Editing Getting Started Guide (section)

== Markets and Happiness ==
All of your villagers have needs for food, drink, clothing, and many other categories. They will buy items from buildings that fulfill these needs - e.g. if they are hungry, they will buy Bread because it fulfills the Food need.

Markets are the most common place to stock items for purchase. Once you've built a market, you can click on any of its inventory slots to assign an item to be stocked. Villagers assigned to the Market will supply these items. Or, you can just use your avatar to drop an item off to a Market and a free slot will automatically be assigned to that item.

When a villager buys an item, it is added to their 'Equipment' section. The item lasts for a few minutes, but eventually is consumed and needs to be replaced. (This timer is controlled by its 'durability' stat).

Some later-game buildings like Dessert Shop and Apothecary can sell items directly to workers, without needing to bring them to a Market.

Villagers can actually store backup copies items in their equipment. The number of backup items they can store is controlled by the "Worker Pockets" perk. This is very helpful because it means they can buy more items with a single shopping trip, so that is less time wasted moving around.

You can view the needs that items fulfill by checking out the Misc / Item Stats panel.

Note that unlike Factory Town 1, Markets themselves do not generate happiness. They are really just glorified storage buildings with a special flag that lets workers buy items from them.

Overall town happiness is determined by comparing all villagers individual happiness. High town happiness makes new villagers arrive faster. Low town happiness makes new villagers arrive slower, or not at all.