Every recipe has a length in ticks. Each tick you work costs the recipe's energy per tick, so the energy for a whole craft is the energy per tick times the ticks you actually spend. The station panel also shows the tick length.

Each station belongs to one of the five masteries: Building, Smithing, Farming, Book writing or Anatomy. A recipe lists the mastery level it needs. Below that level a normal recipe cannot be worked at all ("Not enough mastery"). At or above it, each tick adds your mastery divided by the required level, rounded down and capped at 3, to the progress bar.

Star crafts (prayers, stories, newspapers, embalming solutions, planting seeds and a few dishes such as Vegetable salad) and autopsy work can be started below the required mastery. Each tick then succeeds with a chance equal to your mastery divided by the requirement; a failed tick still uses up a tick of the craft. The result's quality depends on how many ticks succeeded: the recipe card lists how many successful ticks give silver and gold.

Finished crafts pay out red, green or blue tech points, shown on every recipe card. Tech points buy technologies, and technologies unlock most recipes and buildings. The tech points guide covers where else they come from.

Advanced recipes need an extension built next to the station: a Tool Rack or Fine Tool Rack beside the woodworking and stonemason benches, a Hardening Bucket beside the anvils, Bellows or a Casting Table beside the furnaces. Without it those recipes cannot be crafted; each station page lists which recipes need which extension.

Furnaces, kilns, ovens, the distillation cube, barrels and the compost pile craft over time once a recipe is started. Most of them burn Fuel, which is an ingredient on their recipes; a Firewood shed next to them turns every 2 Firewood into 20 Fuel.

Zombies can be put to work at most stations and only take recipes that match their own mastery. Factory benches (Assembly benches, Smithies, Kitchens) need a zombie to work and must be linked by conveyor belts; they turn out supplies and kits in bulk. See the zombies guide.

Mastery comes from talents and perks (see the talents page), tools and temporary buffs. Because progress per tick is mastery divided by the requirement, the same recipe keeps getting faster as it rises, up to 3 steps per tick.

Some perks change a recipe: Blacksmith adds nails, Cook adds dishes, Heat Saver cuts the Fuel a recipe burns. Recipe cards show the base amount first and the perk amount in brackets.

Not in the build data: the only capped pieces are the graveyard areas, at most 2 of each. Space in each area is the real limit. Upgrades such as Kitchen Oven II replace the station they improve rather than adding a second one.