PC Gun Smithing - New Players

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DeToX86

New member
Hello! I saw the game on sale and bought it for myself and 4 friends. We really were having a great time and couldn't understand some of the low ratings for the game. Then we got an MD5 error on day 12'ish and lost literally everything that wasn't on our person and were dumped in the wild as night started. (Things did not go well from there.....) After doing a lot of research on the issue we decided to start over as we all really love the game.

I read through a bunch of the tips and tried to do some searching on here, but it's very difficult. With almost all the Youtube videos I find being for PC and running on completely different alphas things are extremely difficult to keep track of and are at times directly conflicting with how things work on console.

My question is related to gun smithing on the console version. As a group, we elected to all specialize in different areas. I'm doing armor smithing and gun smithing. Armor smithing hasn't been an issue other than I thought making a ton of cloth armor was going to help with making leather armor but there doesn't appear to be any crossover. (However, I'm quite the tailor now.) I'm now making as much leather armor as I can so that I can make some good iron stuff when we finally get a workbench. (Or run to use the traders.) Gun smithing has been an enigma. I've been reading scematics, crafting gunpowder and blunderbuss ammo, and I've assembled multiple guns. From what I can tell, my gun smithing level has had no influence over the level of the gun I've assembled. I think anyone else in the group could have made the exact same gun with the parts that we've found.

With that said:

1. What is point of having a high level in gun smithing?

2. Is it only for crafting ammo faster?

3. I have yet to repair a gun yet as I don't want to take the quality hit. I have a level 187 hunting rifle I put together but it has about 25% durability left. Am I better using this until it breaks and then repairing or is there a quality drop once you get to lower durability?

4. We seem to have found plenty of nitrates, but not a lot of coal. Any good ways to find coal?

Thanks in advance for any help.

There's a significant chance this won't be the last of my "help the newb" posts. ;)

 
According to the wiki, gun smithing rank relates to a "decrease in repair penalties and get more from repair kits. Reduce ammunition crafting time."

I think the biggest piece of advice that I could give you has more to do with scavenging and the workbench. Stay with me here...

Find a town and spend sometime scavenging for a wrench. Once you have a wrench you can "disassemble" a workbench (like you would breakdown a car for parts). If I remember correctly, you can find them in some of the gas stations or maybe auto dealers. They aren't too hard to find. Alternatively you can put points into the workbench perk as well but disassembling one is relatively easy and saves you points. From here you can combine gun parts to increase their quality. You find enough parts if you consistently scavenge that you should be able to level them up & repair them pretty quickly. Combining clothes & armor will work the same way.

 
Thanks for the info. We found a wrench, got both and workbench and a chem station and on our way home the guy carrying everything had a bit of a mishap with radiation..... and ya, we lost it all.

We are actually quite close to a trader so I've been using his workbench to craft iron armor for the team. I haven't been able to figure out combining things. I put 2 of them in, it shows me the output, but it doesn't give me a prompt on how to actually perform the action.

 
Thanks for the info. We found a wrench, got both and workbench and a chem station and on our way home the guy carrying everything had a bit of a mishap with radiation..... and ya, we lost it all.
We are actually quite close to a trader so I've been using his workbench to craft iron armor for the team. I haven't been able to figure out combining things. I put 2 of them in, it shows me the output, but it doesn't give me a prompt on how to actually perform the action.
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You don't perform anything, you just take it right out of the result slot. It's instantaneous and never requires any resources. So, you see the boxes on the right:

A

B

C

You literally drag what you have into A and B and drag out C into your backpack.

 
Thanks for the info. We found a wrench, got both and workbench and a chem station and on our way home the guy carrying everything had a bit of a mishap with radiation..... and ya, we lost it all.
We are actually quite close to a trader so I've been using his workbench to craft iron armor for the team. I haven't been able to figure out combining things. I put 2 of them in, it shows me the output, but it doesn't give me a prompt on how to actually perform the action.
Click to expand...
Oh, and your radiation zone mix up reminds of something that happened on my very first play through. I had just FINALLY constructed a mini bike for the first time and got to use it for an hour one two. The next day I invited my girlfriend into my game to play split screen and help me build some stuff. She had already been playing on her own ans was better at hunting than I was, so I told her she could get on the bike amd drive it south to get some meat. It was at that point that she jumped on and immediately drove WEST into the radiation and died, stranding the thing... Many wellness point were lost that day trying to retrieve it. I got to the point where I set up a sleeping bag right on the edge of the zone, ran in and drove a feet, died, rinsed and repeated. Good times :)

 
So, the full story is that he shot a pig and we chased it for freaking ever when it suddenly dies. He was super excited because we not only needed the food but he had a challenge to kill pigs. He runs up to harvest and dies. Then we spent an entire day trying to get his backpack but for some reason we couldn't see it. It was as if it had sunken into the ground. After wasting an entire day and many lives we finally gave up. Took us another 9 days of raiding towns and airdrops until I finally found another wrench in a sink. Just survived the 28th so now we can go get both a work bench and chemical station that are a solid day away from camp.

Probably the most fun I've had with total failure in a long time.

 
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Thanks for the info. We found a wrench, got both and workbench and a chem station and on our way home the guy carrying everything had a bit of a mishap with radiation..... and ya, we lost it all.
We are actually quite close to a trader so I've been using his workbench to craft iron armor for the team. I haven't been able to figure out combining things. I put 2 of them in, it shows me the output, but it doesn't give me a prompt on how to actually perform the action.
Click to expand...

So, the full story is that he shot a pig and we chased it for freaking ever when it suddenly dies. He was super excited because we not only needed the food but he had a challenge to kill pigs. He runs up to harvest and dies. Then we spent an entire day trying to get his backpack but for some reason we couldn't see it. It was as if it had sunken into the ground. After wasting an entire day and many lives we finally gave up. Took us another 9 days of raiding towns and airdrops until I finally found another wrench in a sink. Just survived the 28tb so now we can go get both a work bench and chemical station that are a solid day away from camp.
Probably the most fun I've had with total failure in a long time.
Click to expand...
Failing is always fun in this game, like when I stepped on a land mine, went back for my backpack, stepped on another, went back yet again and found out that the original must have dropped too close to another mine that a zombie stepped on and it was obliterated.

Hunting will get much simpler once you get a mini bike. All you have to do it run them over and you've got dinner for days!

 
I read in a different thread that a better method for repairing guns is actually to combine the parts of your gun at the work bench with inferior parts to restore durability without the quality drop from repairing. This would seem to limit the usefulness of gun smithing even more. If this work as described I think I'll start to focus elsewhere with my skill points and just let gun smithing level up naturally as the benefits of a higher skill level just don't seem to be there.

 
Since I had this game I never combined anything in the work bench part of a b c. I usually craft new items for a higher ranked item or use repair kits if I have some.

 
The easiest ways to level gun smithing is crafting ammo parts in the forge, making gunpowder, making bullets/rockets, making that homemade musket and repair kits. Repair kits you will need for fixing the auger, chainsaw, nailgun, individual gun parts. A trick before you assemble guns is to repair all parts before combining or assembling.

 
I read in a different thread that a better method for repairing guns is actually to combine the parts of your gun at the work bench with inferior parts to restore durability without the quality drop from repairing. This would seem to limit the usefulness of gun smithing even more. If this work as described I think I'll start to focus elsewhere with my skill points and just let gun smithing level up naturally as the benefits of a higher skill level just don't seem to be there.
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That’s what I’ve been doing. No loss of quality and even a gain as you combine. Gun smithing used to be relevant and if I recall you could actually improve your weapons. Now I just put my points into the fixer or whatever right it’s called.

 
That’s what I’ve been doing. No loss of quality and even a gain as you combine. Gun smithing used to be relevant and if I recall you could actually improve your weapons. Now I just put my points into the fixer or whatever right it’s called.
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Yep, combining is the way to boost your weapon levels, but you get a better 'boost' with combining fully repaired weapon parts so especially for really rare gun parts it is better to use repair kits on your parts before combining them.

As for ranking up gun smithing.. You get XP for this perk just by watching the forge create bullet tips and casings. Also watching the chem station make gunpowder is a great way to squeeze extra XP outta crafting (in case you didn't know, gunpowder costs half resources when made in a chem station.

- - - Updated - - -

The easiest ways to level gun smithing is crafting ammo parts in the forge, making gunpowder, making bullets/rockets, making that homemade musket and repair kits. Repair kits you will need for fixing the auger, chainsaw, nailgun, individual gun parts. A trick before you assemble guns is to repair all parts before combining or assembling.
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Oops. This guy already said most of my post ;)

 
Thanks for all the info everyone. I will certainly not be spending any level up points on gun smithing going forward. (I typically wouldn't spend any points on something that I can level up by just doing it, but we decided to specialize as a group and give our areas a little boost once we were in a position to use our areas.)

On a side note, where the heck can I find decent amounts of coal and nitrates? We haven't found a cave yet but did find some nitrates. Coal has been an issue. I read in a thread that you look for black dots in the forest map, but those appeared to just be rocks and not coal. (At least for the 3-4 we checked.

 
Thanks for all the info everyone. I will certainly not be spending any level up points on gun smithing going forward. (I typically wouldn't spend any points on something that I can level up by just doing it, but we decided to specialize as a group and give our areas a little boost once we were in a position to use our areas.)
On a side note, where the heck can I find decent amounts of coal and nitrates? We haven't found a cave yet but did find some nitrates. Coal has been an issue. I read in a thread that you look for black dots in the forest map, but those appeared to just be rocks and not coal. (At least for the 3-4 we checked.
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Chop the round small boulders. They give nitrate and some coal as well as raw iron and lead and rocks. Also there's them deposit mounds on the ground thats either coal or nitrate.

 
Go to the burnlands and collect the piles of burnt wood on the ground, they give decent amounts. The mounds on the ground there that burn you, some will tell you to collect them but don't, they make very good natural traps for hunting animals. The trader will sell coal sometimes.

 
Thanks for all the info everyone. I will certainly not be spending any level up points on gun smithing going forward. (I typically wouldn't spend any points on something that I can level up by just doing it, but we decided to specialize as a group and give our areas a little boost once we were in a position to use our areas.)
On a side note, where the heck can I find decent amounts of coal and nitrates? We haven't found a cave yet but did find some nitrates. Coal has been an issue. I read in a thread that you look for black dots in the forest map, but those appeared to just be rocks and not coal. (At least for the 3-4 we checked.
Click to expand...
Just to show you how cruel RNG is I have found literally a ton of coal just on the ground in both the snow and forest biomes. Surprisingly I see very little on the ground in the plains biome. Also when i see a pile and it is usually two veins with several hundred at least of coal. I have over 13K coal in my box right now. As for nitrate, pfft. I have less than 1K. If I do see it on the ground I literally only see piles of 3 blocks which is 60. As someone said the burnt biome is good for coal. Nitrate can be found on the surface (HAHA), in caves or you have to mine for it in the snow biome and good luck. We seems to be most successful when close to bedrock. As an aside, it looks like you can get nitrate mining other biomes (ive only come across it in the forest by accident and I wont include the desert here) still but you have to be lucky. I found some in the forest biome along with lead and iron. It was almost like the honey holes of old before they "improved" mining.

 
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