BlockFactory:Gathering and Crafting

Gathering and Crafting covers how you get your first raw materials by hand and how you turn them into items: in pocket crafting from your inventory, or in machines such as furnaces and Fabricators. You need no tool item for any of it, and all vanilla recipes and benches are switched off.

Felling a tree by hand

Gathering by hand

Stand in front of a tree or rock and hold left click. An axe or pickaxe appears in your hand. It is not an item and takes no inventory slot. The crack on the block shows your progress. When the time is up, the whole tree or rock disappears and the yield goes straight into your inventory.

If you stop hitting for more than a moment, or turn to another object, the timer starts over.

Trees and rocks

Source	Time	Yield	Rare extra
Tree	2 s	2–8 Wood (random each time)	—
Rock	3 s	20 Stone	2 % chance each for 5–10 Iron Ore and 5–10 Copper Ore
Large rock	5 s	30 Stone, 15 Coal	4 % chance each for 5–10 Iron Ore and 5–10 Copper Ore

Bare trees without leaves give the same Wood as leafy ones.

Breaking a rock by hand

Nothing grows back

Wild trees and rocks are gone for good once you harvest them. Near the bunker you find two groves and many rocks, enough for a start. Later, Wood comes from the Tree Farm (Tree Farming research) and Stone from Stone Fields with a drill. See Hunting and Farming and Mining.

Ore by hand

You can also hold left click on a block of an ore field. Every 2.6 to 4.6 seconds (random each time) you get one item of that field, and the crack starts over. The field block stays where it is; fields never run out.

Icon	Field	Gives
	Iron Ore Field	Iron Ore
	Copper Ore Field	Copper Ore
	Coal Field	Coal
	Stone Field	Stone
	Sand Field	Sand
	Clay Field	Clay
	Gold Ore Field	Gold Ore
	Uranium Ore Field	Uranium Ore

Oil Wells give nothing by hand; oil needs an Oil Pumpjack.

By hand you are a little faster than one Wooden Drill standing fully on a start field (one ore every 4 s), but the drill keeps working while you do something else. Use your hands for the first plates, then let the machines take over.

Fuel at the start

Your first machines burn fuel. Wood (2 MJ) and Coal (4 MJ) both work. Large rocks give 15 Coal each, and the Coal Field near the bunker gives as much as you mine. Put a Wooden Drill on the Coal Field early.

What you cannot gather

Soil, sand, stone and water of the ground cannot be broken. Mountain walls only give way to TNT.

Pocket crafting

Open your inventory and choose the crafting tab Factory. It is the only tab left; vanilla's tabs are removed. Pick a recipe and an amount, and the job starts.

• The ingredients leave your inventory at once.
• The products arrive one by one as each piece finishes.
• You can keep playing while the queue works.
• In Creative mode crafting is instant.

Pocket crafting does not make missing intermediate products for you. To craft a Wooden Drill you need the Iron Gears in your inventory first.

Crafting times

Most simple items take half a second each. Bigger things take longer:

Time	Examples
0.5 s	Iron Gear, Copper Cable, Electronic Circuit, belts, grabbers, chests, pipes, Brick Furnace, Steam Generator, Fabricators, power poles, Wooden Walls, floors, Landfill
1 s	Cartridge, splitters, underground belts, Animal Trap
2 s	Wooden Drill, Auto Drill, Steel Beam, Goblin Cart
3 s	Blast Furnace, Storage Tank, Tree Farm, Shotgun Shell
5 s	Flintlock Pistol, Goblin Hut, Cryo Capsule, Rangertower, Coal Plant, Chemical Plant, SlaughterHouse
8 s	Gun Tower, Oil Processor, Nuclear Reactor, Grenade
10 s	Goblin Research Center, Outlander Test Site, Solar Panel, Shotgun, Assault Rifle
20 s	Flame Tower, Rune Tower
30 s	Portal of the Ancient, Great Portal Altar

The Field Manual shows the exact time of every recipe.

The crafting queue

The panel at the bottom left of the screen shows the running job: item, pieces left in this job, how many jobs wait, and the progress.

• The queue holds up to 32 jobs. Adding the same recipe again extends the last waiting job.
• /craftqueue lists your jobs.
• /craftqueue --cancel cancels the job you added last; /craftqueue --all cancels all jobs. The ingredients of every unfinished piece come back, including the piece in progress.
• The queue is saved with your character.

Crafting in machines

Machines craft without you, as long as they get ingredients and fuel or power.

• Furnaces (Brick Furnace, later Blast Furnace and Electric Furnace) need no settings. They pick the recipe from what you put in: Iron Ore becomes Iron Plate, Copper Ore becomes Copper Plate, 2 Stone become a Stone Brick, each in 3.2 s at speed ×1. See Smelting.
• Fabricators (from the Automation research) make any factory recipe. Open one, choose a recipe, and feed it by hand, by belt or with grabbers. See Fabricators.
• Special machines have their own recipes: the Chemical Plant, Oil Processor, Stone Golems Refineries, Uranium Golems Refinery, SlaughterHouse and Tree Farm.

Some recipes exist only in a machine. Advanced Circuit, Engine Unit, Gold Wire and the Rune Modules need a Fabricator; Concrete, Processing Unit and Electric Engine need at least a Fabricator T2; plastics, sulfur, explosives and batteries need a Chemical Plant. The Field Manual names the machine for every recipe.

Copying a recipe

Crouch + right click on a Fabricator copies its recipe, and crouch + left click pastes it onto another Fabricator. This saves a lot of clicking when you build rows of identical machines. See Controls and Building.

Locked recipes

Many recipes start locked and open through Research at the Outlander Test Site. A locked recipe cannot be crafted, neither in pocket crafting nor in a Fabricator. When your team completes a research, the new recipes are available to every member.

In the Field Manual, locked items carry a red mark, and the filter Only unlocked hides them. The first research, Steam Power, unlocks the Water Pump, Water Boiler, Steam Generator, Small Power Pole, Auto Drill and Lamp.

War Golems leave Research Capsules when defeated. Redeem them at an Outlander Test Site for alternative recipes. See Enemies.

See also

• Recipes
• Research Tree
• Getting Started
• Mining