Death Stranding guide: How to build structures and find materials

In Death Stranding, structures that you make can appear in the games of other players. It’s easy to put up ladders, recharge stations, and small shelters on your own, but much larger structures like bridges need hundreds (sometimes thousands) of crafting materials to finish construction. And it’s difficult to find and gather those on your own.

While it is possible to build these all yourself, you can also rely on others to provide materials. But just how do you build these larger structures cooperatively? We’ll show you in this guide.

How to build large structures

One of the first large structures you’ll be able to build is a bridge, but building a bridge is more complicated than just setting down the PCC machine that fabricates structures. For large structures, the PCC will only lay a foundation. From there, it’s up to you (and potentially other players) to pour resources (like metals) into the structure before you can make the full bridge.

To add materials to a structure, walk up to it and hold down the Option button. From the menu that loads, select Complete Structure, where you can add materials and aid in its completion. (If you don’t have any of the available materials to complete a structure — such as ceramics, metals, and special alloys — the option will be unavailable.)

Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

In the Complete Structure menu, you’ll see how many resources you need to finish construction (800 metals in the screenshot above). You can add materials to the structure in the same way that you’d store items in private locker. Once you’ve added enough materials to the structure, it will automatically finish building itself.

How to get building materials

When an object needs hundreds or thousands of resources, where do you find them all?

As you play Death Stranding, you’ll likely stumble across resources all over the map. Everything from metals to ceramics, special alloys, and more appear just about anywhere in typically small quantities. This is an easy way to get building resources as you travel, but it’d take days to find the hundreds or thousands of materials that you need this way.

Instead, you can gather mountains of resources anywhere that you can access a delivery terminal. And you can increase the amount of materials available at each terminal in a few ways.

The first is by completing deliveries to that terminal — and eventually increasing your Death Stranding connection level with the person or people near the terminal.

Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Also, when you and other players recycle materials at a terminal, you not only increase the amount of resources available at that terminal, but you can withdraw what you deposit.

To get materials from a delivery terminal, select the Claim Materials menu and grab as many as you can carry.

Some locations may have literal tons of materials, so it’s best to claim massive amounts of crafting materials for structures after you have access to vehicles. Load up your vehicle, and drive it as close to a structure as you can. Get off the vehicle, access the structure’s menu, and add the materials from the vehicle to it.

For larger structures in the mid- to late-game, you may need to make several trips between terminals, but this is still the fastest way to gain more materials to build the game’s biggest structures.

When facilities don’t have the materials you need, you can always raid MULE camps for materials. Use you odradek to scan a camp and see what’s stored in their hidden lockers before raiding.