Villages grow as your Standing with them rises. Each step from WELCOME to HERO adds something you can see: flower boxes and benches, gardens and woodpiles, taller houses, lanterns and flags, workshops, new houses with new folk, and at HERO your own statue, a fountain and an arch with the village's name. The village's folk gather to celebrate each time it grows.
How it grows
- Growth follows the village's Standing step: STRANGER, WELCOME, FRIEND, TRUSTED, HERO. Each step keeps everything from the steps before.
- New things are built on open land in a ring up to 9 tiles round the village, as well as inside it. They only go on dry, level ground at the village's own height, off roads, and never over anything a player has built.
- Everything is laid out from the village's seed and the world's ground, so a village grows the same way in every game.
- Houses and fences go up while you aren't looking at them. Everything else eases in where you can see it.
- A village with too little room around it keeps its older, tighter layout, but still grows round it.
What each step adds
WELCOME
- Flower boxes under the windows.
- A bench by the well.
- Barrels and crates of goods beside the trader's stall.
- A small kitchen garden by one of the houses, growing the land's own crops.
FRIEND
- Two of the village's houses gain a second story (built by your next visit).
- A fenced garden of the land's crops, with the land's own fence and gate and a scarecrow.
- A woodpile.
TRUSTED
- Lanterns line the lanes, lit at night.
- Strings of little flags across the lanes in the land's colours, glowing softly at night.
- The land's own workshop (see below).
- An orchard row: berry bushes in the Woods and the Rocky Highlands, pines in the Tundra, date palms in the Desert, black pines in the Haunted Wood.
- A new house, with a new villager living in it.
- The guards hit 50% harder and have 50% more health.
HERO
- Your statue: the Wanderer in stone on a plinth with a brass plate, in or beside the square, with a ring of flowers round it.
- A fountain by the square (a frozen basin in the Tundra, a tiled one in the Desert).
- The edge of the square paved wider.
- A welcome arch with the village's name over the road in (or a sign at its side where there is no room for an arch).
- Two market carts.
- A pond with a stone rim, where children play.
- Up to two more houses, where there is room, each with a villager and often a child.
- Villagers call out when they see you ("It's the Wanderer!", "Welcome back, Wanderer!").
Each land's workshop (TRUSTED)
| Land | Workshop |
|---|---|
| The Woods | A sawyard |
| The Rocky Highlands | A forge with its chimney smoking |
| The Tundra | A smokehouse and a sled |
| The Desert | A glass kiln glowing at its mouth |
| The Haunted Wood | A lantern-maker's porch |
New villagers
Each new house gets a villager from the land's own name list. In the Tundra they are always fishers; elsewhere 4 in 10 are fishers and the rest are ordinary villagers. At HERO, 7 in 10 new houses also have a child.
The celebration
When a village reaches a new step, the next time you come to it (or wake up there), its villagers come out and gather in an arc by the square to cheer ("Look how it's grown!", "Welcome back!", and at HERO "Our hero!"). A banner at the top of the screen shows the village's name and "HAS GROWN" with the new step, for 3.6 seconds. This happens once per step for each village.
Tips
- The quickest way to grow a village is its requests (+2 or +3 Standing each) and its notices. See Village Quests.
- Don't build right next to a village if you want it to grow there: growth never goes over what players have built.
