I know what the game needs.

[Rotor]

Copper and Zinc.

 

Or a salvage  yard the szie of Texas

 

As a side note, I missed the tool tip where a component can be smelted without first scrapping it :/.

 

Still learning.

[Syphon583]

Mining my own copper has been an off and on dream of mine. However useful I could see that being, brass is a critical resource in the game and I think TFP would be hard-pressed to make it easier to obtain. As we see with the other changes coming in A21, they are very much wanting the player to go out into the world and into POIs for loot. Making brass a craftable material through mining would reduce that need to go out into POIs.

 

Besides, brass isn't as scarce as it appears. Wrenching cars, wall radiators, AC units, (some) sinks, and doorknobs (when you've read that book) nets you a ton of brass (not to mention the various items made of brass you find in loot like trophies and candlesticks). And as you said, you can smelt it without scrapping it first and, btw if you're not already aware, scrapping it first actually loses material (a quarter of it if I'm not mistaken); you get more by smelting. Unless I'm hurting for inventory space, I avoid scrapping brass items.

[meganoth]

Dukes can be smelted to brass.

[Syphon583]

57 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Dukes can be smelted to brass.

This too. By mid to late game you can be swimming in dukes with nothing to buy. Unless you're just dying to save up for some solar cells (and banks to put them in), bullet casings become the real currency.

[Rotor]

All true, I learnt all the last 2 or 3 days.  I am using a crafted lvl 5 ak and I have used 600 round s the last two BMs.  Once I got the chem station, powder problem went away, now brass is the issue lol.  From the fire into the frying pan, almost reminds me of survival....hay wait! :).

 

I now see a few errors I have made on this okay through.

[Syphon583]

1 hour ago, Rotor said:

All true, I learnt all the last 2 or 3 days.  I am using a crafted lvl 5 ak and I have used 600 round s the last two BMs.  Once I got the chem station, powder problem went away, now brass is the issue lol.  From the fire into the frying pan, almost reminds me of survival....hay wait! :).

 

I now see a few errors I have made on this okay through.

I've lost count of how many playthroughs I have done (not nearly as many as a few players here), but you'd think after 700+ hours I'd have learned everything there is to know about this game. However I'm still learning new things. For instance, I've always known that putting mods into gear makes that gear more valuable when you sell it. However, I've only just learned that not only are the mods themselves worth more when installed into gear (not always true for low-tier gear), but that the value increases exponentially based on the tier of the gear. So saving/crafting spare mods for level 5/6 gear that you plan to sell is going to get you a ton of dukes, which translates into a ton more brass to smelt.

[pApA^LeGBa]

If there is copper and zinc than you never have problems with brass. War of the walkers mod has them mineable. It´s too easy. And making the source of copper and zinc rare leads to the same as we have know with brass beeing rare....

[Rotor]

Well, I should be able to recycle my brass casings :).

[Melange]

29 minutes ago, Rotor said:

Well, I should be able to recycle my brass casings :).

I've thought of that too. So if we could gather some of that brass, the target we are searching for would be maddeningly small. I mean, we've found our arrows stuck in the ground and they're not big things to hone in on and retrieve. That brass? Maybe they'll allow it to be gathered some day, but I would bet it would be 1 casing = 1 scrap brass...🤔

[pApA^LeGBa]

I do a a base where you can use pipe bombs for the first 3 hordenights, doesn´t take too many gunpowder as the first three hordes are pretty short. Meanwhile i try to melee and sneak with the bow outside of hordenight. Only using firearms if i have to and preferably a shotgun. Even without using the trader i can get a decent amount of brass until day 28.

 

If you are willing to go perception and beeing a bit creative, you can also make hordebases purely designed for grenades, molotovs and rocketlauncher. A bit of help from dart and blade traps and you don´t need brass at all if you use a shotgun during the week.

Edited September 8, 2022 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Rotor]

42 minutes ago, Melange said:

but I would bet it would be 1 casing = 1 scrap brass...🤔

 

I am okay with that.  Heck you never recoupe of all it.  I mean unless you are running and gunning, for the most part in a BM the brass is going to be in one spot.

1 minute ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I do a a base where you can use pipe bombs for the first 3 hordenights, doesn´t take too many gunpowder as the first three horde are pretty short. Meanwhile i try to melee and sneak with the bow outside of hordenight. Only using firearms if i have to and preferably a shotgun. Even without using the trader i can get a decent amount of brass until day 28.

 

If you are willing to go perception and beeing a bit creative, you can also make hordebases purely designed for grenades, molotovy and rocketlauncher. A bit of help from dart and blade traps and you don´t need brass at all if you use a shotgun during the week.

 

Outside of BM I am strictly bow or cross bow.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Rotor (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

Only bow/crossbow doesn´t work. At least not on higher difficulties and always running Z´s. Can´t play without a "oh @%$#" weapon for emergencies.

[doughphunghus]

I have a theory: brass isn’t “craftable” because it’s to encourage mining for iron, etc… which is used to make forged iron and steel… which is used for traps.

 

There’s a lot of brass out there, but not so much and easy to get as “raw elements”.  Which is to make bullets not super easy to come by until later game *unless * you want to only focus on that (and then have less traps/resources). It’s not super “unbalanced” today (brass  Vs traps) but it’s jut so everyone doesn’t mine and craft brass like mad and never need traps.

 

I do wish brass could be made from mined elements (and it would make sense) but I feel the amount of those deposits should be “random” or “super rare” in number and amount… maybe only in wasteland, etc. to encourage late game wasteland travel/basing. You find a small zinc deposit: happy day! But not “I now have easy large amounts of brass!”

 

Edit: I took too long to post, but @pApA^LeGBa basically indicated  via a few posts above: that’s how you’re …. Gently pushed… towards playing  if you want to truly conserve brass. It’s to make you be a bit more creative vs just shooting everything through bars/a hole forever. In retrospect, the auto shotgun is a bit OP in terms of “infinite ammo easy to get” and shot speed/power but it’s not as powerful as the 7.62 automatic guns when you have stacks of ammo.

 

Edit2: I think all the traps except the gun turrets use iron as ammo… thus making my theory that the bullet turrets are a red herring to get you to waste brass!

Edited September 8, 2022 by doughphunghus (see edit history)

[Rotor]

4 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Only bow/crossbow doesn´t work. At least not on higher difficulties and always running Z´s. Can´t play without a "oh @%$#" weapon for emergencies.

 

Rgr, not there yet.  I do keep a 9mm and 300 rounds of such, just in case, with a shortly dboule barrel on the other side.

[Melange]

Well perhaps @doughphunghus. TTP wants players to go out of their comfort zone, that's been established throughout the recent forum threads. One way to do that is to force the collection of brass. Lots of it? Well, I take anything brass I can get. And we know it takes a lot of smelting to build up a large quantity of bullet casings. Never swimming in casings to the point where I'll throw out a candlestick in favor of some other loot. I've played the War of the Walkers mod, and yeah copper and zinc are found as ores. For me it was not a big game changer, just a different mechanic.

 

If you are infering that TFP  like us to use traps, I can't say. I don't use traps other than spikes. I seem to manage well enough with out them. We all have our different playstyle. And I'd bet we all like bullets.  Which means we have to loot and salvaage for brass. No two ways about it.

[doughphunghus]

1 minute ago, Melange said:

Well perhaps @doughphunghus. TTP wants players to go out of their comfort zone, that's been established throughout the recent forum threads. One way to do that is to force the collection of brass. Lots of it? Well, I take anything brass I can get. And we know it takes a lot of smelting to build up a large quantity of bullet casings. Never swimming in casings to the point where I'll throw out a candlestick in favor of some other loot. I've played the War of the Walkers mod, and yeah copper and zinc are found as ores. For me it was not a big game changer, just a different mechanic.

 

If you are infering that TFP  like us to use traps, I can't say. I don't use traps other than spikes. I seem to manage well enough with out them. We all have our different playstyle. And I'd bet we all like bullets.  Which means we have to loot and salvaage for brass. No two ways about it.

Yeah, it’s just my guess given brass isn’t craftable, and in theory it “should be” since were mining other things and smelting and building a lot out of them. It’s not like they allow “wooden darts” or “glass blade traps” so it seems making all/most of the “traps” exclusively use iron (of which steel also is from) to encourage mining but not make miners OP for all materials. 

[zztong]

4 hours ago, Rotor said:

Well, I should be able to recycle my brass casings :).

 

IIRC, somebody has made a modlet with a "brass catcher" weapon mod. I've never tried it.

 

Those are real-life things, albeit with a limited capacity. I don't know if the modlet version has a capacity. If so, it would probably handy for clearing a POI, but no good for horde night unless you want to keep stopping the carnage to empty it. Also, I suspect you can't always reuse each casing. It has been a long, long time since I shot, but I recall some casings splitting after being fired.

[Rotor]

3 hours ago, zztong said:

 

Isome casings splitting after being fired.

 

not many, very little actually.

[zztong]

7 hours ago, Rotor said:

 

not many, very little actually.

 

I certainly have no idea. I mean, I recall a pack of some off-brand .30-30 rounds where it seemed half of them split. But we'd fire Remington .22 longs and shorts by the thousands and the brass from them seemed pristine. I've never reloaded ammo, so I've no idea what's involved.

[Rotor]

easier to reload than to make brass casings and buwets tips :).

 

[JCrook1028]

1 hour ago, Rotor said:

easier to reload than to make brass casings and buwets tips :).

 

and primers!

[Rotor]

4 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

and primers!

 

Ssssh!  

 

They are built into the workbench!

 

I get it.  I guess brass shortage is a way to sim primer shortage?  I can live with that.  So, in the end ball ammo and powder musket should rule :).

[Matt115]

This game need  the most skeletons

[Rotor]

Okay, brass skeletons then.

[Melange]

3 minutes ago, Rotor said:

Okay, brass skeletons then.

Why not? No bones about it 😛