How to scrap clothing (in Apparel tab) to get cloth?

[bacca400-stm]

FO4 v1.10.x on Windows 10

I was collecting clothing (like dresses listed under Apparel tab of my pip-boy inventory) because I thought I could scrap it for cloth to make beds. But this is not so. I have dresses in my inventory (under Apparel) and I still could not make beds. So then I transferred clothing to the red craft table at Murkwater Construction site, and I still do not have any more cloth than before.

Do I need a perk to scrap clothing into cloth at, say, an armor station? I found the perk to scrap weapons at a weapons station, but is it possible to use clothing to get the cloth raw material to make beds?

I must be misunderstanding something. When we build something the program is supposed to scrap items in the craft table first, then in our inventory, but maybe this only applies to items in the Junk category.

Thank you.

[Thomastronaut]

If you drop your clothes on the ground and highlight them with your crosshair, you get the option to scrap them.

[Ilja]

If the cloth item has been added in to scrap list then you can scrap it in armorer workbench without any perks. Same with weapons.

The Scrapper perk does not enable scrapping. It merely adds more gains from certain items, like armors and weapons with mod categories.

[The Inept European]

Yes scrapping is somewhat limited. You can scrap most (all?) weapons at a weapons workbench but only some apparel can be scrapped at an armor workbench. For everything else, it must be dropped on the ground within a build area and scrapped from Build mode.

It's illogical and frustrating.

And if you think it's frustrating when you're looking for cloth, wait until you need leather and discover the amount of leather-looking items that don't yield leather even when you scrap them on the ground.

[The Inept European]

By the way the most abundant source of cloth is usually things like Pre War Money and newspapers. Although maybe not at Murkwater.

[Ilja]

Pre War money is somewhat valuable though. I am storing it and using it as actual money.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Pre War money is somewhat valuable though. I am storing it and using it as actual money.

Yes that is a good point, and I do the same - I keep it outside the workshop and not on my person, so it doesn't get used for crafting accidentally. But it is plentiful, and using up a little bit of it is better than being short a bed for settlers or not having a bed for yourself. And using pre war money (as cloth) to finish a set of armour is cheaper than buying the armour, or even usually cheaper than buying an item (or shipment) that contains the cloth. Usually, unless you have very good bartering.

[bacca400-stm]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Yes that is a good point, and I do the same - I keep it outside the workshop and not on my person, so it doesn't get used for crafting accidentally. But it is plentiful, and using up a little bit of it is better than being short a bed for settlers or not having a bed for yourself. And using pre war money (as cloth) to finish a set of armour is cheaper than buying the armour, or even usually cheaper than buying an item (or shipment) that contains the cloth. Usually, unless you have very good bartering.

That's odd. I have plenty of pre-war money in my inventory but it seems never to be used to make beds.

[The Inept European]

I'm not sure how it's controlled exactly but the game does seem to make some kind of attempt to scrap the least valuable things first and the most valuable things last?

[The Inept European]

To be a bit more specific about scrapping, as it's very counter intuitive: you can only scrap apparel at a workbench if it is an armor workbench and only IF you have the apparel in your personal inventory (not workshop inventory), as if you were going to mod the apparel, and you can only scrap the apparel if the game thinks that apparel is a type of apparel that could be modded at an armor workbench.

Otherwise, you have to scrap it on the floor of the build area. (Or get a mod that lets you scrap things more easily).

To be honest it looks like it was a bug or oversight when they developed the game. You should be able to scrap anything in any workbench and you should be able to scrap things directly from workshop inventory, you shouldn't have to move them into personal inventory, much less move them to the ground.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

To be a bit more specific about scrapping, as it's very counter intuitive: you can only scrap apparel at a workbench if it is an armor workbench and only IF you have the apparel in your personal inventory (not workshop inventory), as if you were going to mod the apparel, and you can only scrap the apparel if the game thinks that apparel is a type of apparel that could be modded at an armor workbench.

Otherwise, you have to scrap it on the floor of the build area. (Or get a mod that lets you scrap things more easily).

To be honest it looks like it was a bug or oversight when they developed the game. You should be able to scrap anything in any workbench and you should be able to scrap things directly from workshop inventory, you shouldn't have to move them into personal inventory, much less move them to the ground.

I would say it's a side-effect of the game trying to show only relevant items to mod in the workbench.

I think you'd have to handle that with some sort of toggle for displaying unmoddable items for scrapping, since you often don't want to see them at all. But since the primary purpose of workbenches is crafting rather than scrapping, it wouldn't be the first thing on my wishlist.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

[I would say it's a side-effect of the game trying to show only relevant items to mod in the workbench.

No doubt. Which is why I suggest maybe it's more of an oversight than a bug.

The scrap option should just exist for all items when viewed in a workbench inventory.

I actually suspect it's to do with the console-focused development and running out of buttons. Since all the console buttons are pretty much spoken for already in the workbench inventory screens.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

I think you'd have to handle that with some sort of toggle for displaying unmoddable items for scrapping, since you often don't want to see them at all. But since the primary purpose of workbenches is crafting rather than scrapping, it wouldn't be the first thing on my wishlist.

No you just make it a context menu option in the inventory view of the workbench rather than in the crafting view. Or you have two separate tabs in the crafting view, one Moddable, one All. But you don't need that options if you have the first one.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

I think you'd have to handle that with some sort of toggle for displaying unmoddable items for scrapping, since you often don't want to see them at all. But since the primary purpose of workbenches is crafting rather than scrapping, it wouldn't be the first thing on my wishlist.

No you just make it a context menu option in the inventory view of the workbench rather than in the crafting view. Or you have two separate tabs in the crafting view, one Moddable, one All. But you don't need that options if you have the first one.

Separate tabs would be effectively equivalent to a toggle (since you still need to press something to switch tabs and it would just show you a toggled selection), while having it work from the workbench's inventory would mean having to dump items you want to scrap into it before being able to scrap them.

[The Inept European]

Yes it would be equivalent to a toggle, but it would not be a toggle, and it would be consistent with how the rest of the game's interface works. XD

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Yes it would be equivalent to a toggle, but it would not be a toggle, and it would be consistent with how the rest of the game's interface works. XD

Eh, it matches some parts of the game's interface, but not the crafting part, or the object inventory part.