How do I feed villagers? And make sure they get all their needs

[Jinobe]

Please help me....

[Ele]

Put food and buckets of water in your food storage area and they will use them. Put firewood in your regular storage area and they will use it.

[Morri]

Yep, the two different storage buildings will see to all their needs and they'll take the stuff they need from it themselves automatically.

Alternatively, If you don't have those buildings yet, you can also place food, drink and firewood directly into the chest in their house.

[Dutchgamer1982]

see my guide...

but ok the basics :
at standard game mode :
-each villager by default will need 30 food, 30 wood, 30 water a day.
(I say standard game mode as you can decrease this if you so want)

without messing with game setings :
you have 2 ways to decrease this demand, 1 is a diplomacy skill in your own skilltree, you level it 3 times, each level reduced consumption by 10%

(so with 3 levels, you will use only 21 - 21 -21)

another way is providing a better house, you can replace the walls for better ones
(wattle walls -> wooden walls -> stone walls)
(staw roof -> wooden roof -> tiled roof)
you can also add isolation to all wall types.
**a house with all walls isolated stone, and a tiled roof, will reduce the wood use of all villagers that live inside it by 50%)

-> so with the diplo skill and a good house that is 21 food 21 water 10.5 wood needed per villager per day.

Now how to PROVIDE this :
-you must have build a house to house the villagers in (villagers won't start consuming before house)
-you must have build a food storage (and leveled up your tech level enough to unlock it) and place the water and food in it
-you must have build a resource storage (and leveled up your tech level enough to unlock it) and place the wood in it.

as for what items to place inside it :

Water :
-you have 2 options
**a watersack, with 4 charges
**a bucket with 10 charges
(each charge fills villagers water need by 25)
-> when the last charge of water is consumed, you will get an empty bucket or empty watersack, with 1 less durability.
-> you can refill it but eventually it will tear down.
***
watersack and buckets can be refilled, either at a natural stream or at a well, if you have build one.
->
to obtain the buckets/watersack.. you can buy some buckets.. (cheaper option than watersack).. they will last you quite a while.
OR
-you need to build a lumbercamp (to make planks)
+
-you need to build a workshop (to make buckets)
**making watersacks is not advised.. it needs much more materials.. has less durability.. and has less chaarges.. where as buckets only need planks to make

***so early on you likely craft or build a few buckets and fill them... with 250 water per bucket.. and each bucket lasting 100 times refilling.. thats an easy need to fill.
-
10 villagers means basicly only 1 or 2 buckets refilled a day.
**you could automate this, hiring a watercarrier at a well (who than will refill your buckets)
**if you worry about the buckets eventually breaking you could also hire a craftsman in your workshop but thats a late game worry.

Wood :
villagers can burn either sticks, logs, firewood, or planks.
each stick burned gives them 1 wood
each plank burned, gives them 5 wood
each log burned, gives them 10 wood
each firewood burned, gives them 5 wood.
***you can easely obtain the logs and sticks.. but it's better to turn your logs into firewood. 1 log makes 4 firewood.

10 villagers can need anything from 300 (full need, no diplo skill no upgraded house) to 105 wood).. that means between 60 and 21 firewood per day..
and that in turn means providing between 15 and 6.25 logs a day.
(and with each tree providing between 2 and 4 logs depending on the type that means you will have to cut between 2 and 8 trees a day.. to provide your villagers wood need
***
you will want to automate this.. hire a single villager who is gathering logs, will provide all the wood needs and than some.
(while if YOU do the labour firewood is best, due it is much more work for you to cut down a tree, and carry the logs home, than to craft a log into firewood.. this is NOT the case for villagers...
villagers have an output per hour..
**the base output for logs is 2 per hour of labour, per skill level
**the base output for firewood is 1 log turned into 4 firewood per hour of labour per skill level.
2 logs are worth 20 wood to burn. and take 1 hour to get
4 firewood are also 20 wood but it would take 0.5 hours labour to get the log + 1 hour labour to make it into firewood... = 1.5 hour
**
your lumberjack will need axes to do his job.. place those in the resource storage..
you can easely craft those yourself in early game.


Foood
for food.. there is 1000 things that provide food.
-you can farm food (but that takes time, and by than your villagers have starved, also not very energy efficient)
-you can cook/bake to improve the nutricial value of food (but you need ingredients for that)
-you can fish
(incredible hard for you as player.. best not)
-you can gather :
**not all seasons suited for this, but in spring there is mushroom and unripe berries, in summer ripe berries, and in autumn mushroom
-you can hunt for meat
**the best food option.

as you village start you want to provide them some food... whats best you provide?
tip :
all food rots, at seasons end.. but it rots less when inside a food storage...
food in your inventory rots a lot more than food in a food storage.
tip2 :
if you process partially rotted items, they will turn into 100% usuable items.. so processing halve rotten items to extend their lifespan is a trick you could use.
---
as player you can spend your time either fishing, hunting, gathering or farming.
***
one field of farming will need ->
roughing up (need hoe)
fertilising (need bag, and need fertiliser)
plouwing (need hoe)
seeding (need bag, and need seeds)
harvesting
-> to many steps, and too low yields, to be a suitable food provider.. forget farming.
***
fishing is very hard to do, and fish spears have only enough durability to catch 8-10 fishes.. the yield is terrible the cost high, forget fishing.
***
leaving gathering and hunting.
-mushrooms give about 1 food each, and if you spend a full day gathering them, you can get about 200 of them.. so 200 food, enough to provide for 5 villagers + yourself.
-berries give 0.5 food each (both unripe and ripe) as villagers cannot get poisoned unlike you, unripe berries are as good to them as ripe ones.
One full day of berry grabbing can provide 2000 berries or even more, thats 1000 food
.. spending one day in summer or spring grabbing berries.. and you have enough food to provide 10 villagers all the food they need for 12 days (or a full year in normal season lenght)
-hunting is harder early on, so 100 meat a day but later when you get the hang more is doable.. raw meat only provides 2 food, so thats a meager 200 food but if you roast this meat over a fire, thats 600 food
**
So if it's spring or summer you feed your villagers berries, when it's autumn or winter meat.

however you will want to automate meat consumption ASAP as it is by far the most labour intensive task for you to provide your villagers food.
->
the most efficient way to have your villagers make food is :
have a hunting hut, and have a hunter gather 33% meat and dry it for 66% of his time..
one hunter employed like that will be able to provide for 20+ villagers
he will need knifes..

-so if you start a village with :
a resource storage with some firewood inside it.
a food storage, with waterbuckets and some roasted meat or berries inside it.
that's fine.

you likely want to set your first villager as hunter :
-hunting hut, and have him 33% hunt meat, 66% dry meat.
**you will have to add knifes to the resource storage.
-this will automate your villagers food use.

it is wise to build that second house quickly..

your second villager would be employed as a lumberjack, gathering logs 100%^
**you will have to add axes to the resource storage.
-> this will automate villagers wood use

your third villager would be employed as water carrier
**he can resuse the buckets as they empty, but they wear down very slowly, eventually you will have to place new buckets in the storage building.
-> this will automate villagers water use.

------------
after this :
4/5th worker, likely your 3d house :
early game :
**you want an extraction hunt, hire a miner in it and have him extract stone
-> you will need to add pickaxes to your resource storage
**you want to have your lumberjack reduce his log gathering to 90% and put some 10% in stick gathering
**you want to build a blacksmith, and have it craft your tools (10% hammers, 30% knifes 30% axes, 30% pickaxes)
-> you will need to add hammers to your resource storage

with this.. you can automate wooden hammer and stone knife, axe and pickaxe crafting.. and need not to resupply those yourself all the time.

meaning all you still have to provide is buckets

6th worker : craftsman
-you could put 1 worker in the workshop crafting buckets, change your lumberjack to 85% logs, 5% planks, 10% sticks...

-----------------
finally :
once you have a mine, and a blacksmith 3... you could move your miner from the excavation shed to the mine, and have him mine iron ore
-> and order the blacksmith to craft iron bars, and iron pickaxe, knife and axe (don't bother with iron hammers, wooden hammers are better)
this is slighly more efficient.

you might eventually have to increase your number of hunters....
-------------------------
4 hunters in 1 hunting shed
1 lumberjack in a lumbercamp
1 watercarrier in a well
1 craftsman in a workshop
1 miner in a mine (or excavation shed)
1 blacksmith, in a smithy
-> thats all you need to make your village self sufficient.. will provide for 100+ villagers

[Kwalyz]

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

Water :
-you have 2 options
**a watersack, with 4 charges
**a bucket with 10 charges
(each charge fills villagers water need by 25)

Whilst water from Bucket of Water and Waterskins of Water are the easiest way to get your villagers to satisfy their thirst requirements I will point out that there are a lot of food and drink items that the NPCs can consume to satisfy their water needs - from food (Eg soup, plums etc) and drink (Eg apple juice, mead, rye beer.) So if you have any of these picked up from abandoned camps or bandit camps then your NPCs will consume these as per the management priority list (last tab of the management menu.) if you have the items in the Food Storage building or the chests in their houses.

[Merlin69]

Dutchgamer where is your guide?

[Dutchgamer1982]

"final calculations" on this forum

but the most important elements :

*fully stonewall and isolate your houses
*use logs for fuel
*waterbuckets for water
*dried meat for food
*iron tools, exept for hammers, there you use wooden.
---
for yourself you want to carry
**flatbread (energy dense, so light to carry and easy to make)
**2 watersack (lighter than bucket)

to self supply 100 villagers you need

Hunting Lodge II
**4 HUNTERS**
29% meat
58% dried meat
13% idle

Woodshed II (1 free jobspot)
**1x LUMBERJACK**
38% logs
1% planks
2% sticks
59% idle

Well
**1x WATER CARRIER**
24% waterbucket
76% idlle

Workshop III (1 free work spot)
**1x CRAFTSMAN**
1% wooden bucket
99% idle

Mine (5 free work spot)
**1x MINER***
47% iron ore
53% idle

Smithy III (1 free work spot)
**1x BLACKSMITH**
1% iron pickaxe 0,145
4% iron axe 0,58
12% iron knife 1,74
44% iron bar 6,38
1% wooden hammer 0,3045
38% idle

surpluss per day
0,09473333333333333333333333333333 wooden hammer
0,10183833333333333333333333333333 iron pickaxe
0,058 iron knife
0,1392 iron axe
3,915 sticks
2,7205 logs
2,465 planks
0.5 dried meat
0,2175 wooden bucket
0.3 water bucket
0,1885 iron ore

(these numbers are based on all villagers having 80 mood, have a workskill of 10 and you having 3 levels in the skill that boost villager productivity)

that leaves you 91 villagers to do whatever you want.
-> this be your final goal..

while working towards this.. you can use the tip I gave you in earlier posts in what order to set villagers to work, and grow towards this.

[Ro]

Wow yall really put in the work!! Thank you for this!

[Morri]

Originally posted by Jay Williams:

Wow yall really put in the work!! Thank you for this!

Keep in mind that the numbers provided by Dutch were from before the co-op update, and a lot of food values and production values were rebalanced. So they are not accurate anymore.

[Salciano]

What are the calculations now? :)

[barbaraclubb]

Please don't resurrect Dutch......

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by barbaraclubb:

Please don't resurrect Dutch......

missed me?

[Dutchgamer1982]

Originally posted by Morri:

Originally posted by Jay Williams:

Wow yall really put in the work!! Thank you for this!

Keep in mind that the numbers provided by Dutch were from before the co-op update, and a lot of food values and production values were rebalanced. So they are not accurate anymore.

yeah I need to redo them;) when I eventually get around to it:)

[The REAL chris]

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

Originally posted by barbaraclubb:

Please don't resurrect Dutch......

missed me?

Yes .. Welcome back

[Salciano]

No rest for the wicked :p

[Foxglovez]

Hiya Dutch, welcome back. You have a lot of work to do, best get on it. Just so you know, when I started the game your guides were a lifesaver. We have teased you and griefed you a bit but you are indeed the elete number cruncher. Hats off to ya, well my hat anyway.