Resident Perks and Colony Roles: Choose Deliberately

Where do you choose a resident’s perks?

Open People → resident → Tree, or the Skill tree shortcut in the selected resident’s inspector. The 0.9.17.1 announcement introduces 27 permanent perks across Work, Builder, Blacksmith, Woodcutter and Hunter. Existing skill levels provide points. Read each card’s effect, requirement and available points before committing a resident to a specialization.

These independent checkpoints mean points, eligibility, the perk decision and a separate colony appointment. They are not an unlock chain: choosing a perk is not stated as a prerequisite for appointing a role.

Residents choose automatically by default. Turn automatic choice off if you want manual control; some specializations are mutually exclusive. Older saves receive automatic choices at the start of the next game day, and chosen perks survive saving, loading and profession changes. Changing profession is therefore not a documented way to erase a choice.

How should you decide what is useful?

Start with the job or bottleneck the resident actually handles, then compare the displayed benefit with its conditions. The announcement covers movement, endurance, mood, building, crafting quality, woodcutting and hunting. It does not publish every perk name or a universally strongest build. Work troubleshooting should come before optimizing a worker whose task is still blocked.

For concrete examples, Heavy Load lets builders carry two containers together, up to ten building materials per trip. Strong Back raises a personal cargo stack from 50 to 60. Those are different benefits; ten materials per building trip is not a new capacity for every container. Use the card and the resident’s current task to decide which comparison matters.

How do Chief, Quartermaster and Elder differ?

Assign these roles in a resident’s Overview. Each colony role has one holder; an adult can hold one role alongside a profession. The appointment persists through save/load and profession changes. Match the role to a colony need rather than assuming its title confers an unconditional bonus.

An Elder is consequently a teaching tradeoff, not a free colony-wide speed boost. A Quartermaster complements food storage; the role does not rejuvenate old meals or make them last beyond their food-specific maximum.

How do you check the choice and recover from confusion?

Before choosing, note the displayed perk, requirement and points. Afterwards, confirm the selected card or role holder in the resident’s screen. Inspect an older save again after the next game day before assuming its points vanished, because automatic choices may already have been made.

If an effect seems absent, compare its stated conditions: an awake Quartermaster, a trusted Chief or an eligible lower-level neighbour near the Elder. Record the version and those conditions for a report. No respec or hidden role-reset procedure is established here. This uses the Demo 0.9.18 interface and the dated 0.9.17.1 rules, not a playtested tier list. Plan ahead with season and winter checks.

Which sources and version does this guide use?

Checked November 6, 2026. Current reference: Demo 0.9.18; individual mechanics below retain the dated update that established them. This is a sourced editorial guide, not a claim of hands-on testing.

• StoneEra Demo 0.9.17.1 — Critical Bug Fix & Colony Improvements (2026-10-26).
• StoneEra Demo 0.9.18 — A Fresh Look at Your Colony (2026-11-03).