How to Increase Subject Happiness in Elder Scrolls Castles

In Elder Scrolls Castles, ensuring the happiness of your subjects is a tricky but essential task that you must master. Unhappy subjects will be less productive and have the chance to assassinate other subjects. Here’s how to increase subject happiness in Elder Scrolls Castles to have the happiest dynasty ever!

How to Improve Happiness in Elder Scrolls Castles

Here’s how to increase the happiness of your subjects in Elder Scrolls Castles:

1. Assign them to the Music Stage
2. Assign them to the Bookcase
3. Pick Rulings that make them happy

Music Stage

You’ll unlock the Music Stage at Dynasty level 26. Once built, you can assign two subjects to it to regain their happiness level to the maximum allowed. Once assigned, you can view that subject’s card to see exactly how long it’ll take to fill their happiness meter. However, remember that subjects with the Sophisticated trait will regain their happiness faster than subjects without it. In addition, any rulings that would normally affect their happiness levels will still do so. For this reason, you’ll want to monitor your subjects so you don’t keep them in there unnecessarily and waste production time.

Bookcase

You’ll unlock the Bookcase at Dynasty level 42. While the Bookshelf accomplishes the same task of raising a subject’s happiness, it does so much more quickly than the Music Stage. Outside of the speed rate, all of the same rules apply. You can assign up to two subjects at once, subjects with the Sophisticated trait will become happier quickly, and any rulings will still improve their happiness.

Rulings

While making rulings may seem like a simple process, you can screw up the happiness of your subjects if you’re not careful because a single ruling can affect individuals, groups, races, and classes (commoners vs. nobles) at once, undoing any of the positive gains you’ve worked hard for. If you’re worried about this happening, the safe bet is to go with a neutral decision, but you’ll often have to pay gold or other resources. Otherwise, the general rule of thumb is to pick a ruling that favors the subject with the lowest happiest rating.

Other Ways to Improve Happiness in Elder Scrolls Castles

While there are only three ways to improve the happiness of your subjects in Elder Scrolls Castles, there are several things you can do to prevent them from losing happiness in the first place. First, building decorations is a great way to help maintain the happiness levels of your subjects. For instance, the Iron Armor Stand decoration will lower the percentage of happiness lost for all subjects. The great thing about these decorations is their effects stack, which you can build behind most crafting stations.

In addition to building decorations, you’ll want to isolate subjects with negative traits because they will lower the happiness of your other subjects when working today. For instance, the Bossy and Heartless traits will lower the happiness of other workers. Unless you can put them in with three different subjects with the Volatile subject, I recommend you banish them because the amount of time lost increases the happiness of other workers in the Musical Stage and Bookshelf will cost you more in production time. You won’t be punished in any way for banishing subjects, so don’t be afraid to do so when the time arises.

Now that you know how to improve subject happiness in Elder Scrolls Castles, you’ll prevent unwanted assassinations and have production workers. Check out our Elder Scroll Castles hub for more guides like our Breeding Guide, which walks you through how to breed legendary subjects.