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. At each scissors control, choose between buying an intermediate and receiving it as a free gift, instead of manufacturing that resource and its upstream stages.
Start with the product and quantity
Select the token you want to obtain. Desired output starts with the output of one cycle at the level configured in My Factories, and you can edit the number. Changing the token gives you a new suggestion. A factory without a saved level uses its maximum level; a token without a factory starts at 1.
The selected token, entered quantity, Sell surplus option, purchases and gifts, and tree zoom are kept when you visit another section and return in the same tab, even without signing in. Each product retains its own interrupted branches. This temporary state is discarded when you reload the site or close the tab; it is not saved to your account. Reloading can reopen the Production Line screen, but does not restore those temporary choices. Calculation settings, including orientation and Whole cycles, continue to use your saved preferences.
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 on market | 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 or receives the resources at interrupted branches and manufactures the rest. Gifts cost nothing. The page summary recalculates purchases, Power and manufacturing profit; the window separates direct purchases, gifted resources and remaining base resources. |
When you hover over Buy on market, check the finished product, quantity, unit price and total. This means buying that product ready-made, without manufacturing it. In the mixed-purchase window, Buy directly instead lists the resources bought at the cut branches: the rest of the chain is still manufactured and its power is still counted. Profit Loss's Buying inputs view compares buying the immediate inputs of a recipe.
Profit/Loss keeps the same label in every scenario. A negative value has a minus sign and is red. Hover over the result or tap it to open the information box: it explains the calculation and lists sales of the desired output, enabled surplus sales and the deducted purchases and Power. Buying the finished product on the market uses only resale revenue minus its purchase cost. Both scenarios use the configured purchase and sale adjustments. These are estimates at the selected prices, not guaranteed returns.
COIN / 1M POWER, immediately after Power, shows net manufacturing profit per one million Power consumed: net profit ÷ Power in the active chain × 1,000,000. A higher value means more profit from the same Power allowance. Purchases, gifts, enabled surplus sales and the configured Power price all affect this comparison. When no Power is consumed, the indicator shows —.
If your Power is free, set its price to zero in Settings; consumption is still counted. For example, 100 COIN per million Power corresponds to an estimated 1,500 COIN for 15 million Power at the same ratio. This is a comparison, not a daily production forecast: cycle time, inputs and available factories also matter.
Use the scissors to choose a purchase or a gift
- Find the producible resource you want to obtain another way. Hover over the small scissors on its connection, or click the control, to open a box with the description and two options.
- Choose the shopping cart to buy. The required quantity is bought at the configured purchase price, replacing that resource’s production and the upstream stages of its branch.
- Choose the gift box to receive it for free. The required quantity is supplied at zero cost. This resource and everything upstream on that branch are neither bought nor produced, consume no Power and generate no surplus. The rest of the chain is calculated normally.
- Combine purchases and gifts if useful. Each interruption applies to that occurrence of the resource, not every appearance of the same token in the tree. Drag the mixed-purchase window by its title within the flow frame to keep exploring. While any interruption exists, the summary replaces the normal comparisons with Mixed buying.
- Restore a branch with its cart or gift icon. Closing the window with X clears all interruptions and returns to the normal chain.
Clicking outside the window or pressing Escape does not end this scenario. Removing the last cut also closes the mixed-purchase window; X clears all cuts at once. Cuts are temporary and do not change your levels in My Factories. Opening the tree in full screen keeps the comparison available.
Buy directly appears first and always shows its subtotal in the heading, even for one item. When gifts are selected, Gifted resources comes next with a heading subtotal of 0.00, even for one item. Buying base resources (remaining) follows, listing the materials still needed and their subtotal. Gifted resources remain free and do not increase the total. Individual amounts use regular, neutral text; all heading subtotals and Total are bold in the purchase color. The divider and the right-aligned Total stay in a fixed footer, visible while the list scrolls. Total adds direct purchases and remaining base resources, matching Mixed buying in the page summary. Profit/Loss also deducts Power for the active chain, shown separately on the page.
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.
If you choose Gift for A instead, those 6 units are supplied for free: there is no purchase cost for A, no production or Power for its interrupted branch and no surplus to sell from it. B and the final product still need to be manufactured.
The mixed-buying window stays inside the Production Line flow frame, including in full screen. It scrolls with the page without covering the header or summary, and grows with its contents up to the height available inside that frame. This keeps remaining base-resource rows visible alongside purchases and gifts when space allows. When needed, a visible scrollbar inside the window gives access to all rows while Total stays fixed in its footer.
What cycle rounding changes
Without rounding, the tree uses the ratio between the required quantity and the output per cycle. With Whole 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.
Turning on Whole cycles reveals Sell surplus, enabled by default. It includes the sale of excess final and intermediate products left after satisfying each branch's demand. In the example, the extra 5 units can be sold. Turning Sell surplus off removes that revenue from the manufacturing profit, but keeps the costs of all 3 cycles. Turning Whole cycles off hides the surplus switch and excludes surplus sales from the calculation.
A gift also supplies exactly the required quantity: 25 units in this example, at zero cost. It does not run the 3 production cycles or create the 5 surplus units. Whole cycles and Sell surplus continue to apply to the other active branches.