted by the village
• Finishing jobs for village NPCs
• Donating resources to the village stockpile
• Farming and selling crops to local merchants

Renown Tiers

Renown is lifetime cumulative — it never decays. Each tier triggers a one-time ceremonial announcement from the village elder. Price discounts apply to all merchants in that village and stack with individual reputation effects.

Estate Lots

Non-origin villages now have purchasable property — empty houses and farm plots that you can claim with enough gold and renown. Owning property in a village gives you a place to sleep, store items, and farm without traveling back to your origin settlement. This is especially valuable for players who want to establish trade operations across multiple biomes.

Multi-Expedition Scaling

When a village runs low on resources, it dispatches foraging expeditions — groups of 2-3 NPCs that travel to nearby biomes rich in whatever they need. The number of concurrent expeditions now scales with shortage severity:

Hard caps prevent villages from emptying out:

• Maximum 3 total expeditions active at once
• Minimum 4 NPCs must remain at home
• Expedition members are excluded from village production while away

This means a village in crisis can dispatch food gatherers, ore miners, and herb foragers simultaneously — tripling the recovery rate at the cost of reduced production at home.

Inter-Village Trade

Villages with trade partnerships automatically exchange resources each day. A village with surplus (stockpile > 20) in a category exports to a partner with deficit (stockpile < 5), transferring 30% of the gap per day at 2 gold per unit. Five categories are tradeable: food, wood, ore, herbs, and crafted goods.

Caravans are the primary economic artery — they snapshot village economies, buy surpluses, sell into shortages at markup, and route toward profit opportunities. Base inter-village trade efficiency has been halved, making caravan trade flows more important than passive resource exchange.

See Caravans for how smart trading works and Population & Growth for how trade stabilizes population dynamics.

Economy Stabilization

Recent changes address two chronic failure modes in village economies: harsh biome collapse at startup and caravan fragility that cut off inter-village trade.

Harsh Biome Startup

Villages in desert, tundra, and high mountain biomes were spawning into immediate crisis — their production rates were too low to support even a minimal starting population before the first day’s consumption hit. This triggered the labor directive cascade on day one, which led to population flight before the village could stabilize.

The fix sets biome-appropriate starting stockpiles for harsh environments. Desert villages now begin with elevated gold reserves and dried food stores reflecting their trade-route heritage. Tundra villages start with larger wood stockpiles and preserved meat. Mountain villages spawn with a meaningful ore surplus they can immediately trade for food. All three biome types now reach their first season with a real chance of survival.

Prosperity initialization is also smoothed — harsh biome villages start at a lower prosperity score that reflects their difficulty, but not so low that the decay spiral triggers before they produce anything.

Caravan Improvements

Caravans are now more durable trade agents:

• Longer stays at profitable partners — caravans that find a good buyer linger for additional trades rather than routing to the next stop immediately
• Larger, more diverse loads — each caravan departure now carries a broader mix of goods, making single trips more economically meaningful for both the sending and receiving village
• Reduced route abandonment — caravans previously aborted runs when they encountered terrain penalties or low-value stops en route. They now complete their planned routes unless they’ve exhausted their trading stock
• Survival in hostile biomes — caravan pathfinding now avoids high-spawn zones when possible, reducing the chance of losing a trade convoy to monster attacks

Trade Activity Notices

Trade activity notices appear in the world feed when caravans and merchants complete significant exchanges in your region. You’ll see:

• A caravan completing a large food delivery to a struggling village
• A merchant closing a high-value luxury deal at a market town
• An emergency trade run triggered by a crisis-level shortage

These notices don’t require any action from you — they’re informational, keeping you aware of the economic state of your region without manually visiting every settlement. If a village you care about is receiving emergency food shipments, that’s a signal worth knowing.

Gossip and Positive Deeds

The gossip system now lets positive deeds override negative reputation spread. Previously, bad reputation circulated through gossip networks and persisted even after you performed genuinely helpful actions. Good deeds were quiet; bad ones were loud.

Now, defending a village, completing a bounty, or donating to the stockpile generates positive gossip that actively counters negative rumors in circulation. An NPC who heard bad things about you will revise their opinion if the village elder is talking about how you repelled the last raid. Your reputation in unfamiliar villages can improve through deed-based word of mouth — not just direct interaction.

Related Articles

• Population & Growth — how prosperity drives population growth, decline, and death spirals
• Buildings — storage capacities and building types that support the economy
• Weather & Seasons — seasonal effects on food production and wood consumption
• Military System — how prosperity contributes to military power calculations
• Conquest — resource pressure as a cause of inter-village warfare