Online 404 Crafting: Searching Instead of Memorizing

Crafting in Online 404 is not a menu you unlock and it is not a recipe list you memorise. The developer confirmed in a Steam forum reply that crafting is done through the crafting menu inside your phone's Notes app, which is where the workbench requirement shows up as an indicator, and the recipes themselves are something you look up on the in-game internet. Scavenging is the other half of the loop, and the developer's own examples are all about taking things apart rather than building them from raw materials.

• Where crafting happens: the crafting menu in the phone's Notes app
• Workbench check: Notes shows an indicator for whether you are standing near a workbench
• Recipes: looked up online, not handed to you, and no recipe list has ever been published
• Scavenging first: rip a solar panel off an abandoned house instead of building one
• Base materials: wood for structure, scavenged parts for reinforcement

Where do you craft items, and what is the workbench for?

A developer answered this directly when a demo player asked whether it was even possible to use a workbench yet. The answer was that crafting goes through the crafting menu inside the phone's Notes app, and that Notes includes an indicator showing whether you are currently close to a workbench. In other words the workbench is a proximity requirement that the phone surfaces, rather than a separate crafting station screen with its own interface.

The developer also volunteered that the indicator was probably not obvious enough, and that a short tutorial was being built to make the mechanic clearer. That admission is the reason the phone is the right place to look for answers about this system in general: the phone is not only your search tool, it is also your crafting interface. Our Online 404 smartphone page covers the rest of what it carries.

Official source: Is it even possible to use a workbench yet? Steam forum thread

Why does crafting depend on searching the web?

Because the developer has chosen to make knowledge a scavenged resource. The store page is explicit that there is no magic survival handbook, and that if you want to know how to make something, you search the in-game internet. The first public announcement expands the same idea into specific tasks: finding out which mushrooms are safe to eat, how to repair a vehicle, how to butcher an animal.

The practical consequence, as analysis of the game has noted, is that unlocking the best blueprints depends on knowing the right keywords. Crafting skill in Online 404 is therefore a combination of knowing what to look for and being stubborn enough to fight through the ads and CAPTCHAs that sit between you and the answer. Demo players did not all appreciate that trade, and the strongest recurring complaint in the Steam discussions was about having to look everything up.

Official source: Demo in June and release in July, April 29, 2026

Is there a recipe list you can look up anywhere?

No, and that is the intended answer. No recipe, item database or crafting chart has been published by the developer for this game, and there is no official wiki. If you find one, check what build it was made from, because a list produced during the demo period describes a test build that no longer exists publicly.

The closest thing to official guidance is the store page's philosophy: research first, then assemble. The developer would rather you find the answer in-game than read it here, which is a defensible design decision and an irritating one depending on how much you like typing into a search box while your character is being eaten alive.

What should you scavenge instead of building it?

The store page gives two concrete examples, and both point the same way. If you need electricity, do not follow a guide and build a solar panel from scratch, because you can take one off a nearby abandoned house. The same scavenging logic carries into construction, where wood is the primary building material but a base can be reinforced with things you find rather than manufacture.

Vehicles follow the rule too. Repairing an old car makes moving across the district far easier, which matters in a zone roughly four square kilometres in size, and the terrain between points of interest is forest, water and hills. Our Online 404 map page covers what that district actually contains, and Online 404 base building covers the fortification side of the same scavenging loop.

Official source: Online: 404 on Steam