Looking for The best crafting and survival games on PC? It's easy to confuse them with building games because both involve a building element. However, the critical difference is that construction games are about creating things like weapons or tools that will help you survive in a harsh world or thrive in a charming one.
Crafting and survival games can be created in almost any setting, be it taming huge dinosaurs or running a cute farm. With its wide range, this list has something for everyone, from best open world games to survival games and even zombie games. Some of these games are brutal survival lessons, while others offer more relaxing experience, but whatever your preference, you'll find something on this list of the best crafting and survival games on PC.
Here are the best crafting and survival games on PC:
Minecraft
One of Minecraft's greatest strengths is its versatility. It’s not for nothing that this game is first on the list of the best crafting and survival games on PC. You can create almost anything, from the equipment you need to go on any adventure to the TNT to lure invaders into a trap. Do you feel less naughty? Why not create a roller coaster with a ton of red rock.
You can also determine how difficult it is to create giant items in Minecraft. Play in Survival mode and you'll have to balance creativity and survival. If you want pure freedom, go into creative mode and build whatever your heart desires.
Once you've created your masterpiece, you can show it off the web, where you'll find a community of players ready to show you their Minecraft builds in return. And if you have nothing to do in the base game, you can install everything from Minecraft mods and texture packs to brand new Minecraft seeds and adventure maps.
Thunder
Trove is similar to Minecraft, it's a sandbox MMORPG with endless places to explore, including different biomes and realms, and even dungeons. In addition to exploring and gathering resources, Trove can be built and crafted to make it a magical place for you and your online friends.
When you start playing Trove, you're given a small piece of the world—your capstone—that you can fill with weapons, creatures, and fresh environments. Procedurally generated kingdoms and dungeons keep Trove fresh and exciting as you complete new quests to earn resources and loot to build and craft new items for your little part of the Trove world.
No Man's Sky
No Man's Sky didn't get off to a great start, but after a series of significant content updates from developer Hello Games, it's off to a great start. Now you can build a single base that will be your home no matter where you go in the galaxy, explore the universe in multiplayer mode and travel underwater in creepy, monster-filled alien oceans. If you're looking for something different, you can also try any of these great No Man's Sky mods.
With the release of No Man's Sky 2.0 - Beyond, the multiplayer experience has been greatly improved, making teaming up to create weird and wonderful technology in one of the best space games much more enjoyable.
Despite all the changes, crafting is still a key element of No Man's Sky, especially when it comes to developing your home base. These dwellings not only provide a sense of belonging, but can also be used for farming, storage, healing, shield recharge, and as a home for the various NPCs you meet along your travels. To create and equip your shelter, you will have to work hard in intergalactic searches. For example, a circuit board requires polyfiber and a thermal capacitor, while to craft them you will need cactus flesh, star bulbs, freeze crystals and solanium. Hunting for these items forces you to constantly explore new worlds: you find a planet, explore it and hunt for materials, and then move on.
Stardew Valley
In Stardew Valley, you immediately understand what kind of gaming experience awaits you. As soon as you boot into the game, you will have a fantasy that you have left behind the stressful and soulless city work and went to work on your grandfather's farm.
Armed with basic farming tools and with little to no money, you're stocking up on crafting recipes, turning a haggard and overgrown patch of land into a bustling farm full of food and animals. In the beginning, you will craft for the sake of functionality, laying paths and putting up fences to keep the animals in one place. Once you've mastered the basics, you'll be able to craft more craftable equipment like beehives and kegs. However, you will be crafting not only for your farm: over time, you will be able to create different types of bombs that will help you clear and explore the nearby caves.
There is no need to rush through all this either. Your farm progress can be as fast or slow as you like. It's never boring to craft new tools and tend to the farm either, as the world of Stardew Valley changes with the seasons, determining what foods you can grow. And outside of the farm, you can also get to know the local villagers through idle talk and occasional holidays.
In addition, you can invite up to three friends to help you on the farm or just join in one of the best farming games. If you want to diversify your experience in weird and wonderful ways, you can also download one of the many Stardew Valley mods.
Rust
In Rust, everything is out to kill you, which makes this one of the best crafting and survival games on PC extremely tough. If you don't get hacked to pieces by a rogue raider, then there's a chance that radiation and weather conditions will overtake you instead. Even meeting other players is risky, as there is every chance that they will stone you to death as soon as you turn your back.
Worse still, you are thrown into the world of Rust without guidance or instructions, forcing you to adapt to harsh conditions. So it's best to have a list of handy Rust console commands ready. As you die and die again, you'll learn how to create new weapons, equipment, and cover, from elemental axes and wooden huts to assault rifles and brick fortresses.
With so many other players out to kill you and steal everything you've worked hard to earn, your best bet is to create a clan of like-minded people so you can build bigger and better settlements that you can patrol together. Rust is a challenge, but one worth conquering, especially with a group.
Terraria
Set in the humble crafting genre, Re-logic's game takes Minecraft's block-by-block resource gathering into a XNUMXD world of caves and forests to explore, fight and harvest. As soon as you create your first base, you can go on a journey and solve any tasks, whether it be searching for treasures or exterminating terrible monsters.
There are many types of weapons in the game. You can craft ranged weapons like bows and pistols, or melee weapons like swords and even yo-yos. You'll be able to see for yourself the destructive power of your weapon as you watch the damage numbers rain down on the enemies you attack.
While you are traveling, you can also add various NPCs to your base to get the buff. Dryad, for example, gives eight points to defense. This is very important as it will help you progress further into the underworld, where you will get more loot and even unlock new modes.
Arc: Survival Evolved
Arc: Survival Evolved is a crafting game with one major difference: massive dinosaurs that can be tamed and eventually ridden into battle. There are currently over 176 creatures in the game, and they range from real dinosaurs like the T. rex to mythical creatures like the phoenix. This is one of the best games from the list of best crafting and survival games on PC.
The main focus of Ark may be collecting those dinosaurs, but crafting is how you manage everything and put everything together. Along with the usual crafting items - such as stone tools and dilapidated buildings - you will also create accessories for your dinosaurs, such as saddles and pens to contain them.
Building a solid base is very important as your character stays in the game even after you exit it. This is a high bet, as you can quickly lose all your food, farming, and crafting supplies if you stumble even once. However, like in Rust, this difficulty gives the game a special charm. Also, dinosaurs. D-NO-ZAURS.
Do not starve
Don't Starve is not just a good crafting game, but also one of the best survival games. Being abandoned in the wilderness and having to fend for yourself is a scary concept, and no crafting game on this list leans into that fact more than Don't Starve. You'll find yourself trapped by a demon on an island dripping with Lovecraftian horror, where each day is spent preparing to battle the monsters that come out at night.
To survive in Don't Starve, you'll have to craft dozens of whimsical contraptions in the style of the Victorian era and steampunk. The Science Machine, for example, allows you to develop recipes, but looks like a stump with levers and gears screwed to it. While Don't Starve has a variety of items, tools, and structures, developer Klei Entertainment has managed to strike a delicate balance between giving you plenty of new targets to pursue and not requiring you to have a recipe cheat sheet open in another window, just to get the basics right.
That's a good thing, too, since Don't Starve doesn't have a tutorial and the map is randomly generated, so you'll have to learn to survive and craft as you go. If you have a friend to help you create these great inventions, the standalone multiplayer version of Don't Starve Together is one of the best co-op games out there.
Scrap mechanic
In this construction game, you play the role of a mechanic who has landed on a planet full of erratic robots. Luckily, you can take apart these malfunctioning robots for parts and use them to survive in this alien world.
Crafting and creativity in general requires a lot of engineering knowledge. So if you're looking for a game that lets you create complex designs, from buggies and monster trucks to full-scale production lines, then Scrap Mechanic is the one for you. And definitely, this game should be on the list of the best crafting and survival games on PC.
If you remember how redstone works in Minecraft, Scrap Mechanic will have a similar effect. You connect together mechanisms with complex circuitry and watch your creation come to life. With over 100 building parts at your disposal, you can create anything from transforming cars to moving houses. The game is in early access, so at the time of writing you can only play creative mode, but survival mode is on the horizon.
Subnautica
Mysterious things lurk in the inky depths of the ocean, and after crash landing in open waters, you must use the alien fauna and flora of planet 4546B to stay alive. The eerie, mysterious void that lurks in the depths underwater makes Subnautica one of the most daunting yet atmospheric first-person survival games out there. It's safe to say that we don't recommend this game to those who suffer from thalassophobia, unless you like to experience an overwhelming sense of horror.
During expeditions underwater, gathering materials for your base, you stumble upon blueprints that allow you to create various high-tech items that help you survive and build. Using the Fabricator, you can create all sorts of resources and fixtures; you can even cook weird fish that swim around.
7 Days to Die
An open-world post-apocalyptic game where zombies litter the skyline, 7 Days to Die has you scavenging and shoveling debris to survive the waves of aggressive undead that hunt you every seven days in the game. To fortify your stronghold against the growing horde, you'll need to craft weapons, traps, and armor while gathering resources to fortify the walls that separate you from the swarming corpses that seek you out. Like ARK, this game is also one of the toughest in the list of the best crafting and survival games on PC.
In the world, you will explore dilapidated buildings, collect materials and search for schemes to learn more powerful ones from the 500 available recipes. You will definitely need to craft a tire when you fall through the rotten floorboard into the basement, break your leg and disturb the zombie conference.
Green Hell
Green Hell is a title that easily evokes both the horror of being lost in a dense jungle and the aftermath of an unpleasant spinach-based lunch. Accordingly, in this unforgiving survival game, you must navigate the sultry cacophony of the Amazon rainforest without being struck down by tropical disease and/or food poisoning.
Praised for its realism and brutal difficulty, Green Hell requires you to constantly search for resources and craft weapons, medicine, tools and armor in order to survive. The recipes are practical - you can use a banana leaf to make bandages, dry it and use it as kindling, or gather an armful to make a water catcher or meat smoker.
The game also features a complex nutrition system where the food you consume affects you based on its macronutrient profile (carbs, fats, proteins), hydration levels and sanity - you'll take a big hit if you eat a raw tarantula, but if you treat it with a piece of honey honey, everything will line up. Yummy.
valheim
In Valheim, you play as a Viking warrior who has fallen into purgatory and must prove his worth in order to please Odin and get to Valhalla. The procedurally generated wilderness contains a variety of treacherous biomes, from dark swamps to snowy mountains, all of which are home to Valheim's fearsome bosses. You must defeat them to advance and unlock crafting materials to survive in the next area.
You'll die quickly if you're not prepared, so you'll need to build a Viking homestead to keep your enemies out and set up a workbench where you can craft Valheim weapons and Valheim armor. Up to nine Vikings can join you at the same time, which is very handy since you need to use someone as bait for the trolls while you run around and collect resources.
That's it, the best crafting and survival games on PC that will get your hands dirty and calloused. Some of these games naturally overlap with others, but if you want to create something more substantial, then we have prepared a selection for you. The best cooking games on PC.
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