What is wattle and daub good for?

[Phillip Susi]

It takes clay, sand, dirt, sticks, and grass to make one block.  Clay is somewhat valuable so if I'm going to burn that for a building block, it seems like it's better to use it to make cobblestone and get two blocks for the price of one, and without the dirt and sand, which are also useful and not renewable.

[EnbyKaiju]

Wattle & daub are period-accurate building materials that grant players ways to customise their builds through colour and texture in a way that other blocks don't. There's no other building block that comes in the same range of colors and stays consisted in material texture.

Vintage Story isn't about giving people infinite supplies of materials to easily make whatever they want (outside of creative) and w&b is an example of a building process that's both accurate to the technological availability of the 1300s, but also gives players a very solid sense of having earned what they built.

It's also very popular because it has a different building stages that can be used to great effect for newer or older looking builds. You can even use it to show a building in construction.

I love it, one of the best additions.

[Rainbow Fresh]

8 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Clay is somewhat valuable

I guess you need to look around a bit more closely then. Clay is by no means valuable, unless you are burning through your Fire Clay supply - which is rare, tedious to produce otherwise and needed for much more valuable late-game progression. So...

8 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

it seems like it's better to use it to make cobblestone and get two blocks for the price of one

...as Enby already mentioned - it's not about the min-maxing of materials. If you think the look of cobblestone fits whatever it is you are building nicely, then use cobblestone. If you more want a texture like the w&d blocks, then you know where to spend your resources. Yes, w&d is 1:1 clay for blocks while cobblestone is 1:2; but it is much easier to just grab a stack of dirt, a stack of sand, a stack of clay and cut a bunch of grass to make a stack of blocks worth of daub, which could last longer if you don't fully plaster every single block than it is to grab a stack of clay and *eight* stacks of rock to make 2 stacks of cobble - especially since the latter *certainly* requires you to already have a pickaxe while w&d can be done theoretically day 1.

8 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

and without the dirt and sand, which are also useful and not renewable.

They may not be renewable but especially dirt is something you should not think about. You'll more than quickly enough find that you'll get more than you'd ever *want* to store of that stuff if ever you do any kind of terraforming or excavation. If you *want* to think about it and be smart, you'll specifically use low fertility soil for crafting and keep medium+ for when you need to place some but that's it. Sand might become more of a dwindling commodity in your area if you use alot of it; but the only other thing you'll really need it for is mortar which is it's own very tedious and costly process just for an as in-efficient fancier brick. And usually there are patches of sand all over the place, especially near/in gravel deserts, and mortar isn't picky of the rock type of the sand so that's not really an issue either.

[Chrondeath]

This is an area where I envy Valheim's building system, for being able to mechanically incentivize putting stone / foundation type materials on the bottom and making the higher floors out of lighter materials.  I have no idea if that was a way that wattle-and-daub was historically used, but at least "why not use cobblestone for everything" seems like "because you can't stack it that high" would be a reasonable answer.

I would like a reason to mix building materials and do the weird "overhanging upper story" thing that wasn't just aesthetics, is what I'm saying.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Chrondeath said:

This is an area where I envy Valheim's building system, for being able to mechanically incentivize putting stone / foundation type materials on the bottom and making the higher floors out of lighter materials.  I have no idea if that was a way that wattle-and-daub was historically used, but at least "why not use cobblestone for everything" seems like "because you can't stack it that high" would be a reasonable answer.

This is why I hate Valheim's building system. It works perfectly fine until you want to use that material for some texturing where the game won't let you place it.

For what it's worth though, heavy materials aren't limited strictly to the lower floors of buildings. Notre Dame is one famous example of such. Additionally, a lot of stonework was often covered with plaster and then painted, I believe, so just because the structure itself is stone doesn't mean that the stones themselves are going to be visible.

[LedZeptallica24]

I find it to be an aesthetically pleasing block to use for interior walls.  It has a clean texture (if you want), and color variety to aid in complementing the exterior of your build.  Clay limitations 100% agree with in regards to blue clay and obviously, fire clay.  However, at least in my world, I almost have access to too much red clay (hint: you can see clay deposits from the map, using the colored option!) 

[Phillip Susi]

Is it possible to repaint the wattle and daub after the fact or is it stuck with the color it is crafted with?

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Phillip Susi said:

Is it possible to repaint the wattle and daub after the fact or is it stuck with the color it is crafted with?

Currently, it's not possible to repaint it. Likewise, it's not possible to return a daub block to a more "unfinished" state once you've added more daub to smooth the texture.

[SnapJelly]

I agree that wattle and daub is too hard to make for what it's worth but that's imo mostly just because rammed earth exists in game and that looks pretty similar and is much easier to make.

If not for rammed earth I think wattle and daub would be a far more polular early game block choice for people to make houses out off but yeah as it is it's really only for those that happen to specifically want to play around with it.

A little sad because irl wattle and daub is actually a relatively quick and easy way of making walls!

[Rainbow Fresh]

10 hours ago, SnapJelly said:

I agree that wattle and daub is too hard to make for what it's worth but that's imo mostly just because rammed earth exists in game and that looks pretty similar and is much easier to make.

If not for rammed earth I think wattle and daub would be a far more polular early game block choice for people to make houses out off but yeah as it is it's really only for those that happen to specifically want to play around with it.

A little sad because irl wattle and daub is actually a relatively quick and easy way of making walls!

Leaving aside Rammed Earth, cause I do not think that dried, crusty dirt is a valid comparison in building material cause anyone actually wanting to build nice, lasting buildings will have to move past the dirt cube, I think the imbalance would somewhat sort itself out once the developers push closer to their intended goal of removing grid crafting. Currently, the only influential factor for weighing options beyond raw material is that metal-based things require smithing, ceramic-based things require forming and baking a bunch of clay and ashlar bricks require tediously extracting whole-grain rocks. The rest is solely determined by how many resources you need to shove into the crafting grid and Daub is certainly on the "oof, that's alotta stuff" side. If other options would take more involved, multi-step in-world processes then maybe mixing the daub and just right clicking it on the wattle like before would be a nicer, quicker alternative to having to mortar and place every individual brick or something.

[River Oak]

15 hours ago, SnapJelly said:

rammed earth exists in game and that looks pretty similar and is much easier to make.

I do find it very strange that packed dirt and rammed earth take up the same volume as normal uncompressed dirt

[SnapJelly]

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

cause I do not think that dried, crusty dirt is a valid comparison in building material cause anyone actually wanting to build nice, lasting buildings will have to move past the dirt cube

Yeah that do be true but that's also kinda just how the game works ya know, dirt floats so you can make a dirt house and that would work. The only think stopping you is wanting to make something that purposefully looks nice.

 

2 hours ago, River Oak said:

I do find it very strange that packed dirt and rammed earth take up the same volume as normal uncompressed dirt

Even if it didn't I don't think that would change much, dirt is literally everywhere so having to dig a little more to make your house isn't readlly a big hurdle I think

[Rainbow Fresh]

15 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

Yeah that do be true but that's also kinda just how the game works ya know, dirt floats so you can make a dirt house and that would work. The only think stopping you is wanting to make something that purposefully looks nice.

Which is the goal for any discussion of building blocks. The person wanting nothing but a "effectively functional" "room" to do the bare minimum will never consider anything but the cheapest block to obtain that fulfills this purpose. In which case they'd not even use rammed earth cause it costs more than normal earth and both blocks have the exact same effect if you don't deliberately turn on block instability.

Everyone else is left with the eternal struggle of obtaining ashlar bricks vs. cobblestone, weighing the tradeoffs of daub vs. clay bricks and so on.

[Phillip Susi]

I guess what took me by surprise was that I first started using cob, since that only takes 4 low fertility soil and 5 grass ( which is pretty much free ) to make 10 blocks was a very abundant early building block.  Then I moved to cobblestone, since rocks are abundant ( both being found on the surface, and from panning gravel, and digging deeper once you get a copper pickax ), but I quickly ran out of clay between using it for that, and all of the molds and cookpots, so I turned from using cobble to drystone.  I was a bit worried that wattle and daub had twice the need for clay as cobble, but I guess now that I have all of the molds and cookpots and oven done, I don't need it so much anymore and keep finding more of it.  Still, it would be nice if the daub recepie produced a little more than it does now.  Maybe 12 instead of 8 so you can get two full wattle and daub blocks if you don't mind leaving it incomplete or almost two if you want to complete it.  Aesthetically I would love to make stone blocks but that requires cement and I still have not found any sedimentary rock on my world, of any kind, even though it is supposed to spawn on top of the igneous rock below.

[LadyWYT]

On 8/24/2026 at 1:46 PM, SnapJelly said:

If not for rammed earth I think wattle and daub would be a far more polular early game block choice for people to make houses out off but yeah as it is it's really only for those that happen to specifically want to play around with it.

I forgot rammed earth was a thing, to be honest. Plus it's cheap and only comes in one color, and that's sad beige. It's like building all your walls out of plain sheetrock. That doesn't mean it's a bad material, just that it's not necessarily something you want to use if you want something impressive or otherwise have a specific aesthetic you'd like to achieve.

 

2 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Aesthetically I would love to make stone blocks but that requires cement and I still have not found any sedimentary rock on my world, of any kind, even though it is supposed to spawn on top of the igneous rock below.

I'm assuming you're needing sediment rocks for the lime? If you're playing with lore content enabled, don't forget that you can buy lime from commodities traders(maybe survival goods traders as well, though I don't recall for sure). Likewise, the new dungeons often seem to have lime, limestone, and chalk within them, and the lesser dungeons can occasionally have stashes of these as well. 

[SnapJelly]

10 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Aesthetically I would love to make stone blocks but that requires cement and I still have not found any sedimentary rock on my world, of any kind, even though it is supposed to spawn on top of the igneous rock below

Depending on the biome you're in it can be quite a way before encountering different stone types, my current single player world I spawned in a Peridotite biome which doesn't have any sedimentary rock on top either, the closest other rocks I found were Slate 3000 blocks west (also not sedimentary but it did have marbel so that solved the lime issue) and eventually found a small sandstone biome 1000 blocks further west.

The second one I found was a limestone biome 5000 blocks south.

So yeah if you happen to spawn in a sea of Igneous rock; personally I reccoment just gearing up for a very long walk and trecking on in a single direction for several days until you find it, prospecting on the way of course!

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, SnapJelly said:

So yeah if you happen to spawn in a sea of Igneous rock; personally I reccoment just gearing up for a very long walk and trecking on in a single direction for several days until you find it, prospecting on the way of course!

Or do the story content, if lore content is enabled and you haven't yet done the story for that world. Or perhaps visit the tropics. In either case, you're still traveling quite a ways and covering lots of territory, but with a little more to do than "wander around until you find the thing".

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Or do the story content

I do but I am too scawed to go do story stuff before I got atleast iron armor T.T

 

Edit: doesn't take me more than a year usually though, faster if I rush the armor

Edited August 27 by SnapJelly