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Lethal Companyis all about collecting various pieces of scrap to eventually sell and hopefully meet your quota, only to immediately be hit by an even larger quota. It is, by design, a death spiral; no matter how good you do, you will eventually be hit with a quota you cannot meet.
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With that said, there are ways to keep going far longer than the average player will typically manage. This guide covers the basics of how to really start extending your runs, building wealth to afford better gear, visit expensive moons, and hopefully start beating your quota record.
General Advice
Understanding the Penalties for Dying
There are a few things you should know when collecting scrap in Lethal Company. One of the most important (and which many will figure out on their own) is that all pieces of scrap (but not equipment) on a ship disappear if your crew wipes on a moon. This doesn’t just include scrap you collected on that run, butallscrap you’ve collected and which is aboard the ship. Additionally, you will lose 20% of your current money if someone dies (or 8% of your money if you can collect their body). This penalty stacks if multiple crewmates die.
This means a total crew wipe will often make meeting your quota impossible if you all die on the second day andwilldo so if you all die on the third day.Crewmate deaths, even if you don’t wipe, can also make getting to pricier moons impossible when you otherwise would have been able to go.
In terms of wealth loss, one interesting thing to note is that Gordion (the Company Building moon) is one of the worst places to die. This is because this is often when your wealth will be highest (thus the death wealth penalty is maximized) and when death is most likely to make going to a higher level moon impossible.
Start Aggressive, Play Safe Later
With the above in mind, it’s important that a crew plays neither too passively nor too aggressively. Generally speaking,allplayers should enter a moon’s interior in the beginning. This is when the area is safest and when scrap is most dense. In the early hours, watching from the ship’s internal map and providing support isn’t usually worth the loss of a looter. Only once players start to return should you consider leaving someone behind; this is because moons get more dangerous over time, less loot is now available (since players have collected it), and having someone on the ship means that a whole crew wipe is much less likely.
Finally, many teams leave moons too early.If you can avoid a crew wipe, individual crew deaths often aren’t a big problem; they only matter if you have wealth to lose, but for much of a game, most teams spend their money soon after making it. Unless monsters are threatening the area around a ship (thus risking a total wipe), all but one crew member can often explore “to the buzzer,” potentially finding that one last piece of scrap and only risking a death that won’t penalize the team anyway. The one back on the ship can wait until the ship automatically leaves, or it gets so dangerous that they need to leave manually.
Early Game
If the goal is to maximize wealth, the general wisdom is that one should start by going to either Assurance or March. Assurance is relatively easy and very loot dense, with a crew easily able to gather enough from the moon to meet the first few quotas and often being able to make enough to reach Rend, an important paid moon, within only three days of looting.
March has roughly the same amount of interior wealth as Assurance, but is much bigger. The major benefit of March is that it has the largest number of Bee hive spawns. Bee hives can be tricky to collect, requiring a group to master kiting the Circuit Bees and to typically only bring the hives on the ship once they’re ready to leave, but they can significantly boost the total wealth collected from moons. This allows extracting more value than what the moon is “balanced” for, as the hives are treated separately to interior wealth.
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It’s also worth noting that some players will argueAdamance is superior to March. This is because Adamance has a bit more potential for interior wealth than March, with a much smaller map. However, it also has fewer exits and fewer hives.
For most groups, the choice of what moons to begin on will only matter so much. If one of the three moons above has bad weather and the others don’t, choose the moon with easier weather.What’s actually important is getting 550 worth of scrap, ideally within the first three days.This is how much you’ll need to visit Rend, an important stepping stone to the best moons.
Mid to Late Game
Once a group can afford it, they will then usually want to go to Rend (Dine is an inferior choice, but perfectly acceptable if Rend has bad weather). This moon can more than pay for the trip in a single day and is where a group can build the wealth needed to get to either Titan (which costs 700 to visit) or Artifice (which costs 1500 to visit). The blizzard on Rend can be intimidating, but getting to and from the main entrance is actually pretty simple.
If you pay to go to a moon, you’re basically “locked in,” as leaving to visit a different moon and then returning will require that you pay the cost to visit again. This means you should risk bad weather far more often on paid moons than free moons. Only if the weather is so bad that you think a wipe is likely (such as if the weather is Eclipsed) should you consider going elsewhere.
Titan and Artifice are the two end game moons. Players debate which is the best, with Artifice over twice as much to visit. Titan is theoretically easier outside and harder inside when compared to Artifice. Artifice generates slightly more wealth, meaning it’s the best moon for teams trying to push their quota to the absolute maximum, but if your team finds one easier than the other, you should typically just play the easier moon. Artifice is a moon best tackled with a full or nearly full team, as it’s a challenge that requiresserious cooperationto justify the hugely expensive trip.
You may occasionally be able to skip Rend and go right to Titan if you do very well over your initial three days (you’re extremely unlikely to get enough to afford Artifice in that window), but this may be unwise. Rend can allow you to build enough wealth to afford the expensive Titan tripandbuy some useful equipment to make the two end game moons a bit safer and easier to navigate.Notably, Spray Paint can be very useful for navigation; a series of arrows pointing to an exit can often be the difference between getting lost and getting to the ship.
Pushing Your Personal Best
At the time of writing, Lethal Company has no victory condition. Instead, it isdesigned to be replayed, with most players make it their goal to get the highest quota possible. Getting “extreme” quotas can be very hard, as you will eventually reach a point where a crew wipe willalwayslead to a loss. Moreover, you will need to increasingly become more efficient at collecting loot from moons. Even then, sometimes you might just get unlucky with loot or enemy spawns.
If you want to reach the highest quota possible, you should eventually only be running Titan and/or Artifice. One way you can further boost your ability to make quota is by only sellingsomeof your scrap when you return to the Company Building. The idea is that you sell enough to make quota (and to get to your target moon), keeping the rest for when you next return to Gordion. Assuming you don’t wipe, this will allow you to sell not just what you collect over the next three days, but also the loot you saved, which can potentially let you meet quotas you otherwise would fail to meet.
Playing perfectly, you’d theoretically want toalwayssave loot, only selling what you need.By building up a pool of extra scrap, you’d eventually be able to meet quotas impossible to meet with only three days worth of looting, extending your game for at least a few cycles. However, in practice, most crews fail far before this is a problem, through something like a crew wipe (which would also lose you any saved scrap). The Company is not, it seems,a good place to work.
Lethal Company
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