This guide is designed for mid-level and advanced players who already have a solid grasp of the game's basic concepts and are ready to tackle its more challenging map. The harder map tests your survivability skills and demands greater organization to manage hunger, stress, and fatigue effectively. Success hinges on identifying critical attributes and traits that ease gameplay, organizing settlements, and establishing trade with other factions to maintain a steady flow of scraps and resources across all four quadrants of the map.

In this guide, I’ll share tips I’ve discovered through gameplay and exploring various resources focusing on my preferred playstyle, hoping it may provide insight to you and your own individual playstyle. Although I provide a lot of redundant information also offered in other guides, I believe there are a few tips here and there that you probably have not seen in anywhere else so far fitting for more advanced players. In any case, I aimed for a comprehensive list of tips that synergize well with my play style at the hardest map.

As I continue learning and uncovering more strategies, I plan to update this guide with new insights and sections. If you have additional tips or strategies that you think should be included, feel free to share them—I’d be happy to incorporate them in future revisions.

Stay sharp and safe out there, truckers!

I personally prefer the fast truck, though it does come with some trade-offs—most notably its limited storage capacity. Even with upgrades, storage will remain a challenge. However, despite these limitations, the fast truck can handle an additional 10k+ in storage (albeit with an overload debuff that reduces travel speed) and still achieve speeds equal to or faster than other truck options with comparable loads. (As a note for those of you who are new to the game, you can unlock the fast truck after you receive an achievement by driving 15 km in your first play-through. It really is not very difficult to achieve this, just start a new game, and drive your starter truck from town to town while maintaining your hunger, fatigue, and stress while ignoring every event and other game mechanics until you reach 15 km. You will receive occasional updates as you reach the 5km and 10km milestones. Once you reach the 15 km milestone, you will have additional game options to start with, a heavy truck with high-load carry capacity and the fast truck I mentioned above, which is my preferred truck.)

The fast truck truly shines when paired with a custom character equipped with the "Ex-Racer" and "Night-Driver" traits. These traits provide 10% speed bonuses (and are cumulative) that are especially effective with faster trucks, maximizing their potential. This makes creating a custom character an excellent choice for players who want to get the most out of this truck.

There are other advantages to having a speedy truck as well, among other benefits:

Fuel Efficiency: Faster travel consumes the same amount of fuel per distance, making your trips more cost-effective.
Reduced Fatigue and Hunger: With quicker trips, your character experiences less fatigue and hunger per same distance, making the 10-20% speed bonuses even more impactful.

Overall, if you're looking to optimize your gameplay around speed and efficiency, the fast truck combined with the right character traits is a highly rewarding choice.

Your playstyle will dictate the best approach, but I’m a strong advocate for custom characters. Most preset characters come with numerous negative perks or useless positive traits, attribute points in non-critical attributes, inefficient supplies or equipment, and often come with negative relations with various factions, making it harder to tailor them to your preferred strategy or downright more challenging, especially during the early game. By contrast, custom characters allow you to avoid redundant features and optimize for simplicity and self-maintenance while giving you a head-start during the early game.

I would argue that most attributes become largely irrelevant once you learn how to manage hunger, stress, and fatigue efficiently through the right traits and by building self-sustaining settlements. This is where custom characters truly shine.

What I will offer below as a recommended custom start is, indeed, a very limited set of options. In your playthroughs, if you have developed other viable strategies and identified traits that synergize with other playstyles, please share in the comments and I will be happy to include them in this guide. The following is designed for a fast, agile truck with 2-3 drivers that share compatible attribute expertise, mainly focusing on ranged combat.

Key Traits

Ex-Racer and Night-Driver: If you’re using the fast truck, these 10% speed buffs are game-changing. Not only do they maximize the truck’s natural strengths, but they also improve fuel efficiency and reduce fatigue and hunger on trips.

Bloodthirsty: This trait is highly effective for managing stress, and, although it is by far the best trait for drivers who prefer melee combat by definition, it also happens to be the best trait for effortlessly raising focus - allowing a lot of freedom on attribute points distribution at the custom start. During combat, each melee action—even if it results in a wound—reduces stress. Additionally, receiving wounds will occasionally increase your focus by +1 to +4, allowing you to reach a focus level of 30 without spending many attribute points. After this threshold, attribute point allocation will be necessary to raise focus further, which I don't necessarily recommend.

Trait Strategy
In my current playthrough, I’ve selected Ex-Racer, Night-Driver, and Bloodthirsty, with Rheumatism as my negative trait (a 3-point drawback). Early on, I prioritized removing Rheumatism by spending 10 books and 3 attribute points. While this required some initial effort, the benefits of the three positive traits far outweighed the inconvenience. Later in the game, it's a very viable option to add a few more random positive traits once you hit highly diminished +1 gains for your attribute investments. I find it more effective to rely on the use of advanced and legendary equipment instead of further attribute investments and using the points on additional random positive traits.

Trait Comparison
Many other traits that claim to improve attributes, fatigue, or stress management don’t compare to the advantages provided by Ex-Racer, Night-Driver, and Bloodthirsty. These three traits offer superior utility for overcoming the challenges of starting fresh on the hardest map. However, as mentioned above, there is room for adding a few random positive traits once the diminishing returns hit you on your critical attributes. Again, please share in the comments if you also identified other traits that synergize with other playstyles.

When designing a custom character, my strategy revolves around focusing on attributes that cannot be easily leveled during gameplay, ensuring maximum efficiency with minimal waste. By leveraging the benefits of traits like Ex-Racer, Night-Driver, and Bloodthirsty, I allocate points where they provide long-term value while avoiding unnecessary attribute increases.

Defense

Defense is my highest priority since it cannot be increased after character creation by attribute points, but only through equipment. I invest points until diminishing returns (i.e. when each additional iteration only yields +1 attribute point gain). High defense mitigates melee risks, especially early in the game, allowing more flexibility in managing combat. It is not critical to my gameplay as I prefer ranged combat, but it still is a better investment than some of the alternatives that I mentioned below. What may contradict here my playstyle is, that, Defense actually reduces the chance of getting wounded by melee, in effect, slowing down the progress of Focus attribute acquisition. I still prefer to put a few points to it.

Intelligence

Intelligence is essential for faster leveling and success in attribute checks throughout the game. A character with 16 Intelligence at character creation will reach around Level 25 during the same duration that one starting with 6 Intelligence is expected to reach approximately Level 20 (when no additional points are allocated to Intelligence later). I typically aim for 16–18 Intelligence, as it allows me to focus on fewer critical attributes while still benefiting from frequent level-up opportunities as well as passing some skill checks.

Cooking or Crafting

Cooking: Ideal if you plan to recruit another driver with a high crafting skill. A starting value of 13–16 is sufficient for reaching sufficient success chances for cooking higher quality dishes and you can hit level 30 with minimal attribute point investment and the Chef Hat (+8) later on. Please note that you are capable of crafting advanced dishes at +11 attribute points and legendary at +21 and more cooking attribute points. The complexity of the dish you cook also matters in this calculation where recipes with more ingredients require higher levels of crafting attributes for advanced and legendary dish quality.

Crafting: Best for players who may prefer the lone wolf play style (and, if so, don't forget to pick that trait up when you customize your character) and therefore need to craft their own equipment. However, don't forget that the possibility to craft advanced or legendary equipment relies on your crew's total crafting skill, so, there is a benefit in having a few high-level crafter drivers in your crew when you are trying to craft that legendary sniper rifle. To reach a 100% chance of crafting advanced quality equipment, your total crew crafting skill should be twice the required minimum crafting attribute to perform the crafting at 100% chance. For a 100% chance of crafting legendary equipment, your crew attribute total should be 10 times the required amount which is VERY difficult to attain, but it's a good basis for your guess on your chances. An example is, for a level 40 requirement needed for a Sniper Rifle, if you desire a 100% chance of crafting an advanced quality, your crew total should be a minimum of 80 (which is easily achievable with you and 2 additional specialist drivers with 30+ crafting), to craft a legendary Sniper Rifle at 100% chance would require a total of 400 total crew crafting attribute points which is highly unrealistic that many players could achieve.

I will speculate that, given these chances, if you have 80 total crafting attribute points in your crew, your chances of crafting a legendary sniper rifle is 20% (80/400), however, this needs further testing. I also speculate that the total for cooking attributes in your crew apply similar improved chances to the advanced and legendary quality cooked dishes.

Please note that in either case, whether you pick cooking or crafting as your third skill, it is completely viable to rely on specialized drivers to handle crafting, cooking, and intelligence tasks and leave them on one of your settlements for when you need to craft, cook, or learn new recipes while focusing on your other attributes in your main crew. With high-level crafters stationed at settlements, your crew can focus on combat-related priorities while still accessing advanced recipes and equipment when needed, but this approach needs more advanced logistics, planning, and organization.

Honorable Mentions

Husbandry: While not essential early on when your hunger levels are harder to maintain, raising Husbandry to 18–20 is useful later for gaining the better attack buff provided by dogs and ranged buff by falcons. Just watch for that +5 or +4 extra appetite which significantly increases your food consumption efficiency.

Fitness: Although you can't invest points in it, Fitness gains can be supplemented through clothing and headwear. I highly recommend picking the tactical vest during character creation, it's very cheap and provides some helpful fatigue management very early on in-game.

Focus

Focus can be trained during gameplay through melee combat (each time you get wounded, there is a chance that you will receive +1 to +4 Focus, just keep Med-Kits with you and watch for your Hull Damage), and this is particularly easier with the Bloodthirsty trait. (However, as discussed, high Defense actually mitigates the attribute gains for Focus this way.) This synergy allows stress relief and focus gains simultaneously, making it unnecessary to spend points here, just needs a little bit of training, but hey, you would also receive scraps and resources if you know where to train. Focus levels up to 30 with this method, after which you’ll need attribute points to raise it further which I see no point due to diminishing returns.

Attack

Attack is counter-productive at character creation due to its impact on the Appetite attribute (+1 Appetite for every 5 points in Attack) that stays with you throughout the whole game. Starting with 3 Attack ensures an appetite of 3, which minimizes hunger maintenance. Early-game weapons like the Legendary Katana (+19 Attack) diminish the value of a high starting Attack attribute, as its additive bonuses make initial points redundant. For example:

A character starting with 3 Attack will achieve 22 Attack (3 + 19) with a legendary quality Katana (which I consider to be the ultimate end-game melee weapon of choice given my play style), all while maintaining a low appetite of 3. In comparison, a character starting with 9 Attack achieves 28 Attack (9+19) but with 4 Appetite (and attribute point investment that is not significant), resulting in a little bit higher hunger maintenance. What I truly recommend avoiding is any investment beyond 9 Attack at character creation.

As a side note, a legendary quality Katana, arguably the best in slot end-game melee weapon, is not very trivial to craft within a week or two weeks at the start of the game especially if you recruit a specialized crafter with 25+ crafting as your first crewmate. The resources are not hard to come by at all, especially when compared to the resources and crafting skill requirement needed to craft the best end-game ranged weapon, a legendary quality Sniper Rifle.

It is critical to know that your Appetite will not change after character creation even if you raise Attack with attribute point investments or with various quests later on, so starting Attack (and Appetite) as low as you can afford is recommended.

The ranged accuracy often scales with percentage-based equipment bonuses (e.g., 4x scopes), making initial investments more impactful. In contrast, Attack damage bonuses from gear are additive like +19 from the legendary quality Katana, meaning base Attack attributes contribute less to overall performance. Attack also reaches diminishing returns much sooner than Defense and Focus, and is particularly harmful during character creation due to Appetite increase that remains with you the whole game.

Speech

Speech levels very quickly through bartering, making initial investments completely unnecessary. Always pick the Barter option when dealing with stores and you will gain +1 Speech if the transaction is beyond some scrap amount, however, this scrap amount gradually rises as you gain more attribute points in Speech. Therefore, it's very effective to break transactions into smaller scrap deals beyond this minimum amount and gain multiple +1 Speech boosts per overall deal. For instance, instead of selling 7 Building Materials in one deal and gaining +1 Speech, you can sell each Building Material one at a time, and gain a +7 gains Speech per the whole deal of 7 transactions. Similarly, instead of selling 90 vegetables, split it into 2 or 3 stacks to gain +2 or +3 Speech gains. Each transaction costs time, but it is worth it, just make sure to watch that the price per unit is not drastically changing from transaction to transaction since the longer duration for multiple split transactions also means bigger shifts in the economy dynamics of the store during that passed duration. +1 Speech gains with this method cap at 30, and with diminishing returns beyond this point, I see no value in any additional investment, just craft the necessary legendary hats for better deals moving forward. If you follow the method of splitting your transactions as described, you can easily raise Speech to 30 from 6 in one in-game week. Towards hitting that cap of 30, I also would recommend watching for the "Happy" modifier that adds a few extra points to your Speech and may inhibit you from gaining the Speech attribute if it artificially pushes it to or beyond 30. If you are around +26 or +27 Speech without this buff, plan your transactions for when you are beyond the fatigue levels that remove the Happy modifier.

Charm

Charm is largely situational and can be supplemented with clothing and headwear providing +2 Fitness, making dedicated attribute points here less critical. Also, I don't get frisky often or need to party, especially due to my character traits that lower stress.

Virtue

A lack of Virtue when entering a town in the early game may be somewhat annoying as it will cost you a few scraps. However, much like Speech, it really is a minor concern for the first week or two of the game and organically grows very fast with each delivery or bounty you complete. I keep Virtue at its base level at character creation and just pay a few hundred scraps if necessary. The points spent here are really not worth it especially considering when other attributes are unattainable or hard to attain after character creation.

Other Survival Skills

Attributes like Fishing, Hunting, Foraging, and Farming are redundant with proper settlement management as accessing additional food won't be necessary. By establishing four settlements dedicated to producing food, water, and ammo, survival needs become trivial. I rarely invest in these skills beyond their base values. There are more tips about settlement planning, management, and utility below to benefit your survival, but basically, establishing four strategically placed settlements for food, water, and ammo production ensures resource availability and self-sufficiency. These negate the need for excessive skill point allocation to survival attributes.

Although many guides recommend the bolt-action rifle as a must-have, I personally prefer the ghost mask, which costs 3000 scraps, and get a musket instead. The ghost mask is unique, not craftable in-game, and can only be obtained through certain non-repeatable quests. It provides a rare %30 Attack bonus, which stands out because, as I mentioned earlier, Attack bonuses are typically additive rather than scaled, making this item a valuable choice.

I also highly value the tactical vest. While it provides only a minor buff to fitness and charm, these bonuses are very useful during the early game. They help you maintain fatigue and improve charm until you can craft a legendary quality tactical vest. Equally important is that at fitness 6 and further, getting wounded does not carry the risk of getting infected, which is critical to raising your focus attribute.

Aside from these three items, I recommend acquiring a 2x scope or a sight, as these are also materials needed for crafting the end-game gun part, the legendary quality 8x scope.

For melee weapons, I suggest getting two metal bars for crafting a crowbar later, which becomes useful once you recruit your first crewmate, ideally a driver with a high crafting attribute at the first bar where you will arrive. The +3 attack provided by the metal bar is comparable to the +4 by the crowbar, but you get to have a melee weapon for your crewmate as well if you opt to recruit one early. Again, this is a very minor decision that won't impact much of your early game, let alone late.

I try not to leave any scrap points behind and aim to buy key parts for the weapons I plan to craft later, such as the 2 metal bars and the musket. The only reason I didn't get the crowbar earlier is that I prioritized the ghost mask, musket, and tactical vest, which left no scraps for it.

When it comes to faction points, I try to distribute them equally among factions, with a bit more focus on Taranis and Syndicate, particularly for early trade deals. However, this is entirely optional. As a quick beginner tip, you can raise your faction standings by buying drinks for drivers from that faction at bars for 300 scraps. This is a worthwhile early-game investment because cities near your settlements are controlled by these factions and will be more inclined to trade with you if they favor you enough, especially if you are closer in proximity to them.

A key strategy in the harder difficulty map is to use the four settlements, which are positioned centrally in each of the map's quadrants, as the center of your operations. This allows for efficient exploration and trade mission completion while also serving as convenient points for resupplying your truck with vital resources like scraps, food, water, and ammo.

Additionally, if you find yourself away from your settlements or the bank and urgently need scraps, you can radio call your bank to arrange a loan. Furthermore, you can convert scraps from trade in your settlements into creds with the radio calls when you are away from your settlements, which will instantly appear in your account no matter where you are. These creds can later be converted back into scraps at a bar or bank, ensuring you always have access to essential resources.

When starting a basic settlement early on, it’s important to manage your settlement's prosperity carefully. If the prosperity of a settlement exceeds 10, there is a risk of attacks from infected or bandits. This means that as your settlement grows beyond 10 prosperity, you will need to invest in defenses like walls, med-kits for healing, and defenders to protect your assets. However, these investments can be costly and overwhelming during the early to mid-game.

A viable strategy in the early-mid game is to visit each of the four settlements and build a minimal base that provides constant supplies, and a small income and passively improves your standing with other factions through minimal trade. You can gradually start constructing key facilities while keeping your prosperity under 10, the following setup requires approximately 20 building materials to achieve that. A water pump (requiring one farmer with a level 5 requirement), a simple crop facility (that provides two farms/ranches, I prefer a ranch for 2-4 chicken and eggs production and a farm for vegetables, requiring 2 drivers with a minimum level 15 requirement in farming and husbandry), a light industry facility (for 4 crafters with a level 15 requirement), an advanced industry facility (for 1 crafter with a level 15 requirement), a prospecting facility (for 2 drivers with high speech attribute with a minimum level 15 requirement), a foundry (for 1 crafter with a level 25 requirement), and finally, a wall (which is only built so you can get your prosperity to a minimum of 4 after building your pump so you can build higher prosperity facilities, you don't need a worker on the wall if your prosperity is less than 10).

The minimum attribute level requirements for these structures are manageable (often around 15 or so), and you can recruit the necessary drivers either from the bars in other towns around your settlement or through the labor market menu at these bars, where you can find specialists with higher crafting, farming, or husbandry skills. You can also find an animal handler at the circus who has a higher husbandry skill, though they may come at a higher cost. Take note that, with this method, you will not be able to use your own bar at the settlement to recruit from your labor market since this action requires a minimum of 12 prosperity.

Avoid rushing into building too many defensive structures or investing too heavily in additional facilities at early and mid-game. Especially early on, you won't be able to afford the required building materials to build these facilities, there won't be a lot of trade options due to the proximity of other towns and lack of favor required for longer distances, workers will be more costly, and raids can be annoying to defend against. Instead, focus on the minimum requirements for constructing essential facilities like the water pump, farm/ranch, and light and light advanced industry to ensure a steady supply of goods and improve your faction standings. Additionally, consider not overspending on specialized drivers too early—while their higher skill levels can boost production, it’s often more efficient to recruit a few mid-level drivers to start and scale up as your settlement grows, and provide them with advanced or legendary farming/husbandry/crafting/speech headwear and clothing later when you need higher production.

It's important to note that you can significantly boost production in each of your facilities by recruiting a driver with double the minimum required skill level. For example, if you’re farming wheat, which requires a minimum farming attribute of 15, assigning a driver with a level 30 farming skill will double your production. This principle also applies to husbandry, crafting, and speech, supported by advanced and legendary quality clothing and headwear.

As you progress into the endgame, consider growing your settlements beyond 10 prosperity, requiring you to build stronger defenses and recruit drivers with high attack skills to protect them from weekly raids by infected and bandits. Increasing prosperity will also let you produce more resources and develop heavy industry, which in turn can supply additional building materials, tires, and more tradable products, and a consistent income from scraps.

In my games, I typically start by building a water pump to ensure my crew has a reliable water supply during visits, as it only requires a low-level farmer. Next, I focus on developing farms to produce a steady stream of food: I use one ranch to generate +4 eggs and +4 chicken per week with a high-husbandry driver (level 30 after clothing and headwear buffs) and another farm for vegetables. Meat, eggs (optional), and vegetables, when combined with water, create one of the best stew recipes in the game. This approach guarantees that I have a constant supply of the main ingredients for this recipe in all four quadrants of the map. You can improve the stew further by adding salt (optional), so if you stock up on salt or spice during your travels (as well as eggs, chicken, vegetables, and water), especially from towns that sell them cheaply, managing hunger, particularly with low appetite, becomes easy.

Alternatively, you can produce salt within your settlements by using the prospecting facility to obtain ore, which can then be converted to salt using the advanced industry worker slot. However, I typically avoid this route as the investment is not worth the return. Instead, I prefer to use this slot for crafting more valuable products, such as wine, beer, or clothing, which can bring in significant cash in trades with other factions. For example, I skip the raw material production from farms/ranches (and focus on the above products for my own food supply) and instead look for nearby towns that offer raw materials for the light industry, occasionally resupplying them as needed. Clothing is a particularly good product to craft and sell, as it is always in demand in large cities. In my setup, I provide threads to my light industry, which produces cloth, and then the advanced industry turns the cloth into clothing for maximal profit. Always check nearby trading towns for their demand, quantity, and pricing (especially if they are within the trading distance of your settlements), then focus on producing that industry to maximize scraps and faction favor.

In the early and mid-game, I also rely on the prospecting facility and foundry to craft ammo and occasionally resupply myself whenever I visit my settlements. If a nearby town is interested in trading for any of the items I produce that I use for resupplying my crew, such as water, chicken, eggs, vegetables, ore, or ammo, I consider it depending on my excess production capacity.

I’d like to mention the map in general and the special nodes with cores that allow you to craft unique equipment, parts, and upgrades for your truck. When you survey the map, you’ll notice special resource nodes spread across the map, mostly at the far edges. These nodes provide you cores but also pose more difficult weather challenges and are situated in high-infected zones, often near bosses or infected cities. I recommend exploring and acquiring these resources sooner rather than later but make sure to come prepared with ample food, water, and ammo, and keep an eye on your stress levels as you approach the map's edges. Acquiring these cores early can give you a significant advantage, providing a strong head start, but it may help to make some upgrades to your truck in anticipation of the challenging weather. In the hard map, there are +10 cores available in these special nodes, and in addition, another +10 cores can be found in the question mark locations, which typically don’t require extremely high attribute checks to access. These question marks offer fun options for interesting conversation, may check some crew attributes, and enrich the overall story and lore of the game while providing cores, attribute points, and other valuables with minimal risk.

Later in the game, crafting cores becomes less challenging with the abundance of scraps and other crafting materials you'll gather on your travels. However, one of the first investments I find to be of the highest value is the third seat for your truck if you pick the fast truck, particularly for worker transfer to your settlements from nearby bars. In my playstyle, a Sniper Rifle (or 2) also proves useful, as well as the Ammo Belt Box part for your truck that boosts the number of ammo fired by 30% for your whole crew.

When starting a new game, my first priority is to deliver the ration and building materials provided in the starting main quest on the hard map. Afterward, I visit at least one settlement with some building materials and establish small facilities for food, water, and ammo production by recruiting drivers from nearby bars and labor markets. If possible, I also set up trade routes with nearby faction-controlled cities to accumulate scraps and high-profit goods for my occasional resupply visits. I keep these initial settlements at or below 10 prosperity, avoiding concerns about raids. While exploring nearby nodes and the map around these settlements, they passively accumulate the necessary supplies. I do this one quadrant at a time and explore the surrounding area after the initial settlement investment.

Since I favor a ranged attack playstyle, my character development focuses on maximizing Focus. Early on, I aim to craft a trapper hat for its +2 fitness bonus (raising fitness to +6) and begin searching low-infected-risk sites for scraps and resources. This process also allows me to take damage in melee, which helps train my Focus attribute. My first goal is to raise my character’s Focus (and that of any crewmates) to 30. To facilitate this, I stock up on +10 Med-Kits from a nearby affordable store and locate a low-risk infected node near a town with a repair shop. Engaging in melee combat damages the truck’s hull, and repairing it yourself costs five times more than repairs at a shop. I leave these nodes when the hull health is around 15–20% and make a quick repair. By the time I reach my desired Focus level using this method, I’ll have accumulated sufficient resources to craft a bolt-action rifle or two. At this stage, I equip all my crewmates with high-quality rifles. I usually can’t afford Sniper Rifles at this point, as they require +2 cores each.

Acquiring cores for Sniper Rifles and other advanced parts for my truck becomes my next objective, which involves venturing into higher-risk infected zones, often located on the map's edges. If my initial settlement is in the southwest quadrant, I find this area on the hard map offers the most cores with relatively easier access. I start by raising my Focus while gathering scraps and resources, then progress to exploring core nodes and question mark areas in that quadrant. Once Focus and Crafting skills (either mine or a crewmate’s) reach +30 and I’ve obtained a few cores, I transition into the mid-game, exploring higher-risk infected regions for valuable materials.

I typically recruit only one driver until the endgame, prioritizing someone with a low appetite, high intelligence and crafting skills, aiming to boost their Focus and Crafting to +30 quickly. Raising Crafting to +30 through failed crafting attempts can be challenging, but I find the cap early on and bandana later to be a good option for these gains, so I stock up on a lot of fibers and leather for this purpose. Personally, I prefer the Decorator as my first crewmate, but this choice is subjective. Adding a third crewmate requires significant planning, particularly with the fast truck setup, as it necessitates investing in a third seat (costing either 3 cores in any repair shop or 1 core with significant storage sacrifice at one of the cities) and managing the increased hunger demands of the team. Additionally, a larger crew introduces more potential for drama. Consequently, I postpone recruiting a third crewmate until the endgame, though I may acquire the third seat earlier for transporting drivers to settlements in need of workers.

For my third recruit, I prefer someone with already high Focus, as I’d rather avoid additional training at that stage. Ideal candidates include the Sharpshooter and the Vagrant, though low appetite remains a key consideration.

Once I’ve crafted several legendary-quality Sniper Rifles and armor to outfit my entire crew and installed end-game defense and offense parts in my truck, I recruit a third crewmate with high Focus (and Attack). With the truck stocked with necessary supplies, I begin tackling bosses, saving Titan for last.