Tools and the Trip Home

The Company store is described as carrying many useful tools for the job: lights, shovels, walkie talkies, stun grenades and boomboxes. The publisher’s warning is that things get dangerous at night.

Buy against a specific failure

Every named tool answers something: light for visibility, a shovel for defence, walkie talkies for coordination, stun grenades for a bad moment, and the boombox for reasons the store leaves to you. Purchases that do not map to a failure you have already had are usually the ones that go unused.

Talk while inside, not after

The description explicitly asks players to communicate with crewmates to carry valuables to the ship before things get too dangerous. Communication is the tool that converts a group of scavengers into a crew, and it costs nothing.

Night is a deadline, not a mood

Because danger rises at night, the trip home should be planned while it is still light. Decide the departure point before the crew is loaded down, or the haul decides it for you.

Do not leave anyone behind

The store’s final instruction is to try not to leave anyone behind. Beyond the ethics, a lost worker costs the crew more than the scrap they were carrying, which makes the rescue part of the profit plan.

The trip home is measured against the job in meeting the quota, and someone should be on the radio, as covered in ship as a command post.