Buildings, Population & Construction

Every copy of a building has its own plot and its own row in the Building it table on the building's page. A plot appears when both of these are true:

1. Your player level is at least the copy's Player level.
2. The building under Needs built exists at level 1 or higher, meaning its construction has been finished (tapped). A building that is still under construction does not count yet.

Most first copies need nothing but a player level. The chains that do exist:

After that the three Shack types take turns. From level 13 on, each new Small Shack waits for a Large Shack, each Medium Shack waits for a Small Shack, and each Large Shack waits for a Medium Shack. Small Shack copy 4 (level 13), for example, needs Large Shack copy 1. If one Shack is left unbuilt or untapped, the next plots in the chain don't appear.

The build cost and time are shown in the build window and in the Building it table on each building's page. Early buildings take seconds. Later copies can take days: Small Shack copies 13–18 take 2 days 10 hours each. Building costs are usually Gold, Building Blueprints and raw resources or factory products. If you are short of a factory product, the window offers to buy the missing amount. Missing Blueprints send you to where they can be found, and missing Gold opens Gold Trade.

When the timer reaches zero the progress bar switches to its finished state, but the building is still not complete. Tap the building (or its bar) to finish it. Only then does it gain the level, give the Player EXP in the Reward column, add its population, and let the next plot in its chain appear. When a new Shack is finished, a new resident walks onto the base.

A speedup that brings the timer to zero finishes the building in the same step. You don't have to tap it afterwards.

There are three ways to shorten a build or upgrade.

• Diamonds. The cost is 1.5 Diamonds per minute left. Time left is rounded up to a whole minute and the total is rounded up. Longer timers don't raise the rate.
• Speedup items. Each one removes 1 minute. The button uses as many as you have, but never more than the minutes left. The window stays open so you can then pay the rest in Diamonds.
• Hero assignment. The Command Center's Hero Assignment has three Building Speedup seats, which open at player levels 6, 10 and 21. Each assigned hero adds a percentage that depends on rarity and stars. A Legendary hero gives 1.25% plus 0.45% per star, which is 12.5% at 25★. An Exotic hero gives 1.67% plus 0.6% per star, which is 16.67% at 25★. The same Hero Assignment's Trading Speedup seats are covered under Cargo Port freighters.

Example. The Accessory Factory takes 16 hours (960 minutes) to build. Finishing it at once costs 960 × 1.5 = 1,440 Diamonds, or 960 Speedups. With 20 minutes and 1 second left, the game counts 21 minutes and charges 32 Diamonds (31.5 rounded up).

The game's own preview divides the build time by (1 + your speedup bonus). With one Legendary 25★ hero (+12.5%), the 16-hour build becomes 57,600 ÷ 1.125 = 51,200 seconds, about 14 hours 13 minutes. Unconfirmed: the game server sets the real finish time, so the actual saving may differ from the preview.

All copies of a building share one Upgrades table, and each building's page lists every level. An upgrade needs three things:

1. Player level. If your level is too low, the building menu offers no upgrade and factories hide their Level Up button.
2. Population, if the level lists one. Your current population has to be at least that number.
3. The cost: Gold, Building Blueprints and a factory product, which are paid when the upgrade starts.

An upgrade arrow appears over a building when the first two are met. It does not check whether you have the materials.

What a level adds depends on the building. A factory's level decides which recipes it can make: the Seafood Kitchen needs Lv.2 for Seaweed Juice, whatever your player level. Every recipe and the factory level it needs is on Recipes. Self-producing buildings make more per hour, cap buildings raise the population cap, and Shacks add population. Some buildings have only one level: the Command Center, Broadcast Station, Arena, Shop, Cargo Port, Gear Factory and Museum open a feature when built and never upgrade.

Two upgrade lines unlock late:

• Shacks. A Small Shack reaches Lv.2 at player level 67 and Lv.3 at 91. Medium and Large Shacks reach Lv.2 at 71 and 81. Until then the only way to add population is to build more Shack copies.
• Cap buildings. Their Lv.2 opens between player levels 28 (Power Station) and 39 (School).

You start with 3 population and a cap of 10. Each finished Shack adds population, and each finished cap building raises the cap:

The game uses these numbers in two checks:

• Population requirements only count Shacks that are finished. A Shack under construction adds nothing yet.
• The cap is checked when you build or upgrade a Shack. It counts Shacks under construction as if they were already done. If the new Shack would push that total over the cap, you get Population Cap Reached. Build the cap building first, then the Shack.

Example: level 7. With one Small Shack you have 3 + 6 = 9 population against a cap of 10. Level 7 opens both Small Shack copy 2 and the Power Station. Starting the Shack first would make 15, over the cap of 10, so the game refuses. Build the Power Station (cap 10 + 30 = 40), and the Shack goes through.

Example: the Accessory Factory at level 27 asks for 255 population. Level 27 opens 8 Small, 7 Medium and 6 Large Shacks, so the most you can have is 3 + 8 × 6 + 7 × 12 + 6 × 20 = 255. You need every one of them, including Large Shack copy 6, which also opens at level 27 and takes 26 hours to build. The cap at that point is 280, so the cap is not what holds you back.

Requirements never ask for more than you can reach. If you build every Shack and cap building as soon as it unlocks and upgrade the cap buildings when their level allows, you always have enough. Often you have only a few to spare:

If something says Not enough population, build more Shacks?, look for a Shack plot you have not built, or a finished Shack you have not tapped.

Seven buildings produce a set amount every hour. The number goes up with the building's level, and every copy produces separately:

Example. Six Training Camps at Lv.7 make 6 × 17,550 = 105,300 Hero EXP an hour. Four Fishing Chairs at Lv.5 make 3,200 Fish an hour.

You collect the Training Camp, Smelter, Marine Beast Training Camp and Silicon Ore Factory by hand. A bubble appears over one once 10 or more have piled up (1 for the Silicon Ore Factory), and tapping any bubble collects from all four types at once. If storage is full, the game tells you which items overflowed. The Command Center's Training Camp Yield seats (player levels 13, 18 and 23) raise the Training Camp's output by a percentage.

The fishing, diving and scavenging you start from Fishing Chairs, Diving Docks and Scavenger Ships are separate from this hourly output, and are covered on Fishing & Diving and Scavenging.

Factories don't produce on their own. They work through a queue of recipes you pick, and Farmland grows crops you plant. Both are covered on Recipes and the factory pages.

The people walking around your base show your population, from a minimum of 3 up to a maximum of 20 however high your population goes. When you tap floating debris, an idle resident walks out to fetch it. Resident Requests, the orders residents bring you, are a separate system.

• Construction never completes by itself. You can leave a finished building untapped indefinitely. It gives no EXP, no population and no new level until you tap it, and plots that depend on it stay hidden.
• Population is never spent. A factory that asks for 225 population leaves you with all 225. Two upgrades in a row with the same requirement need the same 225, not 450.
• You cannot choose where buildings go, move them or demolish them. Every copy has a fixed plot, and the game has no option to move or remove a building.
• Late in the game the cap becomes the limit. From player level 71 on, all the Shacks you can build would give more population than the cap allows (at level 81, 1,227 against a cap of 1,010). From then on, upgrading cap buildings is what lets you add more Shacks. Requirements still stay under the cap.
• The Warehouse's Resource Storage Limit is not the whole story. Your real storage limit is sent by the game server. A higher Warehouse level mostly changes how many resource piles are drawn around it.
• The Platform is repaired, not built. Its button reads Fix, and it has no upgrades.
• Unconfirmed: how many buildings can be under construction at once. The game data sets no limit on the number of builds running together. A limit may still be enforced server-side.
• Unconfirmed: whether Fishing Chairs, Scavenger Ships and Diving Docks need collecting. Their hourly output is shown in the building menu, but the collect-all bubble only covers the four buildings above. The game server handles how their resources reach you.