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Building

Building

Build B: start with a foundation on dry, level ground, then add walls, a doorway and a roof. A green preview means OK; red tells you why not. R rotates floors, roofs and stairs, walls turn to fit their edge, Esc finishes. Walls and floors always attach to a foundation or floor.

Building pieces

Keep it standing

DecayOutside towns everything wears down and collapses at 0%: wooden pieces after 15 days, stone after 61, a workbench after about 2. Town land stops it. Every rate is under Decay outside towns below.
Go higherUpgrade to stone with a wooden hammer; the button says what's missing. Stone supports allow a 3rd and 4th storey. Put upper floors at stair landings.
DamageAxes damage wood, pickaxes damage stone and metal (Blacksteel and Star Iron ones too since 0.3.2). Town buildings are much tougher, and a Town Hall can't be damaged while its town exists. Fields outside towns can be damaged and cleared like wooden builds. Breaking a support can bring down the pieces above it.
LootA destroyed chest spills its contents, and anything left on the ground disappears after 5 minutes. Destroyed pieces drop ¼ of their materials; disassembling your own gives back ½ (rounded down). Remove chests and furnishings from a support first, and start at the top.
DoorsYour own doors open for you. Town members need building permission, and a plot's owner can use the doors on their plot. Friends get no extra access. Chests and stations are open to anyone in reach.
Region capEach region holds 4,096 pieces for all players together, including stations, chests and doors. Build B shows the count. At the limit new pieces are refused and cost nothing.

Decay outside towns

Without town land under it, everything you build wears down to 0% and then falls. We measured this on about 100,000 buildings seen on EU on 20 October 2026. The rules below match 93–100% of the worn pieces of almost every type (doors 85%, the anvil about 75%). The rest had worn further than decay alone explains, most likely from damage. tested Version 0.2.11 then cut stone to 60 days and metal to 120, so those rows use the game's new numbers.

WhatSafe forThen 100% → 0% overMaintain with
Wooden pieces (foundations, walls, floors, roofs, doors, stairs…)1 day14 daysPlanks
Stone pieces1 day60 daysCut stone
Storage chest, metal chest, signs1 day14 daysPlanks
Workbench, loom, inscription table, market stall, fence, camp6 hours2 daysPlanks
Campfire, smelter, stonecutter, forge6 hoursabout 8½ days*Cut stone
Anvil6 hoursabout 17 days*Metal ingots
Wheat and berry plotsDon't decay, but an empty one clears after 7 days without planting, and outside towns they can be damaged (since 0.3.2).

* Before 0.2.11 stone stations took 52 days and the anvil 104, because stations wear 7 times faster than pieces. These two times assume that's still so; we haven't measured them since the update.

  • Stations wear 7 times faster than building pieces of the same material and get only 6 hours of grace instead of a day. A workbench out in the wild is gone after about two and a quarter days.
  • Decay is steady and keeps running while you are offline. A wooden wall is at 50% seven days after its first day.
  • Maintain (Build B, wooden hammer in your pack, within 9 m) refills the piece and restarts its grace. It costs 1 material per 10% missing, rounded up: a wall at 95% costs 1 plank, at 50% it costs 5. At 90% or more it always costs just 1.
  • "Metal lasts 120 days", as the game's Maintain tip says, only applies to the anvil, the one metal station, and stations wear 7 times faster, so about 17 days. A metal chest wears like wood.
  • At 0% it collapses and is gone. Not one piece at 0% was still standing in the data.
  • Town land stops decay for every building piece on it (all 34,683 we saw). It doesn't repair them: pieces that wore down before the land was claimed stay at that condition (about 1,700 did), so maintain them once. Stations and chests there are protected too, except 86 of about 2,900, almost all owned by players outside that town. If a town's treasury runs dry and it doesn't pay within 7 days, the town lapses, its land is released and everything on it decays like the rest.

Tips from building

  • Build reach is 18 m up or down, and a foundation can attach up to 6 m lower than the one next to it, so a build can step down a slope.
  • Stations and chests go on slope decks, wheat and berry plots can go under a roof, and town halls and market stalls can stand on foundations and floors, even over water.
  • A foundation sits at the highest ground under it. On a slope its downhill edge can float metres up (3.8 m measured), and a doorway there can't be reached. Put doorways where the floor is within about 1 m of the ground. tested
  • You need to stand close to remove a piece (it worked within 6 m, failed at 11 m). Remove a doorway's door first. tested
  • Standing on a raised slab can put a station below you "out of reach". Step off. tested
  • Chests and stations can go indoors on a foundation; two chests fit on one 6 m tile. tested
  • Sign posts hold 3 lines of up to 24 characters, readable within 8 m, and follow the same language rules as chat.
  • Windows block you like walls. Roofs hide while you're inside, in rooms up to three storeys tall. A split-level build on uneven ground counts as one room, and flat roofs can sit at ridge height.
  • Floors and roofs need a wall or post below them, or a connected deck edge.
  • Since 0.3.2: fences span a full building edge and join up at the corners, walking into a wall no longer makes you jump, and Town Hall placement says why it can't go somewhere.
  • Since 0.3.0: doors push people aside instead of closing on them, your own pet no longer blocks you, houses on slopes with raised sections count as one room, balconies stay visible indoors, and upper floors on high hills can be picked and built on. Jumps off roofs and decks are smoother, and wall jumps are back.
Show the original infographicBuilding and towns infographic