7 Days to Die Workstations (V3.3): Workbench, Forge, Cement Mixer & Chemistry Station - Craft, Move, Repair, Schematics
Survival in 7 Days to Die requires more than just a stone axe. You must progress through the tech tiers to stay ahead of the game's difficulty scaling. This guide covers every workstation, what it unlocks, and the optimal order to build them.
Workstation Overview
Each workstation unlocks new crafting recipes and improves efficiency. Here's the complete list:
| Workstation | Forge Ahead Magazines | Key Materials | Primary Use |
|---|
| Campfire | Tutorial (free) | 5 Small Stones | Cooking, boiling water |
| Forge | 4 magazines | 50 Cobblestone Rocks, 1 Wood Log, 10 Leather, 3 Duct Tape, 3 Short Iron Pipes | Smelting, forged items |
| Workbench | 10 magazines | 25 Forged Iron, 20 Mechanical Parts, 5 Duct Tape, 100 Nails, 100 Wood | Tools, weapons, vehicles |
| Chemistry Station | 50 magazines | 100 Forged Iron, 30 Short Iron Pipes, 5 Bottles of Acid, 3 Cooking Pots, 1 Beaker | Medicine, gunpowder, fuel |
| Cement Mixer | 34 magazines | 25 Forged Iron, 10 Mechanical Parts, 4 Springs, 1 Engine | Concrete mix, crushed sand, gravel, asphalt |
How to Unlock Workstations
Workstations are unlocked by reading Forge Ahead magazines. Find them in:
- Broken workstations in POIs (guaranteed 1 magazine each)
- Trader POIs (each trader has broken workstations inside)
- Bookshelves and mailboxes
- Quest rewards and trader purchases
Campfire - Your First Workstation
The campfire is available from the moment you spawn and is essential for survival.
What It Does
- Boils Water: Turns murky water into boiled water once a Cooking Pot is installed (prevents dysentery)
- Cooks Raw Meat: Charred meat needs no tools; grilled meat needs a Cooking Grill, restores more food and prevents food poisoning
- Crafts Basic Recipes: Bacon and eggs, stews, teas, and basic medicines
Campfire Upgrades
Add cooking tools to unlock more recipes and slots:
- Cooking Pot: Required for boiled water, teas, coffee, stews, glue and herbal antibiotics; made at the forge
- Cooking Grill: Required for grilled meat, chicken wings, corn on the cob, fish tacos, jerky and steak and potato; made at the forge
- Beaker: Required for antibiotics, Fort Bites, Recog and plaster casts at the campfire; it cannot be crafted, so keep the ones you find
Pro Tips
- Place your campfire in an enclosed room to reduce heat map signature
- Craft multiple campfires for parallel cooking during horde prep
- Coal burns twice as long as wood (fuel value 100 against 50) - use it for overnight smelting
Forge - The Foundation of Industry
The forge transforms raw resources into usable crafting materials. Without it, you cannot progress past primitive tools.
What It Smelts
| Input | Output | Ratio |
|---|
| Iron Ore / Iron items | Forged Iron | ~1:1 |
| Lead Ore | Lead | 1:1 |
| Brass items (doorknobs, trophies) | Brass | Varies |
| Small Stone / Cobblestone | Stone | - |
| Clay Soil | Clay | - |
Forge Tools
The forge has three tool slots. Install tools by opening the forge and placing them in a tool slot:
- Advanced Bellows: more airflow and faster smelting
- Anvil: faster crafting at the forge
- Crucible: required to craft forged steel, steel arrowheads and bulletproof glass
Forge Efficiency Tips
- Smelt brass radiators and doorknobs - they're the most common brass source
- Always keep clay in the forge input - forged iron uses 5 units of clay with every 10 units of iron
- Forging is loud and generates heat - build the forge underground or in a reinforced room
Workbench - Unlocking Technology
The workbench is your gateway to modern equipment. Most of its recipes unlock through crafting skills, which rise as you read magazines; a few, such as ammo bundles and exploding arrows, come from perks.
Workbench Recipes Include
- Weapons: Compound bow, hunting rifle, SMG, shotgun, sniper rifle
- Tools: Steel tools, auger, chainsaw, nailgun
- Armor: the 15 craftable armor sets, each piece from an armor crafting kit plus leather or cloth (primitive armor is made in the backpack)
- Vehicles: Bicycle, minibike, motorcycle, 4x4 truck, gyrocopter
- Electrical: Generator bank, battery bank, blade and dart traps (solar banks and solar cells cannot be crafted)
Workbench Slots
The workbench has no tool, mod or fuel slots: it has an output slot only, and what you can craft at it, and at which quality, comes from your crafting skills. The Advanced Bellows is a forge tool, not a workbench one.
Chemistry Station - Advanced Crafting
The chemistry station enables mass production of ammunition, explosives, and advanced medicine.
Key Recipes
| Category | Items |
|---|
| Ammunition | Gunpowder only (1 coal and 1 potassium nitrate powder, half the backpack cost); bullets, shells and rockets are made at the workbench |
| Medicine | First Aid Kits, Antibiotics, Herbal Antibiotics, Steroids, Fort Bites, Recog, Plaster Casts (painkillers cannot be crafted) |
| Explosives | None: pipe bombs, dynamite, frag grenades and contact grenades are made at the workbench |
| Fuel | Gas cans (2 per oil shale) and oil, both from oil shale only |
| Materials | Glue (from bones), paint, paper and beer; acid and military fiber cannot be crafted |
| Vehicle parts | Car batteries, needed for the minibike, motorcycle, 4x4 and gyrocopter |
Chemistry Station Tips
- Gas comes only from oil shale: each shale makes 2 gas cans
- The beaker cannot be crafted: the station itself needs one, and so do antibiotics, Fort Bites, Recog and plaster casts at the campfire
- Gunpowder needs coal and potassium nitrate (mine nitrate in caves and deserts); at the station it costs half as much as in the backpack
Cement Mixer - Building Infrastructure
The cement mixer converts raw stone into building materials for fortified bases.
Cement Mixer Output
- Crushed Sand: 1 Small Stone each
- Cobblestone: not a mixer recipe; Cobblestone Rocks are made in your backpack from 1 Clay and 1 Small Stone, and 10 of them make a cobblestone block
- Concrete Mix: 1 Crushed Sand, 1 Small Stone and 1 Cement (cement comes from the forge); 10 Concrete Mix make a concrete block
- Terrain blocks: Gravel, Asphalt and Stone
When to Build It
Build the cement mixer after your first horde night when you need to upgrade from wood to concrete defenses. It requires an engine, so consider buying one from a trader or salvaging a wrecked vehicle.
Crafting Quality System
Crafted items have quality levels from 1 to 6. The quality you can craft comes from the item's crafting skill, which rises as you read that skill's magazines:
- Six levels per item: every craftable item lists six skill levels, one for each quality tier
- Example: the Pistol crafts at quality 1 from Handguns skill level 11 and at quality 6 from level 25
- Quality 6 is craftable: reaching an item's sixth level lets you craft it at quality 6
- Higher quality: more durability and more mod slots (the Pistol and the iron tools have 2 mod slots at quality 1 and 4 at quality 6)
Crafting Efficiency Tips
- Use the Track Feature: In the crafting menu, click 'Track' on any recipe to see missing ingredients
- Parallel Processing: Build multiple forges to smelt iron while crafting at the workbench
- Queue Management: Right-click to craft 5x, Shift+click to craft max quantity
- Schematic Priority: Read schematics before spending skill points - you might find a free unlock
- Advanced Engineering Perk: from rank 2, crafting at the Workbench and Cement Mixer is 20% faster
Picking Up Workstations
Player-owned workstations within your Land Claim Block can be picked up by holding E and selecting "Take" from the radial menu. This lets you relocate your base without losing valuable stations.