The short version
You now start a job with vacation days
Before 0.1.6, vacation days could only arrive through job perks and Story Cards — which is why players were literally quitting and rejoining jobs to get time off. Now a new job comes with some, working accumulates more, and you request days off or paid leave over the phone. How many you start with is not published, and the patch notes say it varies by Storyteller anyway.
The primary source
Everything the studio has said
This is the entire official record on vacation days — one entry in the 0.1.6 patch notes. Nothing else in that patch, and nothing in the 0.1.6b hotfix, mentions the system:
Revamped Vacation days: Players now start a new job with vacation days, and can now accumulate vacation days while working and ask for days off or paid leaves over the phone. This also varies depending on the chosen Storyteller.
Two terms matter here: the game deals in days off and paid leaves. There is no mention of sick leave anywhere in official text, so if you see a guide describing one, treat it with suspicion.
What changed
Before 0.1.6
No natural accumulation at all. Vacation days came only from Occupation Perks and Story Cards, and requests went through the Occupations panel. Players' workaround for wanting a break was to quit the job and re-apply a few days later.
After 0.1.6
New jobs start with vacation days, working accumulates more, and requests move to the phone with two options — days off and paid leave. The amounts vary with your chosen Storyteller.
Perks
The six perks that grant vacation days
Spend an Upgrade Point on one of these instead of a rank increase. Worth knowing before you commit: this perk list was documented before the 0.1.6 rework, and no source has confirmed whether every one survived unchanged.
| Perk | Effect |
|---|---|
| Vacation Day | +1 vacation day. |
| Paid Time Offhas a cost | Pay $100 to gain one vacation day. |
| Negotiated Vacation | +1 vacation day on the first work day of each week. |
| Vacationist | Vacation days are offered more often. |
| Vacations are for Top Performers | Finish three work days in a row at 100% performance, then gain +1 vacation day after every work day. |
| Extra Vacation Day | 33% chance of +1 vacation day after each work day. |
Perks that pay you while you are off
A separate cluster exists purely for vacation income. Their existence tells you something the patch notes do not: if perks are needed to earn money and upgrade points during a vacation day, the default is probably neither. That is an inference from perk design, not a documented rule — we flag it rather than state it.
| Perk | Effect |
|---|---|
| Professional Tourist | $150 per day while on vacation. |
| Fruitful Rest | Income rises by $25 for each day spent on vacation. |
| Vacation Commissions | 20% chance of $50 every hour of a vacation day. |
| Out of Office | Earn upgrade points even while on vacation. |
The console shortcut
One command grants a vacation day to the selected Para's occupation, no arguments needed. Open the console with Ctrl+F1, or Cmd+F1 on Mac.
ADDVACATIONDAYRelated, but not the same question
People ask what happens if you take time off. Nobody has documented that. These adjacent facts are confirmed — do not read them as answers about vacation:
- Being late for work does carry a performance penalty. Patch 0.1.5 added it for cancelling the Go To Work action. Whether an approved day off counts as absence is a different question, and unanswered.
- Quitting mid-shift means leaving the workplace immediately with no pay for that day.
- Sustained bad performance earns strikes, and enough strikes get a Para fired.
- One perk explicitly grants upgrade points while on vacation, which implies you normally get none.
Not yet documented
This is the longest such list on the site, and that is the honest state of this system two weeks after it shipped:
- How many vacation days a new job starts with. The patch notes say you get some, not how many.
- The accumulation rate. Per work day, per week, scaled by rank — no source says.
- Whether banked vacation days have a cap.
- The exact phone menu path and the wording of the options.
- Whether the Occupations panel still accepts requests after 0.1.6.
- Whether sick leave exists. Official text mentions only days off and paid leaves.
- How pay works on a day off versus paid leave. Assuming one pays and one does not is reasonable and unverified.
- Whether taking time off costs performance or contributes to a strike.
- Which Storyteller setting controls vacation days, what it is called, and its default.
- Whether the six vacation perks above still behave as documented after the rework.
Vacation days FAQ
- How do I take a day off in Paralives?
- Since patch 0.1.6, use the phone: your Para can ask for days off or paid leave. Before that patch, requests went through the Occupations panel and vacation days were far harder to come by.
- Why does my Para have no vacation days?
- If you are on a save that predates 0.1.6, or the Para has held the job since before the patch, they may never have received a starting allowance. The patch notes also say the amount varies with the chosen Storyteller. As a shortcut, the console command ADDVACATIONDAY grants one outright.
- How many vacation days do you start with?
- Not published. The official notes confirm that new jobs start with vacation days without giving a number, and they explicitly say it varies by Storyteller — so a single number would likely be wrong anyway.
- Is there a cheat for vacation days?
- Yes. ADDVACATIONDAY awards a vacation day to the selected Para's occupation. It takes no arguments — open the console with Ctrl+F1 or Cmd+F1 and run it once per day you want.
- Do you get paid on vacation?
- Unconfirmed. What we can say is that several perks exist specifically to pay you during a vacation day, and another grants upgrade points while off — which suggests the default gives neither. That is an inference, not documentation.
- Does taking time off hurt job performance?
- No source addresses it. Being late for work is confirmed to carry a performance penalty, but an approved day off is a different thing and nobody has tested it publicly.
Keep reading
The rest of the career system
Ranks and promotions
How Upgrade Points, Application Points and pay actually work.
All 11 career domains
Top pay, required skills, and which suits your household.
Storyteller settings
The panel the patch notes point at for vacation-day variation.
All console commands
The searchable index, including every occupation command.
Patch notes
The full 0.1.6 entry and every build since launch.
Verified against build 0.1.7c on 2026-07-27. The official wiki had still not covered the 0.1.6 vacation rework as of that date.