Happiness and Town Quality

Happiness, the smiley-face resource, measures how content the townsfolk are, and it has exactly one use: sermons. Attendance is whichever is lower, your happiness or your church quality, and each parishioner costs one happiness when the sermon starts. You gain it through Town Gratitude, by selling certain goods to town traders, and later on through town orders.

Town quality is a hard ceiling for happiness. It begins at 0 and becomes 10 once Certificate, Please is done. It stays there until you reach the port, where the story adds 10 more. Throughout the opening, then, you can’t hold more than 10 happiness, and no sermon can draw more than 10 people.

How the ceiling behaves

• At the cap, every extra point is thrown away.
• Below the cap, you get what fits and lose the remainder.
• Listen for it. Happiness flies to you as little smiley orbs, the same way tech points do. A failure sound as they land means they overshot the cap.
• It never drains on its own. Starting a sermon is the only thing that reduces it.
• You start with 9, so it’s practically full as soon as town quality hits 10.

Say town quality is 10 and you’re on 8. A Town Gratitude worth +5 puts you at 10 and wastes 3. Use it straight after a sermon that consumed all 8, and you’d keep all 5.

Sources

Town Gratitude

Using a Town Gratitude gives 5 happiness. It sits in your inventory indefinitely, so hold it until you’re low. Quest rewards include Planted and Delivered, Two Peas in a Pod, Jack in a Boat and Fighting Spirit Required; across the opening chapters you receive 13, or 65 happiness in total. Januarius sells them too, one at a time.

Selling to town traders

Certain traders are classed as town traders and hand out happiness for specific goods, which show a smiley in the trade window. Every such good has a weekly limit, and every trader has a weekly happiness cap; both reset on Pride day (Time and the Week). Beyond the limit, sales still pay money but give no happiness.

The two available from the beginning:

Trader	Goods	Happiness each	Weekly limit per good	Trader’s weekly cap
Januarius	Burial Certificate I, II, III	1	5	10
Herm (tier one)	River fish fillet	0.4	5	2
Herm (tier two, after Planted and Delivered)	Vegetables, wheat, river fish fillets	1/15 up to 0.4	5 up to 30	15

As long as all your bodies are first-tier, every certificate is a Burial Certificate I, which caps Januarius at 5 happiness per week, not 10. Higher-tier bodies later raise it.

Sale happiness accumulates in fractions, and a point is only paid out when the trader’s weekly running total crosses a whole number. Fractions still pending at the reset are lost.

Orders

Finishing town orders pays happiness as well. The order boards are in the port warehouse, so they become available after you cross the bridge.

Increasing town quality

Construction and house repairs don’t raise town quality directly. A repaired house drops green scrolls; giving those to Linda through “New people” is what adds town quality, at 1 per scroll. Your reputation with her limits the first few options.