Short answer
The useful part first.
Enter a wooden vessel, take the elevator into the procedural ruins, collect resources, and extract before the whole crew is lost. Spend secured resources at the Outpost on upgrades that persist between runs.
The core loop in five steps
- Enter a vessel.
You play as a Living Spark possessing a wooden body. The vessel can break; the Spark can survive and look for another body.
- Descend into the ruins.
The underground layout changes between runs. Explore, fight, and decide how much risk to take before returning.
- Gather resources or gold.
Smash furniture for construction resources, or feed it to the Grinder for gold. These support different Outpost upgrades.
- Extract before a full wipe.
A single broken vessel is recoverable if your Spark reaches another vessel. If the entire crew is lost before extraction, unsecured loot from that run is gone.
- Rebuild the Outpost.
Use extracted resources to restore structures, unlock persistent upgrades, and prepare for deeper runs.
What beginners should prioritize
- Learn the route back to extraction instead of treating every room as mandatory.
- Distinguish loot carried in the current run from progress already secured at the Outpost.
- When a vessel breaks, focus on keeping the Spark alive and finding another vessel rather than assuming the run is over.
- In co-op, plan around recovery and extraction as a team; the official FAQ says the game remains intentionally demanding when played solo.
What changes between runs?
The dungeons are procedurally assembled, while the Outpost is persistent. Official store information also describes mutation and corruption systems, survivor discoveries, items, and modifiers that change a run. This page stays at the verified core-loop level; it does not invent item tiers or enemy tactics that are not yet documented by an official source or repeatable test.