Carving and knapping

• Knapping turns flint nodules into flakes, blades and stone tool heads.
• Carving turns branches, antlers and wood into handles, stakes, tent pegs, mallets and knapping tools, and helps with spears from long sticks.

Both are the rural route into masonry and later blacksmithing.

Forage with the Stones focus in Search Mode, or right-click a flint boulder to break off its deposit with a pickaxe, sledgehammer, club hammer or stone maul. You get nodules and sometimes flakes. Rural ground beats town, and riverbanks and farm roads are good places to look. Search Mode is on foraging.

1. Sharp flint flake: one nodule plus a knapping tool (stone hammer, mallet or knapping tool). No skill or magazine needed in current builds (one source).
2. Crude stone axe: a sharp flake, a branch or handle and two bindings (rags, twine, duct tape or denim strips) at a crafting surface, usually Maintenance 1. It chops trees and kills zombies but breaks quickly.
3. Later: stone awl, blade and chisel; a flint saw (needs twine or leather strips); bigger axe and maul heads (need flat stone and more skill).

Researching a finished tool can unlock better versions, and some stone heads need magazines.

Small flake crafts give little XP; blades and chisels more; saws and large heads the most but cost the most stone. Read the Carving and Knapping books in the right level band, since they multiply XP but do not teach every recipe. Opinion Do not carve useless items just for XP; make handles and mallets you will use. Work in a lit room: one guide warns unlit basement knapping is error-prone since 42.20.

The knapping VHS tape gives 300 XP. Conflict: pindrop.gg lists knapping unlock levels differently on two of its own pages, so check the crafting menu before planning a level.