Crafting

How to craft

First of all, just looting a city is unwise. You'll probably run into trouble at some point, and breaking windows or smashing down doors can bring unwanted nasties even closer. Hell, some buildings are even alarmed. So instead of looting something, why not try and craft it?

There are plenty of recipes, but most require a high skill-- e.g to add a silencer to a gun you need to have your firearms skill at 1 or higher.

Here's just a few examples for starting weapons that can be made only a few minutes into the game.

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• • Nail board
• A two-by-four with a few nails in. It makes a nice club for the early game.

Tools!

• A rock.
• Some nails
• Some wood.

You wake up in a shelter. run outside and look for a suitable rock. Run back inside, smash up two or three benches. press & to open the crafting menu and you should be able to craft this easily-made club from the remnants. You can destroy plenty of furniture, windows and doors etc to get nails and two-by-fours.

• • Wood spear!
• It's a nice throwing weapon and it's pretty light.

Tools!

• Steak knife/combat knife/butcher's knife etc.
• A heavy stick/ a two-by-four.

Again, such a simple weapon. sneak into a local house, check the kitchen for a cutting implement. Unfortunately stuff like butcher's knives don't make the best weapons in the early game, but you'll need at least one for butchering animals for food anyway. Tip: Smash a window with your nailboard. Smashing windows drops some sheets (I assume this will be changed to glass sheets at some point) and a heavy stick, which I assume is some part of the windowframe. Voila, open the & menu and you have a pretty good throwing weapon. you can also find heavy sticks a short walk into any nearby forest, or just use a two-by-four from smashing some furniture.

• • Crowbar

You can destroy the locker in the evac shelter to give you a pipe. You can then find a rock near the shelter and craft a crowbar. It is very useful for opening locked doors and also serve as a good melee weapon. (requires one skill point in mechanic)

• • Construction!

Okay, so you've broken a window. don't jump through it yet or you'll probably cut yourself like some little emo kid. Press * to open the construction menu, and then g to select >clear a broken window. this means you can jump through it without damage. Also it's much, much easier to board up a window than repair a smashed door. Peek out a window and see if there's anything nasty nearby-- if there isn't, we can continue. press * and then f to move furniture. Use this to move things like armoires and dressers in front of windows-- but remember this is only really to block line-of-sight, and you'll usually want at least one or two escape routes (usually the front door, as that blocks light anyway.)

• • Boarding/Taping up a window

Tools!

• A hammer, two-by-fours, nails
• Alternatively, duct-tape.

Very, very simple. Breaks line-of sight, so you can hide easily. Try not to make any noise and hide in a central room away from the entrances. You'll need 50 pieces of duct tape per window, and you usually find duct tape in rolls of 100, 200 or 250. It's quick and easy-- and you can still break through if need be.

To board it up you need a good amount of wood and nails-- but most importantly, a hammer. If you're lucky you'll find one on a corpse or dead zed-- if not, you may be able to find one in a hardware store. A hammer allows you to do quite a lot of construction and can be used as an impromptu weapon if need be (but then again, so can tattered leather pants.) Boarding up windows and doors not only defends your supposed hideout, but blocks line of sight. Again, remember to save a few escape routes and try not to make any noise while inside, or the horde may just come a knocking. For extra survivability drag some furniture in front of your boarded-up windows. That should give you a few more turns to either wake up/finish puking/reloading etc and get the hell out of dodge.

• • Traps!

Let's get to the meaty stuff. you probably won't be able to craft much at the start, but if you make 4 wood spears and somehow manage to obtain a mystical shovel (rarely in hardware stores, you can usually find them at farmhouses and barns so get exploring the countryside) then dig a pit from the * menu. You then enter the & menu and scroll through until you find the 'spike pit' trap.

• • Bear trap!

Skill requirements!

• Primary skill: Mechanics 1
• Secondary skill: Traps 1

Tools!

• A wrench

Resources!

• x3 Scrap metal
• x1 spring

A very, very, VERY useful trap. Simple to make, they don't weight much and they hit the weakpoint for MASSIVE damage and have a prolonged stunning effect on any enemy that trips them.(although some enemies are fast enough that they can run over one without tripping it, which is why 2-3 in a line is a nice idea for trap dodgers and plain redundancy. Once you have a few beartraps your safety is all but guaranteed-- and you can even use them in an offensive capacity. by placing them at a corner and luring a zombie over them. After one use it needs to be reset, and it can get stuck inside of the larger zombies.

Also, if you're near to a forest, they tend to catch a regular supply of crunchy critters to butcher for food. Additionally, they make a loud SNAP! when they activate, which can alert you to nasties (or tasty critters) nearby. WARNING: Some powerful or large enemies that trip a beartrap and survive will drag that beartrap with them-- it's still stuck to them until they die. However, as long as you have enough traps, you can disarm one and place it somewhere else as long as the enemy is trapped in one. Generally, as long as a hulk hits 5 or 6 bear traps it's either severely injured or outright dead-- and you can also throw spears, rocks or gun it down while it's giving you the evil eye.

The only problem I see with this is the reliance on springs. Only available by finding them in craters, and metal wreckage sites. Look for craters on the map get those springs. Military outposts with turrets-- throw rocks at them at night. Turrets drop both scrap metal, steel chunks, lumps, and different types of ammunition. And a last but very rare source is the humble lawnmower. When deconstructed it also provides a few springs.

• • spiked board trap!!

Okay, get this. You get some pieces of wood and take a hammer, bash a WHOLE LOAD of nails in it like a boss... and then have it point nail-side up. I haven't used this because frankly the nail requirement is pretty huge-- it's something like 5x two by fours and x20 nails, although it's very simple to make, the components are certainly more common than springs. However, as a bonus unlike the bear trap it doesn't need to be reactivated after every use. It just sits there, anything that walks over it gets hurt. However they weight a whopping two or three times as much as a bear trap-- and bear traps do a much, much more damage. It's a nice idea if you want to put up roadblocks of spiked boards in areas though for running massive hordes back and forth over them until the nails shred their feet, then their legs, torso and hands as they try to crawl after you...