The Factory

Beneath your house lies the Factory, an abandoned Inquisitor works full of conveyor belts, broken machinery and zombie-powered carousels. Conveyor belts function nowhere else. Get it running and zombies turn out building kits, furniture, food and town supplies, while porters haul the crates into town. Larry notices the clanking behind the basement wall early on, but breaking through takes a long time.

Ways in

There are five entrances, and clearing any single one counts as discovering the factory:

• the two blockages in your house basement’s south wall;
• one in the vineyard cellar;
• one in the tunnel beneath the Crossroads well;
• one between the factory hall and the Old Mine.

Every one requires a Reinforced Beam, plus either 4 Building Kits I (the mine entrance) or 4 Iron Details (the rest), and Building mastery between 3 and 8.

A Reinforced Beam starts as an oiled beam, and beams come off the Circular Saw, locked behind 40 reputation with Jack. You reach that with his first iron order at the port. So even though the story nudges you toward the basement wall much sooner, the factory can’t open before then.

Inside, smashing any pile of junk in the hall prompts Larry’s “I told you clearing that debris would be worth it.” Clearing the rubble on the east side also reveals a ladder up to your yard, a handy shortcut, though it can only be broken from inside.

All twelve blockages

Beyond the entrances, more blockages carve up the underground. Every one of the twelve counts toward the Clear the Way inspiration, and its final level wants them all.

Location	Count	Side effect
House basement to the tower (the first, from Albert’s story)	1	None
House basement to morgue basement	2	None; these are the only two without a Reinforced Beam, taking an Iron Detail and 3 Oiled Planks each
House basement to factory hall	2	Counts as an entrance
Vineyard cellar	2	Clearing both unlocks the vineyard cellar Porter Station
Crossroads well tunnel	2	Together with the warehouse pair, unlocks the Supply Storage Porter Station
Warehouse cellar	2	The warehouse-side one opens only after you’ve been inside the warehouse
Factory hall to Old Mine	1	Counts as an entrance

Blockages can’t be queued or batched; each has to be cleared by hand.

Running it

Element	How it works
Belts	Conveyors, behind 50 reputation with Jack, unlocks conveyor belts, splitters and underground belts. Items advance one cell every 2 seconds, and any workbench on the line with a zombie in it starts the moment its materials arrive.
Power	Each belt cell, splitter and station draws 1. Zombie Carousels supply it: up to four zombies apiece, 7 power per walking zombie. The hall already has two broken ones, each repaired with 6 Bronze Gears, 4 Bronze Details and 4 Wooden Planks at Building 5. Drop below the belts’ demand and the entire factory halts, zombies and workbenches with it.
Floor space	Six broken conveyor mechanisms in the hall each unlock another building area once fixed, using bronze, iron or steel parts depending on the mechanism.
Broken walls	Two cracked walls can each be blown open with one Dynamite (Demolish the Wall); this only affects the factory itself.
Raw materials	Discovering the factory activates seven material heaps in your yard (marble, stone, wood, clay, sand, coal, iron ore), which appear to share contents with the matching heaps inside (Unconfirmed).

The factory’s rating, displayed as belts/power, is what Jack’s Factory Tour checks. It needs 20, and the game uses the lower of the two figures, so you need 20 or more belt cells running on 20 or more power.

Shipping goods out

Crates come off the belt at a Supply Station, where a Zombie Supply Porter stacks them in the Supply Storage room. Onward routes:

• Supply Storage Porter Station, available once both well-tunnel and both warehouse-cellar blockages are cleared: carries 22 kinds of supply crate through the tunnel into the town warehouse’s cellar.
• Vineyard cellar Porter Station: delivers beer and wine from the vineyard cellar onto the factory’s drinks pallet.

Later the story wants Zombie Power, made by the factory’s Bioreactor from 5 Wheat apiece with no zombie needed.