Building Tiers & Base Defense

Thatch → Wood → Stone → Concrete is the full material ladder. There's no tier-4 building material — the T4 electric-tier unlock is an appliance (Wall Charging Station) grafted onto a Concrete shell, not a new wall type.

The tiers

• T1 — Thatch/Wood: cheap, fast and disposable. Fine for a first-night shelter, not for anything you plan to keep.
• T2 — Stone: survives most storms and most predator hits. Stone Wall Fortification (Stone x50 + Tree Sap x20) is a dedicated reinforced piece for the side facing a wave or storm front, without upgrading the whole base.
• T3 — Concrete: the durability ceiling. Concrete Wall Fortification (Concrete Mix x10 + Steel Rebar x20 + Steel Screw x10) is the same idea at the top tier. Everything else at T3 — Clay Brick, Limestone, Stone Brick, Aluminium, Glass — is a cosmetic/biome-material swap sharing Concrete's durability, not a further step up.
• Biome variants (Ice, Sandworm, Scoria) exist at T1/T2 for their local look, not extra protection — treat them as Wood/Stone equivalents.

Floors and doors

• Thatch Floor (Fiber x20 + Stick x3) and Wood Floor (Wood x20 + Fiber x12) are the T1 pair; Stone Floor (Stone x20 + Iron Nail x6 + Wood x6 + Leather x4) is T2; Concrete Floor (Steel Rebar x10 + Steel Screw x4 + Concrete Mix x4) is T3.
• Wood Door (Wood x10 + Fiber x8) is the T1 baseline; Concrete Door (Steel Ingot x6 + Steel Screw x4 + Platinum Ingot x2) is the T3 top — notably the only door recipe that reaches for Platinum, so keep some in reserve before a base-defense upgrade pass.

Active defenses

• Wood Spikes Fortification (Wood x80 + Rope x6) mounts directly onto fortification walls and damages anything that attacks them — cheap chip damage on every hit a predator lands on your perimeter. Refined Wood and Concrete variants scale the same idea up the material tiers.
• Medium Wood Hedgehog (Wood x60 + Rope x4) and Scorpion Hedgehog (adds poison) are standalone obstacle placements for open ground where a wall isn't practical.
• Automated defense turrets exist too (pistol and flamethrower variants) for a base that wants protection without a crew member on watch — a late-stage investment, not a starter option.

The Building talent tree (21 nodes)

• Discount Thatch/Wood/Stone/Concrete cut crafting cost per tier — stack the one matching whatever you're actively building, not all four at once.
• Wood/Stone/Concrete Hauling cut carry weight per material — grab the one for whatever you're currently stockpiling in bulk.
• Weatherproof Cladding slows storm damage on wooden buildables specifically, and Fireproofing Sealant cuts their catch-fire odds — both worth taking if a T1 shelter is going to outlive its first storm season rather than get replaced immediately.
• Extra Space II enlarges every storage deployable's inventory — a base-wide multiplier for one point.

Repair doctrine

• The Repairing talent With One Swing gives a chance to instantly repair a building piece, and Better Than New grants temporary storm resistance right after a repair — worth a couple of points if one crew member owns base maintenance (see the Weather & Hazards guide).
• Doorway chokepoints beat walls — predators and hostile AI path to doors, not through solid walls, so a defended single entrance holds a base far cheaper than upgrading every wall.
• Roof your generators and crop plots — storms and hazards target exposed infrastructure specifically, not just open ground.
• One bed per prospector, inside the walls — respawning outside your defenses during a night wave is a second death before you've even re-geared.
• Build your final material tier from the start on anything permanent; re-upgrading an occupied base under active predator pressure is worse than the wait.