The crafting ladder
Hand to bench to anvil to furnace, and what each opens.
Six stations, each one a thing you build and put down, and each one opening a list of recipes you could not reach before. Stand near a station and its recipes stop being greyed out.
You will need
- Wood and Stone for the first rung
- Metal for each one after that
Steps
- Hand — 16 recipes, no station. This is the whole of what is open to you before you build anything, and it includes the workbench itself.
- Bench — 22 recipes. 4 Wood + 2 Stone. The first real unlock: tools, modules, torch devices, pipes.
- Anvil — 40 recipes, the largest list after the assembly table. 3 Copper + 2 Wood, at the bench.
- Chemistry Bench — 5 recipes. Small and specialised.
- Assembly Table — 43 recipes, the biggest list in the game.
- Blast Furnace — 15 recipes. Built from the Forge Core, which is what the layer 1 boss drops. This one is a reward you win once, not an ore you go back and farm.
When it works
The crafting menu at a station shows a long list with most of it in white rather than grey. Each station page above lists exactly what it makes.
When it does not
A recipe is greyed out and you have the materials. Then it is the station, not the ingredients. The two errands look identical in the menu and send you to opposite ends of the map: "go build an anvil" and "go find more copper". Check which station the recipe wants on its station page.
You put a station down and now you cannot find it. Stations are *placed materials*, not fixtures. They can be mined back up, and they can be buried, burned or drowned like anything else. A workbench next to a fire is a workbench you will lose.
You are standing on the station and it still will not craft. Reach is a radius around you, not a tile you stand on. Step next to it rather than on it.
You cannot make the Blast Furnace. It needs the Forge Core, and the Forge Core only drops from the layer 1 boss. There is no other source and no recipe for it — that is the shape the layer's reward takes.
You want to see everything at once. The Recipes index lists all 141 across the six stations, and every material page says what it is used for.
Next
Ore into bars — the first thing the ladder actually asks of you.