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How Crafting Systems Work in Games: Recipes, Resources and Progression

How crafting systems work in games: recipes that combine resources, tool tiers that gate progress, durability, recipe discovery and the grind.

By Published 4 min read

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Key takeaways

  • Crafting is a mechanic that lets a player make items such as tools, armour or weapons from combinations of other items.
  • Wikipedia describes the survival crafting loop: gather resources, craft better tools, and use them to reach better resources.
  • Tool tiers gate progress: in Wikipedia's common example, a wooden pickaxe can mine stone but not metal ores, while a stone one can.
  • Durability makes tools break after use, which keeps gathering going; recipes may have to be discovered by experiment.
  • Repetitive gathering is called grinding; whether it feels like a chore or a pleasure depends on the player.

Chop a tree, turn the wood into planks, turn the planks into a tool, and use the tool to reach something better: that is the crafting loop. Wikipedia notes that many survival games feature crafting and that most massively multiplayer online games have a crafting system. This guide explains how crafting systems are put together, using Wikipedia's articles on survival games, sandbox games and technology trees, and its glossary of video game terms.

What a crafting system is

Wikipedia's glossary defines crafting as a game mechanic that lets the player's character construct items, such as armour, weapons or medicine, from combinations of other items, and notes that most massively multiplayer online games have one. A crafting system can be broken into three parts:

Part What it is Example
Inputs Resources gathered from the world, or items made earlier Wood, stone, ore
Recipe The rule that turns inputs into an output Two inputs combine into a tool
Output The new item, which may itself be an input later A pickaxe, a block, a weapon

Wikipedia's survival game article describes the usual form: combining two or more resources makes a new object, which can then be used for further crafting. Some games use a single resource to make another instead; the article cites Subnautica.

The loop that drives progress

Crafting becomes progression when outputs improve what you can gather. Wikipedia describes the loop: the player collects resources to craft new tools, which allow them to obtain better resources, which are used to make better tools and weapons, and so on.

A common example, Wikipedia explains, is a ladder of pickaxes of increasing hardness, which this guide calls the pickaxe ladder: a wooden pickaxe can mine stone but not metal ores, while a pickaxe made from that stone can mine the ores. The same pattern applies to weapons and armour: items made from harder-to-find materials give better attack and defence.

Tiers: the tech tree in miniature

Strategy games formalise the same idea as a technology tree. Wikipedia describes it as a hierarchical representation of the upgrades a player can unlock, organised in levels called tiers, where each new technology usually opens one or more new options. A crafting ladder is a small tech tree: each tier of tool unlocks the materials for the next.

A worked example. Picture a simple, hypothetical recipe book:

  1. 1 log makes 4 planks.
  2. 2 planks make 4 sticks.
  3. 3 planks and 2 sticks make a wooden pickaxe.
  4. 3 stone and 2 sticks make a stone pickaxe, but stone can only be mined with a pickaxe.

To reach the stone pickaxe from nothing, you need the wooden pickaxe first: 3 planks and 2 sticks. Sticks come in fours, so 2 planks give you 4 sticks, and the wooden pickaxe takes 5 planks in all. That means chopping 2 logs, which yield 8 planks. The 2 leftover sticks then go into the stone pickaxe, with 3 stone mined using the wooden one. The total is 2 logs and 3 stone, with 3 planks to spare, but only in the right order. That ordering is what makes a crafting system feel like progress rather than a shopping list.

Durability and recipe discovery

Two design choices change how a crafting system feels:

  • Durability. Wikipedia notes that crafting systems often make tools and weapons break after a certain amount of use. Breaking tools keep you gathering and crafting long after you have first made them.
  • Recipe discovery. Some games show every recipe. Others, Wikipedia explains, do not give the player the recipes, so they must be learned through experiment or from game guides. Hidden recipes make discovery part of the game.

The grind

Repeated gathering has a name. Wikipedia's glossary defines grinding as performing a repetitive, time-consuming action before being able to advance, and notes it is considered either an annoying waste of time or an enjoyable necessity, depending on the player's attitude. Crafting games live on that line. A good system gives each round of gathering a visible result: a new tool, a bigger building or a new place to explore.

Crafting with no limits

Not every crafting game keeps the pressure on. In a creative mode, Wikipedia's glossary explains, progression gates and dangers are stripped away, which makes gathering optional. Creative versus survival mode compares the two approaches.

Crafting in Block World RPG

In Block World RPG Craft & Build, crafting is the bridge between its two halves. You gather resources, craft tools and weapons and build a base, then explore for dungeons, monsters and dragons, earning EXP that grows your stats and skills. As the app's page puts the loop, you come back stronger, then build bigger and travel further. The Block World RPG guide walks through it, and building your first base is where most crafting starts. It is one of our anime and creative apps.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

What is a crafting system in a game?
Wikipedia's glossary of video game terms describes crafting as a mechanic that lets the player's character construct items, such as armour, weapons or medicine, from combinations of other items.
Why do survival games make you upgrade tools in tiers?
Tiers turn crafting into progression. Wikipedia's survival game article gives a common example: a wooden pickaxe can mine stone but not metal ores, while a stone pickaxe can, so each tool opens the next set of resources.
What is durability in crafting games?
A limit on how long a tool or weapon lasts. Wikipedia notes that crafting systems often make tools break after a certain amount of use, which means players have to keep gathering and crafting.
How do players learn crafting recipes?
It depends on the game. Some show recipes in the interface; Wikipedia notes that others do not give the player the recipes at all, so they have to be learned by experimenting or from game guides.

Sources

  1. Glossary of video game terms (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
  2. Survival game (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
  3. Technology tree (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
  4. Sandbox game (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed

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