The world of Once Human is absolutely huge, and while you can unlock teleporters that let you travel quickly around the map, you’ll need a car. The good news is, Once Human has several of them, including a motorcycle you can unlock very early on. It will help you get around temporarily, but if you want to use the motorcycle long-term, or if you want to unlock better vehicles later, you’ll need to understand the system for crafting, upgrading, and using it.
However, it’s not particularly clear how these things work. Here’s everything you need to know about getting a motorcycle, repairing it, keeping it in working order, and building a better vehicle later.
How to get a motorcycle
The good news is that you can get your first car early on in your playthrough of Once Human, as long as you follow the main story. Continue the quest under the “Follow the Stardust” tab in your Journey menu, and eventually, Marie will send you to the settlement of Deathville. Missions will allow you to get to know some of the key characters in the town, including Claire and Law. When you’re done, Mary will transport you to the outside world and give you a motorcycle to ease your troubles.
However, like all other equipment, your motorcycle requires maintenance and repairs. To keep it looking its best, you need to build a garage. The Garage also allows you to craft your own motorcycles if you’re willing to go the hard way, and can be upgraded later to craft and modify your vehicle as well as craft new ones.
How to build a garage
Like everything else you can build and craft in Once Human, unlocking the ability to build a garage requires the relevant meme upgrade. You can find the garage node in the building tech tree and unlock it very early on.
Once you’ve found a garage in your building options, build a garage on your territory – it doesn’t matter where. You’ll need copper ingots and rusted parts to build one; the first requires a furnace, crafted from materials you can mine, while the second must be obtained from the trash you loot from the world you run through the demolition bench. Before building a garage, you will need skills related to both craft equipment.
From there, unlocking additional features for your garage is simply a matter of advancing its technology tree in the Buildings tab. Next, you’ll need to unlock your vehicle’s modifications, which will allow you to upgrade its parts to make them faster, more durable, and more fuel-efficient.
Repair and modify your vehicle
Even if you drive well, your motorcycle and other vehicles will take damage while you’re using them, but if you don’t, they’ll also take damage when you drive off a cliff or hit an object. If your vehicle suffers too much damage, it will begin to spark and catch fire, and may eventually be completely destroyed. To prevent this from happening, you need to fix it regularly.
However, figuring out how to repair your vehicle can be a little confusing, and you can’t do it on site. Instead, head to your garage and interact with the control panel on the side. There you will see a menu of your vehicle and its parts. It’s easy to miss, but it’s also a menu you can use for repairs. Press the G key to bring up the repair menu, which will display the components required for repair. I’ve found that through lots of looting and teardowns, I always have the gear I need to repair my bike without having to farm it – so make sure you pick up plenty of junk on your adventures to keep yourself stocked with crafting materials.
Modifying a motorcycle is a little easier to understand. Once you unlock the correct meme under the Modify tab, you can also use it from the Garage menu. In the left menu that displays the vehicle’s name and durability, you’ll also see its components, arranged as four square images. Click on one of them and you’ll see a new menu showing which parts you can upgrade on the vehicle and how they will affect its stats, as well as how much they cost.
You can easily complete the first set of motorcycle upgrades using bronze ingots and other materials obtained from exploring the world, but you will have to explore some slightly more difficult areas than the ones you find at the beginning of the game. In order to get better upgrades, you need to continue advancing in the garage tech tree.
Build a four-wheeler
The deeper you get into the game, the more likely you are to see other players with vehicles that are better than the standard motorcycle. Especially if you are teaming up with other players and friends, you may want a car that can accommodate more people. You can also turn yourself into a four-wheeled ATV, but like the repair menu, it’s unclear how that works.
First, go to the “Memes” menu under the “Buildings” tab and follow the tech tree from the garage down to the four-wheeler in the 3rd level area. When you unlock the Quad Vehicle node, you’ll be able to build an ATV (basically a Jeep) and a Retro Coupe (two vehicles).
To build any vehicle, go to the garage and access its menu. You need to open the vehicle inventory menu, which is a bit hidden – like the repair menu, it’s hidden behind a shortcut key that’s only listed at the bottom of the garage menu. Press the X key to open the vehicle list, from here you can select any vehicle you want to build.
As with modifications, you can craft each part of the vehicle you want in order to craft the entire vehicle, and clicking on each square will show you the cost of crafting each component. You need to make all four parts to make the vehicle, so make sure you have all the materials you need to make them all at once.
While you’re out and about, you can use the Vehicle List menu to switch between summoned vehicles, each with their own benefits. Motorcycles are smaller and more maneuverable, coupes are faster, and ATVs are stronger and can carry more people. Now you just need to refuel them.
How to make automotive fuel
There are two types of fuel your vehicle can use: portable blended fuel and drummed premium fuel. The first is the weaker type and is good for 100 units of fuel when you add it to a vehicle, while the second is good for 1,000 units of fuel. By comparison, when your motorcycle is filled up, it has about 3,000 units of fuel in it (more if you upgrade the tank).
You can use your region’s refining facilities to produce more fuel, which requires acid to craft – check out our acid farming guide to learn more about how to craft this basic material. Unlock the Refinery facility by activating the Fuel Refinery node in the meme, which you can find on level 2 of the Infrastructure technology tree.
Refining facilities (and later, more efficient super-refining facilities) would slowly convert the acid into a portable fuel blend. Portable fuel blends can also be slowly converted into barrels of premium fuel if placed in a refining facility. So when you’re out exploring the world, you’ll want to set up your refining facilities to make fuel so you’ll always have it waiting when you need it.
