Lab Arc Wiki

Workers are divided into four types:

- Migrant Workers work for money, and live in town. Their skills are variable, and they may or may not improve over time. The Migrant Pool tends to change every so often as the best workers are hired on by local farms and as unhired workers go their own way. You can boost Migrant morale by giving them free food, and Migrants with poor loyalty or responsibility may eat or take home some of your harvestables.

- Live-In Workers work and live on the farm, requiring you to build Bunkhouses for them to live. They also require Food (so essentially you provide room and board); but you don't need to pay them quite as much, and you have better control over how their skills develop.

- Visiting Farmers can stop in and work on your farm; in exchange for their services, they receive a small amount of your harvest or Coins (as determined by you). Provide good rewards to visiting farmers and they're likely to come back.

- Family Members can work on your farm or workshops while you're out supervising (or offline); you just request a task and if available, a Family Member will fill it first. You can specify at a workshop that you'd like to exclude workers or worker types from doing this.

- You yourself qualify as a worker under specific circumstances - namely, if nobody else is available, or if the task in question is short (a few seconds). If not, you will be notified of the time you will spend working and require confirmation to continue (you'd rather not work on something for two days when you could be watching your workers, after all). You can disable yourself as a worker to require delegation, or disable confirmations to always do a task if possible. If nobody is available to do a task, you will receive notice (and a friendly pointer towards the Want Ads.) If you are working on something, you can't do anything else unless you choose to go On Break - at which point you can go tend to other things and come back later.

• Manager. A Manager is a worker whose job is to make sure the other workers are doing what they're supposed to. Managers send unproductive workers back to work and reassign them if necessary; they also issue appropriate orders to workers who need guidance (“Where should we put these carrots, boss?” “Load them in the Cellar for now, the Produce Barn is full.”) in your absence.
• Gardener. A Gardener is assigned to care for plants and make sure they're healthy; they can Fertilize, Water, Weed, Clear Pests, and Harvest plants, and can tell you how your plants are doing if you ask. (“I'm a little worried about that Corn patch. I think the bugs are really getting to it.”) If they have nothing to do, they will follow their Worker instincts.
• Weeder. When weeds are on the farm, this worker Weeds; they may also cut grass and trim foliage. If no work in this category is available, they follow their Worker instincts.
• Planter. This Worker plants seeds as previously directed by you, either as part of a long-term plan (“seed these specific plots with Heirloom Wheat whenever available”) or as part of a direct order (“I need fifty wheat planted today.”) If they have no planting tasks available, they follow their Worker instincts.
• Waterer. This Worker is specifically tasked with watering dry plants. A good Waterer works quickly and doesn't overwater plants, making sure they have enough but not too much. They may also let you know when a plant is overwatered by nature or other workers, so you can order a spot not be watered for a while. Waterers are also responsible for topping off water supplies for animals. When nothing is left to water, a Waterer follows their Worker instincts.
• Harvester. This Worker is tasked with harvesting produce, and may also be responsible for recovering Heirloom Seeds that you can use in future plantings. If your farm is active, you will need Harvesters to collect things while you're away, and you will probably want them separate from the Gardener who can handle all manner of problems so that food continues to come in while the gardener is busy removing infestations of beetles. As with all others, Harvesters follow worker instincts when there is nothing to harvest.
• Clearer. This worker is tasked with clearing whatever obstructions you tell them to, whether it's a crop that needs to be destroyed to make room for others, a large rock in the field, a fallen tree, or anything else of relevance. Clearers are usually necessary after major storms to clean up debris, and may be needed if you suffer major crop failures to clear the plots for future development.
• Handler. These workers handle animals; shearing them for wool or hair, milking them, collecting eggs, slaughtering them for food, feeding them, and keeping them safe and happy. As with the Gardener, a Handler is responsible for a number of tasks that could be assigned to individual workers; a Feeder, in particular, is useful for feeding animals, and a Waterer is useful for watering animals. Handlers with no work follow their Worker Instincts.
• Cleaner. This worker is tasked with cleaning up around the farm, looking for garbage and clutter and properly disposing of them. Note that a slacker Cleaner might just toss everything in the trash instead of compost piles and recyclers, especially if it's easier… Cleaners with no work follow their Worker Instincts.
• Worker. A generic worker has no clear job, and as such is usually assigned tasks when available by a manager (or by you directly). If they are responsible and happy, they may assign themselves tasks if not specifically ordered not to. Worker Instincts dictate what a worker does when it has nothing you or your manager has ordered it to do available, and depend on the worker's skills and responsibility. Irresponsible workers are very likely to slack off if not tasked with something constantly…

Nobody works twenty-four hours a day. Farmers and workers take breaks to rest, eat their meals, and avoid getting completely worn out. You can schedule people's breaks, or even take them away entirely, but know that exhausted workers do very poor jobs (and will have very poor job loyalty), while exhausted family members will be very unhappy (which is just as damaging). Let your people rest and reap the rewards.

When you hire a Migrant Worker, you will generally be hiring them for a 'shift' of time; they come to your farm, work between specified hours, collect their pay and go home. Providing breaks for Migrant Workers ensures that you get good-quality work from them, and that they will rest when you expect them to instead of when you aren't watching.

Live-In Workers and Family Members are on site around the clock, and collect their pay every day and their food at meal time. They also typically 'work' a shift so as not to exhaust themselves, but are more flexible about their hours, most of the time.