Spiritfarer Ship Building Guide: All Upgrades, Rooms and Layouts

Your ship in Spiritfarer starts as a modest vessel with a cabin and not much else. By the time you ferry your final spirit to the Everdoor, it will be a towering, sprawling home-at-sea packed with guestrooms, gardens, forges, and kitchens — a floating village built one blueprint at a time. This Spiritfarer ship building guide covers every room type, all Ole’s upgrades, layout strategy, and the Glim-farming tips that keep construction moving.

If you are new to the game, start with the complete Spiritfarer guide for an overview of all core mechanics. When you are ready to dive into meeting the spirits who fill those rooms, the Spiritfarer spirits guide covers every passenger and what they need. Spiritfarer belongs to a wider family of reflective, exploration-led games explored in the best puzzle and exploration games guide.

How Ship Building Works

Building on the ship uses a grid-based placement system. Every structure occupies a set number of grid squares on the ship’s deck. When you acquire a blueprint — either from a spirit’s questline, from Ole, or from exploration — it appears in your build menu. You place the building by selecting a spot on the deck grid, and construction completes after a brief building animation (or instantly if you use the double-jump trick to land on the frame).

Three mechanics matter from day one:

• Rotation: All buildings can be rotated and repositioned freely after placement. There is no demolition penalty, so reorganise often as the ship grows.
• Upgrades: Most production buildings have upgrade tiers that require Glim plus specific raw or refined materials. Upgrades increase output speed or quality, not size.
• Navigation cabin clearance: The navigation wheel sits on the starboard side. Tall multi-storey buildings placed directly beside it can clip into the view. Keep taller structures amidships or port-side.

Room Types Explained

Guestrooms

Every spirit needs somewhere to sleep. Guestrooms are the basic accommodation: a small structure with a bed, personalised by each spirit’s aesthetic. When you invite a new passenger, their guestroom blueprint unlocks automatically. Build it before the spirit boards and they will move in immediately; build it after and they will wait on deck.

Guestrooms cannot be upgraded in the traditional sense, but many spirits request improvements or additions through their personal questlines — a fireplace, wallpaper, a specific piece of furniture. Completing these requests raises relationship levels and unlocks story beats.

Spirit-Specific Rooms

Beyond the basic guestroom, each spirit unlocks at least one specialised room or facility as you advance their story. These are distinct from production buildings — they are personal spaces tied to that character’s arc. Examples include:

• A meditation garden for one spirit that doubles as a quiet outdoor space
• A music room that becomes a functional part of their questline
• Workshop extensions that reflect a spirit’s profession in life

These rooms stay on the ship permanently even after a spirit passes through the Everdoor. You do not lose their building when they leave, which means the ship accumulates a meaningful architectural history of everyone Stella has cared for.

Production Buildings

Production buildings are the engine room of the ship economy. Each one converts raw materials into refined goods that feed cooking, crafting, and further upgrades.

Place production buildings where Stella can reach them quickly. The Kitchen benefits most from a central position since you use it constantly for every spirit relationship.

Functional Rooms

Two functional rooms serve logistical rather than productive roles:

• Cellar: Unlocked mid-game, the Cellar stores preserved foods for the long term. Items placed inside are protected from spoilage, which matters when juggling multiple cooking projects simultaneously. It also functions as a wine and cheese cellar — place certain foods inside and they improve over time.
• Mailbox: Receives letters from spirits and characters across the world. Letters occasionally include items, recipes, or story-critical information. Check it regularly when docked at ports.

Ship Upgrades from Ole the Shipwright

Ole is found early in the game at Furogawa. His upgrades do not add rooms — they improve the ship itself as a vessel and platform. Visit him every time you acquire new resources; his upgrade tree unlocks progressively.

Speed Upgrades

Speed upgrades reduce travel time between islands. Each tier requires:

• Raft Speed I: Hardwood Planks + Ash Plank + Glim
• Raft Speed II: Steel Ingot + Oak Plank + higher Glim cost
• Raft Speed III: Aluminium Ingot + advanced materials — significantly cuts cross-map travel

Prioritise Speed I early. Spiritfarer involves a lot of back-and-forth travel, and even a small speed increase compounds into hours saved over a full playthrough.

Hold Capacity Upgrades

Your ship’s hold determines how many items Stella can carry. Upgrading hold capacity is essential as production scales up — without it, you constantly return to chests mid-task.

• Hold I: Basic materials, low Glim — unlocks extra inventory rows
• Hold II: Mid-tier metals + Glim — adds further rows
• Hold III: Advanced alloys — near-unlimited carry capacity for a casual playthrough

Structural Upgrades

Structural upgrades unlock new physical capabilities for the ship:

• Rock Destroyer: Allows the ship to smash through rock formations blocking island access. Required to reach several mid-game locations.
• Ice Breaker: Lets the ship navigate frozen seas. Opens the northern ice map region and several spirits’ home islands.
• Mist Cleaner: Clears the magical fog surrounding the outermost map areas. Needed for late-game islands and the final stretch of most spirits’ stories.

These three structural upgrades effectively gate the story. Rock Destroyer comes first; save resources for it immediately after Speed I.

Atul’s Foundry: The Most Important Production Building

Of all production buildings, the Foundry carries the most weight. Atul, the bear spirit, builds it as part of his questline and teaches Stella to smelt ores. Almost every ship upgrade, building improvement, and spirit request eventually traces back to a refined metal — which means the Foundry is always in demand.

Foundry Upgrade Tiers

Each smelting cycle takes real time. While ore processes, attend to other tasks — water the garden, cook a meal, or talk to a spirit. Spiritfarer rewards players who multitask across their ship rather than standing and waiting.

Garden, Orchard, Field and Food Production

Food is the primary love language in Spiritfarer. Every spirit has favourite foods and comfort dishes; cooking them boosts relationship progress. The food chain runs through three growing buildings:

• Garden: Grows vegetables from seed packets found in chests or bought at shops. Each slot takes a set number of in-game days. Onions, carrots, leeks, and cotton are essential early crops.
• Orchard: Fruit trees planted in the orchard grow over several days and then produce repeatedly without replanting. Apple, pear, and olive trees are the backbone of mid-game cooking.
• Field: Wheat and corn grow here, providing ingredients for bread, porridge, and animal feed. The Field also grows sunflowers, which yield oil used in many recipes.

All three growing buildings benefit from Stella’s watering mechanic — watering crops daily speeds up growth. Set a routine of watering every morning before leaving dock to maximise output.

The Farm provides eggs, milk, and wool from animals you collect at specific islands. Animals need feeding daily — the Field’s grain keeps them productive.

Glim: The Ship’s Building Currency

Glim is the soft currency used for almost all building upgrades and Ole’s ship improvements. It appears as glowing blue orbs and drops from several sources:

• Resource processing: Smelting ores and processing materials generates small Glim amounts
• Fishing: Certain fish sell for Glim at shops, or Glim drops from catch animations
• Spirit happiness: Keeping all spirits well-fed and comfortable generates passive Glim over time
• Exploration: Chests and breakable objects on islands yield Glim
• Selling surplus: Shops across the map buy processed goods for Glim — build surplus production and sell the overflow

Most efficient Glim farm early game: Smelt copper and iron consistently, sell processed ingots you do not immediately need, and keep the Foundry running at all times. The return on smelting raw copper into Copper Ingots and selling the excess compounds quickly.

Ship Layout Strategy

There is no single correct layout — Spiritfarer is intentionally open-ended. That said, experienced players converge on a few practical principles:

• Kitchen central: Put the Kitchen amidships where Stella can reach it from any direction without crossing the entire deck. You visit it constantly.
• Foundry rear or port: The Foundry is used regularly but not constantly. Keep it accessible but not in prime real estate.
• Group guestrooms together: Clustering spirit accommodations creates a residential district that is easier to navigate when checking on multiple spirits in sequence.
• Tall buildings port-side: Multi-storey structures like the Loom or Kitchen on the port side preserve your navigation cabin sightlines.
• Growing buildings deck-forward: Garden, Field, and Orchard need daily watering. Putting them at the bow keeps them visible when you board the ship each session.

As the ship expands, it grows both up and out. Buildings stack vertically — you will eventually have a ship with three to four floors of structures. Use Stella’s jump and glide to navigate vertically between levels.

Managing a Crowded Ship

By the mid-game, the deck fills up. You cannot permanently demolish most buildings — guestrooms in particular are permanent fixtures tied to spirit questlines. However:

• Reposition freely: Move everything. A reorganisation session every few hours of play prevents the ship from becoming an unnavigable maze.
• Build vertically: Smaller structures stack on top of larger ones in some configurations. Experiment with stacking production buildings to reclaim deck space.
• Prioritise active spirits: If a spirit’s questline is complete, their room still remains, but you can push it to the edges or roof to free prime deck positions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big does the ship get?

By the late game, the ship extends to roughly double its starting deck length and reaches three to four storeys in height. It becomes a genuinely large structure with its own internal geography — spirit districts, a farm end, a production mid-section, and Stella’s cabin aft.

Can you remove rooms permanently?

Guestrooms and spirit-specific buildings cannot be demolished. Production buildings and functional rooms can be repositioned but not deleted. The ship is cumulative — it only grows.

What happens to a spirit’s room after they pass through the Everdoor?

The room stays on the ship permanently. Spiritfarer treats this intentionally — the ship as a memorial to everyone Stella has helped. Former spirits’ rooms become quiet spaces you pass through as the journey continues.

Which upgrade should I prioritise first?

Raft Speed I from Ole, then Rock Destroyer. Speed reduces the friction of travel immediately, and Rock Destroyer gates several critical story islands. After those two, upgrade the Foundry as soon as Atul’s questline enables it.

How do I get more Glim efficiently?

Keep the Foundry running continuously. Smelt every ore you gather rather than storing it raw. Sell refined metal surplus at shops. The Glim return on smelting is the best passive income stream available before mid-game activities unlock.

Do I need all production buildings to finish the game?

The Foundry, Kitchen, and at least one growing building (Garden or Field) are effectively required to progress through spirit questlines. The Loom and Sawmill become necessary as material requirements escalate. The Cellar and Mailbox are optional quality-of-life additions.

Sources

• Spiritfarer Wiki — room blueprints, building stats, upgrade costs
• SuperCheats Spiritfarer Walkthrough — production building unlock order
• Steam Community Spiritfarer Guides — layout tips and Glim farming strategies

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.