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Jobs & Work

Overview

Colonists find their own work. You don’t hand out individual tasks — you decide what each person is willing to do, and they pick jobs off the pile that match. Most of running a colony is adjusting that willingness rather than issuing orders.

When a colonist seems to be doing nothing useful, it’s almost always one of three things: nothing needs doing that they’ll accept, they can’t reach it, or a need has overridden work entirely.

How it works

Every colonist has a ranked list of civilian jobs — all their peacetime work — and, separately, a single combat role. The two answer different questions: the list is what they do, the role is how they fight.

Civilian jobs are worked top-down. The job in slot 1 is what they reach for first; the ones below it are what they fall back to when nothing better is available. Higher slots win, and you get more slots as a colonist levels up.

The combat role is one choice from Soldier · Archer · Knight · Mage — or nothing at all. A colonist with no combat role is a non-combatant: they run from a fight rather than joining it. That includes your Guards, whose job is to patrol, watch and raise the alarm — being on watch is not the same as being willing to die. If you want someone to hold the line, give them a combat role.

Combat roles are deliberately rare — roughly one founder in five is drilled for one, so most of your colony is people who will run. You are guaranteed at least one, though: a settlement never opens with nobody willing to stand. Everyone after that is your decision.

Work is chosen by priority, and needs sit near the top of it:

  1. Combat — being attacked outranks everything. What they do about it depends on their combat role: a colonist with one stands and fights, one without runs.
  2. Critical needs — a starving or exhausted colonist deals with that first.
  3. Work — the jobs they’re willing and able to do.
  4. Idle — wandering, socialising, whatever’s left.

That second tier is the one that surprises people. A colonist who won’t work is often just hungry — see Food & Eating and Sleep & Rest.

Skill matters too: given two candidates, the better-skilled one is preferred, and doing a job improves the skill that backs it.

Playing with it

  • Open the Jobs panel on a colonist to set their ranked civilian jobs. This is the main lever you have over what any individual does with their day.
  • Give someone a combat role in the same panel if you want them to fight. It’s a separate slot from their work, so your blacksmith can also be your soldier — they’ll forge all day and still hold the wall.
  • Sound To Arms when a raid lands. It musters everyone: colonists with a combat role fight properly, and the rest turn out as militia for the duration. It’s how an unprepared colony defends itself, but a cook with a kitchen knife is no substitute for a garrison.
  • Match jobs to skills where you can — a specialist finishes faster and improves faster, and the panel shows each colonist’s skill levels alongside the slots.
  • Use the Orders bar to mark specific targets. Arm a tool (chop, mine, forage, hunt, haul) and drag a box over the world to mark what should be worked. This is how you point the colony at that stand of trees rather than any tree.
  • If a job is going undone, check three things in order: does anyone have that job enabled, can they physically reach the target, and are their needs met?

Good to know

  • A colonist who won’t work is usually hungry or exhausted, not badly configured. Check their needs before rearranging their job slots.
  • Nobody works themselves to death. Critical needs always outrank work, by design.
  • Breaking off to eat doesn’t lose the work. A colonist dragged off a half-built wall by hunger picks up from where they stopped, and the time spent eating doesn’t count towards the job either. If someone else gets there first, they continue it rather than starting over.
  • Marked targets persist. Something you’ve designated stays marked until it’s worked or you cancel it.
  • A Guard is not a soldier. Guards patrol, spot trouble early and raise the alarm — but without a combat role they flee like anyone else. Staffing a garrison is a deliberate decision, not something that happens by giving people the Guard job.
  • A colonist’s combat role doesn’t change with what they’re doing. Someone hauling a crate is still an archer, and will fight like one the moment it matters.
  • Any colonist can be given any job. There’s no skill or level requirement to unlock one — an untrained colonist simply does the work badly and slowly, and gets better by doing it. A brand-new Healer will tend wounds clumsily from their first patient rather than standing around until they’ve somehow learned medicine.
  • Skills shown on the character panel may include temporary buffs, while the Jobs panel shows the stored level. If the two disagree, that’s why.
  • Idle isn’t wasted. Socialising and recreation feed the soft needs that keep mood up.