Recipes

Overview
Recipes represent the way raw or unrefined goods are refined, crafted, or packaged into more valuable goods. This value comes from the goods' ability to be used to satisfy villagers' Complex Food Needs or Services Needs or for Trading.

The game calls all the ways that buildings gather goods, produce goods, or provide services recipes. There are only a few things in buildings that are not recipes. For example, the Passive Effects from service buildings, the Stormforged Cornerstones in the Forsaken Altar, and the Firekeeper Bonuses in the Ancient Hearth are not recipes.

By sequencing together recipes into production chains across your settlements' buildings', you multiply goods. Production recipes usually generate more units of the product than they use of the ingredients. For example, many production recipes produce 10 of a particular good, like, but use much fewer than 10 of the input ingredients, like. This becomes especially useful if you can get complex food production up early, as you can feed more villagers with complex food than with raw food.

Swapping Ingredients
Whenever producing a new recipe, check to see which ingredients are allowed. If the recipe accepts multiple ingredients, the resource icon will be round with rotating arrows around it. If the ingredient is required, the icon will be square.

In the example screenshot, the top recipe is for. This Building is currently using for this recipe, but the rotating arrows around the icon means you can swap the ingredient. This recipe also has a fixed ingredient of ; the square border around the ingredient icon means you cannot swap this ingredient. The bottom recipe for is currently using, but that can be changed, indicated by the rotating arrow circular frame around the Eggs icon.

Recipes Panel
You can also see your current Resource amounts from the Recipes Panel. You can browse the Recipes Panel by either end Product or Ingredient - allowing you to see which Recipes either produce or use that Resource. If you uncheck Show All, it will only display the Resources and Buildings you have available. You can also check Show All to explore the full list of Recipes.

When browsing by Product, the left-hand side number indicates the current amount in Storage; and on the right-hand side you can set a Global Production Limit for that Resource. If you click on a Product, it will expand a menu showing which Buildings have Recipes for that Product - including which Ingredients can be used, how many Ingredients are required, and how many resulting Resources that Recipe will produce. It will also display all possible Resources which could be used to produce that Product in the bottom of the panel - including how many currently reside in your Storage.

When browsing by Ingredient, the left-hand side number indicates the current amount in Storage. If you click on an Ingredient, it will expand a menu showing all the Recipes from all the Buildings which use that Ingredient. If you have unlocked a particular Building, you can adjust which Ingredients are being used and apply a Building-specific Production Limit that overrides the Global Production Limit.

The Recipes Panel hotkey is  by default.