REKA is the cozy witchcraft game readers are most likely looking for: its full 1.0 release arrived on Steam on 26 October 2026. You play Reka, an apprentice to Baba Jaga, exploring Slavic-folklore settings and building a walking chicken-legged cottage. Your first witchcraft is not a combat spellbar: you cook three-ingredient crafts in the hut oven, then use them in village rituals such as cleansing a home, protecting doorways, or—if you choose a wicked path—poisoning a rival’s meal. Start by gathering food, salt, and oven fuel, and let the early quests teach you what each item does.
Different game: If you meant Witchy Business, that is a separate witchcraft shop simulator built around fulfilling potion orders and managing customer patience. The recipes and instructions below are for REKA.
What kind of witchcraft game is REKA?
REKA is a single-player, combat-free exploration and crafting game from Emberstorm Entertainment. Its official Steam description calls it a cozy world inspired by Slavic folklore: Reka learns from Baba Jaga, forages, cooks, brews, helps villagers, tames forest creatures, and builds a mobile home with chicken legs. The game is about wandering, making things, and deciding how your witchcraft affects people—not defeating enemies with damage spells.
The full 1.0 release went live on 26 October 2026, following Early Access, which began on 12 September 2024. The launch added the closing story chapter, more side quests, shrines and collectibles, updated house-building tools, and 21 Steam achievements. Steam’s English-language review snapshot at the time of the 1.0 launch week showed 83% positive from 2,028 reviews overall and 87% positive from 240 reviews in the previous 30 days; those percentages can change. The game is for Windows PC through Steam.
What “spells” means in REKA
Players often search for “REKA spells,” but the first witchcraft is better understood as oven crafts and field rituals. Black Salt and Mild Poison are craftable items; pine branches, garlic, honey, ravens, and other tools help complete rituals or quests. Ravens can remove cursed objects, but they are not an attack spell. The game does advertise potion brewing, but a complete official list of cauldron potion recipes is not available here, so the documented starter instructions below stick to recipes and rituals established in player guides.
What should I gather first?
Prioritize ingredients that are used in early meals, quests, and witchcraft. Gather wood whenever you can: the oven consumes it, and recipes do not cook without fuel. A balanced starter supply saves repeated trips while you learn what nearby villagers request.
- Forage: raspberries, edible mushrooms, fly agaric mushrooms, garlic, cabbage, pumpkin, grain or wheat, apples, honey or honeycomb, and wood.
- Buy or unlock: salt, flour, and eggs are available from the merchant. Flour may also appear randomly early on. After helping the Forest Spirit, a farmer near a windmill can give you a small windmill for the hut that grinds grain into flour, according to a player-guide comment posted on 28 October 2026.
- Grow or process: poppy seeds come from growing poppy and letting it rot, according to the player oven guide. Chickens can provide eggs once you have a nest at home.
There is a small but useful harvest change in the October 2026 Steam patch: cabbage plants now give two items rather than one. Keep fly agaric separate from ordinary edible mushrooms; the documented starter use for fly agaric is Mild Poison, not a meal.
How do I use the oven and make my first witchcraft?
Use the oven in the middle of the hut for cooking and the documented starter witchcraft crafts. Every listed oven recipe uses exactly three ingredients. Put wood in the back of the oven before starting; combine the ingredients, then collect the finished item on the right. Queued items can be clicked back into your inventory.
First crafts: Black Salt and Mild Poison
| Craft | Three ingredients | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Black Salt | Salt + salt + salt | Cleanse a home, protect its doorways, or perform a lost-relative ritual. It sells for 12 coins; villagers will not eat it. |
| Mild Poison | Fly agaric + fly agaric + fly agaric | Optional wicked quest item for a rival’s food table. It sells for 8 coins and poisons villagers if served as a meal. |
These are functional choices, not merely decorative recipes: Black Salt supports protective and cleansing tasks, while Mild Poison enables a deliberately harmful quest route. A Steam Community sidequest guide describes witchcraft items as tools to cleanse or charm places and, in some cases, poison people. The guide is community-written rather than a developer recipe list.
Useful starter food recipes
| Food | Three ingredients | Value or quest use noted in the player guides |
|---|---|---|
| Porridge | Grain + grain + grain | 8 coins; small, neutral meal. |
| Fruit porridge | Grain + raspberries, filling the three slots | 8 coins; small sweet meal. |
| Honey porridge | Grain + honeycomb, filling the three slots | 8 coins; small sweet meal. |
| Fruit-and-honey porridge | Grain + honeycomb + raspberries | 12 coins; small sweet meal. |
| Raspberry jam | Three raspberries, or two raspberries + honeycomb | 8 coins; used for a forgetful villager. Two jams count as one small sweet meal. |
| Mushroom soup | Three edible mushrooms, or two mushrooms + salt | 8 coins; small savory meal and used at the Bludnik shrine. |
| Bread | Three flour, or two flour + salt | 8 coins; small savory meal. |
| Garlic soup | Garlic + garlic + garlic | 6 coins. |
| Pumpkin soup | Pumpkin + pumpkin + pumpkin | 6 coins. |
| Scrambled eggs | Egg + egg + egg | 6 coins. |
| Cabbage soup | Cabbage + cabbage + cabbage | Added in the October 2026 patch; value not stated in the player-guide material. |
| Apple compote | Apple + apple + apple | Recipe listed in a 1.0-era player guide; value not stated. |
| Apple pie | Apple + egg + flour | Recipe listed in a 1.0-era player guide; value not stated. |
| Oladi | Apple + honey + flour | Recipe listed in a 1.0-era player guide; value not stated. |
Some recipe lists call raspberries “berries.” The player guides were still receiving comments during 1.0 launch week, and newer dishes—including apple recipes and cabbage soup—were added after an older oven guide was first written. If a recipe does not work, confirm the exact ingredient and that all three oven slots are filled; do not assume a one- or two-item recipe or a second crafting station.
How do I complete the first witchcraft rituals?
Most early rituals are simple actions in a village or on the map rather than menu-driven spells. Talk to the relevant villager, learn what is wrong, and bring the right craft or item to the right place.
Cleanse and protect a home
- For Home Cleansing, find the grieving villager sitting on a bench. The home’s interior appears grey.
- Use a pine branch and place Black Salt in every corner. The color returns when the cleansing is complete. The player guide reports a reward of about 30 gold plus decor.
- For Home Protection, place Black Salt at every doorway, including the shed, and garlic on every window frame.
Help a grieving relative or bless goats
- For the Lost Relative ritual, find the babushka at a fireplace and put Black Salt in the oven in front of her.
- For Blessing Goats, brush honey on the goats’ faces. Baba Jaga may give instructions the first time.
Lift the chicken-farm curse
- Speak with the villagers arguing about the farm, then talk to Baba Jaga.
- Find the cursed object above the henhouse entrance. Aim with the right mouse button and send ravens with the left mouse button to remove it.
- Cleanse the area with a branch. The guide says the likely reward is a chicken for your home.
- In building mode, place a nest under Friends. Pick up the chicken with E to collect eggs; hold H to teleport home, then choose whether to keep or free the animal when entering the hut.
Other early requests and shrine clues
- Forgetful villager: hand over raspberry jam after Baba Jaga tells you what to do.
- A Poisonous Request: place Mild Poison on the target’s food table. The player guide reports about 90 gold and substantial decor as a reward; this is the wicked route.
- Shrine of Zorya: light all candles in front of the three symbols.
- Bludnik: the player oven guide identifies mushroom soup for the shrine interaction.
- Trinashka: make mushroom pierogi. A book inside the home lists the creature’s liked recipe; one guide author’s save indicated cabbage soup, so consult the in-game book rather than assuming every save or guide gives the same preference.
In a settlement, speak to villagers and ask, “Have you heard anything interesting?” A Steam Community sidequest guide says this can reveal larger need-quests. A few first-map tasks include carrying a goatling back to Milena, helping pumpkin farmer Dunja bring in the harvest, investigating Yullia and Jakub’s missing friend, and deciding whether to help Bartek with the crows. Choices can affect how the story is told; the missing-friend task, for example, can involve telling the truth or lying.
How do I call the cottage and keep it from wandering?
The Mortar and Pestle Talisman calls the chicken-legged hut when you use the right mouse button. To teleport home directly, hold H. In the 1.0.25.afc5b3 Hotfix 2 update, a chair in the hut gained the options Stay here and Roam free. Choose Stay here once you have settled on a home location; older saves defaulted to roaming, so check the chair if the cottage keeps moving away.
Cats can also become companions: pick one up and set it down outside, and it may follow Reka and highlight interesting things. Chickens and other adoptable animals can be placed in the home through the Friends category in building mode.
Which cottage upgrades matter early?
Start with function and room to expand instead of trying to perfect the first room. The end of the tutorial provides an old chair, a simple table, a sleeping bag, a white candle, and a simple wall shelf. That furniture is a starting floor, not a complete interior.
- Keep some space open. Early cottage advice published ahead of 1.0 recommends giving the first room one simple purpose and leaving room for later building. Quests introduce materials and systems, so you do not need to collect every forest item before understanding its use.
- Unlock materials as you find them. The 1.0 building update includes spruce, birch, beech, and pine woods, plus clay. The September 2026 beta notes say finding a material in the wild unlocks it for building.
- Use the newer building tools. The Saw, also called the Cut Manager, controls how intersecting blocks cut or snap. Drag-to-build and drag-to-delete handle multiple pieces; a rotation indicator, smarter snapping, and improved roofing make larger structures easier to shape.
- Build vertically and decorate intentionally. Most blocks can be placed on any surface, including ceilings. Floating candles can be placed, and unlocked achievement plaques can decorate the home.
- Make a practical home loop. Place a nest for eggs and use the hut oven as a kitchen. If you adopt a cat or chicken, place it under Friends in build mode so the animal has a home.
The 1.0 launch also added 21 Steam achievements, including “Sage of the Stove” and “Witch’s Castle,” with plaques for the house. Background autosave frequency is adjustable. Studio notes also cite performance work for large houses and lit villages, but loading behavior can still depend on the build and save.
What should I feed villagers, and how do rewards work?
Hungry villagers standing by a table ask for a small or normal meal and may want something sweet or savory. The player guide’s rule of thumb is that a small meal is usually one food item and a normal meal is two. A correctly matched meal is reported to earn about 60 coins plus ingredients and decor; a meal that is the wrong size or type earns about 30 coins. These are guide-reported reward amounts, not a guaranteed payout for every request.
Never use Black Salt as food; villagers will not eat it. Mild Poison is also not ordinary food: only place it on a table when deliberately pursuing the poison request. For the Winter Preparations task, stock a cupboard with the requested ingredients or dishes. The guide reports 60 gold plus decor on completion.
Farm quests can reward more than the basic harvest payout. Help pick pumpkins or cabbages into the shed, cook with the harvest—for example, stuffed pumpkin or cabbage rolls—and return the prepared dish to the farm table. The sidequest guide describes rewards such as 30 gold, ingredients, a painting, or decorative produce.
What changed in REKA 1.0, and what technical issues should I know about?
The 1.0 update is more than the final story chapter. Emberstorm’s 26 October 2026 announcement lists additional side quests, shrines, collectibles, the house-building overhaul, environmental details such as moths around lights and footprints, and 21 achievements. Chapter pacing was rebalanced, especially “Learning the Ropes.” Accessibility options added in the October patch include individual content warnings, a more legible font, high-contrast journal colors, reduced motion, and the option to unequip shoes and go barefoot.
Launch-week fixes are version-specific. The 27 October hotfix addressed some saves freezing on load when houses contained stacked clay blocks, a trial-map loading issue, point-of-interest grass, chapter pop-ups, and an inability to sleep at a location with held weather or lighting. Hotfix 2 added the hut-chair choices and graphics options for Bloom and Dialogue Depth of Field, plus a monitor picker, a fullscreen-fill fix, load-timeout changes, a Leshy blessing soft-lock fix, and use-item unlocks on load.
Hotfix 2 dropped DirectX 12 and Vulkan because of crashes or glitches; the supported renderer was DirectX 11. If you experience a load freeze or a quest soft lock, check that the game is updated before changing the save or rebuilding a house. Some players also could not access the 1.0 build on launch day because a Steam-global issue delayed the update; that was not described as a game-specific save problem.
Windows PC requirements
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 64-bit | Not stated in the Steam specification excerpt. |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-6400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1400 | Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X |
| Memory | 16 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics | GTX 1060 6GB or RX 580 | RTX 2060 or RX 5700 XT |
| DirectX | Version 11 | Not stated separately. |
| Storage | 10 GB available space | Not stated separately. |
How much does REKA cost, and where can I play it?
Steam’s regional price snapshot showed a 35% discount through 7 November 2026. In India, the base game was ₹880 list price and ₹572 on sale; the soundtrack was ₹300 list and ₹240 on sale. These are Indian-rupee regional prices, not universal pricing, and no USD or EUR list price is established here. Steam also showed a discounted Deluxe Edition containing the game and soundtrack. Check the Steam listing for your region and current offer, since launch-week discounts and review totals change.
The Steam listing specifies single-player, Steam Cloud, and Family Sharing. It lists nine interface and subtitle languages: English, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Full audio is not marked as supported for those languages in the store table. The Steam minimum specification is Windows PC; a Steam Deck compatibility rating was not captured in the listing information available here.
There is a Steam demo, but the available store information does not establish how much of the game it includes or whether a demo save carries into the full release. The soundtrack is a separate digital DLC composed by Sebastian Grunewald, originally released on 12 September 2024.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the REKA demo save carry over to the full game?
A demo is listed on Steam, but the available listing details do not say whether its save transfers into the 1.0 game. Check the current demo page or in-game save behavior before relying on a transfer.
Is REKA Steam Deck verified?
A Steam Deck Verified or Playable rating was not established in the Steam listing snapshot available for this guide. The published minimum requirements describe Windows PC, so they do not independently confirm handheld compatibility.
Can I buy a physical REKA soundtrack or collector’s edition?
The listed soundtrack is digital Steam DLC, and no official physical CD, vinyl, or physical game edition was listed on the Steam store, Emberstorm site, or Fireshine REKA page available for this guide. That does not rule out a future release, but no physical edition is established here.