Structures & Crafting

Crafting, not placing

A structure is a shape of tended tiles whose revealed subtypes match a recipe. Each terrain family has one shape and three tiers:

• Fields — a bent line of 3. Granary (3 grain) → Farm (2 grain + livestock) → Well (2 grain + water vein).
• Forest — a straight line of 3. Lumber Camp (3 timber) → Hardwood Grove (2 timber + hardwood) → Tapping Line (2 timber + sap).
• Hills — a triangle of 3. Quarry (3 stone) → Mineshaft (2 stone + ore seam) → Deep Shaft (2 stone + coal).

When your tended tiles contain a matching set in the right shape, the build card appears. Assembling costs 1 AP for the basic tier, 2 for the middle, 3 for the top — and from then on the structure pays +1, +2, or +3 of its resource every turn. The completed structure is drawn across its member tiles on the map, with the focal building standing on the tier ingredient — the well on the water-vein field, the headframe on the coal.

Structures are the ONLY income

This is the single most important economic fact in the game and it bears repeating: tended tiles yield nothing per turn. Only structures produce resources. A city with ten tended tiles and no structure is a big, proud, penniless city.

So the shape of a good economy is: tend with intent (collect a recipe, not a scatter of pretty tiles) → assemble → repeat. Every city should be working toward its next structure at all times.

Planning around the reveal

You can't fully plan a recipe because subtypes are hidden until tended. The practical approach:

1. Tend the cheap inner ring first — every reveal is information as well as territory.
2. The commons always work. Three grain, three timber, three stone — the basic recipe needs only the common subtype, so a basic structure is never far away.
3. Rare reveals upgrade the plan. Turned over a coal tile? Steer the next tends to complete the Deep Shaft triangle instead — +3 ore beats +1 three times over, and its 3 AP build cost is still just one turn.

The pieces are counted

Krestfell deals the map like a board game: at creation the world is laid out with an exact, finite count of the rare pieces, face-down. Rare subtypes aren't rolled when you tend — they were already there, waiting. There are only so many coal seams in the world, and whoever's borders enclose them owns them. Land, in the long run, is the scarcest resource in the game.

The full recipe table, with art and exact AP costs, is in the Structures reference.