Pearls are basically compressed loot that can look like this:



The size of a pearl only affects the amount of items received. Round pearls are fully formed and will give the most items, while chunks will give only small amounts.

Pearls can be found in friendly dumpsters and malevolent dumpsters (simply named dumpsters, but they spawn bunnies along with pearls), found on most gas stations:


Can be extracted via Hand-Vac from the Beach Ball anomaly, found in the Deep Zone:


Or found in pneumatic deposit boxes, ARDA investigator trucks and abandoned squire's trunks (the deeper into the zone, the bigger the spawn chance):

To get the loot stored in a pearl you will need a Matter Deconstructor, which must be built first:

You can also break pearls using Impact Hammer or Magnetic Hammer, but this is not only the waste of tools (1.5 magnetic hammers needed to break the smallest fragile pearl), but also reduces the loot recieved to 1/3 of usual amount.

Pearls come in different statuses, each status guaranteeing specific drop, however, all pearls drop metal scrap and steel sheets, and all pearls can drop paint, accessories and bulbs. The list below only shows which status increases specific item drop:

• Wet pearls drop electronics and circuit boards.
  
  
  
  
• Cracked pearls drop copper wires, pressurized cartridges and bulbs.
  
  
  
  
• Burned out pearls drop marsh eggs, red balloons, swamp corals, lead platelets, thermosap crystals and circuit boards/plasma (these seem to be mutually exclusive).
  
  
  
  
  
• Charged pearls drop plasma, rubber, gas cylinders and more paint and decals than other pearls.
  
  
  
  
• Peculiar pearls drop tools and random resources. The bigger the pearl, the better tools will drop. You can see a thermal vacuum and two liberators dropped by this pearl.
  
  
  
  
• Oxidized pearls drop fabric and chemicals.
  
  
  
  
• Unreliable pearls drop food, MRE and decals. One might think this is the most boring pearl imaginable, but I think it's the best pearl there is, I'll explain below why.
  
  

By now you have probably noticed that some statuses have possible "fix". Fixing a pearl will change its status to unreliable. While these pearls offer only basic resources, they have the biggest chance of dropping paint, decals and car accessories. 8 out of 10 unreliable pears have dropped an accessory. 4 out of 8 pearls dropped two accessories.


Even non-fixable pearls can be turned into unreliable (however, I don't recommend sacrificing peculiar pearls, as they are rare, but you do you). Here's how to do it:
1. Take a pearl you don't need. Let's say, the charged one.
2. Smash it with an Impact Hammer, it turns into cracked.

3. Apply a fix with Sealing Kit, the pearl turns into unreliable.

4. Put it into the Matter Deconstructor.

5. Enjoy your new accessory.

• turn a charged pearl into wet by throwing it into the water, might require a few tries;
  
• turn any pearl into cracked or oxidized (random) by hitting it with liberator;
  
• turn any pearl into charged by throwing it to the spark tower anomaly (sizzling mist, wriggling wreck and minutemen don't work).