Comfort Level: How it Works & Why it's Wrong (updating for 0.9.009)

[casta_03]

------------New info will appear at the bottom---------------
I just spent some time messing around with my dwarf house to try & adjust the comfort level. What I've found is somewhat disappointing.

First off, the sole way I checked the effects was by looking at the number displayed by the totem. I did not go off of anything else because if there is some hidden modifier, I couldn't see its effects in any way whatsoever.

Now, you've got this floating head whose general happiness determines... something. Probably recovery rate when your dwarves sleep. In order to have any number over 0%, you need an enclosed house. This includes most or all of the following:

- Every background spot needs a wall or a window
- Every border square on the house (the outside walls, floor, & ceiling) needs a foreground wall, a door, a hatch, or a piece of natural terrain (in both background & foreground) that probably needs to be replaced with a wall.
- You can use roof construction pieces for the roof of the house & maybe even the walls. This isn't recommended.
- The entirety of the borders of the house needs to fall within the Totem's area of influence. This is shown by some weird orange-yellow star-dot trail that traces around. If it clips inside the house at any point, your comfort level will take a dip.

Ok, so now you have something above 0%. Congratulations on being a functioning destroyer of worlds capable of sheltering your short bearded stupid followers. So how do we get this number higher than 35-45%? This is where it gets weird.

- Each bed in your house beyond the first lowers your comfort level. The type of bed has no discernible difference
- The crafted material used for your external walls makes a difference. Brick is best. Wood is worst. Dirt is... detrimental. Don't judge me!
- Foreground & background walls within the house make no real difference. Ledges & background walls that count as being inside can be made of any material without impacting comfort level.
- Doors & hatches that are exits to the house lower your comfort level (at least, in comparison to bricks). I didn't bother checking if the first door has this effect. I watched enough existential horrors doing this with the Sims
- For the roof, brick beats out shingles by a very wide margin. In my testing, I took 11 tiles. 2 had hatches, the rest were shingle tiles. I replaced all of them with a double-brick ceiling. Comfort level shot up by 15%.
- The size of the house doesn't make much of a difference aside from contruction costs & the protection range threshold.

Now, for the important bit:

Nothing else matters

You know that entire tab in your crafting menu that's full of luxury items designed to look nice, most of which have a comfort rating? All that stuff you've been building for little expensive mini-objectives? Yeah, none of that does anything to affect Mr Totem's mood. Nothing. I went from one of everything to nothing. No change. I then filled up the place with the higher-rating items. Still no change.

That aside, the presence or absence of these items had no notable change to the healing time for my one dwarf that still owned a bed. Granted, I didn't test extensively & didn't use a stopwatch. But if I need a clock to note any difference, then there really isn't a difference.

Sidenote: Controlling one of your dwarves & hurling him off a cliff just to see how long his injuries take to heal is somewhat cathartic in its own right.

Conclusion: Either the comfort effects of these objects has not yet been worked on & implemented, or the current incarnation needs to be worked on. At all. Because it doesn't look like it's been worked on.

Update info:
-The shape of the outside walls has a small amount of influence over comfort level. Solid blocks give less comfort than walls shaped to show supports/rafters/etc. Total deviance probably depends on shelter size, but probably falls in the range of 5-10%.

- Having some trouble with hatches? Good news! Hatches (still need to check doors) provide a grace area where above & below the hatch counts as having a foreground wall.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=203168862

- Comfort level was given a cap, so you won't be seeing anymore screenshots with numbers higher than 100%

- Luxury items still have no notable influence on comfort level

- Type of bed doesn't seem to affect healing times, but sheep are more plentiful & the fabric pattern has more than doubled its output, so comfort & luxury beds are much easier to come by, in case you're tired of leaf blankets

[WhiteCrow]

Good thread and great findings. Bumping for awareness.

My hope out of this is that Comfort actually works, and only the display is bugged, but I highly doubt it, since as you mentioned there's no discernable difference in rest time. Kinda' hope they fix this soon, as a fairly large portion of the game is missing.

[casta_03]

I think 'fix' is the wrong verb here. This game is currently in its early access phase. Eseentially, it's like a crowd-sourced beta-testing. It shows the devs what needs to be focused on, while giving players some say in how the game is shaped. I don't think comfort level is broken as much as incomplete.
I imagine that future patches will remove all doubt.

[Tachyon]

Ah I see just focus on borders if you are worried about comfort. Though so far hasn't been that big of a deal.

[casta_03]

Higher comfort levels speed up health recovery time. There's a huge difference between 40-50% (good wood borders), 70-75% (stone walls), & 105+% (brick). It's not a huge deal, but it does mitigate downtime for a relatively small investment of time.

[l1keafox]

So it's just the outside borders that determine the comfort level the most? Not the walls and/or decorations?

[casta_03]

Pretty much.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=200132302

Square structure. Brick outer walls, all shaped as simple blocks, 2 steel doors, 1 iron hatch. Background walls & internal platforms made of wood. Simple beds, basically no furniture. Plenty of comfort.

[Gonanda]

Originally posted by casta_03:

Pretty much.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=200132302

Square structure. Brick outer walls, all shaped as simple blocks, 2 steel doors, 1 iron hatch. Background walls & internal platforms made of wood. Simple beds, basically no furniture. Plenty of comfort.

Impressive! Very impressive!

[Malaise]

Many thanks for sharing your findings. I was getting very frustrated that my substantial collection of cuckoo clocks didn't seem to be affecting the %. Now I know. :(

[Smash]

Originally posted by casta_03:

Pretty much.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=200132302

Square structure. Brick outer walls, all shaped as simple blocks, 2 steel doors, 1 iron hatch. Background walls & internal platforms made of wood. Simple beds, basically no furniture. Plenty of comfort.

You have furniture like mirrors and statues, is removing them do any difference?

[casta_03]

nah, they're just there for esthetic purposes
here's a different one with a similar setup & no real furniture
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=198457955

[Smash]

Thank you.

[casta_03]

new information added to the bottom of the initial post
I'll reformat if I think it needs to look pretty
it doesn't

[JAXE]

Oh that sucks, i don't like the look of brick, i had tons of luxory items and was wondering why the comfort was still low.

[casta_03]

Originally posted by memanme:

Oh that sucks, i don't like the look of brick, i had tons of luxory items and was wondering why the comfort was still low.

All that matters are the actual outside borders. The interior can be anything you like.
In addition, depending on the exact parameters of the building, you can have a single room with your totem & beds, walled off entirely from the rest of your building (except for doors, of course). Then you'd just have a single brick room, with the rest of your house built however you like.

Beyond that, the calculations for comfort can go up to 120% or so, while the level itself has fairly recently been capped out at 100%. If you like stone, depending on the number of beds, 60-70% can be brick, the rest stone, & you'd still have a high comfort level. If you can compromise to settle for just the background -or- the foreground being brick, you can get away with even more.

If you still don't like it, go with what you like. It just means your dwarves sleep longer. It's not really -that- bad.

[JAXE]

The building also uses roof tiles i guess ill switch all the sides to brick.
I switched my upper levels side beams to all brick and it went to 100%, kept the inner section the same however the lower section is still using wood beams. I guess above ground only counts.
Thanks.