Gunpowder is a crafted material you can produce from coal and nitrate powder. As the description notes, it isn’t something you use on its own — it serves as the foundation for crafting your own ammo and explosives.
Uses
The real value of gunpowder lies in being able to supply your own consumables. Since it’s a material worked into the crafting of ammo as well as thrown and placed explosives, it lets you break free from the early-game “once you burn through the rounds you scavenged, it’s over” situation and keep fighting. Ammo in particular tends to be chronically short if you rely on buying or scavenging it, so once you have a system in place to supply gunpowder steadily, your play gets dramatically easier.
How to Obtain and Craft It
There are two ingredients: coal and nitrate powder.
- Coal … Obtained from mining underground ore veins and from dismantling certain objects.
- Nitrate powder … An ore often found around caves and on the surface.
Both are consumable materials gathered through exploration and mining, so when building a base it’s a good idea to survey the surrounding area with an eye toward “how am I going to secure coal and nitrate?” Crafting itself is generally done at the corresponding workstation.
When to Use It
Before a Blood Moon or a long expedition, we recommend crafting a stockpile of gunpowder and then processing it into the ammo and explosives you need. If you keep it stored as raw material, you gain the flexibility to allocate it to different purposes as the situation demands — “ammo today,” “explosives today.” It’s an unassuming but indispensable item that supports your exploration and defense from the mid-game onward.