In Moonlight Peaks, your machines have personality. The Refiner is a pink, mouthy little gremlin that eats logs whole and spits out planks; the Keg wears tiny bat wings on its hoops. These are your Farm Helpers — the placeable machines that turn raw crops, wood, stone and ore into everything worth having — and this page collects every one we’ve seen, with the confirmed crafting recipes from the demo and the longer datamined list of what’s coming at launch.
Short version: you unlock Farm Helpers as blueprints, craft them from the build menu, plop them anywhere on your plot, and feed them. Processing is where the money is — see our money guide for why raw goods are almost always the wrong thing to sell.
Core machines and build recipes
These recipes were first captured in the demo and have remained in the community’s launch-build tables. We retain that provenance rather than presenting an uncited screenshot as a fresh official confirmation.
| Machine | What it does | Recipe | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refiner | Refines raw resources — wood into planks, stone into refined stone | 20 Wood, 20 Stone | 4×3 |
| Furnace | Smelts ore into metal bars (copper, iron) and coal | 15 Copper Ore, 5 Refined Stone | 2×2 |
| Workbench | General crafting station | 30 Wood | 4×2 |
| Cooking Station | Outdoor cooking — see cooking & recipes | 5 Refined Stone, 5 Planks | 2×2 |
| Keg | Turns produce into juice, beer and wine | 20 Wood (Workbench) | small |
| Herb Garden | Dedicated plot — the only place herbs grow | Early blueprint (a gift from your mom) | large |
| Scarecrow | Appears in the build menu alongside the machines | Not yet captured | — |
A Loom — for weaving ethereal threads into cloth — also turns up in demo mail as a buildable, so expect it early in the full game too.
The build costs above held up at launch. Blueprints for the Furnace, Keg and Refiner come from the Workbench; the Mill is bought from the Howling Hammer carpentry shop instead.
What each machine makes (confirmed recipes)
Now the game is out, we can list the exact outputs for the three core processors — the machines you’ll live in. The patterns are clean: juice takes 3 fruit, wine takes 4 grapes, and every metal bar needs 1 Charcoal.
Keg — drinks. Feed it fruit, wheat or grapes:
| Output | Recipe |
|---|---|
| Any fruit Juice (Blackberry, Blueberry, Cranberry, Lemon, Melon, Raspberry, Strawberry, Blood Grape, Blood Orange, White Grape) | 3 of that fruit |
| Beer | 3 Wily Wheat |
| Red Wine | 4 Blood Grapes |
| White Wine | 4 White Grapes |
Furnace — smelting. Note that every bar also eats a Charcoal, which the Furnace makes from plain wood:
| Output | Recipe |
|---|---|
| Charcoal | 1 Wood |
| Copper Bar | 4 Copper Ore + 1 Charcoal |
| Iron Bar | 4 Iron Ore + 1 Charcoal |
| Gold Bar | 4 Gold Ore + 1 Charcoal |
Refiner — raw materials and animal feed:
| Output | Recipe | Yields |
|---|---|---|
| Planks | 3 Wood | 1 |
| Soft Planks | 3 Light Wood | 1 |
| Hardwood Planks | 1 Heart Stone | 1 |
| Refined Stone | 6 Stone | 1 |
| Stone | 1 Heart Stone | 20 |
| Fodder | 1 Fiber | 2 |
| Deluxe Fodder | 50 Fodder + 1 Mana Essence | — |
Two things worth flagging: the Refiner cracks a single Heart Stone into 20 Stone, so one lucky mining drop feeds a lot of building; and Deluxe Fodder ties your spellcasting economy to your livestock, since it needs Mana Essence.
The processing chain (why the Refiner comes first)
Farm Helpers feed each other, and the order matters:
- Refiner first. Wood and stone are everywhere; the Refiner turns them into planks and refined stone — and nearly everything else is built from those. Even the Furnace needs refined stone.
- Furnace second. Copper ore from the rocks around your plot becomes copper bars (later, iron bars) — the ingredient behind lamps, wheelbarrows and sturdier gear.
- Then the fun ones. Kegs, the Cooking Station and the Herb Garden turn your crops into things people actually pay for.
You’ll see the chain right in the crafting UI: furniture recipes are tagged “Made at Refiner” or “Made at Furnace”, so the game tells you exactly which machine gates which item. Decorating your house runs through these machines too — half the catalog in our decorating guide starts life as a log in the Refiner’s mouth.
Kegs: the wine economy
The Keg deserves its own paragraph because the town practically runs on it. Orlock’s first quest is literally a wine order, and demo players agree: “you will need a lot of kegs.” Produce goes in; juice, beer and wine come out, worth far more than the raw harvest. Kegs are compact and place anywhere — one player set theirs directly beside the bed, which is either efficiency or a lifestyle statement.
Grapes → keg → Red Wine is still an early money loop, but launch tables now give us a few concrete alternatives. These are community-reported output values; slash-separated figures are reproduced exactly because wiki.gg has not labelled the tiers.
| Keg output | Input | Energy | Reported sell value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beer | 3 Wily Wheat | 1 / 2 | 420 / 520 |
| Blood Grape Juice | 3 Blood Grapes | 40 / 50 | 100 / 120 |
| White Grape Juice | 3 White Grapes | 3 / 5 | 120 / 180 |
| Melon Juice | 3 Melon | 3 / 4 | 300 / 380 |
| Moon Juice | 3 Moonfruit | 50 | 320 |
That makes the Keg more than a wine-only machine: Blood Grape Juice and Moon Juice are credible emergency food while you are still building a full cooking pantry. Keep enough grapes for Orlock and recipes before feeding every last one to the machine.
Herb Garden: herbs play by different rules
Herbs cannot be planted on normal farmland. They need the dedicated Herb Garden — a chunky plot that arrives early as a blueprint from your mom — and they feed straight into potion brewing. Datamined machines suggest the herb pipeline goes deeper: a Herb Drying Rack to dry them and a Mortar to grind dried herbs into spices for cooking.
The full 16-machine roster
The launch game confirms 16 Farm Helpers in total. Beyond the three core processors above, these are all in the game — their jobs are confirmed, but their exact input→output recipe tables are still being catalogued by players:
| Machine | What the files say it does |
|---|---|
| Herb Drying Rack | Hang herbs and plants to dry |
| Mortar | Grinds dried herbs and foods into spices |
| Bee House | Nurtures bees; collect honey at intervals |
| Loom | Weaves materials from ethereal threads |
| Cheese Press | Cheese from milk — pairs with your Draculambs & livestock |
| Mana Extractor | Extracts essence from magical crops — fuel for your spellcasting |
| Mill | Grinds resources into powders (think flour) |
| Jam Maker | Pots of jam from fruit |
| Firefly Sanctuary | Nurtures fireflies; produces firedrops |
| Firefly Pollinator | Boosts plant quality in a 9×9 grid around it |
| Chocolatier | Chocolates |
| Seed Sequencer | Produces seeds — likely from crops, Stardew-seed-maker style |
The standouts: the Firefly Pollinator is the first confirmed quality mechanic we’ve seen for crops — a 9×9 aura is enormous, and farm layouts will be built around it. And the Mana Extractor finally answers how a farm feeds a spellbook.
Placement is forgiving
Nothing we’ve seen suggests you can brick your layout. In the demo you rotate machines freely (Q/E on PC), pick them up again, and re-place them at will — so plant your Refiner wherever and re-plan later when the Firefly Pollinator makes 9×9 grids the law of the land. More plot-planning in the beginner tips.
Still to confirm
Processing times, output values, machine upgrade tiers, and whether the Scarecrow actually wards anything off — none of that is nailed down yet. We’ll fill in exact numbers once launch-build data is stable, and mark anything demo-sourced until then.
New to the game? Start with everything we know, then the first-week walkthrough — your Refiner is hungry by day two.
