Spiritstead Villager Happiness Checklist

In Spiritstead, happy villagers work harder and angry ones refuse jobs — at 0% happiness they may leave the village entirely. Food shortages, skipped bonfires, and decoration neglect cause most mood crashes, not bugs. This checklist gives you a repeatable rescue sequence when the happiness bar dips during territory buys or spirit hunts. Use it alongside Villager Happiness guide for theory; this page is the mid-session triage list.

Use the interactive checklist below — tick items as you stabilize mood. The page layout injects tool UI separately; markdown - [ ] boxes remain the authoritative list if widgets are offline.

When to open this checklist

Run the list when you see:

• Villagers refusing work after drag-assign.
• Red food warnings or empty warehouse hover stats.
• Happiness below 50% during expansion.
• Quest credit missing despite “finished” buildings (gray incomplete houses block mood).

Pause territory purchases until food and happiness sections below are green.

Emergency happiness recovery (5 minutes)

• Stop expanding — no new land purchases until mood stabilizes.
• Open food warehouse hover — confirm positive production minus eating ticks.
• Drag one villager to a bonfire or market happiness building.
• Sell surplus wood if you need gold for a quick café or decoration purchase.
• F reposition misplaced bonfires closer to worker clusters if walks are too long.

If mood still drops, continue to full diagnostic sections — do not assign new production jobs yet.

Food stability checklist

Starvation is the fastest happiness killer:

• Carrot plot (or current crop chain) staffed via drag-assign.
• Food warehouse built and within reasonable walk distance.
• Hover food pile — eating per tick must stay below production per tick.
• Add second food worker if quests allow dual staffing on one plot.
• Pause decorative spending until ticks stay green through one day/night cycle.

Deep production math: Production & Warehouses.

Happiness building checklist

Spiritstead lifts mood through structures and decorations, not passive proximity alone in some demo builds:

• Bonfire built centrally and staffed at least once per crisis.
• Market, café, or tavern unlocked at current town level.
• Decorations placed if quests mention overall village mood.
• Villagers dragged to happiness buildings — standing nearby may not count until future updates.
• Road completion on gray buildings — incomplete houses hurt broader mood goals.

Happiness building catalog: Happiness Buildings.

Work refusal checklist

When villagers ignore jobs after drag-assign:

• Confirm happiness above 0% — angry villagers refuse tasks.
• Check building requirements (roads, materials) — gray shells do not accept work.
• Verify no blocking props between villager and station after rotation mistakes.
• Re-drag after F reposition moves that shifted walk paths.
• On Steam Deck, retry drag with zoom-in — see Steam Deck tips.

Expansion-specific checklist

Territory buys cause happiness spikes because walks lengthen and food routes break:

• Rebuild dirt roads to new plots immediately after purchase.
• Move or duplicate warehouses near new production tiles.
• Place bonfire within new district before staffing log cutters there.
• Delay Snow biome push if Green Forest mood is still unstable.

Map pacing: Territories guide.

Adventure vs Creative notes

Mode	Happiness focus
Adventure	Real consequences — 0% can lose villagers permanently for the save arc.
Creative	Practice happiness layouts without walkout risk; test decoration density for screenshots.

Long-term mood maintenance

• Schedule bonfire breaks after large drag-assign sessions.
• Keep spirit automation (Peppok on nodes) running so you spend less time micro-managing food.
• Use Building Planner to avoid cramming houses away from happiness hubs.
• Re-run this checklist after every spirit portal milestone — shards distract from food ticks.

Related links

• Getting Started — first-hour bonfire quest.
• Controls — drag-assign and F reposition.
• Spirit checklist — do not hunt spirits while food is red.
• Review demo notes — developer acknowledged happiness tuning in demo feedback.