LostVale guide

Fame, rank, home and family

Renown and reputation, rising from wayfarer to earl, the homestead that draws settlers and grows into a town, the lord's dues, friendship, courting and marriage, children, growing old, and the heir who carries on.

Fame

Two numbers measure how the Isles know you.

• Renown is how far your name has travelled. Deeds are told of where they happen (a stronghold lord laid low, a commission done, a city founded) and the telling fades with distance and the years. The Envoy’s steps make your name carry further (how far your name travels), last longer (how long your name is remembered) and grow faster (renown from deeds).
• Reputation is how you have done by each place, from −100 to 100: commissions, trade and crimes move it. With the lord’s standing, it adds up to your standing with each lordship. Prices, pardons and titles all follow it.

Charisma (your own, your level, the wheel and what you wear) eases talk, trade and courting.

Rank

Everyone begins a Wayfarer, addressed as “stranger”. From there:

• Freeholder: when the lord’s officer finds you settled on the land under the lord, you become “{name} of {your homestead}”, addressed as goodman, goodwife or neighbour.
• Knight, Baron, Earl: titles the lord grants. Once your renown, standing and property are great enough (the table below gives what each asks), petition the lord. They set you a questline of charges (clear a stronghold, delve a dungeon, hunt a named quarry, deliver letters, and at the end an audience after a vigil) and grant the title at its end.

Each rank changes how you are styled and addressed (“Sir Aled”, “my lady”), adds to your homestead’s draw, and sets the share of your property’s worth owed in dues each season. Most ranks pass to your heir; a knighthood does not.

The homestead

What you build is surveyed into rooms and buildings (see Building, rooms), typed by the benches in them. Together they are your homestead, laid out as a place of its own that your household walks through their days in.

• Desirability (0 to 100) is what draws folk. The household page of the journal shows each part of it:

  Part	Up to
  Your name in these parts (renown)	+30
  Rooms under a sound roof (2.5 a room)	+15
  Work at the benches (benches worked, jobs)	+10
  A garrison keeps the peace (1.5 a soldier)	+10
  Comforts within (furnishings)	+8
  Food put by (more than three days’ stores; bare stores take away up to 10)	+8
  Company (the household)	+5
  Standing with the lord, and your good name with the neighbours	by how they regard you
  Your rank, and the size of the place	by rank and tier
  Dangers of the land (area level past 3)	down to −20
  Dues unpaid	−8 for each due left unpaid

• Settlers: folk of the area come to live in its empty rooms and work at its benches, those trained in each trade. They do the work there.

• Dues: the lord’s officer comes up from the town to ask the dues of your rank on what the homestead is worth.

• Provisions: the household (and any garrison) eat from the homestead’s stores each day, the food nearest to spoiling first. Days short at table make tenants leave and soldiers desert. Food keeps best in a larder, a granary or a cellar dug into the ground (see Staying alive).

• Envoys: well-spoken folk who come to serve at an envoy’s bureau can be sent to the courts of the realms (see Kingdoms, war and faith).

From homestead to city

A homestead grows by its buildings with a closed-in room and the folk who live there (you among them): a hamlet, then a town, then a city. Each step draws more folk and is told of. The land around the world’s first landing is kept clear of any lordship’s houses and fields so that a homestead raised there can grow into a town.

Hearts

• Friendship is possible with anyone grown.
• Courting needs both of you to be drawn to the other (your leanings are your own, chosen in the creator) and both to be eighteen or more. Charisma eases every step: words land better, gifts are better taken.
• Marriage: your spouse comes to live at the homestead. Envoys can also arrange a marriage into a royal house.
• Children of your own come only when one of the two can bear a child and the other sire one, and the bearer is young enough. Any couple, or anyone with a home, can take in a foundling.
• Name your heir among your children.

Growing old

Everyone ages with the world’s seasons: a year is the world’s four seasons. Children come of age at sixteen and take up the work of their place; the old leave the heavy work at sixty-six; and all die when their years run out.

You feel your years past fifty. Your lifespan is the years you were born with, plus more for a hardy constitution (each point less than the last, up to a dozen years). When your years run out, your heir (the one you named, or the eldest of age) takes up your line: the property, the purse, the hereditary rank, the family’s name and something of the craft.

The tables below list the ranks and the tiers a homestead grows through, read from the game’s own content.

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).