Metal Fragments

Look at the list under this text and you get the point: hundreds of recipes want frags. On day one they decide almost everything you do, because a bench, a pick, a door and a gun all pull from the same pile.

Most of them come from smelting metal ore in a furnace. Barrels along the roads drop some too, and the recycler turns the junk you loot into more. So when the nodes near you are picked clean, a road run with a hatchet and an empty bag is a decent start.

Where the first big stack usually goes:

• a Level 1 workbench for 100, the gate to most early crafts
• a metal pickaxe and hatchet, so the next trip pays more
• a sheet metal door for 150, the first door worth a code lock
• building upgrades, which nobody budgets for and which eat the most

Then the Level 2 workbench asks for 500 at once, plus high quality metal. Later in the wipe frags stop being scarce and turn into ammo: every batch of 5.56 rifle ammo takes ten. Groups that shoot all evening keep a furnace running just for that.