Metal Scrap

The first metal, and why it is heavy

Wiki type: unrefined. Wiki weight: 5. That already matters, because one unit of scrap has five times the listed weight of one unit of Plastic Waste. The same page and the old Quick Start agree on where it sits in the world: vehicles, gas stations, highway islands, plus factory ruins and abandoned motorboats. Two sources for the places, one source for the weight. The Scrapsmith turns it into Metal Plates, and plates are listed at weight 7. Smelting does not make the cargo kinder. It makes a building ingredient, and you pay more on the scale for the privilege. Early guides say to ignore metal until the storage yards exist. I agree with that as inventory advice. A boat full of weight-5 scrap on day one is how a Very Light town becomes Heavy before it has a desalinator.

Plates then show up in costs all over the building table: the fishing boat wants 2, generators want several, the large yard wants 3. So the Scrapsmith is not a luxury bench. It is the gate between “I saw a car” and “I can build the boat”. Aluminum is a later, different scrap from factories. Do not feed car doors into an aluminum recipe. There isn’t one.

A loop you can repeat without a respawn rule

I cannot tell you whether a stripped car comes back. Respawn is undocumented for the whole resource list. What I can say is that highway islands and motorboats are landmarks you sail to, so the travel page’s range circles matter more than a timer. If the map says you cannot reach the next island, the fix is batteries and a lighter town, not a second visit to the same sedan. Once plates exist, spend them on the fishing boat and the generator before you spend them on a larger house. Food and power unblock the week. A prettier cabin can wait.

Questions