Pacific Drive: How to Use the Fabrication Station (Recipes, Energy & More)

Pacific Drive’s systems can be very dense and a little overwhelming at times.  One of the most crucial things to learn to help you out is the Fabrication Station. This unassuming little terminal tucked in the corner of the garage you use between missions is one of the most crucial pieces of equipment to utilize your resources on besides crafting the things you unlock from this station. If you need any help, here’s how to use the Fabrication Station and unlock recipes in Pacific Drive.

How to unlock recipes in the Fabrication Station

You can find the Fabrication Station in the corner of the garage where you return after expeditions in the alcove off to the right side of the garage by a door to the right of the crafting table. It’s the white terminal in the corner of the room. Interact with the machine to open up the UI and to open up the tech trees.

In the top-most row is controls on how to sort or find recipes quickly across all of the tech trees available. One row down is the tech tree selections, or categories for different recipes. Things such as garage upgrades, lights for the car, armor, gadgets, and engine upgrades are in their own independent trees.  The main window in the center is the tree itself to select recipes. The column to the right shows prerequisites to unlock the recipe, materials needed, and how much and what type of Energy is needed to spend on the recipe.

Where to Find Energy to Use in the Fabrication Station

Energy is the main resource to find to unlock recipes and you can see the types and amount of Energy you have in the upper left hand corner of the Fabrication Station’s screen. You can find these resources by picking up Anchors during an expedition. Anchors have 3 different types and are indicated by the color they glow – Yellow is Stable, orange or red is Unstable, and purple is Corrupt.  Corrupt Energy is the rarest and can only be found in expeditions inside the Mid Zone or later in the game, and these will usually unlock the most advanced recipes in the Fabrication Station.

Picking up Anchors from pedestals will allow you to feed them to the Arc Device in the car and open a Gateway back home. Beware though, as feeding the Arc Device Unstable and Corrupt Energy can result in unique interactions and the car to develop Quirks which must be fixed via the Tinkering Station in the garage. These can cause the car to malfunction while certain interactions happen such as shifting into drive, opening a door, or even turning on and off your headlights.

The Best Recipes to Unlock Early on in the Fabrication Station

One of the best trees to concentrate on early is the Lights tree, which contains both headlight upgrades for the car and an independent tree for upgrading Road Flares into the Relightable Flare and Flashlight. The Relightable Flare recipe can be unlocked fairly early on, during your second expedition into the Zone or so. The recipe is fairly cheap and the materials needed to craft one are relatively easy to find, so long as the game fairly drops Road Flares from crates and closets. The Relightable Flare is better than a standard Road Flare because you can turn it on and off and it lasts longer than a normal Flare will.

The other important upgrades to look for are the Offroad Tire from the Tires tree, as this tire type makes driving off the main road much easier and will make climbing hills a breeze. This one does require a Tier 2 crafting table to make the item itself, so you may not have one readily available in the back of the car, but Tier 2 crafting tables can be found in the open world and the crafting table at the Garage counts as any tier.

You would also benefit from unlocking better armor for the car early on via advancing through the Refine tree as there are several recipes in general that require Refined materials such as Steel Sheets and Gears as components to craft the items you unlock across the entire Fabrication Station.

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