The world of Once Human is absolutely enormous, and while you can unlock teleportation stations that let you fast-travel around the map, you’ll need a vehicle. The good news is that there are several in Once Human, including a motorcycle you can unlock fairly early. It’ll help you get around for a while, but if you want to use the motorcycle long-term–or if you want to unlock better vehicles later on–you’ll need to understand the systems for crafting, upgrading, and repairing them.
How any of that stuff works isn’t particularly clear, though. Here’s everything you need to know about getting your motorcycle, fixing it up, and keeping it in working condition, as well as making better vehicles later on.
How To Get The Motorcycle
The good news is that you can get your first vehicle pretty early in the process of playing Once Human, provided you follow the main story. Keep on the tasks under the Follow the Stardust tab in your Journey menu, and eventually, Mary will send you to the settlement of Deadsville. The quest will have you learn about some of the key figures in the town, including Claire and Lowe. When you’re done, Mary will send you out into the world and give you a motorcycle for your trouble.
You can get the motorcycle pretty early in Once Human, but to maintain it, you need to unlock the Garage and its related Memetics.
However, like all your other equipment, your motorcycle requires maintenance and repairs. In order to keep it in top shape, you’ll need to build a garage. The garage also allows you to craft a motorcycle yourself if you’d rather get it the hard way, and can later be upgraded to craft and modify your vehicles and craft new ones.
How To Build A Garage
Like everything else you can build and craft in Once Human, unlocking the ability to construct a garage requires an associated Memetic upgrade. You can find the Garage node in the Building tech tree, and you can unlock it pretty early.
Once you’ve got the Garage in your building options, construct one in your territory–it doesn’t really matter where. You’ll need Copper Ingots and Rusted Parts to build one; the first requires a Furnace to create from materials you can mine, while the second has to be gained from junk looted from out in the world that you run through a Disassembly Bench. You’ll need the tech related to both pieces of crafting equipment before you can build the Garage.
From there, unlocking additional features for the Garage is just a matter of advancing its tech tree in the Building tab. Next, you’ll want to unlock Modifications for your vehicles, which will allow you to upgrade their parts to make them faster, more durable, and more fuel-efficient.
Repairing And Modding Your Vehicle
Your motorcycle and other vehicles take damage as you use them, even if you drive perfectly–but if you don’t, they’ll also take damage when you drive off cliffs or slam into objects. If your vehicle takes too much damage, it’ll start to spark and catch fire, and eventually can be destroyed outright. To keep that from happening, you want to periodically repair it.
It can be tough to find the repair menu, which is accessed at the Garage by pressing G.
It can be a little confusing to figure out how to repair a vehicle, though, and you can’t do it in the field. Instead, head to your Garage and interact with the control panel at one side. There, you’ll see your vehicle, as well as a menu of its component pieces. It’s easy to miss, but this is the menu you can use for repairs, too. Hit the G key to bring up the repair menu, which will show you what components you need to make your repairs. I found that, from doing a ton of looting and disassembling, I always had the gear I needed to repair my bike without having to farm for it–so make sure you’re picking up lots of trash on your expeditions to keep yourself flush with crafting materials.
Modding your motorcycle is a little easier to understand. It’s also available from the Garage menu once you unlock the right Memetic, under the Modification tab. On the left menu that shows your vehicle’s name and durability, you’ll also see its parts, arranged as four square images. Click one and you’ll get a new menu that shows you what parts you can upgrade on the vehicle and how they’ll affect its stats, as well as what they’ll cost.
You can make the first set of motorcycle upgrades pretty easily with Bronze Ingots and other materials you’ll get from exploring the world, but you’ll have to explore some of the slightly tougher areas than the ones you find at the start of the game. To get better upgrades, you’ll need to continue to advance the Garage tech tree.
Building A Four-Wheeler
The further you get into the game, the more you might see other players with better vehicles than just the standard motorcycle. Especially if you’re teaming up with other players and friends, you’re likely to want a car that can accommodate additional people. You too can make yourself a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle, but like the repair menu, it’s not immediately clear how it works.
First, head into the Memetics menu under the Building tab and follow the tech tree down from the Garage to the Four-Wheeler, in the Tier 3 area. When you unlock the Four-Wheeler node, you’ll gain the ability to make either the All-Terrain Vehicle, which is basically a Jeep, and the Retro Coup, a two-seat car.
The All-Terrain Vehicle is slow but has high durability and can carry four players.
To build either car, head to the Garage and access its menu. You need to open up the Vehicle List menu, the location of which is a bit hidden–like the repair menu, it’s hidden behind a quick key that’s only listed at the bottom of the Garage menu. Hit the X key to open the Vehicle List, and from here, you can pick any vehicle to make.
Like with modifications, you can craft each piece of the vehicle you want in order to craft the whole thing, and clicking each of the squares will show you what it’ll cost you to make each component. You’ll need to make all four pieces in order to craft the vehicle, so make sure you have all the materials necessary to craft all the components in one go.
Access the Vehicle List menu by pressing X and use it to craft new vehicles and swap between them.
You can use the Vehicle List menu to swap between which vehicle you summon when you’re out in the world, and each has its own benefits. The motorcycle is smaller and more maneuverable, the Coup is faster, and the All-Terrain Vehicle is tougher and can carry more people. Now you just need to fuel them.
How To Make Vehicle Fuel
There are two kinds of fuel you can use on your vehicles: Portable Mixed Fuel and Barreled Premium Fuel. The first is the weaker kind, good for 100 units of fuel when you add it to a vehicle, while the second is good for 1,000 units of fuel. For comparison, when your motorcycle is fully fueled up, it has around 3,000 units of fuel in it (or more if you upgrade the gas tank).
Use the Refining Facility to make sure your vehicles always have plenty of fuel.
You can make more fuel with a Refining Facility in your territory, which requires acid to craft–check out our acid farming guide for more info on how to make this essential material. Unlock the Refining Facility by activating the Fuel Refinery node in your Memetics, which you can find in Tier 2 of the Infrastructure tech tree.
The Refining Facility (and later, the more-efficient Super Refining Facility) will slowly convert Acid into Portable Mixed Fuel. If you put Portable Mixed Fuel into the Refining Facility, you can also slowly convert it into Barreled Premium Fuel. So you’ll want to set your Refining Facility to make fuel while you’re out exploring the world, so that you’ll always have some waiting when you need it.
