Staff the job, not the tier list screenshot. The best worker is the highest Work Suitability you can currently catch/breed for a building you actually run.
Work Suitability roles explained
| Suitability | Main buildings / tasks | Staffing tip |
|---|---|---|
| Kindling | Furnaces, cooking heat tasks | Keep them near smelters; redundancy helps during big ingot pushes |
| Watering | Farms, mills needing water | One strong Watering Pal can outperform two weak ones |
| Planting | Crop plots | Pair with Watering; farms fail if either side is missing |
| Generating Electricity | Powered production | Comes online mid-game—plan beds/food before power spikes |
| Handiwork | Benches, factories, assembly | Your real “crafting FPS”; understaff this and everything stalls |
| Lumbering | Logging sites / wood nodes | Feed building spam and charcoal-adjacent crafts |
| Mining | Ore sites / mineral nodes | Gate for tools and mid-game tech |
| Medicine Production | Medical stands | Situational but valuable for sustained expedition play |
| Cooling | Coolers / food preservation style tasks | Biome and production dependent |
| Transporting | Hauling between chests/buildings | Add when path distances grow; useless if storage is already adjacent |
| Farming | Ranch products | Great passive goods once ranch targets are chosen deliberately |
Early, mid, late staffing philosophy
Early
Fill coverage gaps. A Lv1 in a missing role beats waiting three hours for a “perfect” species.
Mid
Upgrade ranks in Kindling, Handiwork, Mining, and your food pair. This is where bases start feeling automated.
Late / 1.0
Breed for rank + work-speed passives. Endgame crafting wings punish mediocre Handiwork hard.
Recommended crew sizes (single main base)
- Food cell: 1 Planting + 1 Watering (+ Kindling if cooking heat is bottlenecked)
- Raw cell: 2 Lumbering + 2 Mining
- Craft cell: 2–4 Handiwork depending on queue depth
- Power cell: enough Electricity generators for active factories only
- Logistics: 0–2 Transporting based on chest distance
If pals stand around, you don’t automatically need more pals—you may need fewer buildings, better pathing, or more food.
Assignment hygiene
- After every major catch session, open the Palbox and assign with intent.
- Condense duplicates: two mediocre Miners can be replaced by one higher rank later.
- Separate “adventure bench” Pals from base staff so you don’t accidentally deploy your only Kindling boss on a field trip.
- Watch SAN. Exhausted geniuses craft slower than average well-rested workers.
Ranch and specialty production
Ranch Pals are not free value if you never use their drops. Pick ranch outputs that feed spheres, food, or crafting. Specialty medicine/cooling/electric roles should be hired when the building exists—not “just in case.”
