Romestead Building Upgrades & Job Levels
Romestead's progression doesn't really live in a tech tree — it lives in your building upgrades and your citizens' Job Levels. Most "I'm stuck" moments in the early game come from not understanding how these two systems interact. Here's the clean rule.
On this page
The one-line rule
Each upgrade to a building adds +3 to that building's max Job Level. Higher Job Levels make the citizen work faster and unlock new recipes at that workshop.
If you can't craft a recipe you know should exist, or your citizens are "topped out" and idle, the answer is usually upgrade the building — not recruit more citizens, not move buildings around.
How you actually trigger an upgrade
Clicking a building shows you info and a greyed-out Upgrade button, but that's not where upgrades happen. The actual upgrade interaction:
- Build the Carpenter's Workshop. (Which requires beating the Giant Owl first — see our Guardian of Minerva guide.)
- The Carpenter's Workshop has an external workbench on the outside of the building. Walk up to it and press E.
- The upgrade menu opens, same as any workbench — but with a camera-pan mode. You can scroll the view around the map and select any building you want to upgrade.
- Each upgrade requires (a) the building has enough Building Appeal (see below), and (b) you have the resource cost.
No Carpenter's Workshop = no upgrades anywhere. The Workshop is the central upgrade hub for the whole settlement.
Building Appeal — the upgrade gate
Every building has a Building Appeal stat shown in its popup as X/Y, with the cap varying per building (Bakery 16, Farmstead 6, Lumber Yard 6, Leatherworker 6, etc.). A building can't be upgraded until it has enough Appeal.
Appeal is raised by placing decorations within the building's radius. Each decoration adds Appeal to nearby buildings only — not globally.
- Small Bush Decoration: +1 Building Appeal. Costs 1 Lumber. Available from the Decorations build tab on day one.
- To fill a Bakery's 16-Appeal cap, you'd need 16 bushes' worth of decorations in its radius.
- Some decorations (e.g. Brazier — "Provides light") add utility but no Appeal. Read the tooltip before placing.
Decorations aren't cosmetic clutter. They're a real progression system that gates building upgrades.
Upgrade resource costs
On top of the Appeal gate, each upgrade also consumes materials specific to that building. Observed costs:
- Altar → Altar Level 2: 5 of one material. Unlocks teleportation between L2 altars (a network — you need 2+ L2 altars to use it).
- Material Storage → Material Storage Level 2: 6 of one material + 1 of another. Holds more.
The cost UI uses the standard X/Y (owned/required) format with color-coded indicators.
How Job Levels work
- Every citizen assigned to a workshop has a Job Level shown in the building UI as
X / Y(current / max). - The numerator is the citizen's current level for that job.
- The denominator is the building's current max — not a global cap.
- Citizens gain Job Experience from doing the job. XP scales sharply between levels (we've seen 196 XP needed for a single level mid-tier).
- When a citizen hits the building's cap, you'll see the tooltip: "Max job level reached for this building. Upgrade the building to increase the max job level."
How building upgrades change the cap
Each building has a base max Job Level. Upgrade the building and that cap raises by 3.
| Building | Base Max | After 1st Upgrade |
|---|---|---|
| Carpenter | 3 | 6 |
| Bakery | 4 | 7 |
The base max varies by building — Carpenter starts at 3, Bakery at 4. But the +3 per upgrade pattern looks universal across building types.
The Roman-numeral badge
Look at your citizen's portrait in the building UI. There's a small badge with a Roman numeral matching their Job Level — II for level 2, III for level 3, and so on. It's the fastest way to check progression at a glance without opening every panel.
What higher levels actually unlock
The game tells you directly in the upgrade tooltip: "Higher level citizens work faster and unlock new recipes."
- Faster work — same job, less time per craft. Compounds heavily across a busy workshop.
- New recipes — specific craftable items become available only when the assigned citizen reaches a high enough level. This is why two players with identical buildings can have wildly different recipe lists.
This is the mechanism behind a lot of "I can't make X" forum posts. If a recipe isn't appearing, check both: is the building upgraded enough, and is the assigned citizen leveled enough?
When to upgrade vs recruit a new citizen
Two situations, two answers:
- Your worker is at max for the building (e.g. Job Level 3/3): upgrade the building. Recruiting another citizen here is wasted — they'll cap at the same level and you'll just split XP gains.
- Your worker is mid-level (e.g. Job Level 2/4): let them keep grinding. Adding a second citizen now splits XP and slows the leveling of both.
- You have an empty building you actually need: obviously recruit. But fill one citizen per workshop until they cap before adding a second.
This is also why the Bronze guide matters — the Mining Expertise requirement for Tin likely ties into this same system. Whether you can pull Tin depends on your mining building's cap and the assigned miner's level, not just a flag on the citizen.