The Barracks

The town’s defence is run from the Barracks. It stays locked until Herbert gets his 3 Faith in Fighting Spirit Required. The Merc Leader’s four hired swords are waiting inside, and this is where you get ready for the first fight against the zombies.

Getting to quality 12

Both Swords and Bell (Barracks quality 12) and the first battle (defence power 12) set the same target. Only two things contribute:

Source	Quality
Each Barricade I, Spiked Barricade I or Fortified Barricade I	2
Each of the four mercenaries, if paid for the upcoming battle	2 (8 for all four)

Nothing else in the room has a quality value, so you start at 0. Pay the mercenaries and two barricades finish the job; skip them and you need six.

Barricades

You build them from the Barracks build desk, and they can’t be placed anywhere else. The three types share one recipe: 2 Reinforced Planks, 6 Bronze Nails and 2 Short Logs, unlocked by Simple Barricades.

In technology points, nothing in the opening costs more. A Reinforced Plank is an Oiled Plank plus 2 Bronze Details, and its technology is gated behind a reputation node requiring 20 reputation with Herbert. His first two quests supply exactly that; open the tech tree afterwards to trigger the unlock.

The bottleneck is the Oiled Plank. It needs Melted Fat and Wooden Planks, and Melted Fat comes only from the Distillation Cube; no reachable trader has it. A single Melted Fat covers the Oiled Planks for two barricades.

That cube goes in the tower laboratory, and its technology, Alchemy, Distillation, branches from the alchemy technology Albert gives you. The barricades therefore depend on his storyline; the walkthrough has the order.