Nothing is junk: taking apart and mending things
In Nile’s End there is nothing to throw away. A broken fan has springs and wire in it. A ruined jacket is cloth and leather. An empty cartridge is brass. You look at a thing and ask what is inside it.
Taking it apart
Tap the thing in the pack. If it comes apart, a block shows the tool you need (a knife, a wrench, a hammer or a hacksaw) and, as pictures, what comes out. Clothes come apart into cloth and leather, guns into parts, ammunition into brass and powder, tyres into rubber and scrap. And what you find in abandoned houses, such as a fan, a clock or a cassette player, gives you springs, wire and sheet metal.
The tool loses a use each time, and what comes out is always a little less than what went in. So there is no trick that makes something from nothing.
Everything wears
Weapons wear in a fight, shoes as you walk, tools as you use them and vehicles as they carry you. A damaged thing has a small red wrench and a Repair button, and each kind needs its own: clothes a sewing kit and cloth, shoes glue, blades a whetstone, guns a repair kit and spare parts of their own kind. And at camp, on the workbench, you can mend weapons and tools with scrap and no kit. So the scrap you were about to throw away is what mends your gun.
Plans
The simple things can be made from the first day: a hammer from scrap, wood and rope, and with it a knife, an axe and a spear. But the advanced things, like hand-loading ammunition, a first aid kit, a crossbow or restoring a Nasr, you can only make once you know how.
A plan is a sheet of drawings. You find one in the army depots, the factories, the hospitals and the farms, or someone on the road teaches you: a gunsmith, a mechanic, a nurse, a blacksmith or a hunter, in return for something small. Once you have studied it, those recipes are yours for good. Before that, a locked recipe shows a padlock and a hint on where to look.
So you do not pick a recipe from a list. You find a sheet in an abandoned factory and say “finally”.
Vehicles
The parts of a bicycle, a motorcycle and a car wear on their own: tyres and brakes, and in the bigger ones oil, a battery and plugs. When a part runs out it can stop you: a flat, a snapped chain, a seized engine. And worn brakes mean a crash, sooner or later. In the Garage you fit each part new from its spares.
The short version: fix the vehicle before you set out on it and you arrive. If you don’t, you will end up taking it apart for parts halfway.
