If you want the shape of a run and the habits that keep a haul alive, that is the beginner guide. This page is the layer underneath: the systems the game runs on and mostly does not explain.
The loop, officially
“Descend into shifting ruins, rip out furniture, and escape the corrupted, then drag the haul home to rebuild your Outpost.”
“Smash furniture for resources or feed them into the Grinder for gold.”
Stamina is a one-way constraint
Community This is the complaint that comes up most, and it is worth knowing before you assume you are playing badly. As one demo-era player put it: “Enemies are relentless. You kill one, and another spawns before you move one piece”, and critically “only YOU run out of stamina” while enemies keep coming.
Whether that is a flaw or the intended pressure is a matter of taste. Either way, plan around it: stamina is a budget you spend on getting out, not on winning fights.
The developers have engaged with this directly. In a June message they wrote that they want the game “challenging, tense, and rewarding” but not “unnecessarily punishing, especially for solo players and smaller groups”, and Difficulty Balancing shipped as a listed 1.0 feature.
The dropkick
Community The move most new players never discover. Players describe using it to:
- Stun the plague-doctor type long enough to run.
- Buy time against the bomb carrier — “If you dropkick the bomb child as he lights his fuze you can have enough time to run away so long as you have the stamina.”
- Push enemies into hazards — one player describes baiting an enemy toward a pit or trap and dropkicking them into it.
Two caveats. These accounts are from the demo period, before 1.0 rebalanced things. And you may have seen “Dropkick” listed elsewhere as an achievement name — that list is fabricated, and a made-up achievement is not evidence about the move. The move is player-attested; the achievement is not attested at all.
Room upgrades are stats, not decoration
Community Easy to read the Outpost as cosmetic progression. Players report otherwise: one describes “Room upgrades add stats…gumball room adds stamina, front room adds dmg”, and advises building those up before spending on a gun, after which “its not so bad”.
That matters twice over, because progression is also gated behind room levels — another player’s summary was “Certain Progressions are locked behind room lvls to get better items.” So upgrades buy you both a better run and the next quest.
The Outpost systems named by the developers for 1.0: New Outpost NPCs, Player Leveling, Enchantment & Repair Machine, Second Floor of the Outpost, More Constructs, Legendary Gachas.
Your body is expendable, your Spark is not
The single system that most changes how you play once you understand it. You can leave the vessel, an empty vessel is not a target, and the Spark runs on a timer you can manage. Full detail on the Spark and possession page.
Weapons, honestly
Four are consistently reported: a Mallet you start with, a Hammer, a Sword and a Gun. No stats have ever been published for any of them, and players do not agree — the prevailing view puts the Hammer near the top, while one demo-era player flatly called it ineffective.
The weapons page lays out what the consensus is and how thin the evidence under it is.
What the tutorial does not cover
- There is no hiding. No lockers, no cupboards. The Spark is the stealth system.
- There is no cart. You haul using containers found in the level, so routing matters.
- Damaged loot is worth less. Smash to find, then stop smashing.
- The elevator banks your haul the moment you put something in it.