The Workshop
The Workshop is where a settlement starts making things instead of only digging them up. It does two jobs at once: it stores the durable goods you craft, find, and loot, and it houses the single trade you hire to turn raw stores into finished cargo.
Construction
Goods
Raiding
ExpeditionsBuild it before you need to store anything
The Workshop opens once your 
Main House reaches Level 4. It costs 
220, 
180, and 
160 at the first level, and climbs to Level 20. It produces no resources of its own. Every level instead buys two things: more room to hold goods, and a faster path to the trades that make them. The full cost ladder lives on the Workshop card.
Storage that grows with the building
Goods do not share the Storehouse with your gold and stone. They live in the Workshop, and the Workshop holds only so many at a time. A Level 1 Workshop is a small shelf; a tall one is a warehouse. Goods waiting in an open Marketplace offer still take up that space until the offer clears, so a full shelf can quietly block a craft or a raid haul.
This is why raiders need a Workshop at all. A raid still sails and plunders resources without one, but a recovered good has nowhere to land unless the launching settlement keeps a Workshop with room to spare. Overflow is not banked, it is left on the sand.
Hire one trade, and mean it
A Workshop houses a single specialist, hired once and kept for the life of the settlement. There is no swapping later, so the choice is a real one. Each trade unlocks a different line of work.
Hiring a trade asks for a level 4 Workshop and 1,000 coins — within reach in your first week. The shelf is small at that height, so the natural next step after hiring is raising the Workshop itself: every level holds more goods, and the trade grows with the building.
| Trade | Makes | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Quartermaster | Supply Chests, Arms Crates, Repair Timber, Old Guild Seals | Steadier colonisation, faster training, and repair stores. |
| Apothecary | Medicine Chests and the Bitter-Shore Tincture | Lifting a plague off an island; slow, high-value brews. |
| Chandler | Storm Lanterns, Fine Rope, Waxed Sailcloth | Safer crossings and fewer colony ships lost to bad water. |
| Relic Workbench | Wayward Compass, Lumen Crystals | Turning relic fragments and raw lumen into usable cargo. |
Unlock recipes one at a time
Hiring a trade opens its line of work; it does not hand you every recipe at once. On the Workshop's Craft tab each recipe shows as a square — the ones you have learned are ready to queue, the rest show their unlock price. You learn a recipe by spending coins on it, and most also ask for crafting mastery — earned on that island, by crafting. Each trade's tree is a ladder: the first recipe is open at hire, the next asks for 15 mastery, then 40, then 80, and the trade's masterwork waits at 150. Mastery is never spent — it is a standing you reach — and every 50 points also quickens all of that trade's crafting on the island by 3%, up to 15%.
With a recipe learned, crafting runs like any other queue. You order it, its inputs are taken from your stores at once, and the order works through over time. The Workshop handles one order at a time, and a finished good needs a free slot to land in. If the shelf is full when an order completes, it waits rather than spoiling the goods.
Reference
How much does the Workshop hold at each level?grows steeply
Capacity is small at first and accelerates with height, so the early levels gate how much you can craft and loot at once. A few sample levels:
| Workshop level | Goods held |
|---|---|
| 1 | 10 |
| 5 | 21 |
| 10 | 52 |
| 15 | 128 |
| 20 | 319 |
What does each recipe cost and make?13 recipes
Each recipe is unlocked once for the coins and mastery shown, then crafted for the inputs shown. Times are as felt on a 5×-speed world (both current worlds run at 5×); slower worlds take proportionally longer, like every other timer. A few goods are still found only as loot or treasure rather than crafted.
| Recipe | Trade | Unlock | Inputs | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supply Chest | Quartermaster | 1,200 coins | 140 lumber, 100 food | 3h |
| Arms Crate | Quartermaster | 1,500 coins + 15 mastery | 100 lumber, 120 gold, 80 food | 3h |
| Repair Timber | Quartermaster | 1,000 coins + 40 mastery | 140 lumber | 2h |
| Old Guild Seal | Quartermaster | 1,500 coins + 80 mastery | 200 gold, 120 stone | 5h |
| War Drum | Quartermaster | 1,800 coins + 150 mastery | 100 stone, 120 gold, 1 Arms Crate | 5h |
| Medicine Chest | Apothecary | 1,800 coins | 160 lumber, 120 gold, 220 food | 4h |
| Bitter-Shore Tincture | Apothecary | 2,000 coins + 15 mastery | 250 gold, 200 lumber, 150 food | 14h |
| Storm Lantern | Chandler | 2,000 coins | 80 lumber, 120 stone, 180 gold | 10h |
| Fine Rope | Chandler | 900 coins + 15 mastery | 100 lumber | 1h 30m |
| Waxed Sailcloth | Chandler | 1,000 coins + 40 mastery | 90 lumber, 60 food | 2h |
| Swift Sails | Chandler | 1,000 coins + 80 mastery | 180 lumber, 60 food | 3h |
| Wayward Compass | Relic Workbench | 800 coins | 4 compass fragments | 10m |
| Lumen Crystal | Relic Workbench | 2,500 coins | 110 lumen, 40 gold | 2h |
Past the recipes, each trade keeps a masterwork at 150 mastery (2,500 coins): a permanent workbench upgrade that crafts the trade's signature good a fifth faster — the Quartermaster's Ledger, the Apothecary's Still, the Chandler's Flame, and the Relic Workbench's Press.
Common questions
Do I need a Workshop to raid?
No. Raids sail and plunder resources without one. A Workshop only matters for the durable goods a raid can find: without storage at the launching settlement, those finds are left behind.
Can I change my specialist later?
No. The hire is permanent for that settlement. If you want a different trade, you raise it on a different island. Plan the choice around what each settlement is actually for.
I hired a trade but cannot craft anything. Why?
Hiring opens the trade's line of work, but each recipe is learned individually. Open the Craft tab and spend coins (a few also ask for a little crafting mastery) to unlock the recipe you want; until then its square shows as locked with its price.
What is a Lumen Crystal for?
It is bottled lumen you can ship safely. Raw lumen can be lost at sea, but a crystal is a good and crosses the water like any cargo. The Relic Workbench presses 110 lumen into one crystal; using the crystal at a settlement with a Church pours 100 lumen back into the reliquary (clamped to whatever room it has). The 10-lumen loss and the two-hour craft are the price of a safe passage. Crystals are tradeable and can be looted.
My order will not finish. What is wrong?
The most common cause is a full shelf. A completed good needs a free storage slot to land in; if the Workshop is at capacity the order waits. Sell, use, or ship goods to clear room, or raise the Workshop a level. Shipping is quickest from the good itself: open it in the Workshop and choose Send — pick the destination island and the good is already on the manifest. Goods you no longer want can be struck from the stores: open the good in the Workshop, choose how many, and confirm — they are destroyed, the shelf frees up, and any waiting craft order resumes on its own. A strike cannot be undone, and goods sitting in an open market listing still hold their shelf space until the listing closes.