Status & Needs

A dwarf is only as productive as it is fed, rested and uninjured. This page covers the three live “needs” systems — Meals (sustenance), Fatigue (rest) and Health/Injury (recovery) — plus the colony wellbeing state they feed into and the status enum that ties it all together.

For the buildings that recover dwarves, see Accommodations & Training. For the brews that boost or restore them, see Ale & Potions.

Status at a Glance #

Every dwarf has exactly one status at any moment:

Status transitions:

idle ──► working           (assigned to a building)
idle ──► on-expedition     (added to an expedition squad)
on-expedition ──► idle     (expedition completes normally)
on-expedition ──► injured  (dwarf Downed → Rescued on return)
injured ──► idle           (healsAt timer expires)
idle / working ──► resting (sent to a Tavern)
resting ──► idle           (recalled, or Fatigue fully recovered)

Note: on-expedition and injured dwarves do not consume Meals — only active dwarves (everyone else) eat.

Meals: Sustenance #

Active dwarves eat continuously. Meals are produced by your Galley (from Food) and stored per-asteroid in your Warehouses.

Consumption Rate #

Consumption is per-asteroid: each rock feeds only its own resident dwarves from its own Meals stock. A well-stocked asteroid will not rescue a starving one — you must keep food flowing everywhere you house crew.

Unconfirmed: older design docs quote 0.1 meals/sec per dwarf. The live simulation (consumption.js) uses 0.03, which is the authoritative value and what is shown above.

Meals State and Colony Wellbeing #

The colony’s overall feeding level is tracked as an empire-wide aggregate (total Meals ÷ total Meals storage cap across all asteroids) and mapped to one of four states. This drives a global production modifier and a global recovery modifier:

Keeping warehouses comfortably above 75% full is a free, permanent +10% to both production and recovery — one of the cheapest empire-wide buffs in the game.

Starvation Damage #

When an individual asteroid runs completely out of Meals, every active dwarf resident there takes Health damage:

Starvation drain is local — only dwarves on the foodless rock starve, even if another asteroid is overflowing. The drain stops the moment Meals are restored, and Health recovers normally at home afterward.

Fatigue: Rest #

Fatigue (0–100) accumulates from expedition participation and overwork and is entirely separate from Health — a fully healthy dwarf can still be unfit for duty if exhausted.

The Fatigue cap for expeditions is 70. A dwarf over 70 Fatigue cannot be sent on an expedition (manually or by Doctrine) until rested. The Tenacious rare trait raises this threshold to 85.

Fatigue Accumulation #

• Each expedition stage resolved adds fatigue (first-pass: ~5 per stage on a standard run, scaling up with sector hazard tier).
• Long runs that reach Stages 4–5 accumulate more than short or aborted ones.
• The Steady common trait reduces accumulation by −10% per stage.

Fatigue Recovery #

A fully Exhausted dwarf (70 Fatigue) takes roughly 12 hours to clear in a Tavern, or ~23 hours off-duty — so Firebrew ale is the go-to tool when you need a crew back in the field fast. See Ale & Potions.

Fatigue accumulation and recovery rates are first-pass values.

Health and Injury #

Health (0–100) is the health/100 term in the capability formula. It starts at 100 and is consumed by expedition attrition — each hazardous stage outcome can roll Health damage, modified by sector hazards, traits and active ale.

Health does not recover during an expedition. Recovery happens only at home (see Hospital below). The only in-field Health source is the Ancient Blood legendary trait (+3 HP per stage). Healing Mead can also restore +20 HP instantly when served.

No Permadeath: Downed → Rescued → Injured #

Dwarves are never permanently lost. The full resolution path:

Health reaches 0
  └── DOWNED  (expedition ends for this dwarf, or whole squad if all Downed)
        └── RESCUED on return
              └── status set to "injured"
                    └── auto-assigned to a Hospital benched slot
                          └── healsAt timer counts down (wall-clock, even offline)
                                └── status → "idle" on completion

Total-squad-Downed (everyone hits 0 at once):

• The expedition returns no loot (banked loot is forfeit)…
• …unless a Last Stand dwarf is present, in which case the squad limps home at 1 HP each, Injured, with banked loot intact.
• All survivors return Injured. A small Credit rescue cost may apply (first-pass).
• The punishment is lost time and benched crew — never permanent loss.

The Guardian rare ability can save one other dwarf from a total-Downed event once per run.

Injury Severity and Recovery Time #

Severity is set at the moment of Downing, based on how far past 0 the damage would have pushed Health and the sector’s hazard tier:

Recovery is accelerated by several multiplicative factors. The Hospital level is the biggest lever — a Hospital’s severeInjuryBaseHours drops from 24h at Level 1 down to 3.5h at Level 6:

Recovery timers advance against wall-clock time, including while your tab or the game is closed (offline progression).

Unconfirmed: the Healing Mead recovery bonus is +30% in the live simulation (consumption.js / resources.json). Some design docs and the Tavern/Hospital data tables quote +50% — treat +30% as authoritative until reconciled. Severity trigger thresholds and the 48h critical baseline are first-pass.

Morale #

Morale is a colony-wide productivity layer driven by the Tavern / Mead Hall morale stat:

• Training a Tavern’s morale stat grants +5% global productivity per morale stat level.
• The Tavern is also where you serve ale buffs and where fatigued dwarves rest fastest.

Keeping Your Crew Productive — Checklist #

1. Never run out of Meals. Aim to keep every inhabited asteroid above 75% of its Meals storage cap for the Well-Fed ×1.10 bonus, and never let any rock hit zero (starvation Health drain).
2. Rotate fatigued dwarves through a Tavern (or pop Firebrew) before they pass Fatigue 70 and become un-deployable.
3. Build and upgrade a Hospital so Downed dwarves return to duty in hours, not days. Stock Healing Mead for the +30% recovery.
4. Train the Tavern’s morale stat for a compounding global productivity bonus.
5. Pick traits that ease upkeep — Thrifty (less consumption), Steady/Eager (fatigue), Sturdy/Seasoned/Resilient (damage and healing).