When I first started playing Duckside on release, I spawned on the beach and was repeatedly smacked in the back of the head by a baseball bat while fixing my settings. It’s a cutthroat world, and I’m immediately reminded of DayZ and Rust. I can’t count the number of times I did as a freshie on the beaches of Chernarus. Like those survival games, Duckside doesn’t hold your hand. It would help if you learned how to craft weapons in Duckside to survive the screeching ducks (see: other players).
How to Craft Your First Weapons in Duckside
First and foremost, open up your inventory with ‘Tab’ and then navigate to the ‘Crafting’ tab at the top of the HUD. Here, you’ll see a selection of different items you can craft, broken down into categories. The second category, ‘Weapons,’ contains a few choice early-game items to help you survive the archipelago. Straight off the bat, you’ll want a baseball bat. It’s called a wooden club, but as you’ll soon see, it’s a baseball bat. It’s tough to hit enemies, but once you land your strike, it deals a ton of melee damage.
Anyway, click on any of the available weapon blueprints that you have, and at the bottom of the menu, you’ll see the necessary crafting components. In the screenshot above, I’m crafting a Shorty—a double-barrel shotgun designed for close-quarters combat—that requires 90 Metal Fragments and 120 Wood. These crafting resources aren’t too challenging to acquire, so long as you can avoid combat while you gather. For Metal, you’ll have to scrap components at a recycling machine.
Once you have the crafting ingredients for your weapon, click ‘Crafting’ in the bottom right corner to start the crafting process, which does take some time to complete. A workbench will speed up the process and unlock additional opportunities for you, too.
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Choosing Your First Weapon in Duckside
I already mentioned that you should craft the wooden club—a baseball bat—as soon as you have enough wood. You can harvest the necessary 100 Wood from any tree in the game world, and it won’t take long to accumulate that much. It’s the most basic melee weapon you can craft.
From there, you need something with a bit more range. The Bow is more straightforward to craft than the Crossbow, which requires Metal Fragments, Wire, and a Workbench. Conversely, the Bow only requires Wood and Rope. Plus, Arrows only require Wood and Stone, neither of which prove difficult to find in the world.
Once you’ve set up a base and have a Workbench, craft a Shorty. The double-barrel shotgun will save your feathers in a pinch!
Speaking of surviving a harsh world, we recently dove into how to customize weapons in The Forever Winter! Are you playing Duckside? Come talk about the game on our official community forums!
