Survival Crafting

A playbook for survival-crafting games, the gather → craft → build loop, survival needs, the crafting/tech progression, and base building. This is a compositional skill: it orchestrates inventory data, world content, persistence, and threats. It does not re-teach those primitives; it defines the loop and the pressure systems (needs, scarcity, escalation) that make survival tense rather than tedious.

When to use

• Use when the player gathers resources, crafts items/structures, manages survival needs, and builds a base against escalating threats: survival sandbox, crafting/base-building game.
• Use when designing needs (hunger/thirst/temperature), a crafting tech tree, gathering loops, or base placement/building.

When not to use: crafting as a minor RPG feature → rpg. Permadeath grid dungeon → roguelike. For inventory/items as data assets, use godot-resources / unity-scriptableobjects; for world generation, procedural-gen.

Core loop

Gather raw resources → craft tools/items → build and upgrade a base → manage survival needs → explore farther for better resources → survive escalating threats → repeat at a higher tier. Each loop should unlock the next loop (better tools → reach new biomes → new resources → better crafts). When that ladder breaks, the game becomes a grind.

Must-have systems