Best ways to raise happiness in Fabledom 

✓ At a glance

• Maintaining high happiness will do wonders to increase the productivity of your town.
• Access to food is one of the earliest and best ways to keep your town happy.
• If you’re unsure what’s causing low happiness, check your Fabling overview to find out the causes.

Happiness is the backbone of your kingdom. While the general mood of your residents is bound to fluctuate with the addition of new structures, the changing seasons, and a growing population, you can keep the satisfaction of your Fablings relatively stable year-round by prioritizing their wants and needs over expansion. 

In a roundabout way, this will set you up for success as productivity goes way up with high levels of happiness. The faster your Fablings work, the more projects you can develop. In this way, a satisfied kingdom is a successful kingdom. There isn’t a strict formula for boosting morale, though, so we’ve put together a list of the best ways to raise happiness and here’s what to do. 

How to increase happiness

Fablings are just like us – they want ready access to food and healthcare, beautiful living spaces, and a short commute to work. In order to raise and maintain happiness in your Kingdom, you’ll need to consider the unique needs and general wellbeing of your residents. There are a few ways to accomplish this from early on, including the following:

1. Keep your Fablings well-fed

One of the most important factors in raising and maintaining happiness among your population is ensuring that you have enough food to go around. This is simple enough in the early game, but as you welcome more residents to your kingdom, you’ll need to prioritize the construction of additional farms, fisherman’s huts, bakeries, and the like.

Secondary structures like granaries and windmills also play a crucial role in the process, helping with food storage and bread-making. Higher classes eat more food, so they’re more likely to suffer from starvation, lower rates of happiness, and even death. 

2. Build amenities

As your population grows, you’ll gain access to amenities, such as inns, theatres, and puppet shows. These structures exist solely to increase the happiness of your Fablings, so they’re worth investing in as soon as you get the chance. Placing them near undesirable projects can even help to raise the overall desirability of an area, maintaining the satisfaction of your kingdom. 

3. Place decorations

Available from the start of Fabledom, decorations can be built to raise the beauty of an area. In turn, this raises the happiness of the residents who live nearby. I do my best to add decorations like shrubs and benches to industrial builds to effectively cancel out negative desirability. If there’s no room to place decorations in an area, though, consider placing small items in your residents’ yards. This can help to keep habitually unhappy Fablings feeling their best. 

4. Provide adequate water sources

While intuitive, access to water is an absolute necessity for your Fablings and is easily overlooked. The longer your residents go without nearby wells or sewer drains, the more their happiness with suffer. To mitigate this issue, I toggle Priority on these projects when building new homes. This way, water will be accessible from the moment new residents arrive. 

5. Employ Fablings close to home

As you expand your kingdom into nearby territories, you’ll need to begin to consider each Fabling’s commute to work. The greater the distance, the more their happiness will drop. This goes doubly so for residents of higher classes, like commers and nobles. Employing your Fablings within the same block is a safe bet, but commoners and nobles should work as close to home as possible to keep them happy. 

6. Store enough coal to last the winter

Winter is a tough season all around in Fabledom. With farming at a standstill, you’ll need to rely on the goods and resources you’ve stored throughout the year to get by. Since food is of the utmost importance, it’s easy to let coal stores slip your mind – which is a disaster waiting to happen.

Without enough coal to last the winter, your kingdom’s overall happiness will plummet. Fortunately, your score goes back up in the spring, but placing a stockpile by each coal maker in town is a smart way to get a solid supply going year-round. 

7. Build hospitals

In the same vein, sickness wreaks havoc on your Fablings in the winter. While illnesses can spread throughout the year, you’ll see many more residents suffer in the cold, preventing them from working and hurting their happiness score. You’ll start to see sick workers just before you unlock the hospital at the Town population milestone. Once unlocked, it’s best to get construction going as soon as possible and employ a staff of commoners. 

8. Throw festivals

Every once in a while, your Fablings will request a festival. This boosts happiness for a while, though it costs hard-earned coins and serves as a mere temporary fix. Regardless, it’s a smart move to boost morale, even if it’s short-term. 

How to check happiness

The base happiness of your kingdom is displayed at the top of your screen. This is indicated by the face icon, which can range anywhere from visibly upset to joyful. Below, you’ll also see this represented as a numerical value between zero and 100. While keeping an eye on this number is a good idea, there’s no way to tell what you’re doing right or wrong by monitoring base happiness alone.  

To get a better idea of what’s working (and what’s not), you can easily check the happiness of individual Fablings by clicking the paper icon at the bottom of your screen. From there, you’ll get an overview of your kingdom’s residents, their happiness, and recent thoughts. Typically, you’ll see complaints about long commutes to work and undesirable projects, specifically noting things like coal makers and stone quarries, but you’ll also get positive feedback on the construction of amenities and decorations.  

When you spot an unhappy Fabling on the list, be sure to check on their health, hunger, and location as well to determine what you can do to keep them happy moving forward.