No infringement or anything malicious like that is intended for this guide; I'm just some dink with too much time on their hands writing a guide for a really fun video game I've spent too much time on, and I hope that by reading it other players learn more about the game and/or want to play it. So please don't sue me. :3

All credit should be given if a thing I mention or include belongs to someone else; if I did not, please let me know and I will look into it ASAP. Thank you in advance.

Header image for the guide, a 1985 Chrysler LeBaron Town & Country Mark Cross, was taken from an auction on Cars and Bids[media.carsandbids.com]. Support your local station wagons.

Feel free to link this guide elsewhere, that's cool; I just ask that you don't be a jerk and repost it wholesale on other sites without giving credit.

• Feb 12 2025: Initial guide release.
  
• Mar 16 2025: Minor updates to "Parts" section and various small corrections
  
• Apr 14 2025: Minor updates based on Endless Expeditions update; more to follow likely after subsequent patches
  
• May 2 2025: Minor updates and Endless Expedition section added.
  
• May 10 2025: Beat Iron Wagon default. Just to update the sections and toot my own horn a little.

What qualifies me to make this guide?
Well, nobody else did, for starters. There's lots of smaller guides but nothing that serves as a real "Pacific Drive for Dummies" equivalent.
Two, I've beaten a full run of this game on default settings twice over, suffering no deaths unless required to unlock parts, and have been banging my head against the wall with the Iron Wagon difficulty after it was added a few months ago finished Iron Wagon.
Three, I've been answering bits on the forums with people who tend to ask a lot of (what should be) very basic questions with very obvious answers.
Four...well, I enjoy this game and see a LOT of misunderstandings, misinformation, and people giving up on it disappointingly soon. This game deserves a fair shake because there isn't a lot like it on the market, and part of this guide's intent is to enlighten potential and current players that there's more to it than appears at first glance.

The vast majority of this guide, unless otherwise specifically noted, is assuming the following:

• You have a cursory knowledge of video games.
  
• You have a basic knowledge of how this game controls.
  
• You are playing with default difficulty settings, and you are interested in completing the game as originally envisioned by the devs with the default difficulty settings. While there are about eight-thousand individual options for difficulty preferences, I am going to assume with this guide's advice there are consequences for screwing up and will give instructions accordingly so that you do not do that. Should you choose to play otherwise, ignore sections as needed.
  
• You are open to receiving advice that may go against how you specifically want to play the game. This game rewards preparation and planning, and punishes panicked behaviors and sloppy driving, so the advice in this guide assumes, following that thread of logic, that you're not banking on dying or whatever because you really like how the Paddle Tires look.

While I won't be giving away the major story beats, in discussing the mechanics of the game, I will by necessity give away elements such as endgame enemies and endgame-exclusive resources. If you'd rather not have your experience spoiled, read at your own risk.

First of all, I ask that you read the guide first before leaving comments, in case your question might already be answered somewhere in the guide. If not there, then I urge you to use the Search function in the forums. If all else fails, then feel free to leave a well-structured comment with any questions you might have; it might turn out to make a good addition to the guide in the end.
NOTE (3/16/2025): I have turned off comments for the time being to curb spam, but thank you to anyone who contributed thus far. Apologies to anyone looking to the guide, but feel free to ask in the forums and odds are I will answer your question at some point.

Some guides already answer a lot of things, like resources. I will link those where needed with credit to the author.

The Driver is you, the player character. There is little to mention here except that you have a health bar, and when it runs out, that's game over where you are kicked back to the garage.


You have a sprint button (with no stamina bar), a crouch that pushes your viewmodel slightly forward as well as down, and that's really about it. Go drive the Remnant places, loot things that aren't nailed to the floor, and don't run out of health.

Fall damage exists, so be careful when navigating the Junctions.

The unlockable Outfitting Station will allow you to make items that buff the Driver's resistance to various flavors of damage. All should be invested in at some point, but the other unlockables for the car take precedent.

The Remnant is the car, which might as well be the second playable character.

The Remnant also has a health bar. Or to be more accurate, it has several. All the parts installed in/on the car have their own health values:

• The engine.
  
• The five doors: two up front, two in the middle, and the trunk/boot door.
  
• The five panels: one on the hood, two in front, and two in back.
  
• The four wheels.
  
• The attachments: four side attachments and two roof attachments.

Important to note is that the Remnant does not follow the same 1:1 rules as a car in real life.

The engine isn't the most important element of the car, but it is important nonetheless. Without a bare minimum of an engine and four wheels, the car won't be going anywhere.

You can theoretically beat the whole game with just an engine and four wheels sitting on a frame, but good luck with that.

If you do not have doors installed on all the available spots, the Driver is directly exposed to the elements.
If you do not have a hood panel, your engine is directly taking damage from hits and the environment. This is bad and you don't want that to happen, because engines are much harder to replace than panels, and if your engine dies mid-run, you're effectively a dead man walking without repair kits. Even a crude hood panel is better than nothing.


The car's "shield" health bar as seen on the dashboard HUD is effectively an average sum of the condition of all the panels and doors. If this hits red, your car's ability to protect you from the elements no longer applies and the Driver will start taking damage from hits and atmospheric effects (you will see a warning at the top of the screen that says "WARNING: VEHICLE PROTECTION COMPROMISED" if this happens). Obviously, this is bad and you don't want to have it happen at the worst possible time, so keep your parts as intact as possible.

Part health values are represented by colors, in order of best to worst condition:

• Bright green
  
• Dark green
  
• Yellow
  
• Red
  
• Flashing red (critical health; the part is about to be destroyed)
  
• Grey (the part is either destroyed or missing)

Battery and fuel are also separate meters that affect how the car operates.

The following elements deplete battery power:

• Headlights. As far as I can tell headlights further in the tech tree do not use more power than others, so a Crude Headlight will use the battery just as quickly as a Biolumen Headlight.
  
• Certain part abilities. Some parts in the tech tree will require battery power to use (LIM Shield, Ion Shield, Power Tires, etc.). This usually comes in short but intense bursts of power usage.
  
• The AMP Engine uses battery instead of fuel. See "Parts" section for more details.
  
• Emergency teleport; more on that below.

Unlike a real-life car, the Remnant does not need battery meter to start the ignition, and there is no separate alternator. Or if it is, it's being taken up by the Arc Device.
Though being completely empty on battery is never a good thing, it will not--in most cases--prevent you from driving the car or starting/stopping the ignition. Think of your battery as a "magic points" system for your car separate from fuel and part health. This game already has enough magic nonsense in it that you should be able to suspend your sense of disbelief.

The following depletes gasoline:

• As long as the engine is on, gasoline will slowly drain no matter what. Lower MPG engines cause a passive faster drain.
  
• Using the accelerator/throttle will deplete gasoline. How much is dependent on engine MPG.

The Remnant has an emergency teleport (bound to 'T' by default) that is meant to be used when the car is flipped over or otherwise stuck and cannot be freed.
Using the teleport costs a huge chunk of battery power (about 30 units base value). If you do not have that much power left, the game will still let you teleport the car, but at a very hefty cost of directly damaging the car itself. Use judiciously. Teleporting your car out of a minor scrape only to have it reappear half dead is not fun, especially when a possibly-sentient radiation field is actively looking to cash in on your warrant.

Should you happen to run out of health and die or otherwise abandon a run in a Junction, the Remnant will leave behind a ghost roughly at the spot it was when you died or abandoned. You can scan this ghost for records (you need it for a tech tree unlock) and recover some of the lost items.

The saving system only allows you to manually save at the garage. All other saving points mid-run are done at the beginning of each junction; loading a save game from a crash or some other similar disaster will start you at the beginning of the junction.

You cannot move between junctions or exit gateways without you AND the car together. Trying to do so with just the Driver will result in a "WARNING: GET IN CAR" message.

There's tons of potential parts for the car, to the point where understanding how they work together can be overwhelming.

• Crude: Low HP, low damage resistance; wears out sooner on average
  
• Steel: Average HP, average damage resistance
  
• Armored: Slightly-above-average HP, boosted blunt/pierce/explosive damage resistance
  
• Insulated: Above-average HP, electric resistance
  
• Lead-Paneled: Above-average HP, radiation resistance
  
• Acid-Resistant: Above-average HP, acid resistance
  
• Olympium: High HP, extra-high blunt/pierce/explosive damage resistance

In general, you want higher damage resistance for the front bumper and front panels as they will be receiving the brunt of blows when driving.
Front doors should either be armored or insulated.
Mid doors should be lead-paneled.
Back panels should be insulated or acid-resistant.
Back door should probably be some elemental resistance.
Back bumper is your call; it will be the least of your worries. Rad resistance never hurts.

This grouping should optimize a mix of damage type resistances.
In general, radiation is probably the least-threatening hazard except for the rare circumstances you'll be dealing with Level 10 radiation, so it gets the least emphasis.
Electricity hits hard and fast, and you'll encounter it very early in the Outer Zone, so harm reduction on that front is always a good idea.
Acid is a Mid Zone and later hazard, but it's nasty; it not only does lots of HP damage but also will very frequently inflict adverse status effects on affected car parts.

Note that Olympium does not come about until endgame and the resources to make these are quite rare. You do not need them to beat the game by any stretch, but the extra protection never hurts if you can afford it.

While a mix is recommended, you should of course take into account exactly what sort of hazards you can regularly expect on a run when prepping your parts. Obviously kitting for all Armored parts will do you little good against blobs of acid, especially as you get better at avoiding damage by collision and thus do not need the armored pieces as much.

Occasionally, scavenging will yield parts that are marked with a star on the HUD. These are "peculiar." Their stats are higher than the usual ones you can build or find, but with a catch: they cannot be repaired, and scrapping them yields no parts. Use wisely.

This is one of the more important elements that isn't immediately obvious and isn't conveyed terribly well in-game.

Let's say on the left side of the car, you have the following installed front-to-back:

• Armored Panel
  
• Lead-Paneled Door
  
• Insulated Door
  
• Acid-resistant Panel

A slight amount of special resistances will be transferred to immediately adjacent parts. So the Armored Panel up front will also have slight radiation resistance from the Lead-Paneled Door, the Lead-Paneled Door will also get slight damage resistance and insulation boosts, and so forth.

Keep this principle in mind when mixing and matching parts. You car may look very clownish by the end of your builds, but if you are playing for optimized builds, it beats losing all your fresh Olympium pieces to one errant acid storm.

At the start of the game, you can survive on Crude parts if you get the driving controls down. They cannot stand up to much damage to begin with, so using them to tank damage is a bad idea.
Do not waste Repair Putty on Crude parts. If you are semi-diligent about gathering resources, you should have more than enough bits and bobs to craft replacement Crude parts, even out in the field.

You will want to rush Steel parts as soon as you can reasonably afford to make them en masse, then build up reserve resources for a mixture of Insulated/Lead-lined/Steel parts. You can use a Liberator to cycle through Armored parts until you can start making those and throw them in the mix. Carbonfiber is good to add later for Mid-Zone trips, then Olympium will come last.
Steel is good enough for bumpers and such until literal endgame if you can avoid taking too many hits; metal is perhaps the most abundant resource in the game and steel parts just take more metal than usual. You should be able to wean off Crude parts by the time you hit Mid Zone at worst.

Rush Offroad Tires as quickly as you can. Offroad Tires are arguably the most useful upgrade for driving, as they handle absolutely fine on-road and provide the offroad handling that can make a huge difference when you can't stay on the streets.

All other tires are either so situational as to be useless (no, you do not ever need to take four Paddle Tires in your trunk for any reason; staying in water to begin with is a bad idea) or less practical for no real benefit (Puncture-Proof, Power Tires, etc. are all basically "Summer Tire with a gimmick attached"). The sole exception here is All-Terrain Tires, which are indeed very well rounded but in my experience are very prone to puncturing compared to other tires.

Tires work best when the left and right pair match. For your own sake, try to avoid mixing and matching tires, and just use all four of the same type when you can. In dire emergencies, you should replace bad tires with a spare as needed--driving on a flat or blown-out tire that you cannot fix is asking for trouble, as is driving on a bald tire at all--but in general you want to avoid mismatching tire types.

The car is rear-wheel drive, so if you have to mix-and-match, it is a good idea to put the better tires in back. For example, if you're going on a light resource-hunting mission, a pair of Summer Tires up front and Offroad Tires in back will still be adequate for most purposes while being somewhat more economic than four Offroad Tires.

Really, anything that isn't Crude headlights will do fine; they all suck up battery at basically the same rate so it's down to preference, but Crude headlights could barely light a fart and go bad fairly quickly. I personally prefer the Biolumen headlights when Mid Zone starts rolling around because you can see the car from space if you need to wander off for resources and it helps trivialize Eerie Darkness zones, but Insulated Headlights are never a bad choice either, as headlights can short out if hit by electric damage. Armored Headlights are nice, but sadly they are yet another late-game unlock due to requirements.

(cont.)


First note, for those of you unfamiliar with car terminology: higher-tier engines have lower MPG, which means higher-tier engines consume gas more quickly. To compensate for the increased fuel consumption, they go faster. The AMP is its own unique thing; see below.

The basic Carbureted Engine is good enough to last you to endgame if you are clever about getting around terrain, but the lack of speed can make certain escapes painful, and driving up some hills can be all but impossible. It does not need spare gas boosters or cans, but it doesn't hurt to have them either; a Side Tank at bare minimum once you hit Mid Zone is recommended.

The Turbolight Engine is a nice upgrade in speed for not a huge amount of extra investment. By the time you can unlock it, you'll have unlocked the upgrades for extra gas capacity. I recommend you invest in at least one Expanded Backseat Tank (or two smaller Backseat Tanks at minimum) to keep concurrent with fuel demand on long trips. Recommended for endgame due to overall ease-of-use and versatility.

The AMP Engine is a unique alternative that, in short, runs directly off battery power rather than gas. The implication is that this shift obviously requires a serious shift in build and playstyle to accommodate the fact that you no longer have to worry about gas. I would not recommend running this endgame without at least:

• one Hydro Generator (it rains a lot in this game and you're guaranteed to be in the black on charge when it does)
  
• one Solar Panel (will work most of the time in runs)
  
• two High Capacity backseat batteries (duh)
  
• one XL Roof Battery (optional but recommended)
  
• two Mini Turbines (at high driving speeds these will offset any battery cost; the real power loss on this engine comes from start/stop and accelerating from low speeds)

It is endgame viable, however; I finished the entire Deep Zone running it. I normally run Rooftop Storage for this to put more power-generating gubbins on the side mounts. One thing you need to keep in mind with the AMP Engine is that the real killer on efficiency is accelerating, especially from a dead stop; once you actually get going at a constant speed it is less power hungry, so you need to be mindful of start-and-stop driving habits with this engine.
Nota bene: do not take this engine in water; it is practically guaranteed to short out, and Electrician Kits aren't always readily available.

The LIM-Chipped Engine is something you probably won't unlock until literal endgame due to the material requirements, and even with that, it is an impractical investment over the Turbolight engine; what the AMP engine is to battery power, this is to gas. To be fair, gas is more common to come by, but without some preplanning you're still going to have an ugly time. I recommend at least the following setup if you want to comfortably run this:

• one Gas Reservoir(duh)
  
• one High-Capacity Backseat Battery (used mainly for Fuel Synth)
  
• one Expanded Backseat Tank (duh)
  
• one Fuel Synthesizer (converts battery into fuel; remember that it has to be manually siphoned)**
  
• one Hydro Generator (feeds Fuel Synth)
  
• one Solar Panel (feeds Fuel Synth)
  
• one Large Fuel Can in trunk or storage

The remaining slots can be occupied with whatever you want. While it also takes investment and planning, it is fun and it effectively turns your station wagon into a Hellcat Buick Estate, so if you can scrounge up the bits...go nuts.


Straightforwardly put, this thing converts battery power to gas. It is its own side mount entity that you have to siphon like you would a tank. Extremely handy if you know how to use it, and an absolute godsend for certain Turbolight or LIM-Chipped Engine builds, but you should be aware that there is no on/off switch; as long as the Synth is not full, it will continue to produce gasoline until either your battery is depleted or the Synth is full. So be mindful of that.

The Lightning Rod might not seem too notable at first glance, but I slept hard on this part until I started playing harder difficulties. It's a simple concept--lightning strikes get redirected to the rod instead of the car--but the mechanical interactions with certain parts of the game are what really sell it. It's amazingly useful for something that comes so early in the tech tree. There's also a lot of miscommunication and misconception on how it actually functions in the game, so let's analyze that.

For starters, what it doesn't do is protect against certain attacks: the Crackling Crawler's beam, the Spark Tower's beam, Sizzling Mist fields, and the shock blast from the Wriggling Wreck. The former two have different targeting mechanisms, the third is simply a damaging field you must avoid, and the fourth is an AoE blast.
Despite the name, it also does literally nothing during thunderstorms as far as I can tell. The lightning there is merely for ambiance.

What it does affect is any electric beam that works on proxy (e.g. the beams that form in between Minutemen, Shocked Tourists, and so forth. Effectively, the Lightning Rod serves as a proxy point for the current to jump to. So driving within close distance of the Anomaly in question will extend a beam towards the Lightning Rod.
When the beam makes contact, the car is "shocked" but the Rod itself takes damage and you get a small amount of battery charge in exchange. Note that the car being shocked applies for the purposes of conditions such as Violent Voltage (the shock lasts longer and hits harder), Shocking Speed (getting shocked applies a massive speed boost to the car), and so forth; even if the rest of the car doesn't technically take damage from the shock, the status still applies.
The battery charge is nothing to write home about, but it isn't nothing. The true value lies in mitigating errant shock damage.

Where this part really shines is in mitigating one of the nastiest Outer Zone anomalies: the Wriggling Wreck. While it doesn't completely counter them, it goes a long way towards minimizing the potential harm they can do.
A Wriggling Wreck, when the car moves close to it, will summon a field of Minutemen to surround itself (and the car with it). After a few seconds, the Wreck will fire off a blast inside the MInutemen field that does very high electrical damage to any part of the car caught in the blast (or the Driver, if you are foolish enough to test it). You don't want to be hit by this on default difficulty, let alone on any higher setting.
While the blast itself is not hard to avoid, the major annoyance comes in is with the Minutemen field that is basically guaranteed to at least get a couple of licks in on the car even if you avoid the rest of the Wreck. It's basically a free HP tax.
With the Lightning Rod on, however, you can effectively make the whole thing a non-issue. Creep up slowly to the Wreck, trigger the Minutemen, then back out of the circle. The Wreck will never spawn Minutemen directly under you.

The Minutemen will shock the Lightning Rod while you back up safely without running into a Minuteman, then avoid the blast altogether and move on with little more than slight damage to the Rod and some added battery charge while you're at it.
This will be a life-saver in harder difficulties.
-
-
-

(cont. from Part 2)
Takes up six squares in the inventory and has double the capacity of your basic Fuel Can that comes with the car. While you sadly cannot attach it to the Trunk Gunk, having at least one of these in the car at all times is a lifesaver.
On higher difficulties it is a good idea to invest in at least two, just to be on the safe side.

LIM Shield

Spoiler tags because it is a uniquely unlocked late-game item in the storyline rather than in the tech tree.
When toggled on, this bumper reduces damage to the car by quite a bit at the cost of high battery usage upon absorbing the impact. Once you do unlock it, there's no real reason to not have it.
Note that it only consumes battery power when absorbing damage; unlike the Ion Shield, it does not constantly drain power while toggled, so you are free to leave it on as you see fit.

All three of these battery-givers are fantastic and you are basically guaranteed value out of them at some point. Mini Turbines in particular give you back battery power just for driving fast, albeit the regen is slow, but that's still basically free power for doing the thing you do most in this game. Two Mini Turbines are basically enough to offset the AMP's driving usage unless you are literally doing nothing but constant start-stops.

The side storage is a humble yet important part of the early-to-mid game, and depending on your loadout, useful to the very end. A Side Storage can fit a Large Fuel Can and up to six flavors of car repair items/First Aid Kits. Having one Side mount dedicated specifically for necessities is a very good idea early game, as it saves precious trunk space (which you will need for collecting items).
XL Roof Storage can fit a stupid amount of things period but you won't be unlocking it until the midpoint of the game; whether or not you'll want one is dependent on loadout options, but think of it as putting an extra starter trunk (the cardboard boxes) on the roof of the car in addition to your trunk storage.

I'm of two minds about this one. I never had trouble with the radioactive storms in my default difficulty playthroughs, so it was effectively useless there.
On higher difficulty settings, however, it becomes an insanely useful tool because you will not be outpacing the storm in 99.9% of circumstances, so having something that guarantees storm damage reduction aside from Lead-Lined panels is extremely nice to have. This thing gobbles battery like you wouldn't believe, but when it helps, it helps.

Auto-Doc

Spoiler tags because it's a story-based unlock.

This contraption drains battery quite quickly to heal the Driver directly while you hold down the assigned ability key. While I don't recommend using it for every single scratch you'll suffer--it consumes battery power extremely quickly--keep in mind that you can use this in exchange for First Aid Kits to save on fabrics.

A.K.A. the emergency brake. I didn't bother with this much, which was a mistake; I hadn't considered its full applications.
It might not seem like much, and I dunno what the game is talking about when it mentions drifting--this is not that kind of game--but it does have a unique purpose that the game doesn't tell you about, which is being able to quite possibly curb your forward momentum in a bad situation. To anyone who regularly drives a car, I know it sounds obvious, but I'll be the first to admit I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed and didn't think about that application.

In my testing, this can be used to help with conditions like "Shocking Speed"; although it might not save you every time, it might save you some of the time, and I can't fault it on that.
Tip from the comments, credit to Steam user Ich_II:

Originally posted by Ich_II:

If you catch a Left-Right and have time, you can stop with the Parking-Brake (the ability, not shifting to Park) and wait some seconds until the effects wear off. It may be better than crashing. To trigger the anomaly again, you have to leave it and touch it again.

This one is an oddball. It both generates (yes, from thin air) Scrap Metal and automatically picks up any Scrap Metal you drive near.

While largely unnotable in the main game as you will have Scrap Metal burning through your own pockets as well as your trunk and every other storage compartment on your car if you are even halfway diligent about collecting resources, it does have a place in Endless Expeditions because all of Ida's wares are purchased using Scrap Metal and only Scrap Metal. As EE puts limits on what you can bring with you, a bumper that gives free currency for that mode is really nice to have.

If there's something I didn't mention, it's either because I never bothered (Nitro Boost) or too situational to be something I keep on the car (Jump Jacks). Most tools that aid in extra mobility will come at the cost of either potential or guaranteed damage. But of course feel free to experiment.

The other equippables I didn't get to or otherwise don't recommend. Most of these are either flat-out bad, highly situational, or have some other issue that stops me from recommending them full-time.

I did briefly use it on my first attempt at this game, but ultimately gave it up in favor of just having more battery/gas in the seats as I stopped griping about needing to manually shift each time.

There's really not much to say here. It takes up a useful seat rack for a QoL feature that you can adjust to. Pass.

Another seat mount part. These can be situationally useful, but "situational" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Consider this the game's form of "rocket jumping" from other first-person shooters: it's a mobility tool that costs health to use. If your car ever leaves the ground in this game, it's taking damage. The whole car.
Almost all of the time, you will not need the added sudden mobility boost if you understand how the car handles and drives. You will almost never need this to dodge incoming hazards. Elevation changes on the map can be seen and accounted for.
So the only reason I could regularly see needing this is if you're getting absolutely clowned on gateway escapes needing to go uphill, and you have the jump arc calculated so that you only ever land on solid ground and do not land on, for example, trees or guardrails (which will make the damage you suffer much worse). In which case: yes, I suppose I can see the point in keeping this around full-time; also, congratulations on the physics degree.

The only way to stop the jump from wrecking your car is to have the Anti-Grav Emitter simultaneously equipped, in which case you have the equivalent of the moon jump unlocked, which can be kinda fun. But that's also an endgame unlock and requires a roof mount just to counter the effects of this thing.

I do not think it's worth it.

I'm teetering on whether or not to include this in the other "recommended parts" list.

Most of the time, sudden speed boosts can be a problem because usually you just smash into things. That being said, a speed boost rocketing you forward on demand can be very nice to have, but in most cases it would be nothing game-changing. I need to do some more testing on Iron Wagon to see how it fares with the changed driving dynamics, as I could see a better argument for it there for cases when you need to offroad and not be rendered completely inert.

I cannot see the argument for putting this as your front bumper except for a laugh.

Note that these are a side mount. Basically they shove your car opposite whatever side they are installed on when used.

I don't really care for these. Rarely do I ever encounter a situation where they would be useful, and they occupy a trusty side mount (or two, if you are trying to balance out having a juke jet for each side of your car, which makes sense) just in case you need to use them.

I admittedly have not tested these on Iron Wagon to see if the altered driving dynamics give them a better use case.

Not the worst choice, but not the best. My main gripe with this is that it gets less useful as you learn what to look for when searching out resource spawns, which is a lot to ask for taking up a roof slot that could be used for something better.

Maybe if you're doing endgame Perpetual Stability runs in the Deep Zone, sure?

The only one I would ever bother with is the Auto-Tracking Spotlight, and you're still giving up a roof mount slot for that.

Most of the time you just don't really need these. You only see in front of the car 99% of the time, and the Auto-Tracker requires you to toggle it while you leave the car running if you want it to follow the driver.

Again: not the worst choice, but given the practicality of "more battery/gas/storage" they're hard to justify.

Useful early game but falls off as you get better.

It's not the worst choice and will save you from some of the more annoying anomalies like Bubblegum Buddies, but it's also not the best. As you learn to deal with and drive around certain anomalies on the fly, this will be less appealing.
The main appeal with this is that it's a quick "get-off-me" button for two of the most annoying Mid-Zone anomalies: Bubblegum Buddies grabbing you three-at-a-time, and a pack of Burp Bunnies that you can't entirely dodge. In which case it will be very useful, but again, that's situational.

Also has the unfortunate problem of falling off in utility in the Deep Zone, as there are fewer snatching-type anomalies there and the only Bunnies you will see are Boom Bunnies, which just explode on impact.
This also does not stop Pickpockets. If it did, I might consider putting it in the "recommended" slot.

Fun, but rarely make-or-break useful. Fall damage sucks, but as you get better at this game you will not suffer as much from it. Learn to avoid the things that inflict it. That it comes at the very end of the tech tree makes it worse.

The main appeal is if you pair it with the Jump Jacks, but again, that's dedicating quite a bit of space to have on-demand jumps as a viable option.

This is a weird one. It's a single-use(!) side mount item that auto-revives you upon dying and restores your health, then breaks.

You shouldn't be dying independent of the car dying in this game. There are eight-thousand ways to avoid damage to begin with, and lots of ways to heal should you have trouble with that first part. The kicker: you have to die to unlock it.

This can also break before the Driver dies, in which case it becomes useless. Though, if it broke to begin with, it's probably the car dying first, in which case that would render it pointless because you're not going anywhere without the car.

I want to stress that I've never died in a normal run on this game, which makes the death protection pointless. I also want to stress that this cannot be unlocked in Iron Wagon by virtue of erasing your file if you die to begin with.

This is another weird one. Slows down everything except vehicle steering.

As practicality goes, this is basically just a better Juke Jet, but that's kinda damning by faint praise because Juke Jets aren't that great to begin with. It's fun but not game-changing.

(image taken from the Pacific Drive wiki[pacificdrive.wiki])

See this? This is bad. If your part has this, replace it.

All car parts will eventually wear out and become less useful after so many miles. The engine obviously can go much longer than other parts before wearing out, but for other parts, the average point before becoming worn is roughly 60 miles.
There is some random element to this, along with how frequently a part takes damage or is hit with status afflictions that can accelerate the process, but 60 miles is the general rule.

Worn parts can still be used, but will become less useful at their intended role.

Panels and doors will become "fragile." They have reduced HP and crack more easily. Not the worst thing in the world but you should be mindful. Replace on an as-needs basis.

Tires will become "Bald." This is very bad and you should replace them as soon as possible. It doesn't matter what it started out as; a bald tire is as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Among other things, it destroys the grip and handling, and that alone should be enough to scare you into changing your equipment.

The engine will become "worn" and just be less effective in general, as well as hitting "busted" status more easily which cripples your acceleration. I've never seen an engine die entirely, but having your engine crippled is still bad and you should replace it as soon as possible. Remember to check the Friendly Dumpster at the garage if this happens early game.

"Worn" side/roof storage will start leaking out items. Obviously this is not ideal and these should be thrown in the Matter Deconstructor and replaced with new bags ASAP.

Fuel tanks will leak painfully often once their mileage starts to take a toll. Replace ASAP. Once you are at a point where you regularly run them, you should always carry a spare in your storage.

Corroded battery placements are probably the worst item to go "worn," as not only will they leak charge, they'll shock your car with an alarming frequency as long as they are installed. Once you are at a point where you regularly run them, you should always carry a spare in your storage.

I currently do not know if "worn" items like the Hydro Generator et. al. perform worse at their jobs when "worn," but I have been given no reason to believe otherwise.

Remember, fatigued parts can be thrown into the matter deconstructor or scrapped, although you will get less from them than a non-worn part. Still, it beats a kick in the rear.

So remember when looting that Armored panel off that car: it won't last for long.

For more details, see this excellent guide by Sev097.

They happen.

Some are worse than others. Some are downright beneficial, like getting a speed boost when you turn on the headlights. Others are really bad, like all doors opening when you accelerate.

My understanding is that quirks can be triggered for a number of reasons, ranging from taking damage to something as simple as turning the ignition on.

If a really annoying one pops up, decide whether or not it's one you can live with through the rest of the run, or whether you're better off summoning the gateway ASAP. If you've picked up something that, for example, causes a door to fly open constantly, you're losing protection from environmental damage which can be very bad and might screw you if you're in a longer run.

You can always see exactly how many different quirks you've accumulated by going to the "Fixes" menu. Even if the quirk's nature is hidden, you can at least tell if one exists just by looking at the menu. You may find you have a couple extra that you didn't know about.

If you are having trouble diagnosing a particular quirk, the upgrade to the Diagnostic Station that lets you use Stable Energy to give you hints is never a bad option. How this works is that you hold down the "hint" key on the particular column you want to scan and it will highlight one known category at the current time of scanning.
My suggestion is to use the first column, then third column as the highest priority; you should be able to figure out the finer cause-and-effect points via process of elimination.

Remember you will need repair items, usually Mechanic's Kits or Electrician's Kits, to fix most quirks. If it involves the headlights, then you are basically guaranteed to need a Lightbulb Replacement Kit.

Always keep the "trunk -> is closed --> horn -> honks" quirk if you get it. IYKYK.

The stuff you'll need hotkeyed all the time in the Zone, where applicable. (Hotkeying may not always be available depending on your current backpack; adjust as needed.)

Your basic tool for chainsawing anything that isn't nailed down. Scrapped cars and electronics yield important materials.
Always keep one on hand at all times; your scavenging potential goes down quite a bit without one.

The Plasma Scrapper is just the Scrapper, but better in every way. Higher durability, destroys things more quickly, and yields more resources from scrapped items. As of the Endless Expeditions update, it also automatically absorbs any scraps from destroyed items straight into your backpack.

Used for opening locks to some doors, and your primary means of obtaining plasma by destroying generators.
Always keep one on hand at all times; your scavenging potential goes down quite a bit without one.

Like the Plasma Scrapper above, the Magnetic Hammer is Impact Hammer +1. Well worth the expense. During Deep Zone excursions, you'll probably want to bring more than one from the garage.

Your primary lockpick for trunks, cabin doors, and those pesky hazmat cabinets in ARDA trailers.
Always keep one on hand at all times; your scavenging potential goes down quite a bit without one.

Your primary means of getting bulbs out of light fixtures, scooping up marsh eggs, sucking out tree candy, or when you just don't feel like giving yourself early-onset-repetitive-stress-disorder mashing the E key over and over again for lots of materials.
You should have one whenever possible.

Thermal Vacuum is the flat upgrade to basic Vacuum; it sucks things up from a longer distance and also lights up the area. Very useful for grabbing Swamp Corals, as without the automatic light provided by the Thermal Vacuum, they are a tremendous pain to collect.

The Thermal Vacuum's distance grab is also unique in that it lets you do things like grab Bunnies out of the air. If a cluster of them is aiming at your car, this might make the difference between getting your front half dissolved by Burp Bunnies or coming out unscathed.

As of the Endless Expeditions update, the Thermal Vacuum can now automatically deposit vacuumed items into your car's inventory spaces.

Your bread and butter for patching up parts with heavy damage. Each putty comes with 5 uses/charges, and each charge of putty restores a flat 40 hit points to a part it's used on. You can hold a maximum of three in the same inventory slot.

Save it mostly for Steel parts and up when they're actually worth saving in a pinch; making putty is expensive as it requires Chemicals, which are not usually a common resource, so using them on Crude parts is a waste.

The blowtorch can be used at will for nicks and dings where a full charge of putty would be wasted. It does not replace putty, but having a stack of putty and a blowtorch to complement it is always a good idea.

Olympium Blowtorches are of course an improvement over the basic blowtorches, but are such a pain to make that it's debatable if it's worth the effort or materials to do so repeatedly.

e.g. Sealing Kits, etc. They're straightforward and cure certain statuses.

One thing I should note is that certain status ailments (e.g. "Cracked" on doors) can result in the part's max health being reduced. The corresponding item will also restore the part's max HP.

Flares are a mostly reliable means of distracting Anomalies, defusing crowds of Tourists without getting in kick distance, and seeing in really dark areas.
Flare Guns are upgrades to Flares in that they perform exactly how they sound, and can be used from farther away.
Flares are literally everywhere, so there's no reason not to keep a stack of 20 if you can. If you'd rather sacrifice the extra space for a Flare Gun, that's fine too. You don't need both.

Flashlights are mostly a novelty that only really come into play on Eerie Darkness and are low priority, but they're not terrible to have on hand. The Biolantern at the end of the tree lasts a stupidly long time but also takes lots of resources to craft, so it's your call. Better to have it and not need it...

Fires a projectile that sticks to a surface and explodes. Its main use is detaching parts from wrecked cars.

Your choice tool for prying those juicy Armored Panels and Doors off of certain abandoned cars before you hit the Mid Zone. Cycling out old car parts can give you an edge on economy early on, as one Liberator will get you somewhere in the vein of 5-10 parts with all charges. You can get a lot of mileage (pun not intended) out of part rotations.

Sadly, the Liberator's usefulness caps early on in the game, as once you can make Armored parts you won't be needing to scrounge them from wrecks (and will probably be chainsawing them for Thermosap crystals instead). You sadly won't get anything rarer than Armored bits off of wrecks, relegating this largely to early-game use and not much else.

Remember that the Liberator's explosive blast is an AoE and, depending on how parts are arranged, you can hit more than one part if you place the charge just right. Don't shoot directly at the part you want; aim in between to hit multiple parts. It will help you conserve charges.

Liberator Mk. II is an upgrade, albeit a completely unnecessary one; by the time you unlock it, you won't need it. Sadly, wrecked cars do not have anything better than Armored parts to salvage, and by the time you unlock the Mk. II you'll be well past that portion of the tech tree.

The primary part of the game, or where you'll be spending the most time. At least in theory. Junctions are the independent areas you must travel through.

You have a few objectives in all junctions:

• Loot resources.
  
• Grab Anchors. Anchor energy is needed for researching parts, as well as other base functions, so don't hesitate to grab it when you have the chance.
  
• Dodge Anomalies. Most are elaborate obstacles, some are actually aggro and will go out of their way to harass you if the opportunity presents itself.
  
• Complete objectives, where applicable.
  
• Exit. Either through an orange arrow exit point, or through opening a gateway back to the Garage. Most of the time you will be doing this manually, but not always. See below on the story locations for more.

The yellow diamond in the top-left is a gateway that can be opened. The red diamond with a "no" symbol at the bottom is a gateway that cannot be opened because the car is too close. The orange square-with-an-arrow icon in the bottom-right is an exit to another junction.


Some locations are relevant to story progression, and often you will need to complete these to unlock new junctions, zones, or biomes. These will be marked with a green diamond on the Route map.


This is the map screen that shows you the available junctions to enter and drive through.

Scan a junction by holding the Mouse1 button while highlighting it. Some can be scanned, some can't; more on that in the "Other Notes" section. Scan a Junction to see the available information about that route.
In order to open the primary garage door for leaving, you have to scan at least one junction.

Scanning a junction does not lock you into taking that route; in fact, it's highly recommended to scan junctions and take your chances on a different junction if the first one looks to be too much of a problem.

Note on the Route Planning screen that there are multiple different conditions for traveling through one junction to the next. Pay very close attention to these, because failing to do so can screw you on a run.

• If a highlighted junction is denoted with "[#] kLim to escape", it means you can manually open a gateway after collecting enough Anchor energy.
  
  Noteworthy: any individual junction will have enough energy on its own for you to open a gateway, but you should be aware that as you go deeper into the Zones, the gateways will require more energy to open. Since the exit quota accounts all the energy you've collected in a run, depending on your route, you may want to make stops in earlier junctions to lessen the burden so that you're not stuck in one late-game junction trying to get 5 kLim of energy before you can leave.
  
• If a highlighted junction is denoted with a yellow border and a yellow "crossed-out zero" sign that says "no gateway," this means you cannot manually exit out of the map via gateway; you will have to pass through it via orange-arrow exit to another junction.
  
• If a highlighted junction is denoted with an angry red border and a red "crossed-out zero" sign that says "DEAD END", do not enter this area. Going here is a death trap with no exit, and you can only await the sweet release of being scrambled in a storm if nothing else gets to you first. The "DO NOT ENTER" warning is not a joke.

Junction roads that look like long, thick straight lines are highways. These are a separate type of junction that serve as an in-between level for other junctions.

Consider them breather roads, "easy streets", whatever you want to call them. They are effectively a straight line with very few obstacles or Anomalies, and can be used to bypass unpleasant junctions altogether if you so like.
There is an instability storm timer in these junctions, but it's slow, as is the storm's speed when it activates.

The catch is that these have no Anchor energy and no real resources to speak of. There may be a few cars to scrap and/or siphon, a couple of houses, a couple of ARDA trailers, etc. to grab things, but that's about all you're getting; there are no primary biome resources.

Consider whether or not you want the breather room or to skip, say, a Swift Storm junction coupled with Fuel Evaporation. Probably not the worst idea if you're trying to get straight to a late-game biome; if you stop at all the other junctions fill up on resources early you might find yourself half-dead with a full trunk by the time you make it there.

• Junctions that are denoted in white can be interacted with via the scanner. Brown/yellow ones cannot.
  
• If a junction has a wavy red/orange cloud surrounding it on the map, that indicates a junction under "Swift Storm" and you should plan on spending as little time in that junction as possible, as you will have very little safe time in that junction.

• Most story-relevant locations are much larger than the individual junctions. Plan accordingly for a longer duration trip.
  
• All story-relevant locations are denoted with the "Peaceful Stability" condition, meaning you can take as long as you need to in order to complete all the objectives and farm resources. HOWEVER...
  
• With some story missions, while opening a gateway early and escaping is technically possible, the map will not really be designed with that in mind. A good example is getting through the wall to the Deep Zone: while gateways exist and can be opened on a technicality, there are unmarked giant obstacles that will make a lot of what would be otherwise straight-shot routes completely impossible. Sometimes you can abuse the game's jank and the teleport functionality to get out of this, but I don't recommend it as a first order of operations as you may get a bad roll on gateway options and be forced to quit regardless.
  
• With a handful of exceptions, completing a story objective in a relevant junction will trigger an instability storm. Be sure before you complete all objectives that the Driver and the Remnant are both in good shape before completing the final objective. You do not want to complete a long story mission after driving through seven junctions to get there only to die at the escape.

So you're done with the current run and you want to head back to the garage. You need to open the Gateway to do so.

The potential Gateway locations are marked by diamonds on the minimap. You cannot be too close to a gateway in order to open it (represented by the diamond showing up as red on the minimap); in order to open the gateway, it needs to be yellow/orange. If you want to see the radius required to make the gateway available for opening, hover your cursor over it and you should see a yellow circle. Past the edge of that circle is the minimum acceptable distance.
Click on your minimap, then pick the gateway icon you want to use, and hold the corresponding button to open it.

Once you open the gateway, it will trigger the instability storm. Drive towards the giant pillar of light and try not to die.
Stick to the roads whenever possible.

Being near and/or holding an Anchor exposes the Driver to Level 2.5 radiation, so be mindful of your health as you pick them up.

Anchors come in three flavors: Stable (yellow), Unstable (orange), and Corrupted (purple). You will eventually need all three types of energy to complete everything and all anchor energy counts towards the limit to open an escape gateway, so don't be afraid to collect as much as possible.

Picking up an Anchor has a chance of spawning multiple Anomalies in the Driver's general area for about half a minute. Use your judgement when deciding how close to park the car before grabbing an Anchor; sometimes the minor radiation damage might be preferable to avoiding eight-thousand angry hazards spawning on top of your car that you cannot otherwise avoid.
This can range from anything like spawning Left-Rights to causing a full-on meteor storm in the late game.

On that note: the spawning of Anomalies can be staggered out over that short time period. Keep your eyes and ears open. Just because the game only spawned one Bolt Bunny at first doesn't mean there's not more that haven't spawned in yet to vibe check you.

As a general rule: Stable Anchors will spawn in the Outer Zone, Unstable Anchors are Mid Zone, and Corrupted Anchors are Deep Zone. Having said that: there are exceptions that sometimes happen and Anchors will appear out of their standard Zones. If a Junction on the Route Planner notes that you might be able to find a certain Anchor type in a safer zone area, (e.g. Corrupted Anchors in a Mid-Zone Junction), go for it; you may be rewarded for your efforts with early tech tree unlocks.

Endless Expedition uses slightly different mechanics for Anchors; refer to that section for details.

There are quite a few potential conditions, and some I haven't even seen yet.
Rather than write it out myself, I would turn you to the wiki[pacificdrive.wiki] for more on potential junctions if there's one you have a question on. Most of them are simple like "explosions do more damage" and all of those are basically solved by "get hit less." (Also note that some conditions listed on the wiki are ones I have never seen in-game, so it probably includes some dummied out data.)

That said, there are some that you should keep an eye out for over others:

The one so pervasive the game gives you a specific warning on the map for it. Despite that, the description in-game isn't quite right.

The Instability Storm will kick in basically one minute after you enter the junction. To my knowledge, the storm actually only progresses faster on the red phase (but it is very quick on red); the yellow phase is actually quite slow. Keep any zone with this in mind when planning routes as you will likely need to fly through it.

Technically, you can open gateways on this kind of Junction, but I bear no responsibility for what happens if you choose to do so. Trying to do this in Olympic Excursion/Iron Wagon is a one-way ticket to the Shadow Realm.

Low-level radiation (Level 1) Level 2.5 (as of EE update) is present throughout the junction unless you are protected by the car, inside certain buildings/structures, or in another programmed safe zone. Your health will slowly tick away.

Move faster and do not linger.

The game makes it obvious, but: expect Bunnies. Lots of Bunnies. And sometimes Hares.

The main thing to note, however, is in which zone this condition pops up in. As far as I am aware, the types of Bunnies you can expect are Zone-dependent. The implications are: this is mostly annoying in the Outer Zone when you have maybe Bolt Bunnies at worst, worse in the Mid Zone when acid comes into play, and could be absolutely terrifying in the Deep Zone when you're getting roving squads of suicide bombers.

Not usually a huge problem, sometimes even a blessing in disguise, but can be very annoying if you don't work around it.

All Tourists are more likely to follow you around if you don't look at them, and there's always a lot of Tourists in any given map with this on.
Trust me when I say you need to triple-check every time you want to reverse the car in a junction with this condition active because you may find yourself backing into eighteen exploding mannequins that weren't there a second ago, which could absolutely end a run on its own.

The boon is that you're bound to get goodies from the Tourists at some point.

Taking any electrical damage will cause the car to rocket forward as though you touched a Glittering Boulder. This will happen even with the engine off and the transmission set to "park."

This condition can really suck for two reasons. One is that getting shocked will usually propel your car into a hazard, which will all too often be another electrical hazard, causing a cycle of pain that you won't get out of without a lot of damage to the car.

Two is that this condition makes the Lightning Rod a liability, so you have that much less of a buffer to avoid shock damage in the first place.

The Handbrake could save your life here. Remember it.

This junction is stupidly dark; you will absolutely need working headlights and flashlights to even see anything, and even with that your visibility is very limited. This condition turns the game into a genuine horror game.

This is mostly an issue in the Outer Zone, where you need to watch out for Wriggling Wrecks before they jumpscare your car's health away.

This screws up your normal flow by making Anchors impossible to distinctly see on the minimap. This is the main reason you'd want to have an Anchor Energy Radar on standby.

Try to avoid making one of these Junctions a gateway exit, because unless you came in with enough energy to open the gate on entry, you're probably sealing your fate.

Pulling the anchor will speed up the timer for the instability storm, so be mindful of how the Anchors are placed in the map, and if it's worth risking trying to loot the whole place.

The game's wording makes it sound like pulling an Anchor will instantly kick off the storm, but in my experience that is not true.

All battery usage/drainage is roughly tripled.

Fuel not only drains much faster when used, from what I can tell, it also drains even when the car is turned off.

Explosive damage drains battery charge and fuel, so mind the Tourists.

Dying in this junction means you won't leave behind a Remnant Ghost and all your stuff in it will be gone. So don't die.

Well, don't die in general. But especially don't die here.

This one's more annoying than lethal, but it is really annoying to be sure.

In this junction, after you exit the Remnant for a couple of seconds, it will come to life of its own accord--even with the parking brake on and the ignition off--and the car will turn its headlights on and honk (to let you know it is active) while slowly navigating towards you.

In this state, the car can hit you for some damage if it runs into you. The car is not generally smart enough to navigate around anything, so if you have to exit the car, don't be out for long and leave it pinned against something.

Upon re-entering, the car's transmission will be shifted to "drive" even if you left it in "park", so be mindful.

Spark Towers do more damage and have less cooldown in between their attacks. Not usually a problem, but I do want to note that a 3-gen Spark Tower can be a right pain to break with this condition in effect due to them spacing you out, and sometimes you're better off not wasting time or effort on doing so.

Your car parts fall off much, much more easily when damaged. Normally not an issue in the game proper but this condition can be extremely annoying if you lose a door due to something coughing 10 feet away from you.

This is limited to the Mires biome in the Mid Zone. All standing water does low-level acid damage, meaning effectively you should never touch water ever in any junction where this is active. The waterway acid damage isn't as harmful to the Driver as the standard acid projectiles produced by most anomalies, but it will still really mess up the car.

Almost the entire map is covered in one large Acid Storm. This sucks and is ideally best avoided or sped through as quickly as possible.

Exactly what it sounds like. Insult to injury, as it were. If you must go through one of these junctions, exercise extra caution; the fuel depletion from taking acid damage sucks. If you are running a fuel-heavy engine build, plan accordingly. I've seen this combined with other acid-related conditions, in which case you should probably just not take that route and hope the game cycles conditions for the next run.

Deep Zone condition that causes the entire map to rain Fallen Firmaments. This sucks and is ideally best avoided, or if you can't, sped through as quickly as possible.

You have unlimited time; there is no instability storm unless you trigger a gateway. Excellent for farming runs.

More anchors than usual. Go nuts.

Picture this:

You're picking bits off of someone's old sedan when suddenly the screen is turning an angry shade of red and yellow and the music starts getting scary. In a panic, you get into the car and start smashing your way to the nearest safety point.

Your car is broken, and you have to fix a blown-out tire and broken windshield! And you're dying while doing it. You're barely hanging on as you fix the car, but in a panic, you get back in and drive off a cliff. You get out and start teleporting the car, when the screen goes berserk and everything is red and oh god what I SPENT A HALF HOUR IN THIS AREA WHY

...then everything goes black and you wake up at the garage.

Congrats, you've had a firsthand taste of the game's intended time limit mechanic: Instability storms. These will kill unprepared players and, on the higher difficulty settings, they'll be the real test of how well you came prepared.

Unless the zone in question is marked with "Perpetual Stability", you have a time limit from when you enter the area. The clock on the Route Planner should give you a rough estimate of how long you have vs. other areas; if it reads "low" or "none" then do not plan on spending much time in the zone.

The game gives off multiple warnings when the time limit is up and the zone starts to collapse:

• You'll hear a mechanical noise followed by air-raid sirens. There are two variants: three higher-pitched sirens repeated (for the yellow storm) and a longer lower-pitched siren (for the red storm). Either one is a sign that you should start wrapping up business. Air raid sirens IRL are used to denote really bad things (hence the name) so this ought to be your actual cue to leave; the devs made them loud on purpose so you cannot miss them and they are heard universally in the environment, even while you are in the inventory screen(s).
  
• The minimap in your car will start displaying a yellow ring as it closes in around the area. This is the lesser-damaging of the storms, but ideally you don't want to stick around in it. You'll know the storm has caught up to you when you hear a loud "whoosh" and the screen is surrounded in yellow mist. This storm deals Level 5 radiation damage.
  
• As the storm progresses the minimap console will display different messages alerting you to how screwed you are ("Storm Warning" --> "Storm Incoming" --> "DANGER"). If it gets to "DANGER" on anything other than a player-initiated gateway exit, you have probably screwed up big time.
  
  
• At some point, the yellow storm will be followed by a red storm (usually looks like a squiggly-lined circle). You should be getting out before the red circle starts catching up to you because the radiation from the red storm is extremely damaging to both the car and the player. This storm deals Level 10 radiation damage and will kill you quickly even with maxed out protection. If the red storm catches you, the screen and the music will go absolutely ballistic with noises that would give the Psycho soundtrack goosebumps.
  
  Triggering an escape gateway will kick-start the storm countdown if it wasn't already in play, and accelerate any storm in progress. The storm kickoff isn't instant--I believe your head-start is based on the time you had remaining--but you won't have long to GTFO.
  
  Sometimes you'll see a purple triangle on the minimap during a storm. This is a payload, a container full of random items. Depending on your proximity and current condition, it can either be schmuck bait or a welcome gift. Don't die just for the sake of picking them up, but if you can take the risk, use your judgement. Sometimes payloads carry fun items, like unique Large Fuel Cans that fill and empty twice as quickly as the standard fuel cans.
  
  Nota bene: if the environment is marked with the "Swift Storm" instability, do not plan on stopping for resources. Drive on through as swiftly as you can or make your way to an exit as soon as possible.
  
  
  Some tips for dealing with storms
  • If you're not in a Peaceful Stability environment, you are always on a timer. Check that clock on the Route Planner.
    
  • Do not panic. Bad driving and bad decisions will only compound into failure if you screw up because the yellow ring scared you. Some radiation damage is preferable to busting up the entire car in a panic.
    
  • Keep repair items on hand in the car at all times, and heal the car if parts are damaged before an escape attempt. Given the choice, it's better to be safe and use the repair items ahead of time than have half your car dissolved in a storm (shortly before the Driver follows suit).
    
  • If you're in a zone where you can't escape via gateway, budget your time and don't wander too far off the beaten path; the roads are usually a safe bet even if they aren't the most direct route.
    
  • Speaking of that, use the minimap and scout ahead of time if possible for gateway exit strategies. You want to avoid elevation changes as much as possible when scoping out a gateway point. Uphill is bad because your car literally may not make it uphill in a direct route on engine power alone (often requiring a roundabout road that will take more time), and downhill is usually more manageable but can still be ugly. Going off a cliff may result in in heavy damage at best, and needing to teleport a flipped car out of trouble at worst.
    
  • If going downhill, don't go full throttle as that will likely result in sending your car plummeting down the cliff into pure pain. Instead, ease your car downhill with the brakes until you hit flatter land, and mind the trees on the way down.

The Anomalies are your biggest problem in most of the game. Some are actively hostile enemies, most are obstacles, and a few are beneficial. This section will outline the basics of each Anomaly type and how to best deal with them. Bypassing them entirely is preferential if possible, but knowing how to dance with each one is the best means of avoiding damage in the zone.

Listed in order of least to most dangerous:

• Broken Bunny (minor direct damage; inflicts "confusion" on the car until the Bunny is knocked off)
  
• Dust Bunny (minor radiation damage)
  
• Bolt Bunny (minor electric damage)
  
• Burp Bunny (acid damage)
  
• Boom Bunny (explosive blast)

This game's closest equivalent to Goombas. They usually come in packs and deal different types of damage to the car, albeit not usually enough to hurt much.

Their means of attack is getting in the car's front field of view, then leaping at the car once they've maintained that general field of view for a while. They give off an audible noise when making the leap as your cue to juke them.
They're easy to avoid if you're actively moving: the second you hear them leap, just turn and drive forward, and they should basically never hit you. They can be easily juked even with starter equipment.
They are not smart enough to navigate around obstacles in preparing for the jump, and can get stuck on random objects. You can get in their way with the Driver when they jump, in which case they will do some damage to the Driver and fall straight to the floor after contact. Not usually a lot of damage, but it should be noted.
In some cases if the Remnant is not around, a Bunny may directly target the driver after spawning. Pay close attention if you are away from the car when picking up Anchors; getting vibe-checked by a surprise Boom Bunny (or several) is not a fun time.

In the event they latch onto the car or any surface, any damage including a simple kick will dislodge them and immediately stop their damage from taking effect on the car. Really, any tool will work, but the kick is free and has low cooldown.
They damage in "ticks" every second or so when they are actively latched onto something.
Bunnies can be destroyed with any tool for usually metal parts, and on rare occasions you might find stickers and the like. Dust Bunnies can yield Lead, Bolt Bunnies can yield Plasma, and I haven't tested Burp Bunnies but I imagine they can yield Tree Candy.
They can be picked up and thrown at nearby wrecked cars to scrap them, although it will take longer than scrapping them. Burp Bunnies are fairly efficient at this compared to the others.

Broken Bunnies are mostly a nuisance, as are Dust Bunnies (radiation damage is small potatoes compared to every other damage type but you don't want them on the car anyway; they seemingly put out damage quicker than Hot Dust/yellow storm radiation).
Bolt Bunnies are a worse problem because of how damaging electricity can be, and the same applies for Burp Bunnies as acid is the most damaging element in the game. While their damage ticks are minor compared to other Anomalies, you don't want them on the car long enough to cause real damage.
Boom Bunnies are late-game enemies and do not stick to the car; instead, they explode on contact after leaping or being thrown. Not only does this make them a right pain to scan, like all explosions in this game, they hurt.

Abductors are obsessed with Bunnies and will slowly move towards them. If an Abductor grabs a Bunny, it will camp that Bunny forever, getting two things out of your hair at the same time.

• Happy Hare (restores health)
  
• Hopped-Up Hare (restores battery)

The good counterparts to Bunnies. Hares are rare even in The Warrens. But they're always a blessing to have around.

Hopped-Up Hares are obvious; as long as they are latched onto your car, they will continuously restore the car's battery.
Happy Hares slowly heal whatever car part they are attached to. The healing pulse from Happy Hares also affects the Driver if the Driver is close enough, so you can use them as free medkits. Just be wary of the storm timer or any other nearby threats when abusing this.

They can be knocked off by damage or running into Potholes, so be aware of that.

Abductors are obsessed with Hares and will slowly move towards them. If an Abductor grabs a Hare, it will camp that Hare forever. If you remove the Hare from the Abductor's drop point and put it back on your car, it will slowly pursue the car to get the Hare back. As far as I know that aggro never goes away.

These annoying jerks will mostly float about the area. Once their searchlight passes over loose items, your car, or you, they will pick the thing in question up with their magnetic crane attachment and fly a short distance away, then drop it. If the Driver is grabbed, they will suffer minor damage from the grab (and may potentially suffer fall damage).

They are best dealt with using flares if you have to, though really any throwable item can work. Throw the item at the ground where the searchlight is heading. You will almost certainly have to lead your shot.

Abductors are obsessed with Bunnies and Hares. If one is near the Abductor, the Abductor will (slowly) beeline for it, and once the Anomaly in question is grabbed, the Abductor will stand guard over it and not leave.
If you remove the Bunny/Hare from beneath the searchlight, they will eventually chase that Bunny/Hare down to grab it again unless another one is spawned/thrown to distract them.

These send slow-moving lightning arcs towards the player or the car, depending on which is closest within range. The lightning hurts and you don't want to get hit by it.
When all the Plasma Generators connected to the Tower are destroyed, the Spark Tower is "killed."
There is a cooldown on the lightning. Bait it out away from each generator, then move in and smash the gen with an Impact Hammer. Repeat until dead. Collect Plasma.

These incredible crash test dummies are (usually) stationary and will explode when hit with a sufficient force. Dashing into them can produce the same effect, so watch out when sprinting in a darkened area lest you hit one. When you look away from them, there is a chance they will move closer to the Driver. They cannot move while you are looking at them.
The explosion hurts and you want to avoid risking it with a kick. They are best dealt with via flares or another suitable throwable.
The explosion can set off other Tourists, so watch out for that. They have a chance of dropping Plastic (common) or Thermosap Crystals (rare) after they explode.

Tourists, when near the driver, will also have a chance to throw out goodies. More often than not it's piles of Fabric or Plastic, but I've also seen them throw out First Aid Kits and Anchors worth a substantial amount of energy.

A more dangerous tourist. Usually less numerous but their electricity makes up for it.
They can daisy-chain currents when near Plasma Generators, Minutemen, or each other, so watch out.
When exploded, they release two sparks in a V that travel along the ground in a straight line for a medium distance. They have a chance of dropping Plastic or Plasma.

Electricity-conducting mini-towers. They show up with other Anomalies. Avoid getting close; their hitbox is bigger than it looks. They pop out of the ground, remain stationary, then disappear after a minute.
They can daisy-chain currents when near Shocked Tourists, Minutemen, or each other, so watch out.

(cont. from part 1)
An electric current that moves around and spawns MInutemen as it travels. These are very annoying at best and lethal at worst, so watch out and keep your eyes and ears peeled for one.

What makes Crawlers so aggravating is that they remain a persistent threat throughout junctions, and as far as I'm concerned there's never just one on any given junction. If one is camping near an important objective, you may have to play the waiting game for it to go away first. I am pretty sure they seek out the car if it's within a certain range, but I am not 100% confident on this.

Looks like a quivering pile of scrap metal. Should the Remnant get close, it will encircle the nearby area in Minutemen. After a few seconds, then it will send out an electric that does LOTS of damage.

These are probably the most dangerous electrical hazard since you cannot always reasonably escape them once triggered and they hurt, so keep watch for these at all costs if you are in a known area with electrical Anomalies. See "Parts, pt. 2" for more details on dealing with them.

These horrifying-looking balloon things hop high into the air until you get close.

Getting close with the Driver will result in the Driver getting hit by something with very minor damage and pushed backwards. Getting close with the car, on the other hand, will make it spawn a Glittering Boulder before it bounces away to another point on the map, leaving a trail for you to follow.

Chase it enough times and it will eventually leave behind a container full of goodies.

Looks like a purple ink-blob monster. If you drive within aggro range, the Remnant will be hit with "confusion" or whatever the electromagnetic storms inflict. Once aggroed, it then crawls towards the Remnant in slow bursts, and will not stop until either it reaches the Remnant and explodes or you pop it first.

You can technically intercept the Scrambler and it will explode on you instead of the car, but for obvious reasons I do not recommend that.

Use a Flare gun to pop it from a distance. Thrown Flares can also work, but you need to be more precise with your throw than you would think.

Very annoying jellyfish-lookalikes that can be solo but usually come in groups of two or three. When the Driver or the Remnant get close, they reach out with an appendage and pull you towards them.

If the Driver is holding something, they will usually snatch it out of your hands. This includes things like Anchors and parts you might be holding. The object-snatching can be avoided by upgrading to the sticky gloves at the Outfitting Station, but this will not stop them from grabbing you specifically.

They can be distracted by throwing Flares, but it doesn't take long for them to get bored.

If an Abductor happens to be near an item the Bubblegum Buddies are grabbing, they will squabble with each other over the item over and over again, usually allowing you free pass to leave. Just make sure it isn't something important to you.

They look like smaller Abductors. These ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hover in one place until the Driver (holding an object) or the Remnant comes close, then yank whatever is most convenient and fly away for a bit. They will not let go of the object until you wrest it from them. When holding a stolen item, their siren goes off so you can both see and hear them to get your item back.

Extremely annoying, and unless distracted ahead of time with a flare, they are guaranteed to yank something off the car. Losing a panel is bad enough, but they can also grab storage racks. If you're escaping a storm and pass by one of these, give them a wide berth when passing by or say goodbye to your items.

Infuratingly, the LIM-pulse Emitter does not stop them from yanking your parts.

Cousin to the Crackling Crawler with a pink paintjob. These things wander around randomly and deal piercing damage to anything they make contact with.

Unlike Crawlers, they do not appear to seek you out and instead seemingly move around randomly. While they're not exactly quick, they hurt; expect high damage and a "broken/cracked/etc." on any part that involves glass or lightbulbs if they nick it.

These spawn Ticking Tumblers instead of Minutemen.

These resemble lit explosive boxes that jitter in place and will slowly tumble around like Tox Boxes from Super Mario 64. They will explode either after a minute, when rammed with the car, or when popped with a Flare/etc. Explosions hurt, so don't get close.

Sometimes interacting with an Explosive Crate will turn it into one of these; if this happens, channel your inner football/rugby player and throw it far away. Look for cracks in an Explosives Box before interacting with it; if the box is visibly cracked, it's probably a Ticking Tumbler lying in wait. The worst thing you can do here is panic and immediately drop it at your feet, because it will explode right at your feet. I'm not proud to admit I almost lost an Iron Wagon file to doing that.

Floating rocks that really don't do anything. They will knock off any Bunnies/Hares on the car if they bump any. That's about it.

Pillars that spawn from the ground and rise up. Usually annoying, occasionally will pop up in front of your car for you to smack into.

They will launch the Driver if the Driver is standing on one, and if you are holding something (for example, an Anchor) the item will usually fall out of your hands.

These light-blue/white ground-based aurora borealis-looking things launch your car and/or the Driver high into the air when moved over. Usually wrecked tow trucks will have these appended to them.

They do not hurt by themselves, but fall damage can, so try to avoid them.

They shoot out air from the floor like geysers.

They will launch the Driver if the Driver is standing on one, and if you are holding something (for example, an Anchor) the item will usually fall out of your hands.
They do not hurt by themselves, but fall damage can, so try to avoid them.

Neon green/yellow field that deals Level 5 radiation damage; they're freaking everywhere in this game so you'll figure them out real soon.

Hot Mist is unusual among the "damaging field" anomalies in that, aside from the stationary fields that spawn in when a level loads, it is also the only one the game can dynamically spawn in to harass you with (and de-spawn after a period of time). The game will do this sometimes when you grab Anchors, or when you're taking too long in one spot and the game wants you to hurry, where it will spawn in multiple at a time in an area.
There is an audio and visual warning when Hot Mist spawns; you will hear a "fft-fft-fft" as a small light burst appears, followed by a low "whoooom" when the field starts to materialize. When you hear and see this happen, it's your cue to bail out of the immediate area.

Usually no biggie to quickly drive through, just don't park in it.

Field of electric damage. Avoid.

Swirling purple-and-orange wind gusts.

These don't damage the car directly, but they cause "confusion" which basically forces control out of your hands for a while and makes the car go haywire for several seconds, so you should nonetheless avoid them.

A buzzsaw that travels back-and-forth in a set line. The red streak on the floor indicates their travel path. There is a long wind-up in between each back-and-forth, so exploit that to get past them if you cannot simply avoid them altogether.

These are easy to avoid and it's usually your fault if you get hit by one, but if you do, expect to repair at least one flat.

These puddles hurt your tires and deal minor damage to whatever moves over them. Expect to fix at least one flat if you hit one with the car.

These fallen-tree-lookalikes hurt your tires and deal moderate damage to whatever moves over them. Expect to fix at least one flat if you hit one with the car, and expect some impact damage to go along with it.

Looks like a shiny gold rock that spins slowly and emanates light. When the Remnant touches this, the Remnant will immediately accelerate to maximum speed for several seconds. Does nothing to the Driver. Frequently attached to wrecked tow trucks as makeshift speed ramps.

Most of the time you want to avoid these; accelerating full-speed for several seconds in this game is usually a one-way ticket into unavoidable damage, and inertia is a cruel mistress. There are a couple of spots, however, where the speed boost is needed to access certain areas. Use judiciously.

These look like any other wrecked car, but when approached, they shoot out flares in all directions with the intent of attracting nearby Anomalies. The main way to tell the difference is that a Honeypot will usually have a road sign nearby written in complete gibberish.

Usually they are harmless, and can be opened/scrapped like any other wreck.

A buzzsaw that travels back-and-forth in a set line, visible by the red streak on the floor. There is a long wind-up in between each back-and-forth, so exploit that to get past them.

They look scarier than they actually are; if you get hit by one it's almost certainly your fault. Expect a flat tire at minimum if one hits the car.

Looks like neon-green Hot Dust/Sizzling Mist. It's that, but acid. Avoid at all costs; they hurt.

These massive acid blobs bounce around like Flubber in zero-gravity. Upon landing, they leave smaller acid mines ("Rotten Eggs") and splash smaller acid blobs around. Drive by as quickly as you can. Acid stays when it hits the floor, so watch out and drive carefully so you ideally don't run over a blob by accident.

Should you be dumb enough to drive through them with the Car, it will deal both radiation and acid damage. They should never be in a position to directly hit you; the Rotten Eggs are much more of a threat.

It's basically a volcano that pukes acid blobs everywhere. Drive by as quickly as you can. Acid stays when it hits the floor, so watch out and drive carefully so you ideally don't run over a blob by accident.

They look like huge Belching Barnacles and in practice are basically a Belching Barnacle+; treat accordingly.

The acidic blobs left behind by other Anomalies. Avoid or wait for them to dissipate.

Field of rapid impact damage. Avoid or tank it with the LIM Shield.

Basically Tourist+. They hurt more and have a wider model, but otherwise treat them exactly like a tourist.

These unsettling things are basically Bollards combined with Tour Buses. They can shoot up out of the ground or be prespawned in the Zone.

If hit, they explode a lot and can scatter resources. Either avoid or detonate them just like a Tourist.

These annoying things smash the ground, cause an earthquake, and send spikes everywhere. The spikes hurt quite a bit, so avoid being near this thing as much as you can; it's got a crazy effective range.

A.K.A. meteors. These awful things come into play very late game. Massive pillars that rain from the sky; when they land, they spread a Level 10 radiation field nearby.

While one is not a problem, there is never just one, as these are spawned by either weather squalls or by a certain zone condition late in the game. Dodge them as well as you can and move on through the area.

These green speaker-tower piles send out healing pulses to the Remnant when the Remnant is parked near them. They are almost never on the roads, but you can identify them by the green glow and low humming noise they emanate.

They have a limited healing supply; exactly how much is unconfirmed. Their AoE is limited, so if you are touching one with your front bumper it will probably not reach the rear door/bumper; you might have to shuffle the car around if you want all your parts healed.

Similarly to the Happy Hare, while it will not heal the Driver if you just walk up to one absent the car, if you get the Remnant in range and then get out of the car while standing close by, the healing pulses will also affect the Driver. Remember this; it will save you resources.

These things that look like piles of scientific equipment will charge the car's battery as you get close.

They have inventory slots; if you put stuff into them, you might get something back in return. I do not have an exact list of that; it can be found at this guide here.

These technically aren't anomalies, but they might as well be, so they're getting their own section.

When you see large green blobs scooting around the minimap, get ready for one of these.

Outer Zone. Very strong winds capable of blowing the car about, albeit not much. This can screw with your driving. A blessing in disguise if you have a Mini-Turbine or two.

This is mostly an annoyance on lower difficulties but the stronger modifiers for driving dynamics in OE/IW can make this a legitimate problem. The less armored/lower on the tech tree your panels are, the more the car will be affected by the winds (a full Olympium car can almost pretend this weather doesn't exist).

Outer Zone. Rain and lightning. The rain will mess with your car's handling and also give you free battery juice if you have a Hydro Converter and/or Mini Turbines attached. The lightning is sadly just for show, and you will not get free energy off it with a Lightning Rod.

Causes bollards to pop up constantly. Very annoying at best and an outright hindrance at worst; you are effectively forced to drive slowly through this one lest you get Wily E. Coyote'd by a random bollard popup.

Also spawns Shakers as you navigate the area, so watch where you drive.

Causes your car to go nuts (honking, lights flickering, and the map will disappear periodically) but thankfully this doesn't wrest control from the vehicle while you're inside like a Left-Right anomaly does. That said, if you step outside the car, it can move on its own in a manner similar to how the Turncoat condition functions.

Not lethal, but the incessant honking is very annoying. The main risk here is having no control over your headlights. Watch your battery power, especially on the AMP engine.

This weather condition will also spawn Left-Rights and Glittering Boulders en masse as you navigate through it, so watch where you drive.

Mid Zone. Exactly what it sounds like: these drop huge blobs of acid. The rain itself is technically a DoT, albeit a very slowly damaging DoT, and the acid of course hurts. Avoid if possible, or drive through and do not stop.

Deep Zone. Constantly rains Fallen Firmaments.
Unlike the acid blobs, I have never been directly hit by a meteor, but that could just be dumb luck on my part; I am sure that if any are capable of directly targeting the Driver or car, you're probably dead if you get hit by one. Not that they need to directly impact you to do damage, as the constant presence of Level 10 radiation is more than capable of putting serious hurt on you and the car.
Avoid if possible, or drive through and do not stop.

Learn how the car handles, and learn to avoid direct damage.

This is not just a declaration of "git gud." Usually having to do heavy repairs mid-run is a sign something has gone very wrong. Learning how the car handles when no active or moving hazards are around is good. Learning to dodge anomalies is the easiest way to prevent untimely incidents, since 99.9% of the damage you'll take is frontloaded from anomalies.

Always, always bring repair supplies. The longer the trip and the later you are in the game, the more it will benefit you.

At all times you should have a full stack of three First Aid Kits, Battery Chargers (or a Prod), Repair Putty (or a Blowtorch, possibly both), etc. The only ones I'd say aren't as crucial are Lightbulb Kits. But for all the others, you will curse needing them and not having them when things go wrong.

Use it to keep a healthy circulation of parts going at all times. If something gets dinged up, stick it in and replace it with a fresh part. Repeat and swap out parts every visit or two as needed. This will help immensely with resource economy.

The reconstructor will even fix negative status effects on parts, as long as that status effect isn't "worn" or whatever else is the fatigued equivalent. It can fix cracked doors, but it can't fix bald tires.
I would imagine it also can't fix "blown out" tires, but I've literally never had one go out on me like that, so I can't say for sure.

This is by far the most efficient means of gathering resources from things. Not just dumpster pearls and worn parts, but you can throw Paints and Decals you don't want in there. Paints are an excellent source of Chemicals, and Decals yield Fabrics.

If you unload your trunk then start a fresh run with a Scrapper that dies after one car, guess what, you're not doing much unless you loot every single trunk along the way just to scrounge up the parts to make another scrapper.

Make sure your tools are fresh before leaving to avoid locking yourself out of resources. I still forget to do this from time to time and I feel embarrassed each time it happens.

One thing that probably goes overlooked by players is the "quick heal" button. By default the "quick heal" key is V, although this can be changed.

"So what," I hear you say, "it's an autokey that replaces actually going into the menu and equipping your healing items, big whoop."

Well, here's a few things you might not know:

• The quick-heal keybind will automatically prioritize the lowest-value to highest-value healing items. So any canned food will be used first, then MREs, then First Aid Kits.
  
• Unlike everything else in the game, you can do this while performing other interactions, including...
  
• You can use the quick-heal while actually driving the car. This is not recommended in real-life for obvious reasons, but if you have the dexterity to hit all the required keys (or just rebind it to a side button on your gaming mouse or something, IDK) you can heal up damage for free en route to, say, the exit gateway while a storm is eating you alive. This should not be relied on to tank gateway storm damage, but being able to tag yourself with a First Aid Kit while driving to the gateway might just save your life sometimes.
  
• If you're getting in the car and sitting down, hitting and holding the quick-heal while getting in the car is just enough to pop a canned food in the time it takes to get in the driver's seat. It isn't much, but every bit helps.

In between runs at the garage, there will always be the following resources:

• Two uses of the Friendly Dumpster. The Dumpster is supposed to give you better stuff the worse shape you are in, so trigger this before anything else (repairing the car, etc.) for best results. If you die and lose everything, the Dumpster should at least give you enough to get back on the road. Note that the parts it gives you are not built to last.
  
• A wrecked car just outside the garage to salvage. Be sure to loot the trunk.
  
• On the shelves right next to the wrecked car, there will always be a Radio and Computer to scrap. These actually respawn on save/load, so you can abuse those for parts if you really need to; it's just tedious to keep at it for a while.

There are a couple of types of areas that are effectively safe zones from the general elements in the zone.

Inside buildings, you are safe from Level 1 radiation (relevant mostly for Nuclear Journey/Olympic Excursion/Iron Wagon but you should know nonetheless). Level 2.5 and higher radiation will override this, so be mindful.

Inside plot-relevant areas such as antenna towers or stabilizers where you have to flip switches, etc. you are safe from Level 1 radiation.

The exit gates between Junctions (not Gateways back to the garage, but the transitions between zones) are effectively safe zones from pretty much everything except maybe direct attacks from Remnants and Level 10 radiation (red storm). If you have the patience, you can make use of the exit gate safety zones to park your car, fix things up, fix the Driver up, refuel, etc. and the yellow storm wall basically can't do anything to you.
There is a limit to this, however. Once the red storm wall activates, the "safety zone" wears off and you will start taking damage as usual.

While honking the horn is fun, it will also attract some anomalies towards your location. Normally this is bad, but if you think outside the box, you can use it for messing with the anomaly AI.

Do not do this for your first go at the game. Or even second. Please don't. This is not representative of the game's intended difficulty curve.

It's not just the reduced timers before storms, or the faster storms period, or the more damaging literally everything, or the part where you need more resources to craft things, or the fact that your battery and gas drain faster, or that the game forces longer distances to trigger gateways so you're basically guaranteed yellow-storm damage no matter how you prepare, or the fact that driving-altering conditions affect the car that much more (slow to a crawl in mud even with Offroad Tires), or the fact that you can't craft car-repairing supplies mid-run, or the universal low radiation damage constantly eating away at your health unless you're in the car or inside certain buildings/safe zones...

It's all of the above. Olympic Excursion is a lot to deal with. Iron Wagon is all the meanness of OE with added permadeath. The game's expectations for stat checks only get worse as you go further into the Zone.

These difficulties effectively have to be played by milking Perpetual Stability zones for all they're worth as you leapfrog through any timed zones. You can take no hits on the way into a story mission and find yourself dead in the water because you got hard-checked on fuel since you had to go through three Swift Storm zones without being able to slow down.
It kinda looks like this throughout most of the game, if I'm being honest.

In some cases, you have to forego any spots for gathering materials to keep them occupied with supplies and car equippables just to make it though. It turns a game with an already slow macroprogression into an even slower game.
The story missions themselves all take place in gigantic maps where you have to meticulously ration gas, and they'll stretch out runs like crazy. Hope you kept supplies on hand to fix yourself up before the gateways hit!

Binge these difficulties at your own risk.

Some things to note if you're willing to take the plunge:

• Watch the Driver's health at all times. Increased damage + permanent ambient radiation = bad times. You will need to ration your First Aid Kits and never go on a run without at least one. Gathering resources not only takes time but also health. Act efficiently.
  
• The most difficult part is the early-to-mid game before you've unlocked good parts. That isn't to say the latter parts of the game are easy but around The Visions you will have had time to unlock better parts, more HP, better harm mitigation capabilities, etc. Dealing with mandatory storms and Wriggling Wrecks when you're on nothing but Crude parts, though? Hoo boy.
  
• If you're competent at otherwise avoiding damage (which you should be if you're even thinking about these difficulties), you want to rush the tech tree for Lead-Paneled parts as quickly as possible. You can dodge, juke, and prevent other things, but you will not be outrunning the storms. Leaning into radiation protection for this reason alone makes life much easier and will give you lots more wiggle room when the storms inevitably catch up to you.
  
• The Lightning Rod is your best friend in the Outer Zone, if for no other reason than it makes Wriggling Wrecks much less miserable to deal with. See the "Parts" sections for further details.
  
• Until you've unlocked the Turbolight Engine, taking two Summer Tires up front and two Offroad Tires in back is probably the best option for wheels. Unlike the default difficulty, the affected driving dynamics actually do make Offroad Tires somewhat harder to work with on-road. Having a mix is not the worst idea until you can unlock All-Terrain Tires or the Turbolight Engine, which has a high enough speed that it will offset the worse performance.
  
• Unlock at least one Large Fuel Can as early as possible. Having the fallback fuel capability at any given time will be a lifesaver early on.
  
• Unlocking at least a Backseat Tank when possible is also a good idea. Fuel gets drained much faster than normal. A backseat Battery upgrade will be nice to have but isn't as urgent a need.
  
• Having a Side Storage with a LFC and at least one stack of three repair parts that aren't Lightbulb Replacment Kits will save you lots of grief.
  
• The first attempts at the Mid-Zone are another ugly difficulty spike. Acid will instantly send anything below full-health Steel panels to the Shadow Realm, and if you hit a Cough Box during a gateway escape, that's probably GG right there.
  
• Your first major stat check will be the "The Visions" mission in the Mires. Be sure you have at least one if not two LFCs and a backseat tank going in; this is a very long mission and failure to plan ahead will leave you dead in the metaphorical water without gas in your tank.
  
• Meteorite Squalls in the Deep Zone go from "extremely annoying" to "potentially game-ending hazard". Be aware of pulling any Anchors in the Deep Zone, because you might trigger one of these in doing so, and if the squall tracks you, the rest of your abbreviated life is going to be unpleasant.

Endless Expeditions are a subsection of the main game added in the April 2024 update that, while technically post-main-story content, can be done at any time during a save file. These expeditions are accessed through a sub-menu on the Route Planner by putting in the special hard drive Francis sends you.

Steam user Sev097 has already made a solid guide on expeditions as a whole, so go support other fans of this game and give it a look. I won't be going over everything that EE has to offer, just some base things to keep in mind; I'll let you discover the rest.

Despite what the name might indicate, these are not really endless. Effectively, they are independent runs that entail their own mechanics separate from the main game. The runs scale ever-upward in difficulty as you complete them and can be repeated as many times as you want.

These are wholly optional and are not required to complete the game's primary story. There's barely any story to be had here, as far as I'm concerned.

Endless Expedition runs, regardless of the difficulty options you have preset in the main file, are all based on difficulty settings from the "Pacific Drive" difficulty. This overrides your settings on a given save file and cannot be changed, and it returns to your previous settings when the Z.E.T.I. drive is ejected from the system. Think of them as increasingly-difficult iterations of the default settings that you get when you turn on the game for the first time. So if you die during an endless run, you still lose your car's parts, you still lose most of your items, etc.

As far as I can tell, there are two priorities for how the current active difficulty settings are determined.

Priority one: how many Endless Expeditions you've completed.

Priority two: how far you are in the storyline *if* you haven't done any expeditions to that point in your save file. Once you start doing Expeditions, it stops auto-scaling, I think.

I tested this by starting a fresh IW file with Jumpstart and doing Expeditions from scratch (so I'm doing these with Crude parts). The expeditions start very easy with 1 or 2 maps before you can exit. The difficulty gets bumped up for each expedition you complete and make it back to the garage (more conditions in stages, more universal Expedition conditions, more maps to go through, more kLIMs to exit, etc.)

If I take one of my very old O.G. save files with the main story completed and start up the expeditions, then the expedition difficulty starts at 6 and only gets harder as I complete them.

In other words, stuff gets progressively more difficult so you can't EZ-mode grind the expeditions for good parts over and over again, and they do get harder than what you'd get from an old base-game file.

The takeaway here is that EE very slowly ramps up to being extremely rude, albeit in a different manner than something like Iron Wagon. After Difficulty 20 there is basically no real curation on the experience and you are thrown to the wolves.

One of EE's main features is blocking you from carrying lots of items in your trunk, and outright disallowing outside storage items (at least when leaving the garage) so that you are forced to consider what you're bringing with you and learn to wing it the rest of the way.
Around Difficulty 8, it hits you with the ugliest types of restrictions: you are only allowed to bring certain numbers of certain tiers of parts on the car. For example, you might be limited to a maximum of five Tier 3 parts. Which is occupied by literally any engine and, say, four All-Terrain Tires. It only gets worse as you go higher in difficulties. Plan ahead and dress your car for the routes you intend to blast through on the map.

There is an exception to these types of item restrictions, however: Unrestricted items (marked with a purple star) that Ida sells you will allow you to bypass these restrictions. There unfortunately is no guarantee you'll get good items from an Ida shop, but lucking into something like a stupid good Engine or even a Large Fuel Can will be a blessing, especially in later difficulties when you are restricted on bringing high-tier parts.

There is nothing stopping you from bringing Unrestricted parts to a normal run, but as they still accumulate wear and tear, it's best to save these for EE runs only.

Because everything is set to the default difficulty modifiers, a file that is otherwise set to permadeath mode is immune from dying in EE as long as you are in EE mode. This stops applying as soon as you take the hard drive back out in the garage.

In order to leave the Endless Expedition and return to the garage, you need to open a gateway and escape on the specific junction that allows it. All anchors are locked during Expeditions by default and require battery charge to open the lock so you can take them.

You can either hook the Anchor up to your car battery via the attached jumper cables, or you can directly taze the lock with one of your battery chargers. Different difficulties require different charge levels.

As far as I know, all Anchors in EE yield one (1) kLIM of energy.

Unlike in the main game, Anchor locations in EE do not necessarily correspond to the little dot in their giant yellow circle as you see on the minimap. Expect to drive around before laying eyes on it, and consider the circle your general guide range.

The above all means that battery usage is at a premium and needs to be rationed out like gas. Think twice before bringing that AMP Engine build.

The bad news is that Ida's wares cost metal, sometimes a lot of it. The good news is that metal is the most common scrap in the game and, if luck is smiling on you, you can get some absurdly broken items far earlier than you normally would in the tech tree.

Even better: you can scrap these late-game items for resources that you otherwise wouldn't get until much later in the game. Think about it this way: you can either spend your hard-earned Olympium Shards late in the game to get one door, or Ida can sell you an Olympium door for ~60 metal. Even better than that: it's an Unrestricted door you can use in EE runs when it would otherwise be forbidden.

You know how in the main game, the red storm has to wait their turn until the yellow storm finishes (unless it's a gateway opening)? Not so much here. Usually when the yellow storm timeout is about halfway/two-thirds done, the red storm starts coming in hot. Keep this in mind, because one major factor you'll have to deal with in EE is the threat of getting into Swift Storm territory.

First of all, I want to thank the person who gifted me this title. You know who you are.

Secondly, I want to thank Ironwood Studios for making this really off-the-wall awesome game. I loved it enough to finish it at least twice over, plus another probably seven attempts at Iron Wagon. (Some got stymied much earlier than others.

Third, if you made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope this helps, and constructive criticism is always welcome.
This should be enough to get people over the game's initial learning curve and then some. I don't want to spoil the rest of the game for anyone who hasn't beaten it, so I urge you to get to it, and experience all that Pacific Drive has to offer.

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