Open-World Games With The Best Crafting, Ranked

Open-world games have changed a lot over the years. But one consistent thing that appears across most large-scale open-world adventures is the ability to engage in some sort of crafting of weapons, armor, potions, or other useful objects.

From survival games to RPGs, there are a huge number of open-world games that give players the ability to engage in intriguing crafting and building using a variety of materials. From the simple and small to the enormous and incredibly useful, crafting in modern games has become a world of open possibilities. These are the best open-world games with great crafting.

Updated on November 12th, 2024, by Chris Harkin: Although there are always new open-world games on the horizon, it does feel like the huge expansive worlds being created across the gaming industry take a lot of time to craft. This makes it difficult for players who have ventured across a number of magnificent worlds to keep finding something large and wondrous enough to satiate themselves. It is even more difficult, perhaps, to find a great crafting system that makes use of many different elements from the game’s world, and allows players freedom to create a huge volume of the things that they can imagine fitting into the game’s world and being of use in some fashion. A video version of this article has also been added.

16 Raft

Get Creative & Craft Everything

The name is almost Craft, and while that might just be a coincidence, the sheer scale of things that players can and must make in order to last long in this seafaring game is completely purposeful. Raft is an amazing game that allows players to come together with their friends and feel the real frustration of how difficult it is to survive when set adrift at sea.

Trying to gather materials and survive all while facing the threats of sharks and very dangerous survival meters, Raft keeps players on their toes and forces them to learn quickly how to craft and survive out on the open water.

15 Ark: Survival Evolved

A World Filled With Creatures & Sci-Fi Blended With Old School Survival Crafting

Though it has a sequel now which has continued the franchise, Ark: Survival Evolved remains a fantastic example of an open-world survival game that blends genres and has a great crafting system. Players gain more Engram points as they continue leveling up in Ark, allowing them to create more and better tools, structures, and clothing, to name but a few.

It can be difficult getting to grips with the crafting systems in many games, but while Ark doesn’t hand-hold too much in the early part of the game, players generally shouldn’t be left feeling lost either. These are some of the hallmarks of a great crafting system, as it is both understandable and yet expansive and elaborate.

14 Starbound

Homes, Food, Weapons & Mass Blueprints: Craft Everything On An Alien World

Although it has been nearly a decade since Starbound was released, it remains one of the most beloved games in the survival genre. Allowing players to venture out onto an unknown planet in a procedurally-generated 2D landscape, Starbound features a vast level of crafting from simple blocks and food all the way up to huge blueprints for much more imaginative ideas.

Starbound is a traditional survival game for crafting in many ways. Crafting tables are required for most things, complex blueprints need to be found before they can be used, and as players progress they will be able to put together better weapons and armor to defend them across a dangerous and unknown planet, as the player attempts to return to their spaceship with the parts needed for repair.

13 Valheim

High-Level Materials Grinding To Create The Future

Valheim has been accused by some players of being too intricate and grindy as players who want to craft some of the larger and better items in the game are forced to hunt for materials, sometimes for a long time, before achieving their goals. Other players insist that the realistic experience makes Valheim one of the best open-world games available for crafting.

It is difficult to judge whether there is too much to the material-gathering process in any survival game, and it will come down to how much each individual player is willing to put up with, but Valheim definitely has a great crafting system and a wide-open world.

12 Rust

Competitive Base-Building Where The Crafter Is King

Rust is another game that is custom-built for pain and frustration. In large multiplayer servers, players could build large bases and craft some great materials and items using the unique crafting style, only to lose it all and have their world come crashing down around them in minutes.

Rust is one of the most intense open-world survival options out there, and while this game will forever cause players to go into a rage at their losses, there is always so much to create and build anew that most will end up returning to it eventually or finding similar games that can be equally brutal.

11 Starfield

Craft Ships & Other Oddities To Explore The Stars

Starfield has proven itself to be among some of the most ambitious games ever released. The nature of the open-world exploration of hundreds of planets is only a little marred by the extra time it takes to travel between them, and there are many ways in which this new Bethesda game finds huge success. One of these successes comes in the form of the open-world exploration that players must engage in for materials.

The crafting in Starfield comes with a real twist to it, one that is familiar to fans of Bethesda games like Fallout 4, but which has been advanced fantastically since then. Weapon mods are available and can take a lot of real effort to create, but they aren’t forced upon players as a necessary part of the game. Bethesda has mastered the art of delivering great open-world crafting options without forcing them upon players.

10 Don’t Starve

Looks Deceptively Simplistic

One of the earlier examples of an open-world survival game, Don’t Starve used a randomly generated open world to intrigue and fascinate players until they were sucked in by the mixture of survival and crafting as well as the fun roguelike gameplay.

Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together are both great examples of what can be done in a simple format without insane graphics in building a believable world that can be extremely difficult and rewarding to survive in. Features such as the sanity meter make Don’t Starve one of the darker survival games available.

9 Satisfactory

Completely New Game Style

There are survival games, and then there are factory and management games. Few games have been bold enough to cross these ideas, and Satisfactory does more than just blend them. This is the first open-world, first-person factory-building type of game.

Players find themselves in an alien world where they have to survive and gather materials to create factories, slowly automatizing everything they need. The first major goal is to build a space elevator, enabling the player character to export items off-world for their employers. Satisfactory is a hugely fun game that has been in early access for five years, but is predicted to fully release sometime in 2024.

8 Subnautica

Oceanic Vehicle Crafting

One of the very best at allowing players to craft in unique ways, Subnautica drops the player into an alien ocean and forces them to survive with only the materials they can scavenge and the items they can craft from the local resources. From building laser cutters to propulsion rifles and even vehicles and bases, Subnautica has a massive variety of crafting.

Players can choose to play Subnautica in a number of different ways, and with the scale of the open ocean where they can gather resources from, there is almost no limit to how much they can create in a single run of the game.

7 The Forest

A Tense Horror, Where Crafting Can Prevent Certain Death

The Forest is unique in that it allows players to craft some of the most insane items imaginable. There are simple things such as weapons and shacks they can create. There are some stranger items like houseboats and traps, and then there are bloodied trophies of their enemies’ heads, and even worse, they uncover the bloody secrets of the island.

The Forest has a unique crafting style, which allows players to find a lot out for themselves about what they are able to put together. A lot of what can be made does make perfect sense and gives players the real feeling of putting together a survivable atmosphere on an unfriendly island.

6 Skyrim

Abuse Crafting Systems To Level Up & Become Overpowered

The best way to describe all the systems in Skyrim are lovable, easy to abuse, and endless fun. Skyrim doesn’t let players craft items in the same way they would in a survival game. Instead, it allows them to engage in several different creative activities. Enchanting, cooking, potion-making, and smithing are the main ways to craft in the game.

These classic RPG elements all offer a wide variety of options, particularly in the anniversary edition of Skyrim which added a lot of extra items to the game. Players can craft all sorts of armor and weapons and enchant them from scratch, and players have found ways to use potions and enchanting to brutally break the game by making super-powered weapons. Regardless of the easy breaks, Skyrim is a beloved game and the crafting systems are wondrous.

5 Sons Of The Forest

An Improved Focus On Crafting To Conquer The Forest

Though The Forest was already an incredible example of an open-world game with great crafting, the sequel which has been in early access for some time now, has already surpassed it. Sons of the Forest brings all the wonder and terror of the original game to a much larger-scale sequel, with an open-world map four times as large as that of the first game.

Additionally, the crafting system has been improved massively, giving players a whole new sense of freedom. The Forest was already a hugely fun survival sandbox that could be used for many creative crafting builds, but now Sons of the Forest has given players an even more freeing and expansive update to a similar style of crafting.

4 Terraria

Immense Freedom In Creativity & Crafting

Terraria is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive games of all time in terms of the open way it allows players to craft an entire world filled with items. The variety is almost unmatched by any other game, Terraria has maintained a lot of love from the gaming community for years because of the highly impressive way the crafting makes it so replayable.

Terraria doesn’t have the most detailed crafting mechanic, and the game is more focused on the exploration and combat sides than on the crafting. So, even though the crafting is hugely impressive, there is one game that does it better.

3 No Man’s Sky

Traverse The Infinite Cosmos For Supplies

Of all the open worlds in gaming, few can lay claim to letting the player travel across the entire cosmos, and even fewer have quite the breadth and length of No Man’s Sky. A game that originally came under fire on release for bugs and issues, it has developed into a fantastic game that allows players to seek out materials on billions of planets.

Crafting is one of the four “main pillars” of No Man’s Sky, as players will have to craft all the upgrades to their suit, ship, and technology, while also crafting more valuable products that they can sell and use for more complicated items. The intense grinding for materials takes a lot of time but makes for a classic survival game format.

2 Palworld

Pokémon-Inspiration Meets Survival

One of the biggest gaming hits of 2024 is another early-access title that has captivated players. Palworld sees players wash up on the shores of a mysterious place where they find pals, creatures that can be captured and used to build, fight, and gather materials alongside players, taking some of the grinds out of normal survival game ideas.

Palworld isn’t finished yet, but it is already a fantastic adventure that allows players to focus where they like. Adventuring across the open world with a team of pals, which players can ride or swim alongside, or building bases and creating a beautiful home for many pals. Either way, crafting is a huge part of Palworld, and there are all sorts of things from homes to traps and farms that players can create.

1 Minecraft

A Beloved Crafting Game With Endless Possibilities

Obviously, the legendary best-selling video game of all time that has the word craft in the name does crafting incredibly well. Minecraft is all about crafting an entire world of possibilities after digging up all the resources players need to do so.

At the very core of Minecraft, above all exploration and combat, comes the crafting. This is the most important aspect and that aspect was so well executed that this literally became the biggest game in history.