Below is a game of incremental progress. That’s true of both making progress deeper, well, below and of learning about the game’s mechanics and rules. As you explore The Depths of the island, you’ll be collecting a variety of items. With a little experimentation, you’ll learn that you can combine some of them to create new items, foods, tools and weapons.

Surviving your journey means learning what you’ll need and how to craft it. And that means learning recipes. In this guide, we’ll give you a quick overview of the basics of crafting (and cooking), then list out all the recipes we’ve discovered so far so you don’t have to try to memorize them. First, though, since we’re lumping everything together, let’s talk about the difference(s) between crafting and cooking.

Crafting and cooking in Below

Crafting in Below takes three things from your inventory and combines them to create something new. That’s pretty much it.

When you select a craftable item from your inventory, it will show up on the left side. Items that can be combined with what you selected will stay white while items that can’t will be grayed out. Once you select three items, you’ll see an icon for what will be created at the bottom of the leftmost column, but you won’t be able to see the name until after it’s created.

Some items (Sticks, String, Shards and Embers) can be combined with themselves to make a higher quality crafting material. These new materials (Bundles, Weave, Spikes and Phosphor, respectively) can then make better or more items. For example, you can make one Arrow from a Stick, Leather and a Shard, but a Bundle, some Leather and a Shard will create four Arrows.

Crafting food and Elixirs is a little more complicated (which is why we break it out below), but it still follows the three ingredients rule.

Crafting versus cooking

The basic premise of crafting both tools and food is the same: Take three ingredients and mix them together. But we draw a distinction between them because when you can do each of them differs.

You can combine three non-food items from the second tab of your inventory at any time. This means you can make Torches and Arrows as you need them. You don’t need to wait to get anywhere, so crafting as you go is a good way to manage your limited inventory space.

For food and Elixirs, though, you need two extra things: a Bottle filled with water and a Campfire. You’ll find your Bottles (you start with one and might collect more along your journey) on the first tab of your inventory with the rest of your food. Standing in water and hitting the button to drink will fill bottles. Once you find and light a Campfire, the top icon that looks like a cauldron will let you turn that water and other raw ingredients into food or Elixirs.

Elixirs

The crafting recipes for Elixirs are similar to the Broth, Soup or Stew that you make from some combination of raw meat and vegetables, but one (and only one) of the ingredients is replaced with one Mushroom. The resulting Elixir will be the same color as the Mushroom you included — Red Mushrooms make Red Elixirs.

Elixirs refill some or all of your various meters (Health, Hunger, Cold and Thirst), but also give you a background stat bonus. Green Elixirs double the number of Gems an enemy drops for a short time, Blue Elixirs slow the drain of your meters and Red Elixirs give you a boost to your attack strength. The current status effect gets an icon just above the heart at the top left of your screen.

What should I make?

As we mentioned in our Below beginner’s guide, you should have two main priorities when crafting: light and food. For light, that means Torches (Stick + String + Ember) as a backup or replacement for your Lantern.

For food, we recommend trying to make Stew (Morsel + Morsel + Morsel) from the various critters you encounter on the early floors. Those rodents you see running around, snakes, foxes and bats all have a chance to drop a Morsel — or a bigger cut of meat like a Chop.

Below recipes list