Determined Craftsman.

After a a quick ride on the tram John was just out of the city. The delicious chemical beverage full of caffeine and other active substances had refilled his mana bar and he was ready to try a few things. The place stank horribly, but it was the price to pay for the rewards it would offer. He hoped that the smell wouldn't stay when he would activate his barrier.

John sneaked in through the hole in the fence known to every kid in town that had one day gone here to play or on a dare and walked between the piles of garbage and junked appliances.

From what Moira told him things inside an illusion barrier had no substance and couldn't be kept once leaving it. John had managed to keep the loot items created by his Gamer skill but he doubted he would be able to search for materials inside the barrier.

Time to get to work. He gathered a small pile of various materials and used Craft on it. The result was a crude sculpture of a naked girl with big boobs. The rough surface and mixed material made him unable to guess who it was supposed to be.

Junk Art: this sculpture made of garbage is a bad rendition of a naked girl with big tits.

"What an informative tool tip! Like I can't see that. I guess I got lucky with the other two crafts," he mumbled as he looked for more materials.

Trying to **** things he began to sort things out, keeping metals, plastic and adding the fabric from the bitch's clothes he took earlier, he even threw the bra from the girl in the tram in for good measure. He really hoped to get some armor.

Craft

Well it was armor, in a way. It looked like I've was from some post apocalyptic movie with huge chunks of raw metal badly welded together. It looked heavy, uncomfortable and very restricting.

Junk heavy armor: This breast plate is made of junk metal. It has rough edges and hurts its wearer without proper padding.
Requirement: 20 Strength.
Requirement not met: - 15 Agility when worn.
No padding: - 15hp/min when moving while wearing it.

His strength was crap and he had not that much hp, he couldn't afford to wear something that would cripple his main fighting skill. But still, a few more crafts and he would be able to lvl up the skill and probability get better items.

He considered putting it in his inventory but it was taking 4 slots (maybe because of the weight), thinking of a common exploit in games he tried to equip it on his secondary set, but because he lacked the requirement he could only have it on his active set.

"We'll there's no need to improve it, even without the bleeding effect it would be too heavy. A shame to lose the materials though, I don't know how much fabric I will find here. Hey wait a second..." he spoke for himself. He had remembered that when using craft on an item he could repair, improve, or use as materials.

He could use it to hopefully get a better result. He figured that there was maybe too much metal in the mix, so he looked for some plastic bottles...

Improve! That was it. How could he have missed that. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a hoody, he could use materials to improve them rather than to play the lottery with the Craft skill.

The hoody was an old one he only wore to hang around the house or do yard work when the weather was a bit chilly, if he told his mom it was torn and he had to throw it away she wouldn't mind it too much.

Improve: Old Grey Hoody.
Repair: 29$
Add light armor: plastic 20 units. fabric 20 units.
Add medium armor: plastic 20 units, light metal 10 units. fabric 10 units.
Add heavy armor: armor: plastic 20 units, heavy metal 30 units. fabric 5 units.
Add special: Missing recipe. Missing components.
Change color: dye 5 units.

Either because of his advanced Observe skill or the presence of available materials the window for using Craft on an item was a lot more detailed than before. He suddenly realized that he didn't use it since he got it to lvl 2, maybe that was when that these options were added.

He figured that medium armor would be best, hoping there was no bullshit mechanism crippling magic when wearing more than light armor. He looked around for some aluminum and added it over the old armor and the bottles he gathered. He put his hoody on the pile and clicked add medium armor. He saw that the option to change color was not greyed out, so he clicked it too before confirming his choices, he also chose repair, hoping to remove the prefix Old on it and get better stats.

A pop up opened asking if he wanted to destroy Junk heavy armor and he accepted.

Craft crit!

The result was stunning, it was either based on choosing the right materials or he just got lucky again. On the ground there was his new hoody and a pile of small cubes. He began to read the window that opened.

Skill Craft, new option: Scrap.
For the same cost as Craft, turn an item into units of its components. Units can be used for crafting better quality items. Units can stack: 50 units = 1 inventory slot.

He picked a few of the small cubes of metal or plastic and checked how it worked. Just like in a video game once he had one in his inventory all others got stacked in the same slot. He had 17 units of plastic, 4 of light metal and 43 of heavy metal. It explained how heavy the previous armor was, the heavy armor option only asked for 30 of these that was more than a third on top of that.

He picked up the hoody and used Observe on it.

Excellent Armored Hoody of Stealth: special item.
+35 armor torso, arms and head (if hood on)
+2 Agility
Advanced stealth: becomes darker when in shadows and counts as camouflage/disguise if the hood is on when using Stealth.
Pockets: +4 inventory slots when equipped.
80/80 durability.

Because of the flashy clothes he had to use, his dark grey hoody had become a slightly faded dark green color. The fabric was fused with plastic fibers and metal threads like his special boxers were and just like them there were reinforced patches. There were pieces of plastic with a metal lattice, looking like some sports protection on his arms, back and abdomen. Even the hood had some segmented protection to keep rigid once in place but fold back if needed. And to finish there were two plates of metal to protect his chest, with a lot of metal thread linking them. All the metal was faded preventing reflection, but there was some burnished gold inlays at the seams and on the edge of the protection plates.

He equipped it and was happy to see that it felt as comfortable as it was before.

He gathered more material and did the same for his jeans and sneakers. He did not get anything special though, only 30 armor on his legs and 25 on his feet.

He had gathered a full stack of light and heavy metal, plastic, glass, and organic materials (he got the last ones from wood, paper, and cardboard).

With no idea what more to do he decided that he was ready enough and, once his mana bar was full again, he raised his hand to the sky.