This guide explains the Tavern Keeper building system and tells you everything you need to know to build and maintain your tavern.
How Tavern Keeper Building Works
The Tavern Keeper building system is a little more complex than plopping a bar and a couple of tables down in a room. Each room has its own nuances, and there are several overall factors that you need to consider when building and designing your tavern.
Read on to learn about all of the important elements of building your very own tavern!
Rooms
Rooms are enclosed spaces within your tavern with a specific purpose. You’ll need several different types of rooms in your tavern, and you’ll unlock more as you increase your tavern’s star rating. Here are the rooms and what they do:
0-Star Rooms
- Hallway: Hallways serve as the «roads» of your tavern and can be used to connect rooms. Some usable furniture items (such as the Bulletin Board and Waiting Bench) can be placed in Hallways, freeing up space in your Taproom. Additionally, employees move faster when walking through Hallways. Strictly speaking, though, they aren’t necessary.
- Outdoors: Most taverns have outdoor space where you can place a Well or Outhouses.
- Staffroom: The Staffroom is where your employees sleep and relax when they’re not working.
- Storeroom: The Storeroom is where you keep food and drink to be used later. Storerooms should be kept cool; hot Storerooms increase the spoilage rate of items.
- Taproom: The Taproom is your main money maker. This is where patrons will come in and sit down to have a drink or eat a meal. Expect Taprooms to take up half or more of your total Tavern’s floorspace.
1-Star Rooms
- Kitchen: The Kitchen is where Chefs prepare meals for patrons.
- Toilet: The Toilet is where patrons go to relieve themselves. You can place an Outhouse outdoors for the early game, but a nice Toilet is preferred.
1 1/2-Star Rooms
- Bedroom: A Bedroom is where patrons will pay to stay overnight. As with food and drink, you’ll want different rooms with different star ratings to serve a wide range of patrons.
- Front Office: The Front Office is a special room where a Server will check patrons into Bedrooms.
General Layout and Pathing
The layout of your tavern matters. Patrons have a «patience» rating, and they’ll either leave or start a fight if they run out of patience. You can only satisfy a patron’s patience by quickly meeting their needs for food and drink, and that means you need to design your tavern efficiently.
Here is an example of my completed Tavern for the «Orcish Ambitions» scenario in Gugamush, the third scenario:
Start with the Storeroom. Food is always delivered to the same general area for each tavern which is indicated by the red «X» on the above map. The Storeroom should be connected to the door nearest the delivery area.
Second is the Taproom. The Taproom should be placed close to any other entrances in your tavern. In the above example, the north and southern entrances go directly into the Taproom.
Third is the Staffrooms. Staffrooms are low priority for pathfinding because your employees only travel to and from them when their shift starts and when their shift ends; place them in whatever leftover space you have.
As noted in our Employees Guide, you’ll need different Staffroom layouts depending on what Tiers of employees you have. Unskilled Employees can have 5 to a room, Skilled Employees can have 2 to a room, and Expert Employees want their own rooms. You’ll also want to leave room for decorations in higher-tier Staffrooms.
Focus on placing beds, light, heating, and decoration (if necessary) for Staffrooms where your employees will actually sleep. You should also build a separate Staffroom with Staff Tables, the Work Schedule, Lockers, and decorations so sleeping staff are less likely to be disturbed.
Finally, most employees want low noise when sleeping, so try to keep Staffrooms away from louder areas like the Taproom. Some employees may also want different lighting setups, so try to accommodate those as well.
You won’t be able to build Toilets until you reach a 1-star tavern, but you’ll want to have at least one bathroom facility outdoors in the form of an Outhouse. You can remove this later once you unlock Toilets when your tavern earns its first star.
Take note that «Foundation» rooms (empty space) will accumulate dirt, but Janitors will ignore it. Make any empty space remaining in your tavern into a Hallway so Janitors will clean any dirt. The last thing you’ll want to do is place welcome mats at every entrance. These will substantially reduce the incoming dirt in your tavern from patrons and employees.
That’s all you can do in the early game until you get for your tavern. A 1-star tavern unlocks the Kitchen and Toilet, so those will get built next.
Start with the Kitchen. The Kitchen should be close to both the Storeroom (so the Chef can grab ingredients) and the Taproom (so Servers can bring food to patrons). You’ll want as close a path to both, if possible; in the example above, Chefs pass through the Common Staffroom to get to the Storeroom.
Next are proper Toilets. You’ll want them close to the Taproom, obviously. Making sure the Toilets are decorated well enough to get a 2-star rating will greatly help your overall Patron Satisfaction.
The final pair of rooms is the Front Office and the Bedroom, and they unlock when you reach a 2-star tavern rating.
The Front Office is where a server will check in Patrons wishing to stay overnight. Since Servers and patrons are usually in the Taproom most of the time, you’ll want to have the Front Office adjacent to the Taproom.
The Bedrooms should be placed similarly to the Staffrooms: in low-noise, low-priority areas. Patrons will only travel to them when they go to sleep and when they wake up, so you won’t have to worry about back-and-forth travel too much. You’ll need a mix of different star ratings for the Bedrooms for different Tiers of customers.
You don’t really want patrons going through other patrons’ rooms, so it’s probably best to connect all of the Bedrooms to a common Hallway. It’s also not a bad idea to put a bathroom nearby if there isn’t a bathroom that is otherwise close enough.
That covers the basic logic of laying out a tavern as of the Early Access launch version of Tavern Keeper. There’s still a fair amount of nuance to cover with the Tavern Keeper building system, though, so keep reading!
Room Star Ratings
Just like food and drink, individual rooms in your tavern can have star ratings. This matters especially for Toilets (which affect Patron Satisfaction), Bedrooms, and Staffrooms (higher-tier employees may want decent rooms).
Generally speaking, the star rating of rooms is improved by placing decorations; you can read more about that below.
Storing Food and Drink
As you might expect, food and drink are stored in the Storeroom. The Storeroom should be kept cool. In colder maps (such as Halflington), this means keeping heat sources such as stoves and hearths away from them. On warmer maps (such as Gugamush), this means placing cooling furniture in the Storeroom.
Keeping Your Tavern Clean
It’s important to keep your tavern clean for two reasons. First, dirt upsets your patrons and employees. Secondly, dirt increases the risk of a fire. Make sure you have enough Janitors to keep your tavern reliably and consistently clean.
Decorating Your Tavern
Decorating your tavern might seem like useless cosmetic frills, but it actually serves a gameplay purpose.
First, decorations with a high star rating improve the «Decoration» metric which affects patron satisfaction, especially when they’re placed in areas that patrons frequent.
Secondly, decorations increase the Room Value of a room, which may be a requirement for higher star ratings. You’ll especially need to do this for Staffrooms and Bedrooms.
Lighting Your Tavern and Controlling Temperature
The lighting and temperature of your tavern are two additional factors that affect Patron Satisfaction. Both lighting and heating your tavern involve fire, so it’s a matter of balancing the lighting and heat benefits while also keeping furniture at a distance to reduce fire risk.
Providing Bathrooms
It’s important to emphasize that having bathrooms with a 2-star Room rating can have a major positive effect on Patron Satisfaction. Make sure to set aside some space for quality bathrooms.
Fire Prevention
Fire is one of the biggest dangers in Tavern Keeper, but it’s largely preventable. There are two components: fire prevention and fire fighting.
To prevent fires, you’ll want to ensure that there is enough space between open flames and furniture. You can use the Flammability overlay to see where there are any problem areas for fire danger.
You’ll also want to place Firefighting Gear installed at different places in your tavern. It’s possible for fire to cut off access to Firefighting Gear, and you’ll lose a lot of money from the fire damage.
Finally, you’ll want to have some spare Extinguisher Barrels. I recommend having at least one Small Barrel Rack dedicated solely to holding spare Extinguisher Barrels so you always have refills for your Firefighting Gear on hand.
Infestation Prevention
Starting in Gugamush, infestations of bug-like creatures can happen. This takes the form of nests that appear on the ground; the nests can either be destroyed with insecticide or destroyed by hand by employees; the latter option makes employees very unhappy for a short time.
Infestation nests reduce Patron Satisfaction. Once a nest takes root, it can spread out and cause more to appear. Pay attention to the notifications at the top right to see if an Infestation is present so you can deal with it immediately.
Scenario Traits
Every Scenario has special Traits that affect the standard gameplay rules or introduce new mechanics. You may have to alter your tavern design in one or more ways to deal with these Traits. Pay attention to them and think critically about how to handle the Traits.
Consider Planning Your Tavern in a Custom Game
Here’s one final tip: consider planning out a tavern in freeplay before playing a scenario. You can avoid some headaches by taking the time to design things with a little more freedom.
If you don’t want to bother, don’t worry; you’ll almost always have to make small tweaks to your tavern design as you play through a scenario.
We’re at the end of our Tavern Keeper Building Guide. Make sure to read our other Tavern Keeper guides below!
More Tavern Keeper Guides
General Guides
- Starter Guide | Beginner Tips and Tricks
- Map Guide
- Unlocks Guide
- Cooking and Drinks Guide
- Employees Guide | Hiring Staff
- Building Guide | How to Build a Tavern
- Story Book Guide | Random Events
Walkthroughs
- The Harvest Festival Walkthrough Guide
- Orcish Ambitions Walkthrough Guide
Challenge Guides
- Best in Show Challenge Guide
- Accountant Challenge Guide
