Devlog #10 - Building A 3-Star Tavern

Posted by Ponzel on 2025-10-31

Hello everyone, and happy Halloween!

Today we’re sharing news about a major new game system: Plot Upgrades!

Why Plot Upgrades?

After our last playtest, one piece of feedback we heard commonly was:

“I have advanced quite a bit, but now the blacksmith is quite slow at doing the metalworks research. I’d like to speed that up, but do I really have to build another forge and another miner? Build everything twice?”

And of course, that hits the nail on the head: In a city-building game like InfraSpace, you could just build a forge/workshop/farm, etc. with one click, but in HavenCraft, making a new building is a lot of effort! So, how do we make it possible to upgrade your buildings while still allowing you to build your own forge/tavern/house the way you like it?

The answer is: Plot Upgrades!

Things You Can Achieve By Upgrading Plots

• Higher work speed in the workshops / farms / forester zone / miner zone.
• Assign multiple workers per work plot.
• More comfortable homes.
• Make free-standing single homes for each family or make a large home for everyone.
• Make a palace for the citizens who deserve it.
• Extend the coverage of public buildings, like the tavern, to cover more citizens.
• Improve the quality of the tavern, making your villagers happier.

How It Works

Once you configure a plot type on the sign, it will show you which pieces it needs to be complete:

Homes need beds, taverns need tavern counters, and carpenter workshops need workbenches.

The more of these pieces you place, the more villagers can use this plot. That goes for all types of plots: Workshops, homes, and public buildings like the tavern.

Once you have built some parts of your building, you can see the stats:

This tavern is already in good shape, but could reach a better rating with some paintings. Also, you might consider making it larger, so it can serve more than 8 villagers. The better your building is, the higher the rating it can achieve. And the bigger your building is, the more people can use it.

We decided to express the quality of the building with star levels. This way, a villager can live in a 2-star home, work in a 1-star workshop, and visit a 3-star tavern in the evening!

You can build your buildings in any way you like. For example, you can use cheap materials on the beds, but include windows to provide 2-star houses for most villagers, but can splurge on the finest materials for the palace for your favorite citizens and get that up to 4 stars. You can make one large tavern for the whole town or many small ones in different styles for each district of your town.

One extra quality of life feature: Once you’re done building, you can hide the stats with a button press:

We can’t wait for you to try the system and give us feedback on which parts are clear and work nicely, and which parts need more work.

Let us know what you think!