Crafting and repair in Frostrail

Frostrail’s store pitch is scavenge, craft, fight, ride. The craft half is easy to skip because it happens in a warm car while nothing is shooting. That is also when most crews lose the next stop: they leave with a pretty gun they cannot feed and a coat that is already torn. This page is the bench loop — what FakeFish has actually said about craftable modular firearms, dedicated repair workstations, and clothing sets — tied to How to Play and the train.

If you want a tick-box, steal the survival checklist. If you want letter grades for archetypes, use the weapon tier list. This page is the queue between those two.

What is confirmed (not a recipe book)

Ez Jämsen’s interview line still holds: a classic WW1-esque set — pistols, shotguns, rifles, machine guns — plus a handful of melee tools. All of the guns are craftable. A modular crafting system lets you enhance them. Spring 2026 notes added dedicated repair workstations so maintaining gear is a place, not a backpack spell. The same letter added multiple new clothing sets next to enemy variants and Relics.

There is no public named recipe list. Anyone posting a fake “12 scrap = Type 8 rifle” table is inventing. Early Access in Q4 2026 is supposed to add more loot and crafting depth; the roadmap is the promise, not a spreadsheet.

The workstation is a room

Playtest HUD shots put a Metal Hammer and Metal Wrench on the hotbar. You will walk those tools to a bench. If four people try to repair during a defense encounter, you have no rear guard. Co-op jobs: Salvage owns the queue, Engine owns veto if the boiler is hungry, Rear does not sit at the bench while the tracks scream.

Habits that survive patches:

1. Repair before the doors open, not after someone is already hypothermic.
2. Repair clothes and tools first if you only have one bench-minute. A torn coat deletes more runs than a scratched rifle stock. Heat rules: Survival.
3. Do not craft a fourth firearm variant because the station is idle. Feed the gun you already shoot. Modular parts on that gun beat a stash museum.
4. If the bench is a bottleneck, add a second workstation when the train grows — same spend order as carriages on the Eden Engine page.

Modular guns without fake IDs

Think in jobs, then parts.

• Shotgun lane — doorway, carriage aisle, Revenant packs. Mods that tighten spread or speed reloads matter more than a range mag that turns it into a bad rifle.
• Rifle lane — corrupted soldiers, walks home, scouts. Panic mag-dumps starve the crew. Parts that cut recoil or reload help; they do not print ammo.
• Pistol lane — sidearm so a scout still has a vote while the rifle is empty.
• Machine gun lane — train defense if, and only if, salvage can feed it. Obstacle-clearing now includes defense encounters. An unfed MG is a C-tier decision wearing an S-tier fantasy.
• Melee — dungeon finishers and ammo bankruptcy. Craft or keep a hammer you already use at the bench.

Pair the lanes with enemies. Four rifles and no doorway gun is a craft failure, not an aim failure.

Ammo is a luxury in FakeFish’s own language. Craft one primary you can feed, one backup, then clothes and fuel. The tier list ranks those lanes; this page tells you not to craft all of them on night one.

Clothes are crafting too

2026 clothing sets sit in the same development letter as Relics and repair benches. That is the balance statement. You change layers on the train. A blizzard coat at −28 °C is the wrong tool in a +99 °C shrine. If the bench can stitch, stitch before the next white-out. If it cannot, that is a salvage target for the next camp, not a reason to skip the world time-box.

Relics are not crafted. They still use the train

Relics drop in dungeons and activate aboard for temporary pilgrimage buffs. They do not replace a gun or a coat. Do not spend bench time “installing” a Relic that is actually a button. Timing: Relics. Pathing: story can wait; the shrine can kill you while you lore.

Session order (steal this)

1. Engine check: Heat, Power, fuel. No bench until the boiler is honest.
2. Queue: coats, tools, the gun you will actually fire.
3. Modular part only if you already shot that gun last stop.
4. Say the craft out loud in co-op so nobody clones a rifle.
5. Leave. Craft envy mid-blizzard is how you donate a hammer to a drift.

When Early Access names recipes, this page gets rows. Until then, if a video recites a shopping list you cannot find in Steam news, it is unverified. Track letters on updates. First hour still starts at Getting Started.