The time has come for the final Roadhouse in the AutoAssault Roadhouse: Happy Hour. Joined by NetDevil’s Ryan Seabury (Design Director), Brian Booker (Lead Systems Designer), Matt Shaffer (Systems Designer) and our usual hostess NCSoft’s Valerie “Pann” Massey, we discussed crafting in the world of AutoAssault.

In a nutshell: the post-apocalyptic world of AutoAssault, you don’t create new items; you fix the old. During your adventures you will find broken weapons, armor, wheels, chasses, etc. that can only be fixed through the crafting disciplines, using various commodities that you find in the world and refine into usable crafting components.

Confused at all? Want more details? You’re in luck, because we’ve got plenty.

Let’s take it from the start. Crafting is broken into disciplines, and to craft something you have to know the discipline of that object. The first thing you do is visit the trainer in your discipline of choice. As a basic, beginning crafter you can either work with Projectile Weapons, Armor, or Power Plants. As you progress through these disciplines you unlock new ones, from Advanced Weapons and Advanced Armor to Hazard Kits and Chasses. For now, though, your trainer will unlock the discipline, and probably send you on a tutorial to gather components and make a sample item.

Once done with that, you either head to the Junkyard (a store that sells broken items) or head out into the world.

When you are traveling through the world and destroying objects you can find broken items, and you also collect commodities, the fundamental crafting objects that can be used to fix ‘broken’ objects. “We want you to interact with the environment; we want you to go out and find things which you then can use to repair these items” said Shaffer. You either have to play the game or have friends that play the game to craft successfully; there is no other way to gather the resources.

There is a huge list of available commodities, and it would be rather impossible to find what you needed if any commodity dropped from any destroyed object. Luckily, there is a method to the madness: if you destroy ruins you will find something like nuts and bolts, metal, or plastic; if you blow up a car you might find grease, gears, or a frame; and if you destroy mutated wildlife you will find something relevant to an organic creature. While this still leaves many possibilities open, you at least know not to waste time setting flowers on fire when you are looking for glass.

So let’s say you head guns a-blazing through some ruins, knocking over walls and filling the foundations with bullets. Your efforts might be rewarded with Salvaged Metal. Salvaged Metal is just one of many commodities that you could have received for destroying those ruins, but as you play the game you will start to notice patterns. You can do one of two things with your Salvaged Metal, both of which require you to do some more gathering: you can either refine it or use it to make a component.

Let’s say you decide to make a component with it. Components are a series of commodities that have been put together, required by more complex recipes. You might put your Salvaged Metal together with some Wiring and Electronics to make a circuit board that you could then use to make a laser weapon.

But what if you decide to refine it? Refining is the process of changing or ‘fixing’ the Salvaged items that you find in the world. All commodities come into the game as Salvaged, and only through refinement can you create Patched and Functional items. If you took 2 to 4 pieces of Salvaged Metal to the Refinery, you could make some Patched Metal. (Note: there used to be four levels to refining, but one level has been removed in the extended beta to make the process more accessible to casual players). Typically, while crafting, you will only have to visit two places: the Refinery and the building for the discipline you are currently working in.