Shelters are the primary residence of your Villagers, their defense against the harsh elements of the frontier, and their source of comfort and recuperation after a long day's work.
Villagers without a residence will have difficulty surviving winter months and will be more prone to Maladies generally, especially those related to extreme weather conditions.
Adequate Shelter access is also a key component of Villager Happiness, without adequate shelter availability, a settlement will experience reduced immigration and local births alongside a greater chance of emigration.
NOTE: See Immigration, Emigration & More for additional details
Upgrade Information
Meeting Villager needs will eventually encourage them to begin upgrading their houses to the next tier, albeit at a cost of additional resources.
Upgrades of shelters initiate automatically while upgrading is enabled, there is no way at present to manually upgrade individual shelters.
However, despite the cost, upgraded Shelters are both a requirement for continued Town Center development (and thus unlocking additional building options) as well as an increased source of revenue.
- Shelters of Homestead quality and above generate a baseline revenue simply by existing
- Shelters of Homestead quality and above also consume an ever-greater mix of luxury goods, which act as a secondary source for passive income
- At Tiers 3 (Large House) and 4 (Manor), Shelters also hold an increased number of residents, improving household density.
Abandonment
As shelters advance to higher levels of upgrades, their requirements for upgrading to their current level now become their baseline to remain inhabited. Should the shelter lose access to any of the basic goods that got them to their current tier (or local Desirability drops below the 30/65/85 threshold) the residents may decide to vacate the premises and move elsewhere in town or emigrate from your township entirely. Thankfully, an abandoned building recovers quite quickly and will usually not need additional materials to repair if found and fixed quickly enough.
First, solve whatever caused the house to downgrade. Desirability is far more common than a lack of goods access, either caused by a reduction from a desirability-negative building placed too closely or a desirability-positive building (such as as school/market/healer's house) that has stopped working.
Use Hotkey G to display current desirability levels, which will also highlight negative buildings with a red outline and positive with green. After either moving negatives or fixing/re-enabling work at positives, the Shelter will recover after a few minutes as unhoused population becomes eligible to move in to your shelter.
Condemned buildings are a different story and will required additional resources and builders to eventually repair. If this is taking too long, Players can use the clear tool (hotkey: C) to remove Condemned buildings and make way for rebuilding.
Basic Strategy
Shelters are the only building (as of 0.7.6) that are impacted by Desirability, so while Shelters may be relocated, care should be used when considering construction of residential districts and placement of buildings with positive and negative desirability impacts.
Initially, primary (positive) buildings to keep in range include Wells, Markets (which generates additional passive Income), and decorations that boost desirability.
NOTE: For layout examples, review those provided on the City Layouts page