Crafting
Crafting involves creating a new item from one or more others at one of the various benches in the game. There are two variations: the campfire and portal, which are technically not "benches" yet they can be used to craft items, thus the term 'Crafting Surface is used instead of "bench."
How To
Crafting requires both prerequisite items and access to a crafting surface.
The items must be accessible in the crafting Blockhead's inventory, being inside (i.e. not visible in) a basket or chest in their inventory is insufficient. Some crafting processes require more than one item type and/or multiples of an item, and all must be accessible.
The crafting surface is accessed by tapping on it. This gives two options: "Remove" (put the item into the Blockhead's inventory) and the crafting surface's name. Tapping on the latter opens a crafting menu.
A crafting menu has a side-scrolling series of icons for the various things that can be created at that bench. Tapping on an icon will present the requirements for that item. If the Blockhead has enough of the items available, the icon will have a green background and a green "Craft" button will be present. If there are enough items available for making more than one of the item, a white slide selector will be at the bottom of the menu for quantity.
Tapping on the "Craft" button adds the task to the selected Blockhead's activity queue and he/she will eventually move adjacent to it and begin working.
Once the crafting action starts, the items needed for the quantity selected will be removed from the crafting Blockhead's inventory. If the Blockhead's inventory has changed so the required items are unavailable, the task will abort. Once the task begins, a menu will appear to show a white progress bar that advances from left to right which also displays in that Blockhead's status icon on the left side of the screen. When the progress bar reaches the right, one of the selected item is produced and the items used to make it are unrecoverable.
Also visible during a crafting action are buttons for "Abort" and to use time crystals.
Using time crystals is called a "rush" and will remove the indicated number of crystals from the player's account (if available) and complete the current crafting action.
Aborting or completing a crafting action will return any unused items back to the Blockhead's Inventory and release the Blockhead from the bench.
Fuel
Three crafting surfaces -- the campfire, the kiln, and the furnace -- require fuel to operate. This is indicated by a ten-slot "fire" bar across the top of their crafting menu and a three-icon fueling menu. The fire bar will go dark one slot at a time from right to left as fuel is consumed.
If all fire slots are lit, the fueling menu is dark.
If any fire slots are dark, any fueling menu icons for items currently available in the crafting Blockhead's Inventory light up. Tapping one will add fuel to the crafting surface, re-lighting one or more fire bar slots. Although they use different fueling items, the icon progression is the same: the first icon restores one slot, the second two, and the third five. Over-fueling the crafting surface (such as tapping the second fueling menu icon when only one fire slot is dark) ignores any excess fuel added.
A fire bar (if any) will remain as it was left at the end of the crafting surface's last crafting session, advancing from there when used again.
An option offered after the initial tap on all three of the fueled crafting surfaces is "Refuel." This opens a menu for refueling without crafting anything.
Notes
For most crafting, the only thing lost by aborting is time. But as fuel/fire is not recovered from an aborted crafting action, aborting on benches that require fuel can also be a waste of fuel resources if not done immediately after completion of an item.