12 Little Big Workshop Tips and Tricks

Little Big Workshop Tips And Tricks (English) Break Room, Research, blueprints, Priorities, Noise and Comfort and Much More

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this article, I’ll show you more than twelve Little Big Workshop tips and tricks.

The exciting economic strategy game Little Big Workshop looks cute and simple. But it is actually very complex and not so easy to master. Maybe some of my tips will help you get along better in the game. Some of the Little Big Workshop tips and tricks are for beginners, some for advanced users. I hope there is something for you too.

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This post exists here as a text, but also as a YouTube video (German language, but many subtitles), so you can choose how you like to consume it.

Little Big Workshop Tips and Tricks Video:

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

If you do not know the game yet, you will also find here a link to my Little Big Workshop Review, where I present and analyze the game in detail.

I’ll start with simpler tips and then step up to the more complex ones.

Repairs are important

An important beginner tip for Little Big Workshop anticipates. I always recommend having the “repair status lens” active. This is the top right of the gray-white buttons with the crossed tools, so the 2nd from the left.

As a result, color codes are displayed on the machines, how much they are worn. And then it will be much easier to repair them when they turn pale green or yellow. The probability of failure due to broken machines is thus greatly reduced.

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Build rooms and tear down rooms

The building tools must first be unlocked in the research. With the renovation tool, we can build new rooms, which actually explains itself. With the wall tool draw a frame, set the door, order, wait, done.

But if we do not want a new room, but only want to expand and enlarge an existing room, we have to plan a second room next to it. Then simply remove the wall between the existing room and the new construction site using the leveling tool. This can all be done in one go, in the end, confirmed and the construction workers move in to rebuild the space.

Somewhat more complex is the tearing of entire rooms. Here I tried it out for a while until I found out. To completely demolish an empty room, we simply have to click on the floor once in the middle of the room with the leveling tool. This marks the room completely for demolition, confirms, and the room will be torn down.

By the way, you can also tear off doors directly if you click on them with the right button and select to tear them down.

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Research and Development – Skilltree

When our company rises in level, we can unlock properties for our company in a kind of skill tree. These enable certain machines, material levels, active capabilities, and so on.

In the beginning, I’ve been thinking a long time about which ones I want to unlock and which ones I do not. I’ve also thought about the specialization that will be unlocked after the Silver Challenge.

Do not worry too much about which research you should do and which not. Because I played the game several times until the end, I can tell you, you can get everything. It’s just about the order, not yes or no.

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Sort customer orders and priorities

Our customers always have particularly lucrative orders for us. But they always have a special risk because they have a time limit. And if we can not handle the production in time, we usually stay on some of the goods and the cost of doing so.

Right on the edge, we have an order list. New orders always end up at the bottom. Thus, all production steps of the new orders on all machines are always “the last” in the respective list.

To reorder this, we should always sort our time orders up with the orange main priority button. As a result, all intermediate materials on the machines are sorted up and our time order gets better chances to be completed quickly enough.

For multiple concurrent time orders, I always recommend sorting them in such a way that the one with the least remaining time comes to the top and those who have a little more time than the second or third are on the list.

Did you know that the colors on the timeline progress bars indicate how well you are on time? If your people hang somewhat behind, the progress bar will be partially red. The redder, the farther back.

And if they are well in time and ready faster than necessary, some green will be displayed. And the bigger the green part of the beam, the farther the work on the project is, as it actually should be.

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Optimize break room, employees fall asleep

The staff break room is extremely important because it is responsible for the recovery of our exhausted staff. Our employees will otherwise fall over exhausted and then sleep on the floor forever.

A staff room should not be too small, as we should put about 10 or more units in there over time. In the beginning, a break room may be smaller, but over time we need larger and several break rooms. I’ll explain exactly why.

An important point that is not well understood in the game is that a break room has only a capacity of 10, I’ll explain more precisely. It is absolutely irrelevant how big he is. This means that no matter how many coffee machines or vending machines we place in the room, unlimited supplies will not accumulate.

Update: In one of the last patches, the former maximum of 10 was removed, so now it makes sense to build more machines if you want to.

The two important devices for the break room are the coffee machine and vending machine. If you look at them, the coffee machine has 3 points on top and the snack machine 4.

These points can be black, then the slot is empty. They can be green, the slot is loaded, and a worker can pick up something. Or they may be white, then we have set up too many machines and exceeded the maximum capacity of the room.

Whenever a worker is exhausted, he goes into a break room to a device with a green dot, gets a refreshment, and generates rest. The green dot then turns black. If a coworker in the whole company does not find a green point, he simply falls unconscious and then lies in a coma for several minutes instead of recovering in about 30 seconds.

Being able to get lots of green points and make sure they replenish quickly is extremely important. We can make sure our precious workers are not idly lying around and sleeping.

Since the maximum capacity is 10, the ideal equipment for a break room with devices is the first 2 coffee machines and a vending machine, because that together are exactly 10 points.

In addition, if we can afford it, we will buy one of all the items from the Recovery Generation category. These devices ensure that the green dots regenerate faster.

And only one at a time, because the effect is halved if we buy more of the same type. As the level increases, we can buy more different recovery devices. Doubling is less effective and makes sense at most as a luxury.

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Little Big Workshop Guide: Noise, comfort, mood and decoration

The machines produce noise in every production room. Noise creates a bad mood. When our employees work in a room with a lot of noise, they are in a bad mood and need more rest.

To counteract noise, we can bring comfort to the rooms. For that, the decorative objects are to be used internally. We should at least bring so much decoration into a room that the room as a whole creates more comfort than noise. We can check this with the function Raumeffektlinse top right.

Important info here is then that, as with the recreational equipment, even here a second decorative piece of the same kind works much less, and each other even less. Ideally, we should not set up duplicates, but rather as many as possible. You should only buy double if the noise can not be neutralized otherwise.

Incidentally, large rooms also have a similar effect to noise. From a certain room size onwards “Big room -25 points” is displayed. And if we build even larger rooms, it becomes a huge room that even generates -50 points. With enough decoration, this is not a problem.

Later, there are three special trophies that can be set up once to double the effect of existing equipment in a room.

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Material Search – When everything gets stuck

When our factory gets bigger and we may even have several parallel strands of assembly tables, sometimes a production process comes to a standstill.

So generally, it’s stupid that our workers may start to stand around, the machines stop working because somewhere else, something does not get done fast enough.

But we have possibilities to intervene. When production stops, we can click on the corresponding machine and see on the right the current work orders. And the required input materials. Those that are available are displayed normally. However, the component that is still missing, is highlighted in red.

If you now click on this red component, you get a light blue circle with a picture of the material on the top right. If we click on this circle, we can get it to the machine or panel that will make that component.

There we can then continue researching why it hooks. Maybe we will find another component there, which should be made elsewhere, but way too far down the list. So we can then track down the hanging part and push it further up the lists or relocate it to a less loaded machine. The button with the arrow to the right serves this purpose.

In the late game, I’ve even built an extra turbo-assembly line, which was only intended for particularly time-critical orders and such intermediate materials, waiting for everything.

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Little Big Workshop Help: Optimize production speed

When we open a fresh factory, we have very inefficient machines for many operations. Often, work steps are only executable with 25% or 50% effectiveness.

Through research and development, we are gradually getting better machines. These should also be unlocked as quickly as possible and then used. First, there are 100% machines for almost all operations.

Later, we even get 200% variants for almost all production steps. Particularly helpful here is the improved assembly station, which has a 200% installation speed. In general, assembly stations are one of the most time-critical departments in our factory.

Over time, the blueprints need more and more assembly operations. So in the best case, we build several assembly departments, connected with control panels. But also with all other work, switchboards are a great thing. They make it easier to manage and expand our factory.

I have had good experiences with 4-5 parallel assembly lines with switchboards for a large factory. If we falter then we can easily remove it by attaching more tables to the dash panel.

It is also important that we adapt existing building plans later so that they also use the newly used switchboards and better machines.

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Reading recommendation:

My Little Big Workshop Review

Little Big Workshop Tips and Tricks – Optimize storage zones

As a first tip for the zones, I recommend setting up a normal main storage area directly at the loading dock to receive incoming material supplies. Our porters can then redistribute them from there.

Right next to it, I would set up an export zone once we have unlocked the zone specialization. This should be very large because over time we will make very large items. And we want to have them out of the production areas as quickly as possible when they are ready. Do not forget to put at least one shelf in each storage zone.

If we later have several loading bays, I prefer to disassemble them a bit and put in the middle a large storage room with an export zone and 2 main storage zones. This way, the materials can be unloaded quickly and the finished products can be loaded quickly. And by the storage in the middle between the bays, both are equally fast.

In each production room, we should then build at least one normal warehouse and one input zone. In larger rooms with many machines, several input zones may also make sense.

Personally, I usually put the machines on the wall. Then I leave a pathway in front of the machines so that the workers can walk a little faster there. And then in the middle of the room, I place the storage zones.

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Storage zones direction

If you click on a camp, you see white arrows on all 4 sides. This is not explained anywhere, but you can click on these arrows and thus set a preferred first storage position. If you click on one of the four arrows, it will be filled out. Only one edge can be selected as a priority at a time.

The practical effect of this priority arrow is that goods are first placed on the floor at this edge. Say, when a larger delivery comes to a warehouse, the transporters first try to fill all the shelves. And then they start to lay things on the floor, starting with the edge that has the filled arrow.

For example, we can make sure that routes are less crowded, or larger sites use sites that are close to the machines first.

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Construction and Spatial Planning – Improve factory layout

Our company in Little Big Workshop works better when we divide certain production steps into departments. This allows us to optimize routes and relocations.

I recommend from the beginning to develop some planning, which department should be later where. Later, we should divide our operation according to the materials and work steps.

We need a wood department, a metal department, sewing, painting, and a plastics department as well as an assembly area. There is also one main warehouse for the material acceptance and storage of the finished end products.

The installation should be as central as possible and close to the loading bays. So we can produce the various intermediate materials in the peripheral areas, collect them in the middle and assemble them and then transport them directly from there.

A little tip on top of that, if later you can buy land, so you can gradually buy the whole table. But the field where the red phone stands will always be left out. You can never buy this.

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Modify building plans instead of making new plans

Over time, we will make different variants of certain products. Especially our regular customers demand after some time ever better versions of the desired devices.

In the beginning, we can save a lot of costs if we create building plans, the most favorable basic materials Over time, we want to make different variants of certain products. Especially, our regular customers need some better versions of the desired devices. This makes our profit margin better, and we can grow faster.

Later, however, it will often be insufficient to use these cheap materials. It is also often possible to use different versions of certain subcomponents that have different properties. Again, it is recommended to use the cheapest at the beginning.

So that we then but in the course, with increasing requirements, do not constantly build the blueprints from scratch, there is a gimmick. It is important to know that you can call and modify the old blueprints. This is much faster than rethinking everything completely. With the cloning button, we can create a copy and then keep both variants.

Just look at the top right. There is a drop-down list with previously used building plans. Search there, if you have a blueprint, which almost meets the requirements, which are shown on the right.

Green dots are missing in the example, so we look at the starting materials to see if we can get more green dots through better materials. We then change one or more components until we meet the requirement.

Do not be put off by first showing the better components in red. This only means that this one change is not enough to meet the requirements. But when we have exchanged several at some point, we reach the demand. Incidentally, you can scroll this unfolded material list partially with the mouse wheel.

And we can use the old blueprint without having to click everything together again. This saves a lot of time and clicks, especially with the often very extensive blueprints of the middle and advanced products.

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Outro – General reader tips

Okay, these were my Little Big Workshop tips and tricks. I hope there were some interesting things for you. With this knowledge, it should be much easier to drive the Nemesis GmbH (not sure how the English name of this Evil Company is) from the factory throne and build a very well-functioning factory.

If you know more tips and tricks for the game or have any questions, feel free to write me in the comments of the above-linked video. I also like to try to help you in the Community Forum or in the Community Discord Channel, to the left of the description.

Then I wish you a great day, let it be well with you, ciao ciao, your Zap.

Links and Sources:

Affiliate Link:
If you do not own the game yet, or want to buy it as a gift for a friend:
Buy Little Big Workshop cheaper at Gamesplanet

Little Big Workshop Steam page

Twitter Page of the developers

Worth a look:

My Little Big Workshop Review

My Reviews and how do I test?

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