Refinery

The Refinery is a Folktails production building that converts agricultural and botanical goods into chemical and utility resources. It processes crops and gathered plants into Biofuel, Catalyst, and Antidote using dedicated recipes. The Refinery serves as the Folktails’ primary way to produce renewable fuel and certain advanced chemical goods that feed mid-to-late-game crafting chains and emergency medical needs.

The Refinery’s known recipes (Folktails) are: 2 Water + 2 Carrots → 5 Biofuel; 1 Maple syrup + 2 Sunflower seeds → 3 Catalyst; and 2 Dandelions → 1 Antidote. Biofuel is a renewable fuel resource used to power faction-specific machinery and conserve Logs for construction and smelting. Catalyst is a chemical intermediate used in advanced production. Antidote treats beavers exposed to Badwater contamination and is important when operating near hazardous liquids.

Fuel production efficiency varies by crop. Per-tile and per-recipe comparisons show the following Biofuel yields:

• Carrot: farming rate ~0.75 carrots/day per crop tile, recipe yields 2.5 Biofuel per carrot, producing ~1.875 Biofuel/day per crop tile.
• Potato: farming rate ~0.167 potatoes/day per crop tile, recipe yields 15 Biofuel per potato, producing ~2.5 Biofuel/day per crop tile.
• Spadderdock: farming rate ~0.25 spadderdock/day per crop tile, recipe yields 12.5 Biofuel per spadderdock, producing ~3.125 Biofuel/day per crop tile.

Spadderdock produces the most Biofuel per crop tile because each recipe takes the same amount of Refinery work time. Potatoes, however, produce more Biofuel per Refinery work-hour due to their large yield per processed unit. These distinctions make crop selection important depending on whether you are constrained by farm area or by Refinery throughput.

• Place Refineries near warehouses or crop fields to minimize hauling time for bulky inputs like Carrots, Potatoes, or Spadderdock. Reducing travel distance increases effective throughput.
• Prefer Spadderdock when land for farms is limited and you need the highest yield per tile. Prefer Potatoes when Refinery machine-hours are the bottleneck and you can supply fewer, denser inputs per work cycle.
• Keep water supplies available if you run the Carrot→Biofuel recipe, since it requires Water as an input. Plan irrigation and water hauling as part of the Refinery supply chain.
• Produce and stockpile Antidote when working near Badwater deposits or running Badwater-processing chains elsewhere on the map. Catalyst production requires Maple Syrup and Sunflower Seeds, so integrate maple tapping and sunflower farming into a chemical production district if you need steady Catalyst supplies.

The Refinery complements other processing buildings and should be integrated into your production clusters alongside farms, warehouses, and transport routes to avoid production stalls.