Starting out: money, rent, customers and the rhythm of a day
How much you start with, how rent grows, what the nightly fees are, where customers come from, and five things to do in your first week. Numbers come straight from the game data.
Quick card
- You start with 600 in cash and a rent of 200. The first rent is due around day 6, then every seven days; each payment multiplies the rent by the difficulty’s factor (Normal ×1.05, Hard ×1.1).
- Three nightly fees grow with the day count: power = (day ÷ 10 + 5) × difficulty factor, janitorial = day ÷ 10 + 3, insurance = net worth ÷ 400 + 3.
- Skip janitorial and trash piles up every night, dragging shop appeal down; skip insurance and the burglary odds climb every uninsured night. Insurance follows your net worth, so a full stockroom costs more to cover.
- At default appeal only two ordinary customers come per day. More appeal, showcase signs and faction reputation bring more.
- What a customer pays is capped at their budget. If it falls short, concede a step and the budget grows (see pricing and bargaining).
- The first two weeks are a scripted tutorial, with a fixed visitor list every day (see the first 14 days).
1. How a day runs
| Phase | What happens |
|---|---|
| Morning | Rent countdown drops by one; events resolve and new ones are drawn; night-location events fire by weekday; the commissary restocks. |
| Opening | Today’s queue is generated in one go: story visitors → bailout → showcase-drawn buyers → scheduled visitors → event customers → tutorial → inspector → suppliers → the week’s specialist → minor characters → wanted → ordinary customers → the rest. |
| Trading | Ring for the next customer. Drag goods to the counter → see the price → bargain → close or dismiss. Customers have a budget, and half of what you earn from them refills it. |
| Closing | The rest of the queue leaves; night-service prices update. |
| Night | Fees → janitorial and trash → power → insurance and burglary → referral services → sabotage events → stolen heat decay → chemistry → fridges and hoppers → the underground exchange resets every seven days → autosave. |
| Night out (optional) | Before sleeping you can visit one place: the dump to scavenge, Dr. Jackson for machines and modules, the commissary for supplies. The cost is one fewer ordinary customer the next day. |
The weekday is the day number modulo seven, and day one is a Monday. Many fixed events hang on weekdays: Dr. Jackson is closed on Mondays, the dump has fresh garbage on Wednesdays, the commissary restocks on Fridays, the lottery draws on Saturdays.
2. Where the money comes from and goes
Start and rent
On Normal you open with 600 in cash and a rent of 200, first due around day 6. Each payment multiplies the rent by the difficulty factor and truncates:
| Difficulty | Rent factor | Retail markup |
|---|---|---|
| Cozy | ×1.025 | +20% |
| Normal | ×1.05 | +15% |
| Hard | ×1.1 | +0% |
| Challenge | ×1.1 | +0% |
The truncation uses single-precision floats, so on Normal the rent does not climb in neat steps; it lands about one credit short each time. Unpaid rent rolls into next week and burns the one-time “landlord grace”.
Nightly fees
The three basic services are all functions of the day number, so they get dearer the longer you trade:
| Service | Cost | If you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Power | (day ÷ 10 + 5) × difficulty factor (×2 on Hard and Challenge) | Machines stop |
| Janitorial | day ÷ 10 + 3 | Trash piles up nightly and shop appeal drops by trash level |
| Insurance | net worth ÷ 400 + 3, ×3 on Challenge | Burglary odds rise with each uninsured night |
Buying the shop
On Normal the property costs 12,000, climbing by 50 a day late in the game up to 5,000 extra. The down payment is 15% of the price, the interest rate 50% a year, paid over 12 weeks. The landlord only offers once you hold twice the down payment in cash. Paying it off triggers the “bought out” ending, and you can keep playing.
Other fixed prices
The vendor permit costs 1,500 on Normal, 2,000 on Hard and 3,000 on Challenge. The new-customer discount is 75% on Normal. Reputation gains and losses are scaled by difficulty too: on Normal you gain at ×1 and lose at ×1.
3. Where customers come from
- Ordinary customer count follows shop appeal. Appeal = a base value − trash penalty + projector and similar bonuses; each threshold crossed adds one visitor, and the default start gives two a day. Perks, location and last night’s outing add or remove one.
- The showcase recruits first. Signs for water, food, materials, medical and household goods draw matching buyers by chance; gun and heavy-weapon signs draw less often. Recruited buyers use up ordinary slots.
- The remaining slots are drawn from pools. Factions are rolled in order (Black Market, Upper Levels, Revolution); if none hits, the Lower Levels pool is used. Pool weights and every customer’s budget are in the customer index.
- Budgets grow with the day. Most are “a random range + day × a rate”, so the same customer is richer later; high appeal scales them further.
- Wanted customers, minor characters and inspectors keep their own rhythm: scripted for the first two weeks, by chance afterwards.
4. Five things to do in week one
- Keep insurance on. It is cheap while your net worth is small, and a burglary is pure loss.
- Sell at the retail price; do not rush to raise it. Normal already adds +15% for you.
- Check the base price before you buy. Look sellers’ goods up in the item table rather than trusting their ask.
- Put one sign in the showcase. One more buyer is one more sale.
- Have the rent ready before day 6. The first payment comes sooner than it feels.
Updated 2026-11-03