Crafting stations and the recipe book

The stations at a glance

Each station is a block you build yourself. Its cost is counted in units of a kind of material: a block is 4 units, a piece 1. "Near a Workbench" means within 8 blocks of one.

Station	Cost	Build it	What it does
Workbench	16 wood	anywhere	Tools up to the Copper tier, paint, glass, furniture, parts, and the place the other stations are built near.
Campfire	6 wood	anywhere	An open fire. Cooks food, chars wood and can smelt the coolest ores such as tin, but tops out at 450 degrees, too cool for most metals.
Crate	12 wood	anywhere	Storage with 27 slots. Crates within 5 blocks count as part of your bag when you craft.
Lamp	1 of any material and 1 fuel	anywhere	A light.
Bed	8 wood and 8 fibre or hide	near a Workbench	Somewhere to sleep.
Furnace	24 stone, clay, brick or metal	near a Workbench	Smelts ore, glass and ceramic, and cooks. 3 slots: input, fuel, output.
Forge Bench	8 wood and 8 stone or brick	near a Workbench	Tools of any tier, alloys, suits, armour, and gear such as jetpacks and drones.
Gun Bench	a Forge Bench's cost, plus 8 metal	near a Workbench, Tinmelt Age	Guns from loose parts, crossbow bolts, cartridges, shells and cells.
Rocket Bench	a Forge Bench's cost, plus 12 metal	near a Workbench, Anvil Age	Rockets, grenades, a land mine and fireworks.
Lab Bench	8 wood and 4 glass or crystal	near a Workbench	Analyses unknown samples, runs reactions, makes compounds, spends research points.
Oven	16 stone, clay, brick or metal	near a Workbench	Bakes dishes at 180 degrees (walls allow up to 320). 6 slots.
Cooking Pot	8 stone, clay, brick or metal	near a Workbench	Simmers dishes at 100 degrees (walls allow up to 160). 6 slots.
Beacon	4 metal and 4 glass or crystal	anywhere	Marks a place you can travel back to. See Going deep.

The Gun Bench and the Rocket Bench are different looks of the Forge Bench block. Each also makes what a Workbench makes, plus its own shelf of recipes. Alloys, suits and armour are still made at a plain Forge Bench. Machines, ship parts and the later blocks are listed by age on The eight ages.

"Stone, clay, brick or metal" means any rock, ceramic, building material, clay, metal or alloy, but not a liquid. "Glass or crystal" means glass, stained glass or any crystal. The material you pick for a station becomes its walls: a Furnace of Brick runs hotter than one of Stone.

What each station does

Workbench

Craft tools up to tier 2 (Copper), and "make" recipes such as paint, stained glass, roofing, furniture, base defences, bike frames and wheels. Opening a Forge Bench also counts as a Workbench for these. See Home, paint and base crafting and Rides and gadgets.

Furnace

Put the thing to smelt in the input slot and a fuel in the fuel slot. The furnace burns fuel only while there is something it can smelt, heads towards the fuel's flame temperature (capped by its walls) and starts working once it is hot enough. It heats up quickly and cools slowly. Metals come out as ingots. Other results come out as whole blocks once four units are ready. Details are on Smelting and fuel.

Forge Bench

The heart of the mid-game. Here you can:

Make tools of any tier: Tools and tiers.
Melt two or three metals together into an alloy: Alloys and the Forge.
Forge suits and armour: Suits and armour.
Make guns: Weapons and ammunition.

Lab Bench

Put an unknown sample in the single slot and it is analysed in three stages of 5 seconds each. See Research and the Lab Bench.

Oven and Cooking Pot

Four ingredient slots, one fuel slot and one output slot. Put the ingredients in with some fuel and it cooks itself.

Working at a bench

Open a bench by using it. You must stay within 6 blocks of it for the crafts that need it to be open.
Crafts take a few seconds and you can watch your character work: knapping by hand, sawing at a Workbench, hammering at a Forge Bench, mixing in the Lab, stirring the Pot, stoking the Furnace, baking at the Oven. A friend sees the same.
Inputs are taken the moment you ask. The item arrives when the job ends. A job in hand can be finished instantly with the Skip button.
Crafting earns Crafting skill experience. Tools earn more than simple items, finer grades more again, and a Masterwork gives a bonus.

The recipe book

The Recipes tab lists every way to make something, grouped by what it is: stations and machines, tools and weapons, smelting and fire, alloys, lab reactions, dishes and suits, plus building blocks, paint, home items, rides and gadgets, and the buggy. It reads the same tables as the game, so what it shows is what the game lets you make.

Can make now: each recipe checks your bag and shows what you have and what is missing.
Missing items: a missing ingredient shows in red with a hint of where to find it, for example which ore to smelt for copper.
Where to stand: the screen tells you if you need to open a Forge Bench, a Lab Bench or to stand near a Workbench.
Make several: up to 16 goes in one go for the simple recipes and reactions.
Nearby crates: crates within 5 blocks of you that you may open count as part of your bag, bag first, then crates. This works at a bench and from the Recipes tab.
Tools and suits pick the best parts you can afford at the bench you have open. Flint by hand, up to copper at a Workbench, anything at a Forge Bench.

Some recipes are kept back by the age of your world or by research. They show as locked until then. Each recipe you make for the first time is recorded in your Collection.

Tips

Build the Workbench first, then put the Furnace, Forge Bench and Lab Bench within 8 blocks of it.
Make the Furnace walls from the hottest material you have. A furnace's top temperature is its wall material's melting point minus 100 degrees, and never below 400.
Keep a crate by your benches. Ingots in the crate are used automatically.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.

Crafting stations: the benches that build the world.