Roguelikes (and roguelites, as I have sometimes heard Void Bastards called) have an element of exploration that few other games have attempted to maintain in this era of elaborate youtube guides: exploration of the mechanics of the game. The first time you put a bag of holding in a bag of holding in Nethack (1987) is a surprise. But then you wonder "well, what if I put a bag of tricks in there?" "What if I put the second bag of holding inside an oilskin sack before I put THAT sack in a bag of holding?" And every time you play through the game you learn more not just about the world of the game, or the "plot" (there's typically very little plot in these sorts of games), but about the mechanics that hold the game together. The only other game genre that commonly has this type of exploration is the simulation.

Like the simulation, the roguelike game (at it's best, which Void Bastards is) ties its various mechanics together tightly. There is a logic to be discovered about how each item's and weapons functions interlace with each other, how each economy in the game feeds into each other economy. And discovering that is a big part of the fun of the game.

So this means a lot of the fun of Void Bastards is trying things out, instead of spoiling yourself with guides. That's why this guide is only going to explain one, exactly one, mechanic: what happens when you die.

It will explore that mechanic in how it affects gameplay in many other areas, but knowing how death works in this game will absolutely change how you approach playing it, and will open up the door to have fun with this game as much as possible.

Void Bastards is a satire and a critique of capitalism through the lens of one of its most persistent features: prison labor slavery, in which the essentials of life (food, air, medical treatment) are rationed through currency and the prisoner ("client", as the game constantly calls them) can never quite get ahead of the demands on them, and certainly can never escape. As befits the satire, this means that several mechanics embrace the highly political message that in a capitalist system, Life Is Cheap.

This simple phrase is implemented mechanically in several ways throughout Void Bastards (and you can find in the game world fictional expressions of it as well). But the most relevant one to your enjoyment of the exploration of the game mechanics is how the game deals with the death of a character.

The most important thing to know is that you don't lose "actual" game progress when you die, just a particular character with which you, the player, navigate the nebula.

Thus, you are encouraged to experiment. Pull levers, press buttons. Run right up to that gunpoint and see what happens.

The way Void Bastards handles character death is also a statement as to what the game considers "actual" game progress. The things you do lose on death are your ammo count, currency, food, fuel and anything you were carrying when you were killed, and you are immediately given more of these supplies for your next character to use. Everything else, including all the upgrades you've purchased and all the crafting supplies you brought back to the STEV, is preserved.

So it is not an accident what the game lets you keep and what it takes away from you on death.
Having a thousand Merits doesn't get you closer to winning the game. Having two thousand rivets for your rivet gun doesn't get you closer to winning the game. Having a great suite of genetic upgrades doesn't get you closer to winning the game. These advantages might help you win, but they aren't actual progress and the game will throw them away the second you make a wrong turn and walk into a room with three Screws.

But this knowledge, if considered in the context of the rest of the game, actually frees you to have fun exploring other mechanics in a way other games don't let you.

As mentioned in the above section, you don't lose either the upgrades you constructed at the workbench, the parts you have collected towards that construction, or the "raw materials" that you can use to construct parts that you're having a hard time salvaging when you die.

This means that (for example) when you construct a weapon, all future characters have access to that weapon and the benefit of that weapon's construction even if the character that built it is dead.

Consequently, as you progress through the game, each subsequent character will be better off (or at least no worse off) than the last character you had in terms of their inherent capabilities. (Remember, your genetic gifts/penalties can be altered on therapy ships and be taken away from you by Gene Twisters.)

This means if you are on the verge of getting a new weapon, rather than delving deep to try to get the story mission parts, there is no penalty at all to staying at your current nebula depth and obtaining the weapon. Then there is no real penalty for continuing to stay at that depth and exploring how that weapon works, which enemies it works best against, building up ammunition for it if you like it, upgrading it, and so on. You can die a dozen times doing this and not worry that you're going to "miss out" on anything. The nebula is infinite and there are always more parts ahead of you.

Similarly, each new enemy type in Void Bastards is introduced in a basic form (Janitors, Tourists), then in upgraded forms as you go through the game. If you're having trouble with a current enemy that you have to deal with, just hang around at the current nebula depth (or even go up a level if you need to!) and die against them a few times. Every time you do you will have a few more parts and a few more upgrades. Eventually you will find the combination of upgrades, weapons and strategies that work for you.

For example, when dealing with Screws, one of the hardest early enemies you run up against, I like to Zap them and run away and lock them in a room, or use subverted machines against them - doing this is a lot easier with an upgraded Zapper, fast door-locking authorizations and cheap security subversion upgrades!

You should consider each enemy type a challenge to try to figure out the best way to deal with, and don't worry if they take you out or badly hurt you a few times. You can't actually lose real progress in the game. The next time you come up against them you won't be worse off for having died.

The one mechanic in Void Bastards that straddles the line between actual progress in the game and the stuff you might lose on death are the "genetic traits" that each prisoner/client has. You get a new set every time you start with a new character, they are altered by Gene Twisters even at the lowest level, and can be intentionally altered on Therapy vessels.

Some of the genetic traits you can get are just awful - others are extremely annoying. If you're doing well and get hit with a Gene Twister to have something truly annoying, you can either die (restarting with a whole new character with a whole new set of gifts) or keep moving forward looking for a Therapy ship. (Randomness in Gene Twisters means it's pretty unlikely you'll get something annoying replaced with something good.) Therapy ships occur even at fairly shallow Nebula Depths, so, again, feel free to "pull up" and look for one that you'll be able to manage, if you decide you don't want to die and reset.

When playing this game on ordinary difficulties, because of how the death mechanic in Void Bastards works:

• There's no downside to staying at your current Nebula Depth until you're comfortable with your weapons and capabilities.
  
• There's no downside to staying at your current Nebula Depth until you get to a therapy ship and remove penalties that impair your ability to deal with tougher situations.
  
• There's no downside to going to a less dangerous Nebula Depth to experiment with a new weapon or capability.
  
• There's no downside to staying at your current Nebula Depth until you have a strategy that will work against particular types of enemies. (As the game will remind you, this doesn't necessarily mean killing them, it can mean avoiding them, fleeing them, bypassing them, or locking them away somewhere they can't bother you.)
  
• There's no downside to just...trying stuff, generally. Paying attention and "seeing what happens" is the fun of a roguelike!