Atomic Heart: How to Craft and Upgrade Weapons

Whether it’s adding powerful element effects to a saw blade on a stick or turning your shotgun into a rapid-fire death cannon, crafting and upgrading equipment in Atomic Heart is key to surviving the robot apocalypse. There’s a lot to manage between resources, blueprints, and one aggressive robot handling the improvement mechanic. Read on to find out how to craft in Atomic Heart and what you need to know about it.

Atomic Heart Crafting Overview Guide

Crafting Components and Recipes Explained

Creating or upgrading a weapon to stave off sci-fi-flavored Soviet death is straightforward. You need three things:

• A recipe (or blueprint)
• Crafting components
• A crafting station

Put those together, and you’ve got a new toy for your arsenal. 

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Where to Find Crafting Recipes and Blueprints

Recipes (or blueprints) generally come from chests scattered around the various complexes you explore. A few, like the Small Neuromed Capsule, will be fairly obvious and on the core path. Other recipes will be hidden behind optional puzzles or in rooms at the end of alternate paths that aren’t necessarily near your objectives. As long as you continue to explore optional areas, you should find plenty of blueprints. 

Where to Find Components

Recipes and blueprints do you no good if you don’t have the parts to put something together. That’s where crafting components come in. These small bits are divided into eight categories and are found from three sources:

• Environmental looting (floors, drawers, and cases)
• Defeated enemies
• Breaking down ammo and healing items

Every time you enter a room, make sure to pass over all of the loot with your telekinesis ability. This lets your hand vacuum up anything of value. Pass over drawers, lockers, the floor, anywhere you can reach. Do the same as soon as you have cleared a room of enemies.

Many of the less common crafting components come from fallen foes, so be sure to pocket the fruits of your labor. You will also accumulate ammo and healing items.

If you have an excess amount of goods, visit an upgrade station and navigate to the Disassembly menu to turn excess goods into useful parts. 

How to Make New Weapons and Items at NORA Stations

Once you have your recipes and components, it’s time to visit one of the NORA crafting stations. These stations are most commonly found in safe rooms or in the mushroom-like buildings called Testing Grounds in the open world. Interact with the NORA Station, and select the “I gotta upgrade my piece” option to launch the crafting menu. 

There are three primary tabs: crafting, upgrading, and storage/disassembly. Within the crafting tab are options for creating weapons, consumables, ammo, and cartridge guns.

Anything you have the blueprints and necessary parts for will be marked as “Sufficient Resources.” Select the item, then select the Create option on the subsequent page. After a moment of assembly, your new toy will be presented to you, ready to be unleashed upon the world.

How to Upgrade Weapons in Atomic Heart

To upgrade your weapons, navigate to the Upgrade tab at a NORA Station. Every weapon you are currently carrying will be listed. Select which one you want to upgrade, and you’ll be taken to a submenu of the different components you can upgrade.

In general, each component will have multiple levels to which it can be upgraded, and some, like blades on axes, will have different options, each with its own upgrade levels to select. Each set of upgrades requires a recipe blueprint and sufficient resources, similar to crafting. If you see an available upgrade you like, select the upgrade option to purchase and apply it. 

Screenshot by GameSkinny

If you find yourself short on the required components for an upgrade, you can always navigate over to the Storage/Disassembly tab. Next, select the Disassembly subtab and whatever it is you want to turn to scrap.

The handy thing is that when you take something apart, you get the full amount of materials required to create it again. There are no wasted parts, which means you’re free to experiment without losing out on any of your hard-found parts. 

If there are any specific crafting materials you want to find, you can also select them from the list at the top right of the crafting screen. This will bring up an infographic showing which enemy types are likely to drop them.

Screenshot by GameSkinny

And that’s how to craft and upgrade weapons and items in Atomic Heart. These systems are just the first of many skills to master in game. For more guides, check out our dedicated Atomic Heart tips hub. Happy hunting, comrade!

Featured image by GameSkinny