Workshop and Crafting Guide

Workshop level and rarity

The Workshop is built in the Sanctuary Hub (40 Scrap and 40 Wood) and upgraded there too; the Sanctuary Hub guide has every price. Its level has one job: it sets the rarity of the armor, weapon and shield pieces you craft, and that rarity multiplies both their stats and their material cost.

The Techie background, called Master Crafter in the game, counts your Workshop as one level higher, and it is the only way to reach the red Godlike tier. A Techie therefore saves a full upgrade at every step: Uncommon gear at level 1 instead of level 2, and so on. Material costs are the base figure multiplied by the rarity and rounded, so better quality always costs proportionally more. Whatever you craft is equipped into its slot immediately and a copy is added to your gear stash, so a Combat Knife replaces the weapon in your right hand.

Every recipe and its cost

Tools and supplies (cost does not scale)

Gear costs by rarity

Sc is Scrap, Cl is Cloth and Wd is Wood. The stats come from the item tier of each piece times the rarity multiplier, as the gear and rarity guide explains. At Common, the pieces give: Scrap Armor 12 Armor and 30 HP; Legguards 12 Armor; Boots 6 Armor; Shield 5 Armor and 5 HP; Gloves 4 Armor and 8 Damage; Helmet 2 Armor and 5 HP; Knife 6 Damage. Multiply by the table above to see higher tiers. A full set of the six armor pieces (no knife) works out as follows.

What to build, and when

Because cost and stats scale together, the real question is which slots give the most for the material. Judged per Scrap, the order is: Gloves (armor plus 8 damage for 5 Scrap at Common), Scrap Armor (the biggest HP and Armor of any piece), Legguards, Boots, then the Helmet and Shield, which give the least. The knife comes last; it is a tier 1 melee weapon.

• Workshop 1 (Common). Make Rope, Gloves and Scrap Armor. A Common set costs only 75 Scrap, 10 Wood and 25 Cloth.
• Workshop 2 to 3 (Uncommon, Rare). Rebuild the chest and legs first. A Rare Scrap Armor gives 19 Armor and 48 HP for 32 Scrap and 16 Cloth.
• Workshop 4 (Epic). An Epic Scrap Armor has 24 Armor and 60 HP, the same as a dropped Common Combat Plate, but you choose when you get it.
• Workshop 5 or a Techie at 4. Legendary and Godlike gear. At that stage the cost is mostly Scrap, so a Pit at a high level matters more than the Workshop itself.

For healing, the stimpack you use in combat is the Infirmary’s Medical Stimpack. The Workshop’s own Stimpack is described as an exploration item and the combat button does not read it, so treat it as low priority.

Ammo, Scrap and the Scrap Launcher

The Workshop has no ammunition recipe, so Ammo is a loot resource. Every ranged attack spends 1 Ammo, melee weapons spend none, and the Scrap Launcher spends 1 Scrap per shot instead. The weapon in your right hand decides which stock the battle screen shows. Ammo also pays for daily turret calibration at the walls, 20 per night.

Worked example: forty launcher shots burn 40 Scrap, the price of two Common Scrap Armors. If you use a launcher, treat Scrap as both ammunition and building material, and craft cheap high-value pieces such as Gloves rather than a Shield. Gunners should hold back Ammo for the turrets and for boss fights; military-type locations pay 18 to 35 Ammo at once, and sneaking through the Fallen Military Convoy yields 8 to 19.

Reinforced Rope and prisoners

To bind an enemy you need one Rope, the enemy at 25% of its maximum health or less, and 2 Action Points. In the range-zone battle screen you must also be at close range, and some enemies, such as Bebok, cannot be bound. A successful bind gives 25 to 40 XP and one prisoner. Rope costs only 5 Cloth, which makes this one of the best returns in the Workshop.

A laborer earns more than a sale after four days, so convert early prisoners and sell later ones when you need the Scrip now. Raids that overrun your base take a share of waiting prisoners, so do not let them pile up.

Resource planning

Cloth is the quiet bottleneck: armor pieces, Rope, bandages and the Infirmary’s surgery (10 Medicine, 10 Cloth, 10 Water) all draw on it. A Common armor set needs 25 Cloth and a Rare one 40, so keep a stock of about 30 Cloth plus whatever your Rope stack requires. Wood is the lightest need, only the boots, shield and knife use it, so most of your Wood belongs to the base upgrades.

A sensible routine is to craft one or two pieces whenever a Workshop upgrade lands, and to stop crafting for a few days when you need Scrap for a base upgrade. Carry at least three Rope into every expedition, spend the rest of your Cloth on armor and keep Medicine for the Infirmary. If the Pit is level 3 or higher, outdated crafted gear is also worth dismantling there.

Related pages

Costs of every building are in the Sanctuary Hub guide, and the base building guide covers raids and survivors. Learn what the numbers on your gear mean in the gear and rarity guide, and see the combat guide for Action Points and capturing. The armor database lists the armor items.

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