Alchemy Factory Building Guide — Multi-Level Layouts, Belts and Transport

Alchemy Factory building is three-dimensional by design. The Steam description makes the point directly: your factory does not have to stay on a single floor, and you can arrange conveyor belts, pipes, devices and your shop at different heights and in every direction. Progress is therefore as much a layout problem as a production one — the same machines crammed onto one floor will bottleneck, while the same machines spread across levels with clean logistics will not.

What the Building System Supports

The official description frames the system around a three-dimensional layout where resources flow efficiently between heights, and says that as the factory expands you extend production upward or downward and integrate scattered functional zones into one connected automation network. The stated end state is a vast multi-level factory with every floor working together, which is also why the community calls it a factory-building game rather than a shop sim.

Element	Official description
Floors	Not restricted to a single floor
Placement	Belts, pipes, devices and shop arranged freely at different heights
Expansion	Extend production upward or downward as the factory grows
Integration	Scattered functional zones joined into one automation network
End state	A multi-level factory with every floor working together

Building Vertically With Intent

The community guide treats vertical building as the answer to the game's biggest time sink: running back and forth to gather supplies. Its method is to put a central staircase or shroom elevator in the middle of the base, then run a central hub blueprint of lift conveyors that lifts common build materials — planks, gears and similar components — up every floor as you go. That way each new level starts with the materials already on hand.

• Put the vertical spine in the middle of the base, not on an edge.
• Use one lift-conveyor hub blueprint for common build materials.
• Carry planks, gears and similar parts upward as you build each floor.
• Keep the hub consistent so every floor is fed the same way.
• Add floors for new production, not to relieve a layout you already outgrew.

Belts, Pipes, Catapults and Cannons

Transport is where the guide's advice diverges from the obvious choice. Conveyor belts connect every corner and are the backbone of early production, but the guide warns that mass conveyors hit the CPU hard in the late game and recommends catapults and cannons for medium and long distances instead, since they are procedurally simpler for the CPU. The Codex lists the upgrade tracks that change these rates.

Transport method	Base rate (Codex)	Best use
Conveyor belt	60/min at base Logistics Efficiency	Short-range, dense production chains
Catapult	60/min at base Throwing Efficiency	Medium to long distance hauling
Cannon	120/min at base Throwing Efficiency	Higher-throughput long distance hauling
Pipes	Not documented as a rate	Moving fluids and gases between devices

Pipes appear in the official description alongside belts and devices as part of how materials move, but the sources used here do not publish a pipe throughput figure, so treat pipe rates as to confirm.

Layout Discipline: Openness Over Megablocks

The guide's strongest stylistic warning is against "borg cube" blueprints — solid, featureless blocks that swallow the build. Its reasons are practical rather than aesthetic: a megablock hides what the build does, makes production problems harder to debug, mystifies your own logistics when you come back after a break, and does not actually save on rendering. The recommendation is to build for maximum openness and transparency so future you can read the layout at a glance.

• Open builds are faster to debug when a chain stalls.
• Visible belts and devices make bottlenecks obvious.
• Hiding machines does not reduce rendering cost.
• Documenting a repeatable layout is what blueprints are for, not concealment.

What Is Not Confirmed

Exact building footprint limits, floor height, pipe throughput and the cost of multi-level structures are not documented in the sources used here. The Codex upgrade figures come from an Early Access version stamp, so re-check the conveyor, catapult and cannon rates after 1.0. For how to save and reuse layouts, see the blueprints page, and for what to prioritise on each floor, see the guide.