Before you start
- A Building Plan in your inventory and a Hammer in your hands. Plans turn up as loot, or you make one from paper.
- Planks and Nails for the first pieces. Fell a tree with an axe to get a Log – it is heavy, so you carry it in your hands – and saw it into Planks with a Hand Saw. At a workbench the same log gives more planks.
- Later grades need Sheet Metal, Scrap Metal and Metal Wire. See where materials come from.
Open the catalog
Press B (controller: hold D-pad up). The catalog has two tabs: build and craft. Pick a category, then a piece – every card shows a picture, the grades and the cost, green when you carry enough and red when something is missing.
| To | Keyboard & mouse | Controller |
|---|---|---|
| Switch category | Q / E | LB / RB |
| Rotate the piece | R or mouse wheel | X |
| Raise or lower a free foundation | Page up / Page down | RB / LB |
| Place it | Left mouse button | RT |
| Leave build mode | Esc or right mouse button | LT |
Place it with the hologram
A see-through copy of the piece follows your view and snaps to the building grid. Green means it can stand there. Red means it cannot, and the panel below tells you why:
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Too steep | Find flatter ground, or start with a foundation – its legs reach down on uneven ground. |
| No support | Walls need a foundation or floor under them, floors and roofs need walls. |
| Ground in the way | Raise the foundation a step or move it. |
| Foreign territory | Someone else claimed this land. Build elsewhere. |
| Not on roads | Foundations, fences and flags stay off the road. |
| Keeps a building entrance free | You cannot block the doors of the houses on the map. |
| Missing materials | Gather what the card shows in red. |
Placing takes a few strokes of the hammer, then the piece stands. On slopes, foundations stand on legs; steps lead from the edge of a foundation down to the ground.
A first shelter, step by step
- Lay a foundation. Add more next to it – they snap together.
- Put up walls on the edges, and a doorway where you want to go in.
- Hang a door in the doorway.
- Close the top with a floor or a roof; a gable closes the side under a pitched roof.
- Fit a Combination Lock or a Code Lock to the door.
- Plant a territory flag to claim the land, and keep materials in its upkeep chest.
Want a second storey? A stairwell floor with stairs under it takes you up. Storage, beds and workbenches are on the furniture page.
Upgrade, repair and take it down
Hold the hammer, look at a piece and open the action menu. From there you upgrade it to the next grade, repair it, rotate it, or take it down.
| Grade | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Frame | Open timber frame with braces. Quick to put up, easy to break. |
| Wood | Boarded with planks. |
| Reinforced | Boards with steel straps and angle plates, asphalt roofing. |
| Metal | Corrugated and riveted sheet steel. The toughest grade. |
- Upgrading costs the material of the next grade and keeps the piece in place.
- Repairing costs part of the material. Right after a piece has been hit you have to wait a moment.
- Shortly after placing you can still rotate a piece or remove it and get all material back. Later, dismantling returns part of it.