After the mission of eliminating the three remaining stalkers in Eliza's employment. Zane and the girls immediately retreated back to the safety of Gravestone. Or as relative as safety could be in this apocalyptic world.
Eliza, for whatever reason, had chosen not to send wave after wave of attack towards Gravestone, something that New Reno commonly had to deal with from Bart's attempts to break their resolve and weaken their forces.
The reality was that for every wave Bart sent towards New Reno, sure; the survivors lost people, but the resources gained from the successful defense only further bolstered the strength of those who remained.
In a way, it was like when the wolves attacked the weakened and sick buffalo at the edges of the herd, strengthening the unit altogether with the death of the weak. Zane, of course, did not know why Gravestone was left to its own devices, but it allowed him to conserve resources, and stock up on supplies. Something he considered himself incredibly lucky for being able to do.
And it was because of this stockpile of supplies, both in the forms of physical assets in the real world and those supplies he now had access to, thanks to the introduction of the inventory feature within his system. That Zane was finally able to construct something within the settlement that was incredibly useful.
Upon returning to the settlement of Gravestone, Zane immediately opened up that tab of his system, the new feature known as "Settlement Management." Almost as if he was playing a city builder mini game. The UI displayed the ability to build various constructs.
Whether it was defensive barricades, or actual buildings with a dedicated purpose. Zane now had the means to place down a work area, where if he assigned some of his awakened population to, they would receive instructions on how to perfectly build the structure, and recipes for the resources required.
There were many options, basic things like greenhouses, clinics, sentry posts, et cetera. Things that until now which had been relatively makeshift, and crude, had some form of complexity to them.
Unfortunately, they all required specific recipes to build, and at the moment, Zane only had one recipe which he acquired after unlocking the achievement Community Leader. Naturally, because of this, Zane's attention was attracted to this building.
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[Building Type: Grim Forge]
[Description: The Grim Forge is used by an awakened survivor to manufacture weapons, armor, and other mappable items from materials scavenged by slaying Undead, or extracting them from resource nodes that appear within the post-apocalyptic world.]
[Requirements:
100x Wood
75x Stone
50x Cement
25x Cloth]
[Stalker's Helm]
[Stalkers Cuirass]
[Stalker's Vambraces]
[Stalker's Leggings]
[Stalker's Greaves]
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There were also three other recipes sharing the same name, but these were meant for weapons and ammunition. Both of which required 5,000 gold each to purchase.
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[Stalker's Short Sword]
[Stalker's Short Recurve Bow]
[Stalker's Barbed Arrows]
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Evidently, when Zane checked his character screen, there were now slots for armor, weapons, and trinkets to be equipped. Of which only his neck slot was currently full. What was interesting, however, was that there were four weapon slots available, two for a primary weapon, and two for an offhand weapon.
Of course, it was clear to Zane who had played many RPGs in the past that this meant he could equip a one handed weapon in each hand. And that out of these four slots, two were meant for melee, and two were meant for ranged. Meaning that Zane could theoretically equip two daggers or short swords, and two one-handed crossbows, switching between them at a moment's notice.
There were of course plenty of other recipes that would be useful to Zane and his party, hell there were more than just recipes for armor and weapons, there were recipes required for buildings in the settlement management feature, as well as recipes for potions, et cetera.
However, Zane's immediate goal was to get the Stalker's set of equipment. After all, he had a feeling that if he and the others were to take on Eliza, they would all need to be fully geared if they wanted to survive the encounter, let alone defeat her.
With this in mind, Zane had a new goal in addition to his previous one. Level up, and get gold, so that he could properly equip his party, and maybe the second party that resided in Gravestone as well.