Revision 6

Ancient Scraps are a Cursed Swamps resource in Windrose, found in dungeon chests, ruined ships, and at the bottom of bog pockets. They are the primary structural component of Mire Metal Ingot smelting (2 Ancient Scraps + 1 Quagmire Powder per ingot). Ancient Scraps are not dropped by enemies; they are exclusively a loot/exploration resource, making thorough Cursed Swamps exploration essential for late-game progression.

Overview

Acquisition

Uses

Farming Strategy

• Map every Cursed Swamps Ancient Ruin you find; hover the icon to see remaining chest count

• Carry an axe for breaking sunken ship wreckage; sunken ships in swamp waters are major Ancient Scraps sources

• Drop a Fast Travel Bell at major ruin clusters so you can return to gather Scraps without overland travel

• Combine Scraps farming with Quagmire Powder farming; both come from the same Cursed Swamps biome

• Stockpile Scraps in chests at your Cursed Swamps base; the Large Smelting Furnace accesses chest storage automatically

Lore

Ancient Scraps are fragments of an older metalworking tradition that predates current Caribbean colonial settlement. They appear most often in the same Ancient Ruins that contain Healing Herbs and lore notes about the ruins' original occupants, suggesting the Scraps are remnants of the same lost civilization. The fact that Ancient Scraps are smelted alongside Quagmire Powder (a Plague-derived material) implies the original metalsmiths had some understanding of the supernatural forces now corrupting the swamps.

See Also

• Mire Metal Ingot - primary recipe consumer

• Quagmire Powder - paired smelting component

• Ancient Ruins - primary chest source

• Cursed Swamps - source biome

Harvesting Tools

Surface-level Ancient Scraps from Ancient Ruins chests can be collected with no tool, but the larger deposits embedded in ruin masonry or sunken-ship wreckage need a stronger tool. An Iron Pickaxe is the standard choice for the harvestable debris nodes; an Iron Big Axe can substitute where the debris is wood-backed, such as inside broken hull sections. Bringing both is a light loadout cost and removes the need to re-trip the biome if a node turns out to be the wrong material type.

Exposure and Pacing

Many of the richest Ancient Scraps nodes sit inside the Infected zones within the Cursed Swamps. These zones apply a damage-over-time effect that cannot be cleansed while standing in them, so most runs plan on short in-and-out cycles rather than extended exploration. A Fast Travel Bell set just outside the infected boundary lets a group retreat, heal, and return without losing positional progress.

Full Base-Building Unlock Path

Collecting enough Ancient Scraps to cover a full crafting-station tier upgrade unlocks more than the Large Smelting Furnace. The scraps also feed recipes and schematics for the following benches, all of which are needed for late-Cursed-Swamps and post-Swamps crafting:

• Large Smelting Furnace: the bench that actually smelts Ancient Scraps into Mire Metal Ingot.

• Blacksmith's Bellows: upgrade adjacent to the furnace; improves smelting throughput.

• Jeweler's Bench: opens a second crafting path that relies on refined swamp-metal output.

Because these unlocks queue off the same resource stream, a common plan is to hold back a reserve of Ancient Scraps even after the first Mire Metal Ingot session so a full station tier can be brought online in a single base-building pass rather than staggered across three separate trips.

Game Data

Properties