The Spud Gun is the ranged weapon that changes how Scrap Mechanic Survival plays. Before you have one, every fight means closing the distance on Scrap Bots and hoping your hammer connects fast enough. After you have one, you pick them off from a safe distance, snipe targets through the iron sights, and stop taking unnecessary damage on warehouse runs. There are two versions worth knowing about, and the path to each one is completely different.
What does the Spud Gun actually do?
The Spud Gun fires potatoes as projectiles and deals 28 damage per hit. Left-click fires a shot; holding right-click aims down the sights and zooms your view, which makes a real difference against distant targets.
Potatoes destroy any block or part with 1 durability on contact, trigger Sensors, Switches, and Buttons, and can set off Explosive Canisters. Each hit also applies a small knockback. The gun counts as a tool, so it stays in your inventory when your mechanic dies, which matters a lot in the mid-game.
There is also a useful side effect: firing a potato at a soil mound plants a new potato crop. That means the gun doubles as a fast replanting tool for keeping your own ammo supply going.
The full Spud Gun: trade requirements explained
The full Spud Gun cannot be crafted at a Craftbot. It comes exclusively from the Farmer Merchant, who sits near a Package Station, usually behind or beside the packing building. World generation shifts the exact position, so follow the road until you reach the merchant platform.
The trade requires three items deposited on the merchant platform:
Both crate types come from fruit you grow yourself, and fruit seeds are locked behind an earlier vegetable delivery. The actual starting point is farming vegetables, not hunting the gun directly.
Packing vehicle setup
Step 1: Grow vegetables and unlock fruit seeds
Start by setting up a farm with Fertilizer to plant and water buckets to grow crops. You need 30 Tomatoes and 30 Beets to unlock fruit seeds from the merchant.
Plant, water each crop from a bucket, and harvest when mature. Harvesting drops extra seeds, so you can scale up the farm as you go.
To deliver the produce efficiently, build a packing vehicle:
- Mount a Large Storage container on the vehicle
- Attach a Vacuum Pump to the storage
- Connect a Button to the pump using the connect tool
- Add a Driver's Seat connected to the button
Load 30 Tomatoes and 30 Beets into the Large Storage, drive to the vegetable Packing Station, and back up to the packer chute. Press the button so the Vacuum Pump feeds produce in and watch the progress meter. A packaged crate ejects when it finishes. Deliver the vegetable packages to the merchant platform to unlock Blueberry and Orange seeds for purchase.
Step 2: Grow fruit and pack the crates
Buy Blueberry and Orange seeds from the merchant and plant them at your farm the same way you handled vegetables. Keep the enclosure up since higher-value crops still trigger raids.
You need 20 Blueberries and 20 Oranges total. Fruit is processed at a different Packing Station than vegetables, so follow the road to find the fruit packer. Run the same packing routine with your vehicle to produce 2 Blueberry Crates and 2 Orange Crates, then deliver them to the merchant platform.
Step 3: Find and deliver a Caged Farmer
The last trade item is a Caged Farmer, a trapped NPC held inside a metal cage. These spawn across the map near ruins, warehouses, and sometimes close to the merchant area. Locate one, lift the entire cage onto your vehicle, and haul it back.
Place the cage on the designated deposit area at the merchant platform. With all five items deposited (2 Blueberry Crates, 2 Orange Crates, and 1 Caged Farmer), you can purchase the Spud Gun.
Farmer Merchant trade platform
The Scrap Spud Gun
Before the full trade is realistic, there is a craftable alternative. The Scrap Spud Gun has worse accuracy, shorter range, and poor sights compared to the full version, but it gives you a ranged option well before you have a working fruit farm.
Unlike the traded gun, the Scrap Spud Gun starts as a quest reward schematic that you then craft at a Craftbot.
Two quests can unlock the schematic:
- Palate Cleanser quest: Deliver a tomato crate to the Farmers Hideout.
- Home is Where Your Couch Is quest (Hubert): Build a watchtower at the structure beside Hubert at the Hideout entrance.
The Hubert watchtower quest requires these materials:
Gather the materials, build the tower following the on-site building plan, then talk to Hubert again to complete the mission and unlock the crafting recipe.
Scrap Spud Gun Craftbot recipe
How do you keep the Spud Gun loaded?
Both the full Spud Gun and the Scrap Spud Gun run on Potatoes in Survival Mode. A steady supply matters as much as having the weapon itself.
Grow potatoes on your farm alongside your other crops, and remember that firing a potato at a soil mound plants a new crop automatically. Since farms draw raids, keep your potato plots inside the same enclosure protecting your fruit and vegetables.
After testing both guns against warehouse Scrap Bots, the full version's improved sights make a noticeable difference at range. The Scrap version handles close clears fine but struggles when bots are spread across a large area. Prioritize the full trade as soon as your farm is producing fruit consistently.
For more strategies across the game, check out the Scrap Mechanic strategy guides collection, which covers everything from base building to bot farming. If you enjoy the survival and crafting loop here, there are plenty of other action games that scratch a similar itch.