# Workshop and recipes _The bench in your aquarium's cabinet: materials, the culture drawer, mixing recipes and bench upgrades._ ## Where it is The Workshop is the cabinet your aquarium stands on. Tap the cabinet's top edge (its brass tag shows what is ready) and the view moves down: the bench fills the lower part of the screen and your fish keep swimming above. Tap the water, Back to the aquarium or Esc to return. The Workshop button in the dock (key W) opens it too. ## Materials Everything you gather is a material in one of six classes: Greens, Shell and bone, Stone and mineral, Fibre and wood, Live and protein, and Essence. Cleaning green glass leaves 20 g of [algae scrapings](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/scrapings), a grown fish now and then sheds a scale after a meal, and a hatchling's first meal leaves its eggshell, and with [Living Plants](https://fishies.lol/wiki/research/decor-living-plants) researched a grown plant gives a cutting. Your shop foods and expedition goods are materials too. ## Mixing a recipe A recipe is one key material and lines that take any material of a class. Drag (or tap) a material into the bowl: each drop fills one line, so no recipe needs more than six drags. Dropping a key shows the recipes it can start as silhouettes; once you have made one, its page in the recipe book fills in. The batch dial makes one, two or three batches at once. Mix starts the bowl in a free slot and Collect takes it when its time is up: food goes into its jar, Remedy into the medicine box and filter floss to the filter, each paying before your coins. Make again refills the bowl with the same materials for one more batch. Food recipes open once you have researched the Kitchen (from level 10, in the Research app) and care recipes at level 10. What you collect shows what it is worth, or for a Remedy, floss or a kit, what it saved you. Every bowl you collect also earns experience, more the higher your level; a tool or kit plan earns five bowls' worth. The recipe book keeps a page for every recipe, sorted by family. A found page shows what it makes, its ingredients with how much of each you hold, its bowl time and its cost; one you have not found yet shows its silhouette and the key it starts with. Food and care recipes also carry a mastery ladder: after 10 bowls of a recipe its rarity odds are better, after 25 every bowl makes 20 g more (a care bowl that much more care), and at 50 it wears a master badge. Food from the bench leaves a fish Well-fed: sold while that meal lasts, it sells for 6% more. Recovery Broth keeps a fish fed twice as long, puts almost a third of its health back and counts as a perfect meal. ## The culture drawer The worm bin is now the bench's culture drawer. Put 20 g of algae scrapings (free) or pellets in a drawer and it makes 75 g of [red worms](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/worm) in 12 hours, ready to scoop into their jar, fresh for 48 hours. There is nothing to rinse or mist. Each batch can come out rarer. With the [Live Food Culture](https://fishies.lol/wiki/research/pantry-live-culture) research, a Hatching Cone joins the culture drawers. Start it for 30 coins and a day later scoop 150 g of [Live Brine](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/nauplii): baby [brine shrimp](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/brine) that give brine's long, perfect meal and stay fresh for 12 hours. ## A bigger bench The bench is free from level 5. Bench 2 (level 15, 4,000 coins), bench 3 (level 30, 18,000) and bench 4 (level 50, 60,000) add culture drawers, more bowls cooking at once, bigger and faster worm batches and better odds of a rare result. A made good is worth one and a half times what went into it, and there is no daily limit. ## The Fine Tools and decorations From level 18 the recipe book offers the Fine Tools for 6,000 coins. With them every bowl takes 15% less time, and a new family opens: Decorations. Mossy Stone, the Glow-moss Lamp, the Ember Kelp Wreath, the Salt Spire, the Mineral Chimney, the Glowstone Grotto and the Opal Arch are made one at a time and go to your stash at the rarity the bench rolls. The Grotto and the Arch also need their finds page in the Journal: Trench Finds and Vent Finds. ## Tools The pegboard on the bench opens your five hand tools: the sponge, the net, the [food scoop](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/scoop), the Pearl Catch net and your [forage bite](https://fishies.lol/wiki/items/bite). Pick one to see it now beside its next tier, the ladder of all its tiers, what the next tier changes and what it takes: your level, the coins and, for a tier the bench makes, each material with how much you hold. The shop sells the first step up of each; the bench makes the higher tiers from foraged materials, each plan opening at its level, and Lay the plan out on the bowl fills the bowl for you. A green light on the pegboard means an upgrade you can take right now. A better tool is quicker, never kinder or harsher to your fish. The pegboard opens the rack on the Tools tab of the Aquarium Studio, beside every other upgrade path. Tools wear a little with use and always keep at least half of what their tier adds; a cheap repair at the bench makes them new. The best sponge, the [Wave Wiper](https://fishies.lol/wiki/recipes/wave-wiper), wipes the whole glass in one long swipe, as often as you like. The bench also makes expedition kits II to IV from foraged materials and a few coins. A made kit goes straight into use, so the bench only makes a kit better than the one you carry, one kit at a time. --- In the game: https://fishies.lol/wiki/mechanics/workshop ยท Fishies 0.8.11 This page is generated. Its text lives in [`locales/en-GB.json`](../../../locales/en-GB.json) under `wiki.topics.workshop`; correct it there.