over 4 years ago - Shurenai - Direct link
Or, yknow, Search the world and find a working workbench. Or search the world and find a workbench recipe so you don't need the skill... Or just buy the workbench at the trader without any investment in better barter/daring adventurer, Neither is needed for the workbench to appear it just makes it appear a little sooner- it's pure RNG either way. You can have 5/5 barter and never see a workbench, you can have 0/5 and see a workbench every shop cycle.

And all in all, You do not NEED a workbench. You can craft most of the most useful items without it. Forge is the only real necessity; being able to craft forged iron and eventually steel, bullet parts, and various other things makes a huge difference in player survival.

Workbench though? It doesn't add too terribly much to a players capabilities imo. The most notable things that come to mind are VEhicles, which are nice but not Necessity, and electrical traps, which again are Nice, but not Necessity.


Lastly, Super lucky? Workbench recipe has a 25% drop rate from destroyed workbench, higher than many other drop rates in the game.. It barely takes any luck. You can walk down a street and enter the garage of each house in turn and almost certainly obtain a schematic by the end of the street; Destroyed/working workbenches are in many POIs offering TONS of chances to loot the schematic.