In Sengoku Dynasty, the NPC Requirement system is a very important point for you and your employees. Use the information in our Sengoku Dynasty NPC Needs and Happiness guide to be able to give happiness and bonuses to your employees while balancing the needs system.
This is the guide Winter’s Embers it was created by. You can find the author’s link at the end of the guide.
Sengoku Dynasty NPC Needs and Happiness
This Sengoku Dynasty NPC Needs and Happiness guide explains the NPC Needs System and how it operates to provide happiness and production bonuses to your people. This guide is a temporary one that is relevant to 0.2.1.0. Happiness, needs, and production are in a constant state of flux as Superkami works to streamline gameplay and balance the Needs system so not all the number will remain accurate.
Needs: An Overview
Keeping your people happy is key to maximizing their effectiveness at the jobs you assign them. Currently there are 6 Needs in the game:
- Meals: Unlocks as soon as you add your first villager (either Ako or Sayuri)
- Beverages: Unlocks when your total population reach 4.
- Heating: Unlocks when your total population reaches 7.
- Maintenance: Unlocks when your total population reaches 9.
- Health: Unlocks when your total population reaches 14.
- Security: Unlocks when your total population reaches 18.
Needs requirements begin modestly and increase gradually as your population grows. Again, these numbers are in constant flux so I won’t be providing information on that. Early on, you’ll supply meals and beverages yourself through normal gameplay. But as your village grows, you will need to use NPC production to fill these needs.
So, how do Needs work? Well, let’s take a look at the Dynasty screen. On the home page, you’ll see an overview like this:
As you can see, I have a population large enough to require all 6 current Needs. You’ll notice there are 2 numbers. The first, in black, is the total number of points of that Need you have stored in your village. I have 4,395 meal points. This comes from all sources in the food storage that provide need. This is followed by a slider with an orange smiley on one side and a green smiley on the other. More on this in a minute. Finally, you’ll see either a green number or a red number next to this. This number indicates your overall balance of production versus consumption. For a better view of this, click on the Jobs tab.
This shows a breakdown of your entire Needs system. The type, how much you have in storage, how much your villagers are producing in green numbers and how much they use each season in red. This doesn’t show your balance like the main screen but it is far more informative.
I’ll discuss the emojis in the next section.
So, what provides for these needs? Some seem pretty self evident but there’s only one way to know for sure. Open up your inventory or storage screen and click on an item. The center part of the window will display all relevant data.
First, we need to know what inventory good provides what need. Now, it should be self-evident for many things on which storage it belongs in. Some, maybe not so much. So, how to tell? Open your inventory and click on an item.
The central panel here shows all the statistics of every item you click on. From top to bottom: what type of item it is, where it is stored, what needs (if any) it provides for, and the cost in coins. In the above image, my sticks provide Villager Needs (Heating): 1. That means it adds 1 point to the Heating Needs in storage. If ever in doubt, check the item’s description here.
Remember, only items stored in their appropriate storage building count.
Happiness and Productivity
This section deals with a mechanic that is currently in flux and may not stay relevant for as long as I’d like. However, this is how the game currently works.
Each Need, as it appears when new population is added, has 2 levels of supply. The Orange Smiley is the basic amount each villager needs to stay content. Failing to meet this minimum threshold will result in a penalty. The Green Smiley is maximum rations. By applying maximum rations, you increase villager happiness. How does this work? Well, it’s a little complicated (hence why it’s being worked on) and there is a LOT of confusion around it so I’ll try and clear it up.
If you provide a ‘green smiley’ for a need, all villagers will receive +1 to their happiness rating to a maximum of 6 for all 6 needs being abundantly provided. This is cumulative so early villagers can get increases in happiness for later needs.
If you provide enough goods for the orange smiley, your villagers will stay content and no change will occur in happiness. What this means is that their happiness level stays the same! It will not revert to base level. If you’ve got +5 happiness, then the orange smiley level of needs will maintain that +5. There’s no need to keep giving people maximum rations!
If you fail to meet the basic needs of the orange smiley, your villagers will become dissatisfied and will receive a -2 penalty for each need not met to a maximum of -12. This is VERY BAD. Do not do this. As you’ll see in the productivity section next, this will tank your village. Later on, when villagers are allowed to leave your village (they’re stuck permanently for now), your village will die. This, like the other needs, is cumulative. If you lose a few points because of a bad season but recover and keep giving orange rations, your people will remain unhappy but will not get worse.
So, in short, you need to provide minimum orange needs across all needs to maintain happiness. You do not need to maintain green-level needs consumption once your current population reaches maximum happiness.
Simple strategy: During the normal course of gameplay, use green-level rations to maximize happiness then flip the slider to orange. When you add new villagers, try to do so in groups. Then, you can use the green smiley and get everyone to maximum happiness by paying the higher cost once. Then drop it to orange again.
Productivity
- Here is where the real issues are and the reason for the disclaimer. The productivity boost from happiness is a temporary addition to the game and is going to be replaced with a different system in a future update. For now, here’s how it works.
- Your villagers begin at neutral happiness and have no production bonus. Ostensibly, each level of happiness grants a 5% bonus up to a maximum of +30%. But, (and here’s where it’s kind of broken), this is calculated for all NPC’s simultaneously whenever needs are adjusted! If you move a slider from orange to green, you’ll see the productivity bonus go to 5%. This will set all NPC’s to 5%, even if they have maximum happiness! Ouchies! So, how to combat this? Any time you boost a Need to green-level, you must boost ALL Needs to green-level to reset all NPC production to the maximum allowed by number of needs available. However, as stated earlier, you only have to do this for one season. This is why I recommend gather new villagers in bunches. You only have to take that higher Needs hit once and you’ll have several seasons to prepare for it, recover from it, or both.
- Yeah, it ain’t perfect but it’s what we’ve got for now. Hopefully the new system will be more concrete.
