You can buy them from the random people in the streets in towns(clicking on the people hanging around will give new options at times, though most just say random stuff). However, I think crafting is way better. If you search ruins every time you pass by them, you will get lots of crafting resources. Also the guns you can buy don't tend to be that great.

Chances are you will hit raw material bottlenecks before critical scrap shortage.
Buy some low level basic guns to save on resources you would use to create bolt actions and semi-autos. The street vendors will randomly drop muskets, pipe guns, maybe standard pistols. Now use these to make rifles.

You will hit the next bottleneck once the guns also need cores.
It all gets very expensive.

For town defense, it should suffice to equip everyone with the street-bought 2500 scrap shotguns. Just have good walls and medkits on hand.

You can also use scrap to buy the materials needed to make your own guns. There are three ways I know of;

i) When you go into a bar, look through the list of people to see if there are any with a "Buy junk" option. Those people are selling the various resources needed to craft things.

ii) When you go into a bar, click on the interact button that every person in the bar has, then the "trade junk" button. Every person in every bar has this option. That brings up a trading screen for the various resources needed to craft things. This option is more cumbersome than (i) and the resources will be more expensive than (i), but every person in every bar has this option. You can also trade other things this way, like stuff you've crafted and other resources you've acquired (e.g. trade pig iron for foil, etc).

iii) Many settlements in plague areas have scavengers (you can see which ones by mousing over them on the map), who you can buy crafting resources from. So it's like (i), but with more risk as there's a chance you will be attacked by zombies every time you click the "scavengers" button to trade with them.

I got most of my crafting resources by searching dumps and settlements in plague areas. If you mouse over them, it tells you which resources you might find when searching them. Searching them also runs the risk of being attacked by zombies. There's a limit to how often you can search a site in one visit - if you get just 6 pig iron, that site is temporarily used up and any further searching at that time will only yield 6 pig iron. You can return to it later and it will restock. I don't know how long you have to leave it for that to happen. I just searched places that were mostly on the way as I was exploring, trading, doing jobs.

I agree that the crafting system is completely absurd. It needs a serious revision. It is one of the very few things that pushes me away from the game.

First is a tedious to craft anything, and in a game, tedious things feels like real jobs. And if your game feels like a job, you have failed at making a game.

Second, the recipes are absurd, ridiculous both point of view the process you have to go through as a player AND role-playing-wise. It makes no sense that you need a baseball bat to make a metal pipe. There are no bats in a metal pipe. Sily as hell.

I have already commented on this in the first week of the steam release. They have said nothing on the matter yet. I think they want to finish the entire game first and then modify the things to be pleasant and improve QoL as well as U.I. at that point.

I like the fact that the crafting system allows you to craft an item without manually doing all the intermediates IF you have the stuff to make them. I have not seen many like that and it brought me a lot of joy.

Hopefully an update will add ways to make Iron, Connectors, Compounds, Gears and Widgets from the more advanced town buildings. Right now the Foundry and Heavy Industry don't have much to make.

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

You can buy them from the random people in the streets in towns(clicking on the people hanging around will give new options at times, though most just say random stuff). However, I think crafting is way better. If you search ruins every time you pass by them, you will get lots of crafting resources. Also the guns you can buy don't tend to be that great.

This thread got me to thinking about those street gun vendors So I tested one by throwing 105,000 scrap at one to see what I'd get for 1,750scr for a random low level gun.

60 guns:
21 Muskets
16 Pipe Guns
23 Standard Pistols

Roughly a 1 in 3 for each gun. Taking a look at the resource cost (and price to buy the parts from random salvage vendors at 100scr an item)

Steel Pipe (800scr)
4 Iron (1 Bat)
4 Iron (1 Metal Club)
10 Pig Iron
Musket (2400scr)
8 Iron + 10 Pig Iron(1 Steel Pipe)
10 Iron
4 Connector
Pipe Gun (2500scr)
8 Iron + 10 Pig Iron(1 Steel Pipe)
10 Pig Iron
5 Foil
Standard Pistol (4700scr)
18 Iron + 4 Connector (1 Musket)
18 Iron + 5 Foil (1 Pipe Gun)
2 Gear

Bolt Action Rifle (6000scr)
1 Standard Pistol
1 Steel Pipe
5 iron

Semi-Automatic Rifle (13000scr)
2 Bolt Action Rifle
5 Iron
1 Connector
4 Widget

This means that the street gun vendor saves a lot of money and time when it comes to crafting some mid tier weapons. Best is the Standard Pistol which is 3x you'd pay for the resources from salvagers. The lesser prizes of Pipe Gun and Musket are still worthwhile for making a Standard Pistol.

This is game changing for weapon crafting, no longer having to scour the map looking for iron and connectors, just buy the basic guns, save the crafting components for making the bolt action and semi-automatic rifle. From there guns get really expensive with core requirements, but the basic bolt action is no longer a chore to make. Also I recommend grooming an expert crafter for making your equipment, I hired a "mechanic" who started with 30 in crafting, now at level 12 with a legendary engineer hat and legendary crowbar she has 68 crafting. The legendary bolt-action rifles she makes shoot more bullets (4) than a standard semi-auto rifle (3). Definitely worth it.

In short: buy a cheap gun and upgrade it, don't make a gun from raw materials.

As a side note, the 2500scr Shotgun sold by the vendor is uncraftable. 1 shot, +60% acc, 3-7 damage, making it a sidegrade to the bolt-action.

i like the 2500 scrap shotgun that you buy from street vendors. very accurate, and only consumes 1 ammo.

Originally posted by veryinky:

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

As a side note, the 2500scr Shotgun sold by the vendor is uncraftable. 1 shot, +60% acc, 3-7 damage, making it a sidegrade to the bolt-action.

Isn't that the Shotgun the Sharpshooter starts with?
His seems more accurate though.

Quality effects the weapon's stats too. So if you are good at crafting you can make a higher quality weapon with more shots and stuff.

u can get the accurate shotguns from street peeps? Dmn.. i should try to get that.. missing out

Crafting can generate Advanced / Legendary items (if crafting chance is at 100% and crafting skill is above the minimum for that item, so if you have 51 and need 50 you can already get legendaries, greatly increased stats.

Only the HighTier guns are expensive to build, anything below sniper rifle is a joke^^
But those 2 cores, thats the expensive part(but too are craftable)

There are UNLIMITED RESOURCES ON THE MAP, why spend money on that lol

I feel like some of the people complaining about the crafting in this game being absurd do not know that you can just click on the finished item and the game will automatically build all the crap in between if you have the materials. The game should be clearer about that.

Originally posted by Omega13:

I feel like some of the people complaining about the crafting in this game being absurd do not know that you can just click on the finished item and the game will automatically build all the crap in between if you have the materials. The game should be clearer about that.

There is a lot of grinding but in comparison to most things, if you start crafting right from the start and keep taking advantage of ruins, it shouldnt be too much work...

EXCEPT for cores. Cores are a pain in the neck and the devs claiming cores are provided in quests etc. is a laugh. It is rarely given and you need all these components and scrap to make one while most items start needing cores and plenty of them as well.