Crafting

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Crafting is a game mechanic that allows the player to create new items from a specific combination of existing items. One of the most unique things about Vintage Story is the number of different crafting methods available to the player. This page is a summary of all the crafting methods currently available in VS, with links to more detailed information below.

Protip: Players can help each other knap tool heads (when holding a stone), form clay items (when holding a piece of clay), or smith items (when holding hammers).

Grid

Grid-based crafting is available at the beginning of the game. Players access the crafting grid by pressing the 'E' key (default), which appears on the right side of the screen. To use, players place items from the hotbar or inventory in specific patterns and quantities within the 3 X 3 grid. During game play, grid crafting recipes are provided in the handbook, accessed using H (default). Grid crafting is often combined with other crafting mechanics, for example: most tool heads (knapped, cast, or smithed) must be placed in the crafting grid with a stick (handle) to complete the tool.

Protip: While placing a crafting component, Right-click + Drag along the squares to automatically place 1 item. This easily and efficiently fills the grid for convenience.

Knapping

Knapping is a crafting method that allows players to make primitive "stone" tools by removing small pieces of stone to shape a blade or tool head.

• Knapping requires two pieces of flint or small stones of an appropriate type (Basalt, Granite, Obsidian, etc).

With flint in the active hand, Sneak + Right Mouse Button (Left Shift, Default) on a solid block to open the dialog and select the item to craft. The selected item will appear on the surface with voxels marked in orange. Use the second flint or small stone to "break" (Left Mouse Button) or remove orange voxels and finish the shape. Shaped tool heads are used to create weapons or finished tools when a stick (handle) is added using the crafting grid.

Clay Forming

Clay forming is a crafting method that allows the player to place and remove voxels of clay to form a shaped container.

• Clay forming requires clay, a firepit and fuel.

With clay in the active hand, Sneak + Right Mouse Button (Left Shift, Default) on a solid block to open the dialog and select the item to craft. The first layer of the selected item will appear on the selected surface. Clay items are built in layers by adding clay to fill green voxels, and removing clay from orange voxels. Pressing "F" with clay in the active hand allows the player to change the size/number of clay voxels filled or removed with each action. All clay items must be fired in a firepit before use. Fired items appear dark brown and have "fired" added to their name. Most of these items are used in conjunction with other game mechanics including molds for casting, vessels for storage, pots and bowls for cooking.

Casting

Casting is used to make the first metal tools from copper and bronze, which are smelted and "cast" into tool heads using molds.

• Casting requires: crucible, molds, fuel (peat bricks, coal, or charcoal), and metal ores.

Copper and Bronze alloys can be molded into ingots or tool and weapon heads. Creating alloys involves combining the correct ratios of base metals to form metals that are more durable than base component metals. To cast metals or alloys, combine the ore nuggets in a crucible and heat the metals to liquid form. Liquid copper and bronze alloys (100 units/mold) are poured from the crucible into fired ingot or tool molds (created using the clay forming interface). Ingots can be worked using the smithing mechanic to create items including tool and weapon heads.

Smithing

Smithing allows players to shape metal ingots into weapon heads, tool heads and plates used to create lanterns and armor pieces.

• Smithing requires anvil, hammer, forge, fuel (coal or charcoal), and metal ingots.

Ingots are created using casting or the bloomery (with an intermediary smithing step to remove rust and properly shape it in the case of iron), and heated using the forge. Heated ingots are placed on the anvil (Sneak + Right Mouse Button), which opens a dialog allowing the player to choose what to tool/weapon to craft. To smith the selected item, the metal from voxels within the current "ingot" shape must be moved into the finished item shape using the hammer. Hitting the work item with the hammer in different modes allows the player to fill the empty blue voxels with metal and remove metal from filled orange voxels. Pressing 'F' with a hammer in the active hand allows the player to change the tool mode. If the work item cools before completion, the item must be reheated in the forge. If one ingot does not contain enough metal to fill the blue voxels required to forge an item, material can be added by placing another heated ingot on top of the work item.