Dungeon Settlers Camping Kit and Campfire Guide

Quick answer: Research Campsite Setup, craft a Basic Camping Kit, then place it like a blueprint from the special tab of the build menu in an open space underground. A camp restores energy, lets you cook and repair gear, and is the only way to rest properly on a long dive. Once placed, it cannot be picked back up.

What a camp is for

Without a camp, your party cannot rest on an expedition. They can sleep on the dungeon floor, but sleeping rough costs mood and adds stress, which is exactly the resource that sends parties home early.

So a camp is not a comfort item. It is the thing that lets you spend another day or two on a deep floor instead of walking back up. Three things happen at a camp:

• Energy is restored to full. Energy is one of the four meters you manage alongside hunger, stress and carry weight, and a settler whose energy hits zero falls asleep on the spot — including mid-fight.
• You can cook. Raw meat you picked up underground becomes food without a return trip.
• You can repair gear. Damaged equipment gets fixed in place.

Unlocking and building one

The kit is gated behind research. You need Campsite Setup unlocked before a camping kit can be crafted at all.

The Basic Camping Kit recipe includes Mana Stone Powder among its materials, which is a common stall point — mana stones go into levelling settlers at the Goddess Statue, and it is easy to arrive at the camping kit with none spare. Plan the powder in before you need the camp, not after.

The roadmap's own terminology lists this content as "Camping Kit and Campfire Site", and the Simplified Chinese store page uses 野營用品 for the kit.

How to actually place it

This is the step people get stuck on, and it is the reason a Steam thread titled "Basic camping kit? Does it work and if so how? There is no use option" exists. There is no use option because a camp is not consumed from the inventory — it is built:

1. Have the camping kit in your party's possession.
2. Open the build menu from the bottom left, the same one you use for workstations and storage chests.
3. Switch to the special tab.
4. Place the camp like a blueprint, in an open area with enough clear space.

If you are looking for a "use item" prompt, you will never find one.

When a trip is long enough to justify one

The practical threshold from the Steam answer is two days or more underground; the sweet spot is a planned three- or four-day dive. For a quick raid on a floor you already know, the kit is not worth the materials.

For shorter trips there is a cheaper approach: set up a workstation on the spot, process grass into textile, and make a bedroll to recover energy faster than sleeping on bare stone. Later research unlocks better-equipped camping kits than the basic one.

You cannot pick it back up

There is no recovery option on a placed camping kit. A repair station can be dismantled to recover stone, but the camp itself is a one-way spend — which is why a second Steam thread asks whether there is "any way to pick up camp", and why a third proposes semi-persistent campsites as a feature request.

Treat every placement as permanent. Place it where you will still want it next dive: near a staircase you re-use, not in the middle of a floor you are about to deplete.

Abandoned camps are a different thing

You will find pre-existing, deserted camps in the dungeon, sometimes with a chest still sitting in them. These are map features, not player-placed camps, and they are worth searching.

One of them is also where the quest hunter Endorsi appears — she turns up at a dungeon camp with a hunting contract rather than standing in your settlement. Keep the two concepts separate: your camping kit is a building you place, and abandoned camps are loot points that already exist on the floor.

What we still cannot tell you

Unconfirmed: whether the Campfire Site is a separate placeable from the Camping Kit, and what numerical bonus a campfire gives. Japanese players are searching for 野営地 効果 — "campsite effect" — which suggests the exact numbers are not documented anywhere. We have the official term from the roadmap and the behaviour from play, but not the values, and we are not going to guess at them.

FAQ

See also: where clay comes from — clay is a settlement material you will be hauling on the same trips — plus your first party and how to recruit.