The Last of Us: Workbenches - what you should invest in? Tips The Last of Us Guide, Walkthrough

Last update: 09 June 2020

This page of The Last of Us game guide explains how the workbenches work. We also advise which weapon upgrades you should invest in to increase the effectiveness of weapons to their maximum.

Weapons can be upgraded thanks to Workbenches, which you will run into from time to time during your playthrough. In order to upgrade a weapon, you will always need two things:

1. Parts - they are found along with other loot.
2. Tools - those are unique collectibles that unlock subsequent upgrade levels. The locations of all of the tools can be found in the Instruction manuals and tools chapter of this guide.

You cannot purchase all weapon upgrades during a single playthrough of the game, as you will not be able to accumulate the required amount of tools. You need to start the game in the New Game Plus mode, to which the previous progress of the upgraded weapons will be transferred.

In our opinion, those are the best weapon upgrades to acquire:

1. Weapon Holsters - This is a unique type of upgrade. Holsters have no impact on the behavior of a specific weapon. Instead, acquiring it unlocks additional "active slots" for weapons. You can purchase a holster separately for main weapon and sidearm. This will allow you to quickly swap between those two - this is immensely useful when, for instance, you will run out of ammo or the situation on the battlefield changes.
2. Magazine Capacity - By increasing the magazine size you decrease the chances of suddenly running out of ammo and ending up in a dangerous situation.
3. Fire Rate - This is especially crucial in the case of the shotgun, which, by default, has a very low rate of fire.
4. Recoil - This category plays an important role in making the best use of available (and severely limited) ammo resources.
5. Power - You will appreciate it especially in the case of guns unlocked in the later parts of the game. Increasing their firepower will allow you to swiftly eliminate enemies even if they were not hit in the head.
6. Reload Speed - Improving this parameter is especially important for shotguns and other weapons where you have to wait for a long time until the magazine is refilled. You might not have enough time for this activity if the current encounter is very intensive.