Settlers - Going Medieval

Settlers are the lifeblood of your settlement. They’re usually fairly independent, albeit a bit lazy, and don’t need a ton of micro-management to be effective workers. That being said, if you become familiar with the settler management tools available in Going Medieval, you can optimize your settlers activities, and ensure they stay happy, healthy, and productive.

Getting to Know Your Settlers

If you left-click on one of the portraits on the right side of the screen, you’ll select that settler. By default, the Biography tab will be selected in the info box on the bottom right of the screen. The last two pieces of information in this box are the important ones: your settler’s religious alignment (if any), and their perks. The settler’s religious alignment will tell you which kind of religious shrine/building you should construct for them, and the perks can affect the way you schedule or utilize your settler. For example, the Night Owl perk makes settlers need less sleep, so you’ll want to schedule them for an hour or two less than the other settlers to get the most work out of them.

Health and Happiness

Clicking the other tabs on the Biography window will give you other info, but it’s the last three tabs you’ll use to keep your settlers happy. The Stats tab gives you detailed info on the current needs of your settler, while the Mood tab displays overall mood, as well as the currently active positive and negative modifiers to the settlers mood. The Health tab is where you can see how sick or injured your settler is.

If your settlers are happy, they’ll get more done while they work. Conversely, unhappy settlers will work slowly, or even ignore what you tell them to do. If a settler’s Mood reaches 0%, they will leave your settlement.

Skills

The Skills tab lets you see how competent your settler is at all the tasks in the game, and how close they are to leveling up their skills. By hovering a skill, you can see what tasks the skill is relevant to. This info is also accessible from the Jobs screen (see below).

Managing Your Settlers

Schedule

Settlers will still do work without a schedule, but they might take more time off for recreation than you’d like, and might over/under sleep, depending on their needs. Open the Schedule with [U] or by clicking the button at the top of the screen to directly manage how your settlers spend each hour. 2 hours of leisure seems to be enough to keep settlers happy, and as long as you continue to upgrade beds as new technology becomes available, 6 hours of sleep is usually enough as well.

Jobs

The Jobs menu [Y] allows you to prioritize what tasks settlers complete first. If jobs are ranked equally, priority goes left to right. What you want to do on this menu is find jobs that settlers are good at, and set their priority on that job higher than other settlers. There are two ways to figure out who is good at what job on this menu: you can hover a given settler’s numbered square, or you can look at the border of the square. The brighter the border, the more skilled at that job the settler is. The stars indicate how much the settler prefers that job; doing a preferred job will make that settler happier, so whenever possible, assign settlers to tasks they like.

Equipment

On the Manage menu [I], you can decide what kinds of weapons, armor, and regular clothes your settlers will wear. You can also manage their food and alcohol consumption — you can even set your settlers as cannibals, if that’s your thing. If you want a settler to stop using some equipment (so that someone else can use it), you can click the down arrow next to the piece of equipment you want them to drop.

Direct Commands

Sometimes, you’ll need something done right away. To have settlers work on a specific task, all you need to do is select them (left click them, drag select them, or click their portrait) and then right-click the task in question. A menu will pop-up, and you can then select what you want the settler to do. There will frequently only be one option available, but sometimes you will choose between deconstructing an object or using it, so click carefully!

You should now have the basic knowledge you need to effectively manage your settlers! You can also check out some of our other guides on managing settlers: