Camp work and interrupted jobs in The Wilds

Open Camp work on the place you mean to use

The Wilds has 31 Camp jobs in Fire and water, Food and hunting, Shelter and rest, and Craft and repair. Open Camp work on your own tile or an adjacent tile. The chosen tile is the work site, so open it on fresh water to fill containers or on the fire to add fuel. Light fire has one exception: beside an unlit fire you built, it can select that nearby fire and says so in the quote.

Read the current quote

Each job page gives its base work time for a healthy body and a maintained tool. The live menu includes your current body penalties and the selected tool condition. The duration is saved when the job starts. Sleep and drying keep their own fixed times. Fire lighting also saves its success roll at the start, so pausing and resuming does not reroll it.

Inputs are spent when you begin

Camp work takes its material inputs immediately from the pack, then equipment, then quick slots. Sharpening water is an exception: it is checked at the start and taken when the job finishes. It keeps the job and its reserved inputs until finishing or abandonment. Protect and the older full lock stop a supply from being spent. Retain alone does not. Protect does not stop a tool being used and worn, water being filled or boiled, or water being used for sharpening. Nearby chest stock is not part of this Camp input pool.

Pause and resume

Opening a menu or reading panel pauses automatic Camp work without discarding its saved job. An approaching predator or moving too far also pauses an ordinary job. Resume interrupted work requires you to return on or beside its original tile. Sleep is different: a predator or moving too far ends that sleep rather than keeping a paused sleep job. The world and your needs can still change while you do other things.

Abandoning does not refund Camp supplies

Choose Abandon work and reserved supplies to discard a job that spent inputs. Those supplies are lost. A job with no inputs has an Abandon work row instead. The supplies are not charged again when you resume a saved job, but abandoning and starting a replacement pays for a new one.

Keep the cooking fire alive

Boiling, cooking and smoking need a lit fire within two tiles of where you stand throughout active work. If it goes out before the work completes, the job ends and its reserved supplies are lost. The quote warns when the current fire forecast is too short, but changing weather can change that forecast. Pausing keeps the job, though the next active work tick still needs a fire.

Leave room for the result

Finished supplies first join matching carried stacks when possible. New stacks can fill the pack. If there is too much to carry, the extra supplies are placed on the ground through the normal drop rule. A failed ground placement can lose them. This also applies to a hammock returned after its planned span becomes blocked.

Choose the boiling vessel

Boiling works on the water already in your containers. With a selected pot, a batch can make up to 200 water safe in total. With a selected bark bowl, it makes up to 60 safe. The first usable pot or bowl in carried-item order is selected. If a bowl comes before a pot, the current quote can say 200 while the finished batch still treats only 60. Put the pot before the bowl to use the larger batch.

Repairs choose a target for you

Mend work checks the selected tile first, choosing a worn trap, then shelter, then hammock. Otherwise it selects the first eligible carried item type. Within that type it repairs the most worn copy present when it finishes. Deployed sites gain 40 condition. Carried cloth gains 45 with sewing or 25 with tape. Metal repair and sharpening add 35. All of these stop at full condition, and ordinary repair targets must start below 90%.

Several copies and alternate supplies

Some jobs choose their method before checking whether that chosen supply is Protected. A Protected tarp can leave Pitch tarp roof unavailable even when debris-shelter materials are carried. Protected sewing charges can likewise leave sewing unavailable instead of switching to tape. Deployed gear takes its starting condition from the first matching carried copy, which can differ from the copy actually spent when Protected duplicates are present. Check the current quote and keep unwanted copies out of the carried pool.

Handwork uses a different payment rule

Building and workbench crafting use individual work steps. A workbench recipe normally takes twelve healthy steps, and its materials are spent on the last one. Stop work on the unfinished recipe cancels that progress without spending its materials. These are separate from Camp jobs, which take supplies when started. Finish or abandon a Camp job before starting building or workbench crafting.