Reinforced Workbench Upgrade

Two kinds of loot sit in this bill. The upgrade itself can't be crafted or researched, and neither can the three pieces of sheet metal inside it. The calculator unfolds the sheets into HQM, frags and scrap at a Level 3 bench, but read that as their value: no bench in the game makes a sheet.

That is why the choice matters. Every sheet you recycle out of it is a high external stone wall, and the ordinary recycler gives back one sheet and a coin flip on a second. Walls keep raiders off the bench in the first place.

So fit it only where losing the bench hurts: the Level 3 workbench, which costs loot to rebuild. The game text promises far more HP and explosive resistance, as the item page says. A Level 1 bench costs almost nothing to replace, and armouring it wastes the sheets.