How to Craft and Harvest in Inferno Protocol

Resources in Inferno Protocol are scarce on purpose. Scrap metal and frayed wires exist, and they will not carry a kit. When you drop a creature you harvest what remains: bones, armor, flesh, organs. That grim loop is the crafting backbone. This page covers harvesting, the craft-from-stash change, cooking, building, clothing, and traps. Rankings for the gear you produce sit on the weapons tier list. Injector crafting and risk sit in injectors.

If you are still in the Prologue, finish getting started first. The notebook, trade interiors, and full cooking rewrite were demo-era systems that landed before Early Access; you will feel them immediately in the settlement.

Harvesting is not optional flavor

You will not find endless ammo crates. Official copy is explicit: ammo is not a reliable pickup economy. World weapons spawn with random ammo counts. After a fight you harvest. That means:

• Confirm the creature is down. Locational death animations exist; a body that fell forward after a back hit can still surprise you if you looted too early in an older build. Wait for stillness.
• Harvest on the corpse, then mark the tile if you expect a shift. A harvested pile is not a landmark unless you drop a torch on it.
• Prioritize organs and armor plates when your stash is full. Flesh cooks. Bones craft. Scrap is filler.
• The trash eater (crocodile-like) can be fed dynamite or grenades and will explode. That is a harvest-or-detonate decision. Do not stand on the corpse.

Giant Rats grab. Harvesting one is a reward for a QTE you already won. If the rat is still in chase state, you are not in loot state. Combat covers the fight; this page covers the bag.

Craft from anywhere — the important QoL

The July 2026 demo content update let you craft using items still inside chests and stashes. You do not have to unpack a backpack onto the dirt. Quick item use works from the inventory screen. Quick merging is a double-click on matching stacks. Building and crafting UIs have a name filter so you can type “torch” instead of scrolling past loin cloths.

Use that. The settlement should be a warehouse, not a floor dump. Keep a small scrap rack (the item exists) near a cooking table. Craft walls before you craft vanity hats. Cowboy hat, loin cloth, leather shoes, round glasses, belt bag, and Snatcher backpack are all real clothing entries from the same update. They change carry and silhouette more than they change the maze. Wear the backpack; screenshot the hat later.

Brass knuckle recipes had errors that were patched. If a recipe looks empty, it may have been a known bug — check patch notes before you vendor the parts. Katana and shotgun were previewed as incoming demo weapons and show up in official screenshots; treat recipes as subject to Early Access churn.

Cooking is a network-aware system

Cooking was rebuilt from scratch to reduce network overhead. Campfires and cooking tables both work. Fire barrels can be lit with a torch and used to cook; they are sensitive to rain and will extinguish. Food can be cooked, overcooked (burnt), or eaten raw, and each state has consequences. “Feel Like a Chef” is an achievement because the studio wants you in this loop.

Co-op implication: one player should cook while others guard. Smoke and light are beacons. In Swamp rain, barrels are unreliable; tables under roofs win. Do not leave a barrel cooking while the squad walks a Jungle seam — you will return to wet charcoal and a corpse.

Leather flasks exist empty and filled. A metal bottle appears in official screenshots. Hydration and cooked food are survival meters, not restaurant RP. Eat before you inject. A rage serum on an empty stomach is how people tunnel into a camp and die wearing a cowboy hat.

Building walls and facing direction

The settlement is where you farm and build walls. A later demo pass improved build usability: placed objects show facing direction, and placement effects were updated. Physics bugs, ladder-exit stand-ups, and interior fall-throughs were patched because building and traversal were colliding with netcode.

Build for sightlines, not for beauty. A wall that faces the wrong way is a suggestion. Leave a door you can find in the dark. Place wall torches on the outside of the settlement so returning squads can see home after a shift. Do not wall off the trade interior; NPC traders have dedicated rooms and a full trade UI.

If a player falls through a floor and loses a stash, that was a launch-week review complaint. Re-log, check the last bed, and do not store your only shotgun in a physics-suspect interior until a patch note says the room is safe.

Traps are crafts you plant and abandon

Official copy: find traps or craft your own, plant them in corridors, back off, let the maze do the rest.

Known trap tools:

• Bear trap. Hold time was reduced; it no longer triggers while you are riding or climbing. Place it on chase routes, not on your own ladder.
• Teleport trap. Explosives teleport with the trap when triggered. That is a combo, not a bug. Pair with dynamite if you like moving the boom.
• Fire barrel. Light, cook, or use as a desperate flare. Rain is the counter.
• Wall torch. Light and landmark. Cheap. Spam them on verified routes. See maze navigation.

Traps are how a six-stack punches above its aim. They are also how a solo player owns a hallway they cannot constantly watch. Mark trap tiles in the notebook so teammates do not sprint into your bear trap while chasing a glowing-eyed Junkyard walker.

Trade instead of crafting everything

NPC traders sit in safe-zone interiors with configurable inventories. The economy is parts and intel, not cash. If a recipe is starving you of a specific organ, trade. If the trader is in a camp that “won’t wait for you to draw first,” that is not a trader, that is combat. Send two, not six.

Crafting does not replace injectors, and injectors do not replace food. Keep the three loops in the same session: harvest on the way out, cook and craft at home, inject only with a plan from the injector guide. That is the difference between a Handyman of the Maze and a corpse with a full scrap rack.