To pick Infection Spores in Atomfall you’ll need to get the Blue Fingers skill — this skill lets you take the plant bulbs inside active infected plants in areas brimming with blue fog. The most dangerous plant areas are also the best places to look for spores, and spores are required to craft Strange Tonic, one of the most important recipes in the game. Every time you try to interact with blue plants in Atomfall, a message will appear telling you that the Blue Fingers skill is required, but it isn’t one of the skills available to you at the start. To unlock Blue Fingers, you’ll need to find a manual.
We’ve already talked about how to unlock the Strange Tonic recipe — but if you need help finding it, check out our full Strange Tonic guide here.
Blue Fingers Skill Guide
The Blue Fingers skill is required to pick spores — one of the required ingredients of the Strange Tonic crafting recipe that cures infection status and adds infection resistance for a time. This is one of the most important recipes in the game, and collecting spores is vital if you want to craft plenty of infection resistance before the endgame. The more infection cure you have the better.
- How To Unlock Blue Fingers Skill: The skill is unlocked after reading the Consumables Manual — this manual can be found in multiple locations.
- One of the easiest locations is in Wyndham Village. You can find a Consumables Manual in the Bakery — find it through the locked bedroom door on the second floor. The key is located at Wyndham Garage (35.5E, 79.2N) on the desk with the note.
Use the key on the second floor of the bakery to encounter the partially-zombified husband of the Bakery. You can ignore the zombie and just grab the manual on the desk. The manual unlocks three skills — Blue Fingers, Buff Duration and Gut Health. Blue Fingers is the most useful and costs 2 skill points to unlock and make functional.
Going to the second floor of the Bakery is part of The Bakery investigation and you can choose to help the Bakery family or report them to Protocol. Killing the husband and wife then reporting them to Protocol is actually a very useful decision — reporting the news to Protocol’s leader in the Village Hall will cause the faction to become more friendly with you, which allows you to enter the Protocol Camp in Skethermoor without getting shot at. This makes reaching the Skethermoor Interchange or the prison much, much easier.
And that’s the simple way to get the consumables manual. This can be done basically right at the start of the game and requires only reaching Wyndham Village, which is an area that’s totally open to explore right at the start. If you can reach Wyndham, you can get this manual for free in minutes.
