Services
Basics
Services are how you keep your Whiskers well fed, squeaky clean, healthy, and happy. Generally, the more services you can provide, the more likely it is that each Whisker will produce more positive thoughts and fewer negative thoughts. Take care of your Whiskers so that you can keep building your Whisker nation.
Dining
Every evening, your Whiskers will seek out a meal on their way home. They will try to find an eating establishment and pick up food that at least meets their expectations. Both the food and their dining experience are evaluated separately. If a Whisker with 4-star expectations eats low-quality food at a high-quality eating establishment, they will complain about the food they ate but still be positive about the dining experience.
Dining Quality
You have 3 options for eating establishments: Warehouses, Cafes and Dining Halls.
| Quality | Eating Establishents |
|---|---|
| 0 ☆☆☆☆ | Warehouse (any) |
| 2 ★★☆☆ | Cafe |
| 4 ★★★★ | Dining Hall |
You should really work to avoid letting Whiskers snack at your Warehouses. Whiskers eating at Warehouses produce more negative thoughts as a result. In the later game, this could be an indicator they're having difficulty finding food at all. Make sure to check your end of day report periodically for negative thoughts related to being hungry or having eaten at a Warehouse. It might provide clues to improving your dining coverage. Additionally, check your eating establishments at the start of a new day to see if they are exhausting their food supplies or not.
Eating establishments do not have a Whisker limit, but are limited by the number of food items inside. The workers assigned to them are not required to be there at meal time and simply serve in a logistical capacity to go fetch the food items you are allowing to be served there. Keep an eye on what you're serving to avoid Whiskers being forced to eat raw food. Additionally. you may not want your Whiskers consuming lower quality food that you need for your Fine Kitchens.
Food Quality
In addition to the dining quality experience, Whiskers will evaluate the quality of food they eat. They will complain about bland food or raw food, if the food they eat is below their expectations. If it is above their expectations, they will produce positive thoughts.
Again, avoid raw food for your Whiskers once you are able to reliably cook meals. Most will be very unhappy about eating raw food. Focus on providing the highest quality meals you can sustainably produce.
High-quality meals impart bonuses for Whiskers the next day. Meals can improve their speed, production speed, and/or strength. Raw food provides the least bonuses and 4-star food around 10 times as much as raw food. There is one exception: Food provided by The Claws (Hardtack and Ration Meals) will give far less of a bonus than the food quality would otherwise indicate.
Below is the list of foods you can produce or obtain in the game.
| Food | Quality | Speed | Production | Strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berries (raw) | 1-Star ★☆☆☆ | +3 | +3 | 0 |
| Fish (raw) | 0-Star ☆☆☆☆ | +5 | 0 | 0 |
| Mushrooms (raw) | 1-Star ★☆☆☆ | 0 | +5 | 0 |
| Canned Food (raw) | 0-Star ☆☆☆☆ | 0 | +3 | 0 |
| Berry Soup | 2-Star ★★☆☆ | +10 | +5 | 0 |
| Smoked Fish | 2-Star ★★☆☆ | +5 | +10 | 0 |
| Bread | 2-Star ★★☆☆ | +5 | +5 | +1 |
| Hardtack | 2-Star ★★☆☆ | 0 | +10 | 0 |
| Mushroom Stew | 3-Star ★★★☆ | +10 | +10 | +1 |
| Fish Skewers | 3-Star ★★★☆ | +10 | +20 | 0 |
| Jam Pastries | 3-Star ★★★☆ | +20 | +10 | 0 |
| Hearty Meals | 4-Star ★★★★ | +25 | +25 | +2 |
| Savory Meals | 4-Star ★★★★ | +25 | +35 | +1 |
| Fancy Meals | 4-Star ★★★★ | +35 | +25 | +1 |
| Ration Meals | 4-Star ★★★★ | +15 | +15 | +1 |
Tea
Tea and Fine Tea do not fulfil Whiskers' hunger needs. They do, however, provide additional positive thoughts (2 and 4 respectively). Like food, tea is served in eating establishments.
Bathing
Whiskers are unhappy being filthy and demand facilities in which to clean themselves. If they reach the point of having dirty fur, they will complain through dirty fur negative thoughts. At the beginning of your journey, this is nearly unavoidable because services take a back seat to survival.
Once you have the supplies to splurge on bathing facilities, you should give your Whiskers a few locations to clean up. Like food, they will seek out bathing facilities on their way home. Be aware that unlike a quick stop to grab food, they will linger at bathing facilities. This can become problematic for your Whiskers with long commutes, as they may not make it home before sunrise and risk hunger and tired negative thoughts.
Bathing facilities come in three qualities and are increasingly more difficult to implement. The most difficult being the Bathhouse which requires steam and water be pumped to it. The bathing facilities are listed below.
| Quality | Bathing Facilities | Capacity | Requirements |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ★☆☆☆ | Bathing Dock | 5 Whiskers | Requires open ocean |
| 2 ★★☆☆ | Showers | 10 Whiskers | Requires pumped water |
| 3 ★★★☆ | Bathhouse | 10 Whiskers | Requires pumped water and piped steam |
Soap
In order to reach a 4-star bathing facility, you will need to be able to produce soap and distribute it to a 3-star bathing facility with a Luxuries Supplier. Soap is consumed over time so it can be challenging to maintain 4-star bath quality.
All bathing facilities can use soap, but since soap is a very late game research item, you will likely have converted many, if not all, of your bathing facilities to Bathhouses by the time you have a regular supply of soap.
A word of caution on the bathing facilities that consume water and/or steam. The evening rush to bathe will substantially hit your reserves of these resources. Since the workers who would help replenish these resources are also busy bathing, you can run out of materials if you do not have enough Water Tanks and/or Steam Tanks. This can be a big change in thinking, especially when you first start setting up Showers to take over for Bathing Docks.
Medical
Medical is probably one of the areas you will interact with the least. Whiskers rarely get sick (on default settings) and there are a number of ways to keep them healthy.
Simply making sure you avoid hiring unsafe workers and sickly Whiskers will go a long way to ensuring a healthy workforce.
The biggest factor for illness is the winter. Freezing Whiskers risk illness, along with work speed debuffs and negative thoughts, so be sure to provide your Whiskers with proper attire and heat their homes and workplaces where you can.
Should a Whisker get ill, they will seek out a Medical Triage facility to recover in. As long as they make it to the facility, they will recover in one of the 5 available beds.
How fast they recover is governed by a few factors. First, if you have assigned Whiskers to the Medical Triage building, they will speed along the recovery of those in bed. Second, you can deploy either Saline Solution (+60 recovery speed) or Medicine (+150 recovery speed) to speed the process along.
Should you fail to have a place for your Whisker to recover or they cannot reach it on time, you may have to build the other Medical building - the Grave. Remember, you can pick up and move Whiskers for 1 approval point, so spend that point and make sure they get treatment.
When you have an ill Whisker, you will get a warning flag at the top of your screen with a germ symbol on it. It will remain until they're healed, even if they're in the Medical Triage.
