Distillation Cube

The Distillation Cube is two Wooden Plank, two Bronze Detail and twelve Brick, and it is the cheapest building in the game measured by what it unlocks. Nine recipes run on it and nothing else in the world runs any of them.

Two of those nine make Melted Fat, which thirteen other recipes want. Six make Alcohol out of whatever you have been drinking. The last one makes Fragrance.

Every craft on it pays 1 and 1 back, so the cube earns spheres while it works rather than costing them.

Building it, and the gate that is not the price

Alchemy, Distillation unlocks it for 5 and 5, and Alchemy, Basic above it is free. Those numbers are not what stands between you and the cube.

Above both sits a reputation lock reading ten with Albert, the plague doctor. Until that clears, the whole alchemy branch is closed and no amount of red will open it.

It goes up in the Alchemy Lab alongside Laboratory I and the Flask shelf. Twelve Brick is the bulk of the cost, so a working Kiln matters more than the spheres do.

Melted Fat, which is why most people build it

One Fat, two Clay Plate and twenty Fuel return four Melted Fat in six seconds. Three Seed oil in place of the Fat returns three over eight seconds, for players with crops rather than corpses.

That output is what gates Polished Bronze, Polished Stone, Polished Marble, Oiled Plank and Ink, among thirteen recipes in total. The melted fat guide has the full list.

Six ways to make Alcohol, and they are not equal

Every alcohol recipe takes one drink, two Clay Urn and twenty Fuel over eight seconds. What changes is the yield, and it changes by a factor of four depending on what goes in.

Wine returns four. Beer and blueberry cider return two. Mead, apple cider and berry cider return one apiece, which makes them the worst thing you can put in the cube.

The ninth recipe is Fragrance, at two Rhododendron and two Clay Urn for three. It is the only one that starts with a flower rather than a drink.

One perk lifts every recipe on the bench

Cube distillations adds to all nine. Melted Fat goes from four to seven, wine alcohol from four to seven, Fragrance from three to five, and the one-yield ciders double to two.

It reads as a worker perk, so it counts for whoever is running the bench. That matters once a zombie is standing at it rather than you.