Your First Hour

A walkthrough of your first hour in a new BlockFactory world: from waking up in the bunker to your first automated smelting line and your first research. Follow it step by step, or skim it to see where the game wants to take you.

1. Wake up in the bunker

The screen is black. You hear a heartbeat, then the hiss of a Cryo Capsule opening. A short scene plays, then you have control. You start with a Flintlock Pistol and a Field Manual in your inventory.

Walk through the dark bunker. Only the red emergency lights are on. On the way you pass:

• the other capsules (empty, or used by other players),
• the dead Bunker Terminal (it needs power, see The Bunker),
• three Bunker Lockers. Open them with the Use key. Each holds 100 Cartridges; the first two also hold a Wooden Drill. Take everything.

Walk to the Bunker Gate. It opens, and a short scene shows you the steppe, the ruin of the Portal of the Ancient close to the bunker, and the dark Great Portal on the horizon, your long-term goal. Climb the stairs to the surface.

2. Read the HUD

Where	What
Right, middle	Next goal: what the game wants from you next.
Right	Tips, shown for 15 seconds when they fit what you are doing. /tips --off turns them off, /tips --on back on.
Top right	Minimap with time and epoch.
Top left	Research points and tower ammunition.
Bottom left	Your handcrafting queue.
Under the crosshair	Info about the machine you look at.

The first tip says it already: hold left click on trees and rocks, then craft a Brick Furnace.

3. Gather wood and stone by hand

You cannot dig the ground. Instead, stand in front of a tree or rock and hold left click. A tool appears in your hand; when the time is up, the whole object disappears and the yield lands in your inventory.

Source	Time	Yield
Tree	2 s	2–8 Wood
Rock	3 s	20 Stone
Large rock	5 s	30 Stone and 15 Coal

A grove of trees and plenty of rocks lie close to the bunker. Wild trees do not grow back, so do not clear more than you need. More: Gathering by Hand.

4. First handcrafts

Open your inventory and use the crafting tab Factory. These recipes are available from the start:

Item	Recipe	Time
Brick Furnace	5 Stone	0.5 s
Wooden Chest	4 Wood	0.5 s
Iron Gear	2 Iron Plate	0.5 s
Belt T1	1 Iron Gear, 1 Iron Plate → 2	0.5 s
Coal Grabber	1 Iron Gear, 1 Iron Plate	0.5 s
Wooden Drill	3 Iron Gear, 3 Iron Plate, 1 Brick Furnace	2 s

Craft two or three Brick Furnaces and a Wooden Chest now. The ingredients leave your inventory at once; the item arrives when its time is up. See Crafting.

5. Find the ore fields

Drills only work on ore fields. Open the map: the fields show in their own colors. Around the bunker you always find one field each of Iron, Copper, Coal and Stone (about 60 blocks out) and Sand and Clay (about 100 blocks out), plus a small lake. See The World.

6. Wooden Drill and Brick Furnace

1. Place a Wooden Drill on the Iron Ore Field (right click with it in your hand). It covers 2 × 2 blocks and drops its ore at its front left corner.
2. Place a Brick Furnace right at that corner. The drill now feeds the furnace directly.
3. Fuel both. Hold Coal (or Wood) in your hand, crouch and press the Use key on the machine: the stack goes into the fuel slot. Coal holds 4 MJ, Wood 2 MJ.
4. The furnace turns each Iron Ore into an Iron Plate (3.2 s each). Crouch and Use with an empty hand to take the plates.

Put the second drill and another furnace on the copper field. A furnace also bakes 2 Stone into a Stone Brick. You will need a lot of those.

If a machine stops, an icon floats over it after a few seconds, for example "No Fuel" or "Output Full". See Status Icons and Warnings.

7. Your first automated line

Feeding every furnace by hand gets old fast. Build the classic chain:

Wooden Drill → Belt T1 → Brick Furnace → Coal Grabber → Wooden Chest

• Belts carry items on two lanes. A drill or grabber can drop onto a belt.
• The Coal Grabber moves one item at a time between belt, machine and chest. It burns fuel too, and it feeds itself from the coal it moves.
• More drills need more Iron Gears and Iron Plates, which this line now produces for you.

A drill on the coal field with a belt to your furnaces solves the fuel question for good. Details: Mining, Belts, Grabbers, Smelting.

8. The next goal: power and the portal

The goal panel asks you to power the bunker first: connect the Bunker Power Connector at the top of the stairs to a power grid. Power comes from steam engines, and those need your first research, Steam Power. Research starts at the Portal of the Ancient:

1. Rebuild the Portal of the Ancient on the ruin next to the bunker, in four phases. Bring the materials by hand (crouch and Use), on a belt pointing into the portal, or with a grabber. Open the portal with the Use key to see what the current phase needs.

   Phase	Materials
   Foundation	200 Stone, 100 Stone Brick
   Pillars	100 Stone Brick, 60 Iron Plate
   Arch	80 Iron Plate, 60 Copper Plate, 30 Iron Gear
   Rune Ring	60 Copper Plate, 60 Iron Gear, 100 Coal

2. Call two Goblins. Feed the portal worked metal (plates, gears, bricks, belts, cartridges); each item fills the essence bar by its Gob value. When the bar is full, the summoning runs for a short while and a Trapped Goblin appears in the output.

3. Call an Outlander. This call wants variety: every kind of item fills at most a tenth of the bar, so bring at least ten different kinds.

4. Craft a Goblin Research Center (2 Trapped Goblin, 40 Stone Brick, 20 Iron Gear, 20 Iron Plate) and an Outlander Test Site (1 Trapped Outlander, 60 Stone Brick, 30 Iron Plate).

5. Feed the research center products of your factory. The goblins turn them into Gob points and write Knowledge Scroll I.

6. At the test site, choose Steam Power and bring its scroll. When the test is done, the steam machines unlock.

Then build a Water Pump at the lake, a Water Boiler, a Steam Generator and Small Power Poles up to the bunker. When the connector gets power, the bunker lights come back on. The full research system: Portal of the Ancient, Research, Power.

Stay safe

Enemy nests lie far from the spawn (500 blocks by default), so the first hour is usually quiet. Your machines make noise, though, and noise wakes the steppe. A Gun Tower needs no research; fill it with the Cartridges from the lockers. Wooden Walls (3 Wood → 2) slow attackers down. See Defense and Noise and Unrest.

See also

• Factory, Not Sandbox
• Controls and Building
• Field Manual
• Epochs