Stars Reach Housing: Placing, Building and Protecting a Homestead

Getting your first homestead, step by step

Since Ground Control 8.5.0 (3 September 2026) there is nothing to unlock. The studio's own words were that it decided to "just make availability very easy for now", and that this "may well change in the future". Here is the current path from a fresh character to a placed plot.

1. Finish Haven and leave for space. The one-time Homesteader grant fires the next time you enter a Space zone. It applies to every account, new and old, and arrives even if your inventory is full. A pop-up explains it when it lands.
2. Pick a destination planet. Since 8.7.0, portal travel shows the planet's Mayor and Servitor edicts as you pass through, so you can see the local rules before you arrive. The Galactic Map added in 8.6.0 shows which sectors connect to which.
3. Walk to a spot and start placement from your inventory. Homestead boundaries switch on automatically while you place (8.4.6), so you can see the footprint.
4. Let the bottom edge rest on the ground. Since 8.4.5 a homestead or zoning lot can hang in the air with its lower edge on the surface, which avoids a half-buried foundation on a slope.
5. Confirm or cancel. The game now asks whether the homestead is where you wanted it. Answer "No" and it goes back to your inventory (8.4.5). It is not used up until placement is final (8.4.6).
6. Open the Homestead Console and claim a Fabricator. You can claim as many as you like, and the Tool Shop also hands them out free (8.5.0).
7. Check the terrain shield. It is on by default from 8.7.2. Leave it on unless you deliberately want outside terrain to flow into the plot.

What changed, patch by patch

Older guides contradict each other because the rules moved every week or two. This table is built from the official build notes and covers everything housing-related from the Early Access launch build to the current one. If a guide you are reading predates a row, assume that row overrides it.

One gap in the notes: they never print a shop price for extra homesteads or zoning lots, only that the price doubled in 8.4.0. Check the current price in game before you plan a second plot; your first Homesteader costs nothing.

Where you can't place a homestead

This is the question new players ask most often, usually as "why won't it let me place my homestead here?" The official notes do not publish a full list of rules, so the table separates what the studio has stated from what players report.

The main trap is wild-wormhole planets. The official Wild Wormholes update describes them as temporary worlds that sit beyond Servitor space and are open for a random length of time. Hotfix 8.4.3 removed GovBots from these adventure planets because they "are not available all the time", and called such a world "doomed to be lost forever pretty soon". A player answering on Steam explains the consequence: people used to be able to place homesteads there and lost them when the world cycled out, and placement there is now refused. Build on a stable planet you reached through a regular wormhole or portal.

Placing it without losing it

In launch week, players lost homesteads during placement. Hotfix 8.4.6 traced the cause to starting placement more than once, which destroyed the homestead "on the cursor". That specific loss is now guarded against. A few habits still save trouble.

Start placement once and wait. Do not spam the key if the preview is slow to appear. Before 8.4.5 there was also a bug where placing straight from inventory showed no preview while placing from the consumables menu did. Both paths are meant to show it now.

Watch the distance. 8.4.5 fixed placement that could "zoom super far away" because the preview distance was capped and the real target was not. If the outline looks far off, cancel and try again rather than confirming.

Anything placed between 8.4.5 and 8.4.6 may sit half a tile off. The studio said the fix could not move existing homesteads, because it could not tell which way to shift what players had built.

The building tools, and what the Fabricator does

Building uses several separate tools, not one build mode. The Homesteader claims the plot. The Terraformer shapes ground, and it is the same tool used for mining, so anything you dig out stays dug out. The Instaformer and Paver are for foundations and surface work. Since 8.5.0 they are tier-2 recipes on the Circuit Bench II, and you can also buy them at the Item Shop. The Fabricator places, moves and rotates pieces. It no longer wears out, and because it is free you cannot sell it on the market.

Fabricator controls confuse people. A typical Reddit question asks how to raise a piece vertically, because the X, Y and Z controls rotate it instead. No official keybinding list for building has been published. The in-game Galactopedia gained entries on Q and E, Tab and loadouts in 8.4.0, and on Customizing your Home (Instaformer and Paver) in 8.5.0, so that is the first place to look; the official Discord is the next. Raph Koster's developer post on Steam on 10 October 2026 lists a new building control scheme as upcoming work, so expect the controls to change.

Building tiles save the moment you move or rotate them (8.4.5). Before that change, a server crash could roll individual pieces back.

Click to play · loads YouTube — Stars Reach: Homesteading — How to Build Your First Base, by MadcapWarrior

Paint, finishes and the Style controls (8.7.0)

Crafted in Color added a Style row to the Fabricator window. The window also moved to the right side of the screen so it covers less of your build. Select a placed object and you get five controls: Design opens the appearance editor; Copy (Ctrl-C) takes an object's look; Paste (Ctrl-V) applies it to compatible surfaces on another object; Reset restores the original look without refunding supplies; and Grid shows or hides a building grid that now stays within the homestead's bounds.

Previewing is free. In the Design window you can try finishes on each surface region and adjust pattern scale and orientation. OK spends the supplies, and Cancel or Escape spends nothing. Paste and Duplicate check that you have the supplies first and refuse the action rather than spending part of them. Undo and Redo neither charge again nor refund.

Finishes are inventory items you craft: metal, stone, wood, plastic and rubber. Carpentry is now its own profession, covering wood grains, joinery and parquetry. Painting needs a paintable finish already applied. An object's original material is not paintable by itself. Three Crafting-tree skills (Basic, Detail and Advanced Painting) give you progressively finer control over colour channels.

The starbase Tool Shop sells paints and dyes in 12 subdued colours, at 1,000 klaatu for 50 uses. Paint and dye are separate supplies and cannot stand in for each other: paint is for painting and some wood recipes, and dye is for coloured crafting recipes. You cannot craft either yet. Fabrics and wallpapers have not shipped. Since 8.7.2, each step of a finish recipe uses the amount the previous step produced, so you no longer need to over-craft to continue a chain. The update also added close to 100 new generic building pieces that accept finishes. They are made with recipes in the Construction skill tree.

Terrain shields: on by default since 8.7.2

Stars Reach simulates terrain as material that can slide and flow, so a neighbour's digging, or simply the slope above you, could push dirt into your plot. Update 8.7.0 added a simple invisible shield that covers the edge of your homestead in any empty cell and stops outside material flowing in. You switch it on or off at the homestead's control unit.

Hotfix 8.7.2 switched shields on by default on every homestead and zoning lot. It also added a shield around the starter portals on planets, which are the arrival points everybody uses.

Storage, vendors and your homestead count

Storage crates are the only homestead storage documented in the notes. Since 8.4.5, tier-2 crates hold 10 and tier-3 crates hold 25. Tier 2 uses the smaller art and tier 3 the larger. Both are placed with the Fabricator. Since 8.5.1 you can keep recipes in the bank or in storage, so a pile of unneeded recipe items no longer has to sit in your backpack.

Vendors and crates count toward your homestead's object count. A bug left that count too high after you removed a vendor or crate, and 8.5.1 fixed it. Placing a vendor needs the Business skill (8.4.0), and vendor kiosks became craftable with Business in 8.4.5. 8.5.0 set the listing limits at 100 for private vendors and 25 on the public market. If you are over a limit because of the earlier bugs, remove listings until you are under it.

Storage is the most common inventory complaint on Steam and Reddit. The developer post of 10 October 2026 lists expanded storage as near-term work. Until it ships, crates are the answer. Use Shift-click or double-click (both added in 8.6.0) to move whole stacks between your backpack and storage.

Permissions: consoles, GovBots and who may farm

Your Homestead Console is where you claim Fabricators (8.5.0), and the homestead's control unit is where you toggle the terrain shield (8.7.0). The build notes do not publish a full permission system for letting other players build on your plot, and we do not describe one that has not been documented.

What is documented is planet-level. Since 8.7.0, farming and xyloslicing (tree cutting) each have their own planet-wide permission setting. The mayor can set these once the planet's GovBot reaches level 10. Each activity can be open to one of four groups, and mayors can grant licences to individual citizens. The GovBot's first screen shows the same information to citizens and non-citizens: mayor name, population, edicts and any restrictions that are not set to "Anyone". Read it before you build.

Defending the plot, camps, and the coming wipe

Your homestead's threats are environmental by default. There is no player-versus-player combat in the current build; PvP is planned for later, optional and set per planet. Creatures tend to avoid player structures (8.4.0), but Makers keep spawning fauna. The official Starside of 7 August 2026 says to destroy any Maker close to your homestead before its creatures get out of control. Turrets and traps belong to combat engineering, which earns experience when they are actually effective.

Camps are a separate, lighter structure from the Ranger tree. Under the official advancement rules, a camp earns experience only when you or other players rest or re-equip at it, so place one on a route people actually use. Like homesteads, camps are not used up until placement is final (8.4.6).

The wipe is the one long-term risk. The Steam Early Access text says a progression wipe is expected before the game leaves Early Access, and that "some player progress will be reset". It does not say exactly which parts. Founders Pack items, Kickstarter backer items and other purchased or granted account entitlements stay with your account. No wipe date has been announced. Build now to learn the tools, and expect that your homestead may not carry over.