“Panels are everywhere, you can put up a wall in no time. But a nail, you keep that like it was water, man.”
The Fastenings are everything that holds the pieces of a shelter together: screws, nails, cable ties and tape. They are the bottleneck of building, what limits how much you can build and how. In Level 0 there are panels to spare, but nothing to join them with.
Why the Fastenings and not the panels
A panel is easy to find: there's furniture and walls everywhere. What's scarce is the small stuff that joins them. That's why the wanderer carries the important things in the backpack, and picks the big ones up on the spot. With the Fastenings in hand, a starter shelter goes up in about ten minutes. Without them, in a whole afternoon.
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| Screw | Fixes a panel to the frame firmly |
| Nail | Joins wood and light pieces, faster than a screw |
| Cable tie | Holds what won't take a hole |
| Tape | Patches whatever can no longer hold on its own |
You can see how the large pieces are distributed in Frame and Panels and how much they weigh in Backpacks and Weight.
How it looks in the world
Screws, nails and cable ties turn up loose in boxes and furniture, sometimes at the bottom of a drawer or on a shelf. They are also found in Scrap Piles and, with luck, in a surprise box. There's no sign to tell you. The only sign is scarcity, and where the Fastenings are missing, someone used them up before you.
What people say in the world
- A floor note reads: “I drove a screw into the baseboard. Tomorrow I'll see if it's still here.” It goes with stabilization, because what you fasten to the wall, does it survive the next Displacement?
- Another says: “I left my backpack here…” It speaks of the other bottleneck, the one about what you carry. More in Floor Notes.
What people report
Everyone reports a different amount of Fastenings per piece. People say one panel takes more screws than another, and that tape is enough for one night. The archive has not confirmed it and has no figures.
See also
Beds and Shelters, Stabilization, Breaking Walls and Floors.