Sheet Metal

Do not mix it up with the building tier. The sheet metal door and the walls you upgrade with a hammer cost plain metal fragments, and this item never touches them. It goes into heavier things: the ballista and the battering ram take two each, the heavy plate jacket two, and every craft of three high external stone walls needs one.

The catch is supply. Sheet metal cannot be crafted or researched at all, whatever recipe this page shows, so every sheet comes from crates, road loot, the recycler or a trade. Those few decide what gets built.

Picture a duo on day three with three sheets in the box. That is nine wall sections for a compound, or one ram and a single craft of walls. Most groups wall in first, since a ring of high walls keeps roamers off the farm every night, and a ram only pays when there is a stone base nearby to hit.

Later in the wipe, three go into each wind turbine. Only true spares go to the recycler, which returns about half the frags, one HQM and a little scrap.