Deadly Days: Roadtrip Item Workbench Crafting Guide

How to Unlock and Use the Item Workbench

The Deadly Days: Roadtrip item workbench turns collected ingredients into new equipment for your builds. Crafting gives you access to weapons and utility items that can change how you use your limited backpack space. Unlock the station through base development, then browse its recipes to see what you can make.

Between road trips, return to camp and use your collected resources to develop the base. The workbench is one of the facilities you can unlock there, giving you access to item crafting.

Version 1.0, released October 29, 2026, improved the recipe list: it sorts recipes by what you can craft and displays ingredient quantities and rarities. Use those details when planning a craft:

• Look through the recipes you can currently make.
• Inspect the ingredient counts and displayed rarities.
• Read the resulting equipment’s effects.
• Consider which existing backpack effects you would lose by using those ingredients.

Keep ingredient rarity and recipe availability separate when reading the interface. Check both before committing equipment, especially when an ingredient already supports your current build.

Official page: Deadly Days: Roadtrip (store.steampowered.com)

Craftable Weapons and Equipment in Version 1.0

Version 1.0 added 10 weapons, with five available only through crafting. It also introduced Plasma Hand, a craftable utility item that provides unlimited extra hands for equipping weapons.

These additions offer several different ways to develop your loadout:

Craftable equipment	Effect
Flamethrower	Fires a continuous stream of flames and leaves damaging fires that can apply Burn.
Desert Eagle	Deals high damage and pierces one additional enemy.
Mega Shotgun	Delivers very high damage with numerous pellets.
Crossbow	Embeds bolts in enemies; those bolts repeat on-hit effects when triggered.
The Grinder	Attacks with a spiked spinning wheel.
Plasma Hand	Counts as unlimited extra hands for equipping weapons.

For a Crossbow setup, pay attention to effects that activate on hits: its embedded bolts can repeat those effects when triggered. For the Flamethrower, account for both the flame stream and the lingering fires when reading its damage behavior.

Plasma Hand changes your weapon-equipping options, but every weapon and item still occupies backpack space. Plan room for the weapons you want to add and the support items that make them effective.

Crafting, Merging, and Hammer Upgrades

Crafting is one way to improve your equipment. Merging and the Hammer handle different parts of the upgrade process:

Image: PlayStation Store

• Crafting: Combines ingredients into different equipment through recipes.
• Merging: Combines matching equipment into stronger versions.
• Hammer: Upgrades marked items by one rarity at the end of the day, without exceeding the Hammer’s own rarity.

Before using a useful duplicate as an ingredient, compare the recipe’s result with the stronger equipment you could get through merging.

With a Hammer, check which items it marks before the day ends. Prioritize marked equipment below its rarity ceiling; an item already at the Hammer’s rarity cannot rise further through that Hammer.

The Lottery Ticket also interacts with crafting: it has a chance to let a craft avoid consuming an ingredient. Plan around having the required ingredients, and treat anything preserved by that effect as a bonus.

Fit Crafted Gear Into Your Backpack Synergies

A crafted weapon needs the right placement to benefit from your support items. Backpack arrangement determines which equipment receives adjacency and selector effects, so inspect those connections after changing your loadout.

Image: Steam / Pixelsplit

Version 1.0’s Auto Equip places items in the best available opening, including consideration for synergies. Use it to place equipment, then review the marked targets and any conditions attached to their effects.

Some combinations need particular attention:

• Secret Sauce: Adds poison damage to marked weapons and items, but deactivates marked food. Keep useful food outside its marked positions.
• Cogwheel: Links marked triggerable items so that one activation triggers the others. Each item can activate only once within a chain.
• Tesla Coil: Can give marked lightning items additional bounces, but requires an even number of marked electric items.
• Hand Mirror: Copies effects hitting one marked item onto the marked item opposite it. Inspect both targets when rearranging equipment.

In co-op, selectors can also mark equipment in the other player’s backpack. Check both inventories when placing a newly crafted item, particularly when moving it would break an effect supporting your teammate’s weapon.