Tutorial Walkthrough

Welcome, new player!

In response to recent posts on social media expressing confusion during the tutorial, we put together this walkthrough guide. This guide is intended to be followed along while you click through the tutorial missions. Besides reminding you of your instructions and objectives, this guide will provide as much clarity as possible about what is happening and expected—and occasionally include further explanation when it helps explain why something is happening or expected.

If you're feeling even a little confused or not following along why certain things are happening (or not happening), this guide attempts to answer those questions.

If you are familiar with some things but not others, skip around using this wiki article's table of contents.

Note for players already familiar with core game mechanics: This guide does not go into strategy or optimizations. Such information is contained on pages throughout the wiki. Certain things will be omitted here for the sake of clarity about core concepts, so you are encouraged to use this page until you understand the basics, then move on to other pages in this wiki.

For the most part, things will be explained here in this article, without making you click around this wiki. However, plenty of links are provided, should you wish you explore.

Starting the tutorial


This screen greets you when you load the game for the first time. There may be popups about upcoming or recent patch notes, "What's New," etc.. Feel free to ignore these until you become acquainted with the mechanics.

Orientation
The first part of the tutorial orients you to four core mechanics:
 * moving the camera around your town
 * winning and losing the game
 * blueprints for buildings
 * pausing and unpausing the game

The Queen's Envoy is your in-game guide, providing you with instructions on how to complete the tutorial. This character does not play a major role in the game besides the tutorial.

Camera controls


 Use [W, A, S, D] or the mouse to move the camera.

The first step is knowing how to look around. In Against the Storm, you can move the camera forward, backward, left, and right to look around your settlement. Right now, you can see all your villagers and buildings, but you'll need to look around into the forest to plan where to expand.

The Queen's Impatience and losing the game


 Neglecting your village will increase the Queen's Impatience and bring her wrath upon you ...

The tutorial introduces the Queen's Impatience, represented by a bar on the bottom right of your screen. This bar fills up with a bright red color, from left to right towards the skull icon. The bar fills gradually during the course of the game. When the bar fills up completely, you run out of time, lose, and cannot continue playing the town. You will have to start a new town.

Most of the time, the value of the Queen's Impatience simply increases at a slow and steady rate. However, some mechanics cause a large immediate penalty, like making the bar jump up by +1 points instantly because you didn't finish an objective in time. There are also ways to subtract points from the Impatience bar, thereby adding time to finish the mission. Finally, the rate of increase can speed up or slow down based on your decisions and random events.



Reputation and winning the game


 Fulfilling your duties will increase the town's Reputation, unlock new buildings and eventually bring you to victory.

Next, the tutorial introduces Reputation, a bar representing your progress towards winning the mission. This bar fills up blue, from right to left towards the crown icon. Your town gains Reputation when you complete town objectives, make decisions that reward Reputation points, and when your villagers are especially satisfied.

Whenever you gain a full point of Reputation, the Queen's Impatience also decreases by one point.

Unlike the Queen's Impatience, Reputation does not gradually increase at the beginning of each mission. Rather, after you have made some progress building the town and met specific conditions, your town starts to gain Reputation points gradually. This means that you can run out of time and lose the game before you gain any Reputation points.

If the Reputation bar fills up before the Queen's Impatience bar, you win the mission.

If Impatience fills up before Reputation, you lose the mission.

Blueprints


 Now, choose a new blueprint. Click on the crown icon below.

Next up, you are given your town's first Blueprint.

A Blueprint is the ability to place a Building in your town. Most of the buildings in Against the Storm require you to have the Blueprint before you can build it in each town. For example, before you can place a Small Farm in a new town, your town must get the Blueprint for the Small Farm.

There are several ways to get Blueprints. When you earn the choice of a new Blueprint, the tutorial is showing you how to choose it.

 You can choose a new building blueprint as a reward for earning more Reputation Points.

You get to choose Blueprints at the beginning of a new town. The tooltip on the glowing Reputation icon is telling you that you can earn more Blueprints once you gain more Reputation. Do you notice the small blue pips at the base of each line on the Reputation bar in the screenshot? Those are the Reputation milestones. When your town's Reputation reaches each milestone, you earn one more Blueprint.

Choosing your first Blueprint


 Each expedition starts with only a few essential blueprints. More will be given to you as you gain Reputation Points. Now, pick the Woodcutters' Camp.

First things first. During the tutorial, you don't have any choices; the tutorial tells you which Blueprint you get next. In regular missions, when you earn the choice of a new Blueprint, you will get to choose from a few options.

'''Blueprint choice is one of the core mechanics of Against the Storm. You cannot expect to get the Blueprints for every building—not even close. In fact, you may never get to choose a Blueprint that you think you need for a village. Every mission must adapt to the Blueprints choices you are given.'''

After the tutorial, when you start playing regular missions, you will get three free Blueprints at the beginning of every mission. You will only have access to a few buildings, so you may see repeated options. For example, for your first Blueprint, you may be given the options of the Herb Garden, Plantation, or Herbalists' Camp. After you pick one, like the Herbalists' Camp, then you'll get three new options for your second Blueprint from which you can choose one, and the Herb Garden may appear again.

Unpausing and time controls


 Press [SPACE] to resume.

Pausing and unpausing may be the game control you use the most often. When the tutorial started, the game was paused. The villagers were still, Impatience was not increasing, and nothing in the game world was getting better or worse. When the game is paused, you are free to take as much time as you need to plan, look through your town and the forest, make decisions, and step away from your computer.



There is a lot going on in the time displays and controls. Feel free to hover the elements and read the tooltips about them, but for this guide we'll focus on them as things come up, so that you have the right context for understanding why each one is important.

The time controls let you pause, unpause, speed up, and slow down the game speed. These affect everything that happens in the world. If the game is sped up, everything happens faster relative to real-world time, with no exceptions. Timers on objectives, villagers' walking and working speeds, and how often villagers eat and rest are all proportionally sped up or slowed down so that there is no in-game advantage to playing the game faster or slower. It's up to your personal preference, and regardless of how fast the game time goes, you'll still find yourself pausing and unpausing frequently.

The controls are, from left to right, as you might expect:
 * Pause
 * Play (normal speed)
 * x1.5 game speed
 * x2 game speed
 * x3 game speed

1. First Tutorial Mission: Orders, Gathering, and Glades
The first mission demonstrates the following core mechanics:
 * earning Blueprints
 * the contruction toolbar
 * building placement, including suitable ground and gathering range
 * building materials and construction progress
 * workers
 * receiving Orders
 * delivering Orders
 * marking trees for harvesting
 * opening glades
 * gathering resources
 * newcomers
 * the Storm
 * choosing Cornerstones

1.A. Building a Woodcutters' Camp


 Build a Woodcutters' Camp and explore the forest. You have to keep the fire going at all times.

If you dismissed the tutorial message by trying to pause the game again, don't worry, that's why this guide has screenshots. You can pause the game at any time.

When you unpaused the game, you saw the rain, villagers, fire, and the fog in the forest start to move.

Now the game screen looks mostly how it will look in regular missions. The tutorial will explain most of these things soon. For now, the tutorial gave you three objectives.

1. Placing the camp


 Camps

You construct buildings with the buttons at the bottom of the screen, just above the Reputation bar. The button that the tutorial highlights for you is the one for constructing camps. Camps are the cheap, inefficient, yet essential buildings that almost every town uses to get started.

Your only available camp right now is the Woodcutters' Camp, since you just earned that Blueprint.



 Press R to rotate

Press ESC or RMB to cancel

The camp has a footprint of 2x2 squares, and you will need to place it on suitable ground. The ground squares will highlight red underneath the mouse cursor wherever the building cannot be placed.

The large, circular green highlighting around the building is the gathering range. Any trees within the green range can be reached by this camp.

2. Construction by villagers


Once you unpause the game, the camp will be constructed by your villagers. None of your 9 villagers has any work, so they will automatically build for you. You do not need to tell any of them to do it. (In fact, you cannot issue commands to villagers in Against the Storm.)

One villager will first need to go to the big red building, the Main Warehouse. They will pick up the 2 that are required to build the Woodcutters' Camp. That villager will carry the Parts to the scaffolding then start construction.

3. Assigning workers


The camp is finished. There's a red, black, and white warning icon above the camp that looks like a person's head, because the camp needs workers. No trees will be cut or wood gathered until there are workers at the camp.

There are times when you will want to have no workers in a building, but this is not that time. If you haven't already, click on the Woodcutters' Camp to open its building panel.

You have 9 villagers doing nothing right now. You might as well put to work as many as possible.

1.B. Your First Orders


 Periodically, you'll be assigned new orders from the Citadel. Click the envelope icon in the upper right corner to check the new objectives.

By now, you've seen the New Orders alert on the left side of your screen, and you've probably seen the glowing button in the top-right corner. They both mention Orders.

Completing Orders is a reliable and efficient method of gaining Reputation and advancing your town. In the tutorial, Orders represent the chapters in which new concepts are introduced, and they summarize the requirements for completing the tutorial.

When you open the Orders screen, the game automatically pauses.

1. Objectives and rewards in Orders


 Woodcutters' Camps

Similar to Blueprints, in a regular mission, you get to choose from a few options for your Orders. During the tutorial, you are given the Orders. '''And, like having your choice of Blueprints, being able to choose your Orders from random options is a core mechanic of Against the Storm. Every mission must adapt to the Order choices you are given.'''

Review the objectives. You must have two Woodcutters' Camps built, and they must collect 10. You may have noticed that your town started with some Wood; the Wood you started with does not count towards this objective. Your camp(s) must gather 10 new Wood.

When you deliver this Order, your town will receive three rewards.
 * A group of 3 new Beavers will join your settlement.
 * You will gain a Perk called that increases the speed of gathering Wood in the camp.
 * Your town will gain 1 Reputation Point.

2. Another camp and gathering wood


 Woodcutters' Camps

1/2 Woodcutters' Camp

0/10 Wood in Woodcutters' Camp

It will take a minute before your villagers finish constructing the second camp and before woodcutters will gather the Wood you need to complete the Order. Since unassigned villagers build and assigned woodcutters gather, these two things can happen at the same time.

3. Delivering your first Order


 Orders ready to complete

After you build your second camp and your woodcutters gather enough wood, the Order will be ready for delivery. A blue checkmark appears next to Orders that are ready to deliver.

This particular order requires you to gather Wood, so when you deliver the Order, you won't actually be losing 10 Wood from your town. In regular missions, Orders often require you to give up goods to complete the Order. Be sure to read Orders carefully.

1.C. Exploring the Forest
 Mark trees for harvest

A few things happened when you delivered the Order:
 * Your town gained 1 Reputation point.
 * You lost a point of the Queen's Impatience (or brought it down to zero).
 * Achieving the Reputation milestone rewarded you with a new Blueprint to unlock.
 * A new Order became available.
 * You got an alert to Mark trees for harvest.

Recall your objectives:

You explore The Forest by cutting trees. Your woodcutters clear trees to make buildable space and usable to use in your town.

If you haven't already, pause the game and take a minute to scroll around and look at the forest surrounding your village. It's a small area for the tutorial, but it's not completely full of trees. There are Glades in the forest, which are small (and some large) clearings or open spaces. Every Glade holds a random assortment of the following, depending on its size:
 * resource deposits from which your villagers can gather
 * fertile soil for farming
 * encampments of lost villagers you can add to your population
 * ruined buildings you can repair and use or salvage for resources
 * Glade Events, which present you with timed objectives, penalties, and rewards
 * and more

The rewards that come from Glades and Glade Events are one of the primary ways of advancing your town. Most Orders will push you out of the comfort zone of your starting area, whether by explicitly requiring you to open new Glades or by requiring you to use resources you don't currently have access to. Many Glade Events can also reward Reputation directly in addition to any Orders they help you satisfy, making them count twice.

In Against the Storm, the defining characteristic of Glades is not their size, but whether or not they have a skull icon above them. Dangerous Glades have a skull above them; Small Glades do not. Therefore, as you look around the forest, you'll see that most of the Glades on the map are Small Glades. And there is one Dangerous Glade.



2. Assigning additional workers.


Occasionally, you'll be pleasantly surprised to see a new Order with objectives you've already or partially satisfied. In this case, you already had a Woodcutters' Camp with workeres assigned. If you assigned any Beavers as those workers, based on intuition or following along on this guide, then you already have 3/5 of the objective. If not, it's as simple as a few clicks to reassign the workers to be Beavers instead of Humans or Lizards. Or you may have even assigned Beavers in your second Woodcutters' Camp too, which means you already have the second objective of this Order satisfied.

Almost every Order has multiple conditions to meet. In order to be able to deliver the Order, all conditions must be satisfied at the same time. This means that, until you've broken through the forest into two Glades, you don't have to have the Beavers assigned. However, to complete the tutorial faster, you'll want to assign all the workers you can to your two Woodcutters' Camps.

By the way, it's true the other way around, too. If you assign 5 Beavers now, it doesn't count until the second Glade has been opened. If you remove any Beavers from the camps between now and then, you won't be able to deliver the Order until you put them back.

3. Opening Glades
You get nothing from the Glades until your woodcutters open the Glades. When the last tree falls that was standing in between your explored area and the unexplored Glade, the fog vanishes and anything in the Glade becomes accessible. Any timers on objectives or penalties on Glade Events in the Glade start counting. We'll talk more about Glade Events later.

Your order requires you to open two new Glades. There's an alert on the left that says Mark trees for harvest. Clicking it highlights two icons in the construction toolbar. These icons are related to construction because they are how you clear space for new buildings.



When you click the Mark Trees button, the axe icon with the green plus sign, your mouse cursor changes to a wide yellow circle. Clicking and dragging over trees will paint them with the mark for harvesting. Clicking the other axe icon or holding  changes the painting mode to unmarking trees. You may find yourself often flipping between the modes while marking trees.

If you mark trees that are within the range of any Woodcutters' Camp, their marking will appear yellow. If they are outside of all ranges of all Woodcutters' Camps, the marking will be grey. The marking will fade in and out, so if you find the marking hard to see while the game is paused, try unpausing for a second or two to let the marking intensify.

You could let your woodcutters clear cut the forest until they accidentally open two Glades to satisfy your Order. To progress through the tutorial faster, use the marking tool to focus the woodcutters on the trees that will get them to open the Glades.

4. Delivering the Order


Before long, your Order will be ready to deliver.

5. Third Order: Gathering food


 Food Supplies

Your third Order requires you to use a new building to gather food from the forest. The tutorial village has access to in the Moss Broccoli Patches near the Main Warehouse. But you can't do anything with this resource deposit until you have the right camp. Meanwhile, your food supplies have been dwindling, because the only thing your villagers have been gathering is, and Wood is not food. In the tutorial, you have plenty of food, but in regular missions, you need to establish a food supply quickly.

This walkthrough hasn't yet addressed the two Blueprints you earned since the Woodcutters' Camp for your last two Orders. If you haven't look at them yet, you'll be getting the Shelter and the Small Foragers' Camp.

The tutorial hasn't required you to build the Shelter yet. It's simple building that meets the needs of your villagers for Shelter. This walkthrough hasn't discussed villager needs yet, but for now, all you need to know is that shelter and food are basic needs that your villagers expect you to provide. You can place a Shelter if you'd like, but this guide won't go into that now.



6. Foragers' Camp


<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Press R to Rotate

Press ESC or RMB to cancel

The Foragers' Camp behaves similarly to the Woodcutters' Camp. It has a range from which workers can gather. When you select a Foragers' Camp (whether by clicking on it in the construction panel or by clicking one placed in your village), in addition to the green highlighted area in range, you will also see resource icons appear on the screen. These icons hover over the resource deposits in the forest from which you can gather that resource. As you look around the forest with the camp selected, these icons will show you off-screen resources and help you place your camps within range of resources.

In the screenshot above, notice how one deposit is out of range, so its icon does not have the same yellow, glowing highlight at the others. It's also not quite as big. Also note the icons appearing in the top-left corner of the screenshot, well out of range of this camp.

7. Assigning Foragers


Just like the Woodcutters' Camp (and nearly every other building in the game), the Foragers' Camp needs workers. Which do we chooose? When you open the Foragers' Camp, it also has a Specialization Bonus, and it's.



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Humans

An adaptable species, but very susceptible to the rain. Humans are adept at farming and really enjoy brewing.



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Vegetables

Common food source. Obtained by: Hallowed Small Farm, Small Farm, Foragers' Camp, Small Foragers' Camp, Homestead.

After a short while, you will see your food resources increase. At the top of your screen, you can see the resources summary panel. The first category, which looks like a loaf of bread, is your total food items. These are all of the resources that your villagers can eat. Note that, later in the game, you will come across resources that are ingredients for food but not actually edible as food, like. These goods are categorized as crafting materials instead of as food.

8. Newcomers


<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Newcomers

Newcomers are waiting. The next group won't be sent until you accept this one.

Around this time, you may find a new glowing icon appear in the top right of your screen after a clicking sort of sound. Newcomers have arrived in your village. So far, in this mission, you started with 9 villagers, then gained 3 Beavers and 3 Humans from delivering Orders. Newcomers arrive about once a year (more on Seasons later).



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Pervun Runebeak, Royal Stormwalker

These people have been sent here by the Crown. Which group do you want to stay, Viceroy? The other will continue on to the next settlement.

Like Blueprints and Orders, you are given a choice of (in the case of Newcomers) two groups of villagers who can join your village. In the screenshot above, you can see one choice has 1 villager of each species (3 total), and the other has two Humans. The first group brings a stack of 15, but the second brings three smaller stacks: , , and. Your options will differ; these choices are not fixed in the tutorial like the Blueprints and Orders.

Being able to choose from random options of newcomers—which species they are and what goods they bring with them—is another layer of variability that every mission must adapt to, like Blueprints and Orders.

At any given time, the best choice depends on what you need in your village right now and plan to need later. If you would prefer more food later, if you need another Beaver, or if you need as many villagers as possible, then you could pick the first one. If you need food now or need more Humans specifically, then the second one would be better. It depends.

9. Fourth Order: Gathering clay


<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Stonecutters' Camp

Just like last time, after you deliver your Order for gathering food, you get another Blueprint. And just like last time, your next Order requires you to use it. The Stonecutters' Camp works just like the others. When you go to place it, notice which resource icons appear on the map.



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Stonecutters' Camp

0/1 Stonecutters' Camp

0/5 Clay in Stonecutters' Camp

The Stonecutters' Camp gathers, which are the red-orange rock deposits near your village (and yellow cube resource icons when the camp is selected). Complete this Order just like you completed the Foragers' Camp Order.

10. The first Storm


Around this time, or maybe a few minutes ago (that's fine too), the first Storm will start. Let's talk about Seasons. Every year of every mission, the world goes through 3 seasons: Drizzle, Clearance, and Storm. Each has different effects on your villages and purposes for your villagers.



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Looming Darkness

Forest Mystery (Simple)

The rampaging storm stifles the spirit of all living creatures. An additional stack of this effect is added for each Hostility level. (-4 to Global Resolve)

Active only in season: Storm

Active from Hostility 0

The mechanics and interactions of each Seasons are too involved for this guide. Right now, what you need to know is that during the Storm, your villagers lose Resolve. During the tutorial, it's not going to cause you problems. But it's important to point out that it is happening and the relationship between Resolve and the Storm.

Resolve is the green number under the species in the top left. It's a single number that represents the happiness of all the villagers of that species. Two numbers may be shown if the species' Resolve is increasing or descreasing, so that you can see how far it will go based on all of the current effects on that species. If Resolve drops to 0 or below 0, then that species will start to leave your settlement, one villager at a time. Every villager that leaves causes a penalty of the Queen's Impatience.

Resolve drops because of the Looming Darkness effect (called a Forest Mystery). This effect only occurs during the Storm. It causes -4 Resolve to every species, plus an additional -4 for every level of Hostility. Hostility is the number next to the red eye above the time controls. In the screenshot above, it's a zero, so Looming Darkness only causes -4 to Resolve this time. If Hostility raises to 1 during this Storm or before the next Storm, then Looming Darkness causes -8 to Resolve. That would be enough for the Lizards to be unhappy and start to leave.

The good news is that you have some control over Hostility. For now, in the tutorial, Hostility should be 0, and any Resolve loss should not cause any villagers to leave. Because of that, you don't need to worry about the Storm right now. In regular missions, you'll need to prepare for the Storm every year.

11. Your first Cornerstone


After the Storm, it's now Year II and the Drizzle Season returns. At the beginning of every year (the start of every Drizzle season), you earn a new Cornerstone. Cornerstones are permanent effects you choose to help your village. There are a wide variety of effects; here are some examples:
 * more effective production (bonus resources)
 * faster production
 * cheaper or faster building construction
 * bonuses to Resolve
 * reductions to Hostility
 * reductions to the rate of increase of the Queen's Impatience
 * changes to lengths of the Seasons
 * help with Glade Events
 * bigger groups of newcomers
 * more efficient housing
 * and many, many more

'''The Against the Storm pattern continues. Just like Blueprints, Orders, and Newcomers, you are given random options every time you get to choose a Cornerstone, and every mission must adapt to the options you are given and the choices you make.'''

As you play more missions, you'll start to recognize and be able to plan for powerful combinations and interactions of Blueprints, Orders, and Cornerstones.



<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Choose Cornerstone

The Queen's Envoy

"No one can weather the storm alone. The Queen offers you a cornerstone that will lay the foundation for your town's prosperity. Choose wisely, as you won't be able to change it."

In the tutorial, you are offered these two Cornerstones, Exploration Contract and Carpenter's Tools. The first gives you 20 and 20  every time you open a new Glade. The second improves production speed in a building you haven't seen yet called the Crude Workstation. You can choose whichever you like.

12. Fifth Order: Gathering with the Harvesters' Camp


<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Harvesters' Camp

Another Order, and another camp Blueprint. The Harvesters' Camp lets your village gather plants that produce crafting materials that aren't used in food. Like the Stonecutters' Camp, the Harvesters' Camp comes in only one size. Note which resource icons appear when you go to place the camp to make sure the deposits of are in range of the camp.

13: Sixth Order: Produce building materials
<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Building Blocks

Now it's time to put all that, , and that we've been gathering to good use. The Crude Workstation is your first industry building. Industry buildings take raw materials, crafting materials, and sometimes food to make more advanced goods used to advance your village. The Crude Workstation is the first of these because its products are used to build all the industry buildings and other advanced buildings your settlement needs.

Once you build one, we can talk about production in buildings and how it's different from camps. For now, here are your updated objectives:

14. Placing the Crude Workstation


When you go to place the Crude Workstation, you'll see right away it doesn't have a range like the camps. Instead, it shows white dotted lines traveling between nearby buildings and the workstation. These lines show where the workers assigned to the Crude Workstation can go to pick up the ingredients needed to make products at the workstation. They will go to the closest building that has what they need. If no close buildings have the ingredients, or if there are no close buildings, then the workers will go to the Main Warehouse, regardless of how far away the warehouse is. (You can see this by moving around the map before placing the workstation; one white dotted line will always show the connection between the workstation and the warehouse.) If the village has none of the needed ingredients, then work will stop in the building while they wait for the settlement to obtain the ingredients they need.

This behavior with ingredients is the same for all buildings that produce things with ingredients (vs. gathering camps). More on that in a minute. For now, don't worry too much about optimizing where to put the workstation, anywhere near the center of your village is fine.

15. Recipes and swappable ingredients


<blockquote class="walkthrough-quote"> Crude Workstation

Can produce:,  ,  ,.

Can use:.

Because the Crude Workstation is not a gathering building, it uses a new primary Against the Storm mechanic, Recipes and Ingredients.

Recipes require ingredients (usually a small stack of one or two goods) and make products (usually a stack), and this happens only in buildings with the Recipes. Every production building in Against the Storm has a different, fixed set of Recipes; they are not random. You will start to remember which buildings give you access to which Recipes, and the tooltips will remind you.

Most Recipes have ingredients that can be swapped for other ingredients, which is a critical mechanic to recognize and use. This is shown by a thick, circular border with arrows around the ingredient icon. It is important you learn to recognize this symbol. Here is the Crude Workstation recipe panel for an example. In the recipe for and, note how the circular-arrow border around the ingredient icons for  and  looks different from the square border around the ingredient icon for.



On the wiki, when you can swap ingredients, you will see choices for the ingredients in the same cell of the tables, like this:

Next, besides the ingredients and the product, the Recipe also shows a red icon:. This icons represents the efficiency of this Recipe in the Crude Workstation, which is very low, or zero stars. The efficiency or star-rating helps you quickly compare how long production takes and how many ingredients are consumed to make the product.

The same Recipe ( for ) has a different efficiency in other buildings. For example, in a building you don't have access to yet, the Carpenter, it's and only takes 5  to make the same 2. Recipes in buildings can have zero stars, one star , two stars , or three stars.

If you took the Cornerstone for faster production speed in the Crude Workstation, then the production times in your Crude Workstation will be less than in the screenshot above. The workers you assign will produce each stack of products faster.

If you took Newcomers that brought and, then you'll be able to finish the Building Blocks Order even if you haven't yet gathered enough  or. You will just need to swap to those or enable both ingredients.