In Nested Lands, founding and running your own village is a task far too large to tackle alone. That’s why finding and recruiting villagers is not just helpful, it’s necessary.
We’ve now talked at length about the villagers in previous diaries. This is because Nested Lands is a management game at heart, so all of its features converge upon them. We have discussed previously how to recruit NPCs, as well as what makes them unique, like skills and traits, and the possibilities their uniqueness may bring to the village. Today we will focus on villagers' jobs, at least the ones that will be available on the upcoming Alpha.
For a village to thrive, certain needs must be met for its people. Villagers must have a place to sleep, just as they must have food, water, functional tools and weapons, and even laws and occupations that turn a simple place to live into a true bastion of civilization.
Today, we’ll discuss the occupations and jobs that players may entrust upon their villagers. They fall under three categories: Gathering, Crafting, and Service.
Gathering
Gathering jobs are the cornerstone of your village. They are the simplest, yet most vital of jobs: collecting and storing raw materials to be used by other workers. In the early stages, most of the available jobs that the player may designate will be of this nature, which, in the alpha, will include roles like Gatherer, Wood Chopper, and Miner.
Wood Choppers and Miners are exactly what they sound like. They chop trees for wood and mine large rocks for ore, respectively. Gatherers on the other hand are more general, collecting a variety of simple resources from the grounds around the player’s village. Things like cotton, berries, plant and reed fibers, and even wooden logs and stones are some of the resources Gatherers can collect. As development progresses, we might add a larger assortment to their purview.
Looking for a moment beyond the Alpha and into the future, we also plan to add other Gathering jobs such as Hunter, Fisher, Forager and Water Gatherer to the full release.
Crafting
Crafting jobs are more advanced. They are the occupations that will transform your settlement from a simple group of people living together into a self-sufficient village. As the name implies, Crafting jobs require using raw resources and transforming them into complex finished items. There are a large variety of Crafting jobs, and that’s where the Work-related traits we discussed in the last diary matter the most. In the alpha, Crafting jobs will include the Carpenter, Blacksmith, Apothecary, Cook, and Weaver. All of them produce certain types of specialized items:
- Carpenters turn wooden logs into planks and other wooden resources;
- Blacksmiths use mainly iron scraps to create tools, weapons and armor;
- Apothecaries turn herbs and plants into medicines to treat the Death Plague, making them particularly important;
- Cooks turn raw produce into proper meals, thus feeding your people for longer periods of time;
- Weavers turn cotton and linen into fabrics, which can then be used by other crafters, and create uniforms for all jobs, improving their efficacy.
We have many more jobs planned for the full release, like the Brewer, to create all manner of alcoholic beverages, the Potter, who creates clay and ceramic items, the Tanner, master of all leatherworkings, and the Butcher, who turns animal carcasses into meat-based resources.
Service
Finally, Service jobs offer different types of public service to your village, usually (though not always) through the use of a produced item made by the Crafters.
In the Alpha, there will be four Service jobs:
- Guards, who protect the village from raiders and other enemies,
- Builders, who take the necessary resources and finish planned buildings in your stead, as well as craft the simplest of resources, like turning Wooden Logs into Wood Pieces,
- Cremators, who burn the bodies of the dead, be they friend or foe, to stop the formation of Plague Foci within village grounds,
- Farmers, who use Plant Beds to produce vegetables and other food products.
Meanwhile, the final release version will also include Nurses, who tend to the sick and may slowly treat those infected with the Death Plague, Priests, who improve the morale of any religious villagers, Animal Caretakers, who tend to the animals, and the Tavern Keeper, a friendly face to keep spirits high through merriment and drink.
Occupational Buildings
In total, there will be twelve jobs in the Nested Lands Alpha, as well as another twelve joining in the final release of the game, which makes twenty four possible occupations for your villagers. There will be a suitable job for every character! While Gatherers obviously work in and around all of the village grounds, Crafters and Servicers will require occupational buildings for their labor. These buildings are the initial requirement to unlock these jobs and serve as the workplace and source of materials they will use to complete their respective tasks.
For example, if a Builder needs to work on a new construction project, they will look for resources inside any of the village’s Crafter buildings. The same applies to Service occupations, who all work inside of specific buildings, like Priests in a Church or Guards in Watchtowers. But what happens if the Crafters find no resources at their workplace?
A Living Village
The vibrant feeling of life in the player’s village is one aspect of the game that our team has worked very hard on and is very proud of. Our team has worked very hard to create a vibrant sense that your village is alive when you play. We feel this sets our game apart and we take great pride in it. From engaging events, and ambient dialogue lines to even potential crimes, the interactions among villagers of different occupations will immerse you in the life of your village.
While the player can (and should) regularly check on any issues and requirements for the villagers to complete their tasks, the villagers can also cooperate to finish all necessary steps to complete a certain goal. For example, if the Builder needs more wooden planks to finish a new house, but there are no planks available, they can create a “request” for that material, which will automatically toggle the Carpenter to produce new Wooden Planks. In turn, if there are no Wooden Logs for the Carpenter to use, a new request will be sent to the Wood Chopper to collect more. Once they are ready, the Carpenter will take them so production can resume as usual. After the request is satisfied, all villagers return to their usual routine, whatever it may be.
Of course, if you make sure to leave your village well-supplied before going to explore, such measures may not be necessary, leading to a better rate of completion for villager tasks. Still, as we have said, managing a village can sometimes be too much for one person alone, so giving the villagers the ability to solve problems by themselves allows any overworked leaders to take a breather.
The team is hard at work making the village management experience in Nested Lands the best it can be! We've covered a lot about the villagers, but there's still much more to explore about village life — like Crime, Ordinances, Events, and even a special person who will be your right-hand in managing it all.
If you don’t want to miss any of it, remember to join our Discord server, wishlist the game on STEAM, and, especially, sign up for the UPCOMING ALPHA, which is coming soon.