The Last of Us Part 2 Crafting Guide: All 12 Recipes

The Last of Us Part II has twelve crafting recipes, and nobody gets all of them. Ellie can make eight, Abby can make seven, and only three (the health kit, the pistol silencer and the melee upgrade) are in both backpacks. That split matters twice: the trophy for crafting everything needs both halves of the game, and the ingredients that compete for the same recipes are different for each character.

Our Part I crafting guide covers Joel's six recipes and deliberately stops short of the sequel. This is the other half: every Part II recipe with its ingredients, which ones need a skill first, how many one craft makes, and where the ingredients collide. The skill trees themselves (costs, branches, manual locations) are in the Part 2 skills guide, and this piece only touches the skills that unlock or change a recipe.

The ingredient lists below agree across four sources: The Last of Us Wiki's crafting page, PowerPyx, Push Square and GameRevolution. Yields and carry limits come from the in-game skill descriptions as the wiki transcribes them. PowerPyx, Push Square and GameRevolution all published their lists in June 2020, for the original release, and none of the sources I checked mentions a campaign recipe changing in Remastered.

Twelve recipes, two backpacks

Part II rebuilt the ingredient list as well as the recipes. Sugar is gone. The wiki's crafting-materials page says it is not a crafting material in Part II. Canisters are new, and they feed the bombs and the silencer. Alcohol, rags, binding, blades and explosives carry over from the first game.

Three changes matter more than the new ingredient:

• You can craft ammunition now. Part I's six recipes were the health kit, Molotov, shiv, melee upgrade, nail bomb and smoke bomb, with no ammo at all. Four of Part II's twelve are ammunition: arrows and explosive arrows for Ellie, incendiary shotgun shells and hunting pistol rounds for Abby.
• Two old recipes were rebuilt. The wiki describes the trap mine as working like Part I's nail bomb, except it is planted in place rather than thrown, and the stun bomb as resembling Part I's smoke bomb with different materials.
• Crafting still happens in the world, not in a paused menu. Crafting defaults to a hold: Naughty Dog's accessibility list says you hold X to start crafting and release to cancel, and a Toggle option turns that into taps. Trusted Reviews' tips put the cost plainly: you put the backpack down and leave yourself vulnerable. There is also a shortcut: GameRevolution notes you can craft from the d-pad quick-select menu instead of the full backpack, and Gfinity names throwables, health kits and the silencer as the recipes you can make that way.

Ellie's eight recipes

"Not listed" means none of the sources gives a number. The upgrades behind the numbers are skills: Craft More Smoke Bombs, Craft More Trap Mines and Craft More Explosive Arrows each take a craft from one to two and the carry limit from three to four. Craft More Arrows takes a craft from two arrows to three, and Improved Silencers takes a silencer from three shots to five. Three more skills improve a recipe without changing its yield: Craft Improved Health Kits (+50% healing), Improved Molotovs (+50% flame radius) and Improved Trap Mines (+50% blast radius).

The stun bomb and the smoke bomb are one recipe. Craft Smoke Bombs does not add an item. Its skill text reads "Stun bombs become smoke bombs, adding a smokescreen which blocks enemy line of sight." Before you buy it, the stun bomb's job is on its tutorial card, pictured above: stun a group, then finish them with Strike attacks.

Ellie has no shiv recipe and does not need one. Her switchblade has infinite durability per the wiki, and she uses it for stealth kills on humans and clickers alike. Shivs are Abby's problem.

The melee upgrade doubles as a repair. The skill text says it restores the weapon "to full durability" as well as greatly increasing its damage, so crafting one onto a half-broken pipe gets its durability back too.

Abby's seven recipes

The yield upgrades are Craft More Pipe Bombs, Craft More Incendiary Shells, Craft More Hunting Pistol Ammo and Craft More Shivs, and Improved Silencers adds the extra two shots. Improved Pipe Bombs (+50% blast radius), Improved Melee Weapon Upgrades (+1 durability) and Craft Improved Health Kits (+50% healing) make the result better without making more of it.

Abby starts with two recipes Ellie has to buy. Her silencer and melee upgrade need no skill. The wiki's crafting table gives neither a required skill for Abby, while it lists Craft Silencers and Craft Melee Upgrades against Ellie's versions. Her skill tree also has no node that unlocks them, only Improved Silencers and Improved Melee Weapon Upgrades, which make them better. Naughty Dog's No Return primer says the same about the roguelike: Abby "comes with a melee upgrade recipe." Ellie pays 20 supplements for each.

Her only craftable throwable is the pipe bomb. Neither Push Square's per-character list nor the wiki's gives Abby a Molotov, trap mine or stun bomb recipe. The pipe bomb is the only recipe in the game that takes three crafting materials, but it makes two bombs at base. That works out to 1.5 ingredients a bomb, and exactly one each once Craft More Pipe Bombs raises the yield to three. Ellie's trap mine costs two ingredients per mine until she buys Craft More Trap Mines.

Shivs are what make Abby's stealth work. The wiki's shiv page says Abby uses them to kill clickers and needs them to stealth-kill brutes, which she lacks the strength to choke out, and that shivs do not work on shamblers. The skills guide covers why Craft Shivs should be her first purchase. On the crafting side, each craft makes two, and three after Craft More Shivs.

Where each recipe unlocks

The story unlocks and pick-up locations are from PowerPyx's recipe guide, and the wiki adds that Dina hands Ellie her first Molotov in Jackson.

The two pick-ups are the ones to watch. PowerPyx puts the stun bomb inside a locked pet store in Downtown, with the key in the bathroom of a coffee shop at the northern end of the area, and says a second one turns up later in the chapter if you walk past the first. The trap mine is in a motel bedroom at the start of Capitol Hill: push the green dumpster under the white balcony and climb up. The bow comes off an infected in a Hillcrest garage, right before a bow-shooting tutorial.

The skill recipes sit in branches that are locked until you find their training manual. The manual locations are in the skills guide. One oddity: the 2020 pre-order bonus opened Ellie's Crafting branch before you found its manual. Press Start's June 2020 guide describes a Crafting Training Manual that shows the branch early, though each skill in it still costs supplements.

The ingredient overlaps that decide what you make

Every ingredient in Part II feeds at least two recipes for each character. Here is who wants what:

Read across and each character has a different pinch point.

On paper, Ellie's pinch is the silencer. Canisters and rags each feed three of her recipes, and the silencer takes one of each. Every silencer is a health kit's rag and a bomb's canister, spent on three quiet shots (five with Improved Silencers). The skill text says you can toggle it on and off while aiming, which is how you stop it burning durability in a fight that has already gone loud. My rule: craft the silencer when a quiet kill ends the encounter, not as a default attachment.

Stun bomb versus trap mine is Part II's health kit versus Molotov. Same two ingredients, and the choice is between breaking up a fight you are in and setting up one you are about to start. Explosive arrows are the release valve. They take an explosive and a binding but no canister, so when canisters run dry the bow is where your spare explosives go.

Arrows and the melee upgrade are the same recipe. Binding plus blade either way: two arrows (three upgraded) against one stronger, repaired weapon.

Abby's pinch is explosives and blades together. Explosives feed three of her recipes (pipe bombs, incendiary shells and hunting pistol rounds), and blades are split three ways between shivs, the melee upgrade and hunting pistol rounds. Hunting pistol ammo is the one recipe that draws on both of her tightest ingredients at once. My order on Abby: shivs first, because they are how she stealth-kills clickers and brutes, then pipe bombs, then hunting pistol rounds from whatever is left.

Alcohol is Abby's version of the old dilemma. It goes three ways for her (health kit, pipe bomb, incendiary shells), so every pipe bomb is a health kit you did not make. Ellie's alcohol only has the two uses it had in Part I.

Difficulty changes what a recipe gives you

Difficulty in Part II reaches into the recipes themselves. Naughty Dog's accessibility rundown lists "yield of certain crafting recipes" among the things the Resources difficulty setting controls, next to how many supplies the world spawns. Its Grounded announcement says crafting materials become "incredibly scarce" on that setting.

The wiki's Grounded version of Ellie's skill text shows what that looks like in practice:

Two caveats. The wiki's own silencer article puts that one-shot cut at Survivor and above rather than Grounded only, so the two pages disagree about where it starts. And the wiki gives no Grounded crafting figures for Abby's skills, so I can't give you hers.

If you want the opposite, the Infinite Crafting gameplay modifier gives you unlimited crafting ingredients. It arrived with the August 2020 update, costs 20 points on the wiki's list, and Naughty Dog's footnote says some modifiers are disabled on Grounded. The Part 2 difficulty guide covers the Resources setting in full.

Tools of the Trade, New Game+ and No Return

Tools of the Trade asks you to "Craft every item". It is a bronze on the wiki's trophy list and one of the achievements Steam lists for Part II Remastered on PC. PowerPyx counts twelve craftable items, matching the lists above, and says to craft each one once. What that actually takes:

• Both characters. Five recipes are Ellie-only (Molotov, stun bomb, trap mine, arrows, explosive arrows) and four are Abby-only (pipe bomb, incendiary shells, hunting pistol ammo, shiv). You cannot finish this in one character's half of the game. GameRevolution's trophy guide splits the list the same way: five to craft before the end of Seattle Day 3, four after it, and the health kit, silencer and melee upgrade whenever.
• As little as 80 supplements and three manuals. Six of the twelve sit behind a 20-supplement skill for at least one character, but Abby crafts the silencer and melee upgrade with no skill. If you let her make those two, only four purchases are unavoidable: Craft Explosive Arrows for Ellie, and Craft Shivs, Craft Incendiary Shells and Craft Hunting Pistol Ammo for Abby. Those sit in three branches (Ellie's Explosives, Abby's Covert Ops and Firearms), so three of the eight training manuals. Crafting the silencer and melee upgrade as Ellie instead adds Craft Silencers and Craft Melee Upgrades: 120 supplements and five manuals.
• One stun bomb, early. PowerPyx lists "Stun Bomb (Smoke Bomb when upgraded)" as a single entry, so buying Craft Smoke Bombs should not cost you the trophy. Crafting one stun bomb before you buy the upgrade costs a canister and an explosive and takes the question off the table.

PowerPyx also says recipes carry over into New Game+, so a recipe you missed the first time can be unlocked on a second run.

No Return hands out recipes by character instead. Naughty Dog's primer for the mode says Dina "comes equipped with trap and stun bomb recipes from the jump" and has a skill to craft double the bombs, and that Abby starts with a melee upgrade recipe. The rest of each character's starting kit is in the No Return guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• As Ellie, pick up the stun bomb in Downtown's pet store and the trap mine in the Capitol Hill motel. Those two recipes come from finding the item.
• Buy Craft Silencers, Craft Melee Upgrades and Craft Explosive Arrows (20 supplements each) to complete Ellie's eight.
• As Abby, buy Craft Shivs first. Her silencer and melee upgrade need no skill.
• Treat the silencer as a health kit's rag plus a bomb's canister, and toggle it off once a fight goes loud.
• When canisters run out, put spare explosives into explosive arrows, which do not use one.
• On Abby, spend blades on shivs before hunting pistol rounds, and remember every pipe bomb costs a health kit's alcohol.
• Craft one stun bomb before buying Craft Smoke Bombs.
• For Tools of the Trade, plan on both characters. Let Abby make the silencer and melee upgrade and the floor is four skills: 80 supplements across three manuals.
• On Grounded, expect one arrow per base craft and a two-shot silencer.

More Part II breakdowns are in the weapon upgrades guide and the Part 2 enemies guide, the rest of the series is on our The Last of Us coverage hub, and everything else is on the Mythras blog.