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Crafting Stations
August 18, 2026 at 03:33 AM
Dated the power-grid example to the pre-launch design post, added the current smelter draw figures and the raised generator output, and recorded the craft-time rebalance
Crafting stations are the production backbone of every player base in Soulbound: Online. You build and upgrade them inside your home base at Virelda, and almost everything you craft, from weapons and armor to potions, food, and components, is made at a station. Crafting at a station grants experience to both your character and the station itself, so stations are a core part of meta progression.
The Early Access build centres on a compact set of canonical stations, each with its own multi-level upgrade path. Higher levels unlock new recipes and access to higher-tier materials, add crafting slots so you can run several jobs in parallel, and open add-on module slots for furniture that boosts the station. Before launch the studio described a much wider roster of around twenty-eight station types with more than twenty-five modules across them; that is a longer-term target rather than what the launch build ships.
Crafting continues while you are logged off. You queue smelting, component crafting, cooking, or a station upgrade, then leave; the work finishes in the background and is waiting when you return.
These stations were detailed by the studio. Exact recipes and per-level numbers are still being tuned during Early Access.
Station | Role |
|---|---|
Generator | Powers every other station. Burns fuel such as coal, wood or oil and outputs power shared across the base. Must be kept fuelled to keep stations running, including while offline. |
Smelter | Smelts raw ore into the tiered ingots most other crafting depends on. |
Crafting Bench | Turns ingots and materials into the components used for weapons and armor. |
Chemistry Lab | Brews potions and elixirs and refines rare Yoku. |
Kitchen | Cooks farmed produce into food that grants buffs and restores stamina. |
Weapon Station | Final assembly point for weapons. Forty of the game's forty-three weapons are forged here. |
Gearforge | Final assembly point for armor and necklaces. |
Power Core Station | Upgrades weapons and abilities and unlocks new relic pathways. |
Cosmetic Station | Crafts cosmetics, kept separate from stat gear. |
The smelter is the clearest example of how a station's upgrade path gates progression. Each level unlocks the next tier of ingot and draws more power. Craft times climb steeply with tier, and each slot has a 24-hour ceiling, so a single slot can turn out thousands of steel ingots a day but only a handful of the top-tier ones.
Level | Ingot | Tier | Ore | Craft Time | Power Draw |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Steel Ingot | T2 | Iron Ore | 6 seconds | 15W |
2 | Chronosteel | T3 | ChronoTerra | 3m 24s | 25W |
3 | Tritium Bar | T4 | Tritium Ore | 18m 45s | 35W |
4 | Voidstone Ingot | T5 | Voidstone | 1h 33m 45s | 45W |
5 | Astralite Ingot | T6 | Astralite | 7h 48m 45s | 55W |
The T5 and T6 rows only became relevant once those gear tiers shipped during the first weeks of Early Access. Post-launch tuning has already shortened smelter upgrades from T5 to T6 considerably and rebalanced the crafting experience that chronosteel awards for its tier. A later patch rebalanced craft and station upgrade times across T4 to T6 so that no upgrade takes longer than a day, cutting the worst multi-day waits out of the top tiers entirely.
The Generator is the heart of the base. Production stations draw from its shared power pool, so if your total power draw is higher than the Generator's output, something has to switch off. The studio illustrated this before launch with a starting base where a Level 1 furnace and a Level 1 Chemistry Lab each drew 20 power while a Level 1 Generator produced only 10, forcing a choice between them until the Generator was upgraded. Those specific figures come from the pre-launch design write-up and the live numbers have moved since: the smelter now draws 15W at level 1, rising by 10W per level to 55W at level 5, and a post-launch patch raised the Generator’s maximum output substantially. The shape of the decision is unchanged, and the early game still makes you choose which stations run.
The more you use a station, the closer it gets to its next upgrade, and every upgrade is a permanent improvement to your production. A low-level component bench only makes crude parts, while a high-level one produces epic weapon and ability cores. Add-on modules layer on top: a refinery module can add crafting slots and halve a smelting station’s craft time, and themed modules can unlock exclusive recipes on the Chemistry Lab or Kitchen.
Your base and its stations are designed to be shared. You control who has access through granular permissions and can invite friends to help build and use your stations. The studio has said guild bases (planned after the initial release) will let members collaborate on shared stations, and a roadmap goal is to let other players pay to use your stations for income even while you are offline.
Station names, recipes and module lists describe the Early Access build and are being tuned as it develops.
