CaveCrafterGuide 03 · Production Line
Find where to produce and where to buy
The production tree shows the materials needed for a chosen quantity. Use its branches to understand the full cost, and the scissors to try buying an intermediate instead of manufacturing everything upstream of it.
Start with the product and quantity
Select the token you want to obtain and enter the quantity. The tree starts from that product and follows its recipes: each connection identifies a required resource, and each branch continues down to materials with no applicable upstream manufacturing stage.
The selected levels, mastery and boosts influence the stages. If the same material appears in more than one branch, each occurrence represents a requirement on that path through the tree. Before comparing values, confirm that the final quantity and parameters match what you intend to produce.
Three ways to obtain the same product
| Scenario | How to interpret it |
|---|---|
| Buying base resources | Calculates the resources needed at the base of the tree and the power to manufacture the final quantity throughout the chain. |
| Buy directly | Compares buying the final product itself, in the selected quantity, at the purchase price. This option does not manufacture inputs or consume power. |
| Mixed purchases | Buys intermediates from the cut branches and manufactures the rest. A separate window adds the direct purchases, base resources and power of this scenario. |
When you hover over Buy directly, check the token, quantity, unit price and total. This avoids confusing the purchase of the final product with the purchase of inputs that go into it.
Use the scissors to buy an intermediate
- Find the producible resource you want to buy. Use the small scissors on its connection.
- Check the mixed-purchase window. Manufacturing that resource and the upstream stages of its branch is replaced by buying the required quantity.
- Add other cuts if useful. They all go into the same window. A cut applies to that occurrence of the resource, not every appearance of the same token in the tree.
- Drag the window to keep exploring the tree. The original results stay on the page for comparison.
- Undo a cut using the branch control or close the window with X to clear all cuts and return to the normal chain.
Clicking outside the window or pressing Escape does not end this scenario. Cuts are temporary and do not change your levels in My factories. Opening the tree in full screen keeps the comparison available.
Hypothetical example: cutting just one branch
A product needs 6 units of A and 2 units of B. You decide to buy A because you do not want to manufacture its components. The mixed scenario now buys the 6 units of A and keeps manufacturing B and the final product.
The resources and power used exclusively to manufacture A are no longer charged in this scenario. If A also appears in another branch that you did not cut, that other path continues to be manufactured.
What cycle rounding changes
Without rounding, the tree uses the ratio between the required quantity and the output per cycle. With Round cycles, each occurrence is rounded up to the next whole cycle. Asking for 25 units of a resource that produces 10 per cycle therefore requires 3 cycles rather than 2.5.
The increase can propagate upstream: inputs and power must cover all 3 cycles. When you cut that branch to buy the resource, the purchase covers the requested quantity — 25 units in this example — rather than the 30 that would be produced with rounding.