Take unwanted equipment to a recycling station, choose the items you intend to give up, and confirm the recycling action to turn them into materials. In the public Demo, players have used both individual selections and category-based bulk buttons at the station. Compare equipment before using those bulk actions: an item you are not wearing may still be useful for another weapon style or as a replacement.
This guide applies to Demo Alpha 0.20.18.x as of October 28, 2026. Recycling is demonstrated in the Demo, but exact material yields for every item are not established here. A player who crafted and then recycled an item reported receiving less than the full crafting cost back. Treat recycling as a way to recover some value from unwanted gear, not as a guaranteed full refund or a free crafting loop.
Find the recycling station among the crafting work areas
The recycling station is a separate interaction from making equipment at an anvil or another crafting station. In a Demo playthrough, the player located it beside the anvil after initially standing too far away to recognize the interaction. Approach the work area and check the prompt on the station rather than assuming every nearby machine opens the same menu.
The useful visual confirmation is the recycling interface itself: it offers item selection and recycling actions, including category-based options. If the screen is showing a recipe list or an item under construction, you may be at a crafting interaction instead. Back out, identify the intended station, and read the prompt before committing items.
No universal coordinates, required rescue, or route to a fixed station location are provided here. Use the station visible in your current Demo run. A screenshot can help identify the work area, but it should not be treated as a complete map or proof that every build places the machine in the same spot.
Compare the gear before opening a bulk action
Start in your normal inventory and inspect the item you are considering. Check what you currently wear, whether the spare has a use for a weapon type you want to try, and whether replacing it would lose a useful bonus. An item can be unwanted for the current encounter without being worthless for the rest of the run.
Compare the equipment you want to keep before recycling; this image shows the inventory, not a recycling station.
One Demo player deliberately kept some alternative weapons to try other combat styles rather than recycling everything in the bag. That is a useful model for the decision: keep gear because it serves an identifiable purpose, then recycle the items that remain redundant after the comparison.
If the recycling interface does not show enough information for a comparison, leave it and inspect the item through your normal equipment view. Do not assume that every detail visible in inventory will also appear while choosing items at the recycler. The extra check is more useful than discovering afterward that a broad category included the item you wanted.
Recycle one item first
Use a small first transaction to learn the interface before processing a whole inventory:
- Choose a spare item you have already decided to discard. Avoid using your only alternative weapon for this first check.
- Approach the recycling station until its interaction prompt appears.
- Open the station using the control shown by the current build.
- Select the intended equipment item. A mouse-based Demo playthrough used individual item selection; use the displayed equivalent for your own input method.
- Inspect the selected item and any result information the interface shows.
- Confirm only the recycling action you intended. If the interface asks for a category-wide confirmation, cancel and check which option you selected.
- Verify that the selected item has been processed and inspect the resulting materials in your inventory.
- Repeat with other unwanted items only after you understand that selection and confirmation sequence.
These steps describe the demonstrated workflow without inventing a universal keyboard key or controller button. If your current prompt differs from an old clip, follow the prompt in the running Demo and verify the result with one item before using a larger selection.
Use bulk categories with deliberate limits
The Demo recycling interface has been shown with options for groups such as broken, ordinary, good, and blue items. The exact buttons displayed in your build should determine what you select. Their purpose is faster processing by category; their presence does not mean every item in that category is expendable.
Before accepting a bulk option, decide whether you want to retain anything it includes. Color alone is a poor substitute for that decision. An item with modest rarity can still support a weapon style you want to test, while an item with a higher rarity may not fit your current use at all.
If you cannot tell which items the action includes, process individual items instead. If you move items elsewhere to keep them separate, do not assume that the recycler ignores a particular storage area unless the current interface makes its scope clear. A storage habit is not the same as a verified exclusion rule.
Read the confirmation message from beginning to end. The important question is what the action will recycle, not merely whether the button is highlighted. A transaction that processes an entire rarity group can be very different from the one-item selection you used a moment earlier.
Decide what is genuinely unwanted
| Item situation | Recommended decision before recycling |
|---|---|
| You have replaced it and have no planned use for it | Compare once more, then consider it for individual recycling. |
| It is your only example of a weapon style you want to try | Keep it until you have made that comparison in play. |
| It has different bonuses from the equipped item | Compare the trade-off instead of assuming it is worse. |
| It belongs to a broad bulk category you are about to process | Check whether the category includes anything you still need. |
| It was just crafted to test a recipe | Do not assume recycling returns the whole cost. |
| You cannot identify its role or displayed details | Leave the recycler and inspect it in the normal inventory first. |
The point is to avoid making the decision under the pressure of a full bag. A short sort before visiting the station gives every item a reason to stay or go. It also reduces repeated backtracking when you realize that the weapon you recycled was the one you wanted for the next experiment.
Check the recovered materials before choosing a recipe
Recycling equipment can provide crafting materials. Demo players have used the recovered materials to make new equipment afterward, including items at the nearby crafting work areas. That does not establish that every weapon or armor type returns the same material, or that a particular item always produces a fixed quantity.
After recycling, inspect what you actually have and compare it with the recipe you intend to use. If the recipe is still unavailable or you lack an ingredient, do not assume the recycling action failed. The item may have produced a different material, an insufficient amount, or only part of what that recipe requires.
Keep the recipe decision separate from the recycling decision. Recycling an unwanted item recovers materials; choosing a worthwhile craft requires another comparison against your current equipment. There is no reason to craft immediately just because the recycler supplied some ingredients. Holding the recovered materials can be preferable to making another item you already know you do not need.
Do not treat crafting and recycling as a refund loop
A Demo player who made a shield and then recycled it reported that not all materials returned. That observation is enough to reject a blanket promise of full refunds. It does not provide a complete return-rate table for every recipe, item quality, or later version.
Before crafting an item merely to inspect it, accept that you may lose some of the ingredients if you recycle it afterward. Preview any details your current recipe screen displays, compare the planned item with what you own, and make the craft only if the experiment is useful to you.
Repeatedly crafting the same recipe can also produce different equipment results in Demo accounts. A different roll does not make the recycling step free. Judge the material cost and the possible value separately rather than treating another craft as a guaranteed upgrade funded by a complete refund.
Diagnose a station that does not respond
First check interaction distance. The Demo example where a player could not initially identify the recycler was resolved by approaching the correct station. That supports checking position and station identity before assuming the whole recycling system is unavailable.
If the interface opens but an item does not process, check whether the item is selected, whether you are using an individual or category action, and whether a confirmation is still waiting. Do not keep pressing several controls without inspecting the state; repeated inputs make it harder to tell which selection the game received.
Some Demo playthroughs also reported interface trouble after using work stations. Alpha 0.20.18.x includes crafting-station and controller-navigation fixes, but those notes do not guarantee that every recycling fault is resolved. If the same failure continues in that version, record the exact station, input method, selected item, and visible menu state. Reloading or comparing another input method is a diagnostic experiment, not a confirmed universal repair.
Finish with a checked inventory
After a recycling session, confirm three things: the intended unwanted gear is gone, useful alternatives remain, and the resulting materials are available for whatever you choose to do next. Do that check before accepting another broad category action.
If a result differs from what you expected, stop processing more items and inspect the current inventory. A wrong selection, an unclear category scope, and an unexpected material return are different problems. Separating them gives you a clear next step while preserving the equipment you have not yet committed to the recycler.