Do You Lose Gold When Workers Are Idle in PoE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur?

Gold is a valuable and abundant currency in Path of Exile’s Settlers of Kalguur league. However, it gets scarce quickly when you start upgrading your settlement in Kingsmarch to rank 6 or 7 and above. You’ll start to look at ways where you can manage your gold better, and the biggest culprit is those worker wages. You can make your workers stop production and make them idle, but do you lose gold if you don’t give them any tasks? Let’s find out.

Do You Pay Wages When Workers Are Idle in Path of Exile Settlers of Kalguur?

If you go to Johan, the King’s Hand, and open the “manage town” screen, you’ll see a proper calculation of your total wages and your idle workers. On the left, the calculation of the total wage per hour is only for workers who are currently doing something. If you have idle workers, as seen on the right side of the manage town screen, they are not counted toward the total wages.

If you assign these idle workers, their wages per hour will go up. Removing or releasing idle workers doesn’t affect the wages per hour calculation, either.

To answer the question, no, you don’t lose gold when you have idle workers. If you are losing gold fast, the root of the problem is their “total wages per hour” when you actually put them to work. Hiring the highest-ranking worker who specializes in one field is the most optimal way of recruiting.

If you recruit workers who are above average in three specializations, they will have higher wages. It is also worth noting that Farming and Mapping specializations are two of the most high-paying jobs for workers. Once you get these workers and put them to work, they’ll eat through your treasury really fast.

It does make sense because these two specializations give you the most currency if you use them correctly.

When Are Workers Paid in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur?

Since we established that idle workers don’t get paid, how about assigned workers who are not actually doing things? Let’s take the image above as an example. Two workers who specialize in Mapping are currently assigned to the map device. All the maps are finished, but they are still assigned to the map device, and it says “Mapping” on the status of the workers.

Are these assigned workers counted toward the hourly wage? No, they are technically idle. Once you start putting more maps in the map device and they start running them, you’ll see your hourly wage on the manage town screen go up.

The same goes for Mining, Smelting, Shipping, and Disenchanting. Miners will stop getting paid if they don’t have any ores to mine. Smelters will stop smelting ores if you run out of mined ores. Your shipping crew will stop getting paid after their expedition. Disenchanters will stop getting paid when your disenchant screen runs out of items to disenchant.

Only farmers don’t fall into this category because there is no prerequisite to their jobs. They’ll keep planting seeds to grow crops because seeds aren’t exactly a resource in the game.

The “treasury will empty in” timer on the manage town screen actually takes these factors into account. If your gold is starting to go down drastically, you should get to farming. Use our early currency farming guide so you can get gold and currency at the same time.