Short answer: build Woodcutter, then Sawmill, then Tent, then Campfire and Moonshine Still, then Shallow Pier, then the Landlubber. Everything before the Sawmill exists only to feed the Sawmill, and everything after the Campfire exists only so your workers do not starve.
That order is not a leaked developer script. It is what falls out of the official wiki’s own cost tables once you resolve which building can physically be paid for with what you have on minute one. Every cost quoted below is the wiki’s listed value, read 2026-08-23. Where the wiki is blank or contradictory, this page says so instead of guessing.
The build order, with the gate that unlocks each step
Work down this list. Each row states what you must already have before the step is payable.
| # | Build | Wiki-listed cost | Gate: what you need first | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Woodcutter | None (no cost listed) | Nothing | Produces 8 Hardwood/min from nothing. Hardwood is the only currency the Sawmill accepts. |
| 2 | Sawmill | 10 Hardwood | ~2 min of Woodcutter output | Converts 4 Hardwood/min into 10 Planks/min. Planks price almost every early building. |
| 3 | Tent | 2 Planks | Sawmill running | Capacity 2. Every Hand-type worker costs 1 Housing per minute; with no housing you have no workers. |
| 4 | Campfire | 10 Planks | Sawmill running | 16 Stew/min from no input at all. Greenhands and Swabbies both eat Stew. |
| 5 | Moonshine Still | 5 Planks | Sawmill running | 12 Booze/min, also from no input. Booze is the second half of Swabbie upkeep. |
| 6 | Quarry | 25 Planks | ~3 min of Sawmill output | 6 Stone/min, no input. Stone gates the Stonecutter. |
| 7 | Stonecutter | 12 Planks | Quarry running | 5 Stone Blocks/min from 2 Stone. Stone Blocks price most tier-2 buildings. |
| 8 | Shallow Pier | 30 Planks | Sawmill running | The only pier the Landlubber and every Tier 2 hull can use. |
| 9 | Landlubber | 15 Planks | Shallow Pier | Tier 1 hull, 15 Swabbies, the cheapest way to put anything to sea. |
Two of those costs deserve a flag. The wiki lists no build cost at all for the Woodcutter and the Copper Mine — the cost column is empty, not zero-with-a-number. Treat “free” as the wiki’s reading, not a measured in-game fact. Similarly the Sawmill’s cost (10 Hardwood) is paid in the exact resource it consumes, so a Sawmill placed before a Woodcutter is a dead building.
The mistake almost everyone makes: workers are a running cost
This is the part that separates a first hour that works from one that stalls. In Corsair Cove workers are not a one-off purchase. The wiki’s Pirates table lists an upkeep per minute for every single worker type, and it is charged continuously:
- Drifters, Builders, Fetchers: 1 Housing each
- Greenhands: 1 Housing and 1 Stew
- Masterhands: 1 Housing, 1 Roast Bird, 1 Booze
- Swabbies: 1 Stew and 1 Booze
So the moment you staff your first Greenhands-operated building, you have signed up for a permanent Stew bill. That is why the Campfire sits at step 4 and not step 10. And it is why the Moonshine Still — 5 Planks, no inputs, 12 Booze/min — is the single best value building available on minute one, despite looking like a joke next to the Brewery or Cider Press.
If you want the full picture of which building feeds which, the production chain dependency matrix ranks all 77 resources by how many tiers sit underneath them.
Branch: what to do next depends on what you are short of
After step 9 the correct move stops being universal. Choose:
- If your Greenhands are idle and buildings sit unstaffed → you are Housing-capped. Build more Tents (2 Planks, capacity 2) before anything else. Do not build a second production line.
- If Stew is going negative → swap up the food chain. The Stew Kitchen makes 55 Stew/min from 8 Fish and 4 Fresh Water, versus the Campfire’s 16 from nothing. It costs 20 Planks plus a Fishing Hut (20 Planks) and a Cistern (20 Planks) to feed it.
- If you have Planks piling up and nothing to spend them on → build the Stonecutter chain (steps 6-7) now. Stone Blocks, not Planks, are the wall you hit at Tier 2.
- If a tutorial objective refuses to advance after building gun towers → check your patch version. This was a real, developer-acknowledged blocker; see the patch timeline for which build fixed it.
- If you want a ship before you want an economy → you can. The Landlubber costs 15 Planks and 15 Swabbies, and the Shallow Pier costs 30 Planks. But Swabbies each eat 1 Stew and 1 Booze per minute, so 15 of them is a 15 Stew + 15 Booze/min bill. One Campfire and one Moonshine Still do not cover that. Plan the second Campfire before you plan the ship.
What this page deliberately does not tell you
The wiki gives per-minute output rates but no cycle times — how many seconds a single production run takes, and whether upgrades shorten it. So this build order sequences correctly but cannot promise wall-clock timings. Anyone quoting you “have a Sawmill by 4:30” is estimating.
Cohesion is the other gap. The wiki’s Cohesion page is a two-paragraph stub with zero tables: it states that Cohesion reaching zero is the game’s only loss condition and that Events and Pirate Satisfaction move it, but it publishes no starting value, no capacity number, and no formula. Per-resource Cohesion Values do exist, and the profit per minute vs. cohesion trade works through them. The system-level maths simply is not documented yet.
More Corsair Cove reference material is collected on the game hub.
Sources
- Corsair Cove Official Wiki, List of buildings — production, community and housing build costs and worker counts (wiki last edited 2026-08-07, read 2026-08-23)
- Corsair Cove Official Wiki, Resources — per-minute output and ingredient tables (wiki last edited 2026-08-22)
- Corsair Cove Official Wiki, Pirates — worker types and upkeep per minute (wiki last edited 2026-07-29)
- Corsair Cove Official Wiki, Cohesion — text-only stub, no tables (wiki last edited 2026-08-01)
- Corsair Cove Official Wiki, List of ships — Landlubber cost, crew and pier requirement (wiki last edited 2026-08-01)
