Alchemy Factory Building: Floors, Walls & Lifts

The support rule

Added at the demo-to-Early Access transition: “Building Support Mechanism: Added structural support calculations. Construction now requires careful planning, and floating floors cannot be extended indefinitely without support.” The official FAQ states the consequence: “Upper floors require wall support. Removing supporting walls will also remove connected floors and walls above.”

Three support structures exist beyond walls: the Pillar (steel-reinforced, Building Tool level 3, December 2025), the Custom Beam that only needs support at both ends and switches length, and the Retractable Beam and Conveyor Passage that stretch by dragging (March 2026).

What the Building Tool unlocks

From the Workbench (next to your bed in a 1.0 save): “At the Workbench, you can consume materials to upgrade Inventory capacity, restocking speed, etc., and unlock construction tools. After unlocking level 2 construction tools, you can demolish and build the initial house and purchase land plots.” Level 1 gives platforms and stairs; level 2 is the build hammer that lets you press X and delete the starter walls; level 3 adds the Pillar. The Passenger Lift (June 2026) is also unlocked by upgrading the Building Tool.

The 1.0 building sets, Brick and Marble, join the earlier roof and stone-wall variants. Marble is now the byproduct of obsidian and is “used for building only.”

Floors: full, quarter and the pillar trick

Press T while holding a floor tile to switch between full floors and quarter floors. A tips video’s reason for using quarters: they let you span eight spaces between supports if you build four from each side and meet in the middle, which keeps the interior open. The cost is placing twice as many tiles.

The same video’s warning about tall builds: make every floor’s pillar layout identical to the one below, “or you will eventually not be able to place things after you reach a certain height.” Support is calculated all the way to the ground.

Stairs, lifts and elevators

• Shelf stairs. Place a shelf on a wall, copy it (middle click), and the copy can be placed on the floor and on top of other shelves, making a functional staircase with nothing underneath it. Both the Reddit board and the tips video describe it as the cheapest option.
• Conveyor Lift (for items, not you). Align the bottom first, hold left click, drag the top to height, press R while holding to rotate the top, release. T reverses direction and changes which side is the input. Lifts can be dragged to any height you have materials for; stacking one lift shaft on another creates a second lift rather than extending the first.
• Passenger Lift (for you). Added in v0.5.4530, unlocked through the Building Tool. Before it existed, the community answer to “how do I get up there” was the Bounce Shroom (level 5), and one video is titled “Why use stairs? Do this instead! Bounce Shroom Elevators.”
• Grand staircase, one floor high, was added in June 2026 as a decorative alternative.

How high can you go?

There is no published height limit. A Reddit thread titled “Tried to reach the Height Limit” reports there does not seem to be one. Guides have built to the point where Thermal Extractors hit their maximum multiplier, measured as 17 storeys in one video and as a height readout of 273 (19 floors, some double height) in another; the thermal extractor guide compares the two.

Two launch-week notes

Customers can now walk to upper floors (1.0), so a shop no longer has to be on the wooden ground floor, and the original shop entrance can be removed and replaced with several gates. And a “multiple floor glitch” thread from 7 September offers a workaround for holes in factory floors; read it before rebuilding a floor from scratch.

Sources: Demo-to-EA notes (11 December 2025); Alchemy Factory FAQ (13 December 2025), question 12; Update v0.4.1.3754 (20 December 2025); v0.4.3.4131 notes (6 March 2026); v0.5.4467 and v0.5.4530 notes (June 2026); 1.0 Patch Notes; Timm Plays Games, 50 tips (5 January 2026, transcript); r/AlchemyFactory threads on shelf stairs and the height limit; MonkeyNutz Gaming beginner guide (11 December 2025, transcript) for lift placement.