Hey folks, I hope this guide will be useful to you as I found the outpost mechanic overwhelming at first. It's really not that complicated to get a base up, running, and productive but there is next to no info available and what is out there is hearsay or out of date.

This isn't intended to be a comprehensive guide as I am no expert at Dustland. I'm certain there is room to improve but surely this will be better than going in blind. I'll leave the comments open so y'all can tell me how wrong I am (it's a treat for everybody)

Let's get to it!

Initially I didn't realize how important outposts were to the overall end game of Dustland. Mostly, this is because there's no in game explanation of them other than the tooltips/info you get on screen once you've reached one.

Now that I have some time in the saddle, I'd have to say that any new game player should make reaching Starlight (the first outpost and one of the main quests) a priority. I made the mistake of sinking a couple dozen hours into the game before setting foot in Starlight because of how the quest was worded; I was sure it was going to be another runaround quest like the Taranis main quest and I didn't want to sink the time into it right away. Boy, was I wrong!


Outposts give you a chance to create passive income/scrap/goods that will more than pay for the initial investment. Here's some great outpost facts that you may or may not know or care about at all!

- outposts have an "easy mode" built in where they will not be attacked until the Prosperity level (the upgrade level of the base) is greater than 10. This lets you get an outpost up and running without committing you to defend it until you begin to really invest in upgrading it.

- Your Prosperity level increases as you upgrade buildings. Buildings each have a specific skill requirement (farming/husbandry/crafting/speech/attack) for production of goods. These goods vary by building/job but are mostly the same cargo that you find in town stores.

- Advanced buildings have the ability to create advanced goods that are rare or otherwise impossible to find in the town stores. These usually have a very high sale value.

- food and water are two of the first goods you can produce via the farm and water pump. This will help supplement your meager possessions early game if you don't stray too far on the map

- Followers need to be recruited at bars or found randomly in game and brought to the outpost, where you assign them a job in one of the outpost buildings. If the follower has a lower skill check than the job requires they will still produce the goods but it will be on a sliding scale. Inversely, the higher the skill is, the more the follower will produce.

- Followers also accumulate experience doing their job on the farm, or from defending the outpost from attack

- followers left at outpost jobs no longer need food/water/sleep/stress and their bars are effectively frozen. If followers are stress free and happy when you leave them at the outpost, they will keep that status (important for defenses where attack skill level matters; happy status will give bonus attack and defense)

- ammo however is consumed during attacks. Keep several hundred ammo and at least one medkit per defender in the depot. You can use 30 credits to heal a wounded defender after the battle but you will need medkits to heal during the battle

- trade agreements can be signed with nearby NPC cities and are a huge boon for you once you can support them. They award scrap, positive relations and more importantly for the end game, clout. Don't sign agreements you can't honour or you will lose relations. More on trade later in this guide

IMHO the game gets quite a bit easier and the survival mechanic goes out the window once you have an outpost producing even basic goods. You can use your CB radio to buy credits with your accumulated outpost wealth meaning you always have passive income and no longer need to actively trade merch back and forth between cities.

Apartment - Acts as an Inn but free. Won't reduce stress much but can be used multiple times as it's free. Upgraded via the Manage City button (edit: as of January 2025 the apartment now has a screen allows you to leave followers here to sleep/de-stress)

Bar: Acts just like the Bar in towns, however some options in it are locked behind the Prosperity Level of the outpost you're in. Cannot be directly upgraded. For example, you can't use the Labour market until you're at Prosperity 12. The higher your prosperity, the better exchange rate you get on buying/selling credits. The selection of recruitable followers also increases as your Prosperity does.

Note that unlike outside bars, any followers you stash in the outpost bar will not randomly leave.

Library: Acts the same as the Library in towns.

Repair Shop: ditto


Camp: acts identical to the Camp button on the overworld once you've set up camp. You can Party, Hook Up, and Share Knowledge.

Kitchen: same

Manage City: see Manage City section

Trade: see Trade section

As mentioned above, Starlight is one of the first main objectives and should really be what you pour your time and effort in to from the start.

You'll need a little up front cash to get it off the ground, so I did trade runs between all the starting area cities. Taranis and the adjacent towns all have a commodity that another nearby needs and you can make a small amount of scrap quickly by trading back and forth for 30 minutes or so.

You need two things initially to start your base: building materials and followers. Recruit 2-3 farmers from town bars (1000-1500 scrap depending on room in your truck) and bring 3-4 Building materials (pricing ranges from ~250 scrap to 600 scrap) to Starlight once you've decided to begin.

I built the water pump and farm first. Other discussions online say you need water and food for folks you leave in the outpost and while they do not draw on reserves from the depot I played it safe and left a small amount of water and rations just in case, but I'm 99% sure it was unnecessary.

Equip a farmer to each job via the "Manage City" tab on the left side of the city screen. You can change what they are producing but at this point it really doesn't matter as you're going to leave them in town to passively stockpile goods that you can sell at pure profit.

If you will be away from town for a while consider upgrading the depot storage at least once for added capacity.

Note what the towns nearest Starlight need that could be produced with tier one buildings. You can trade for pure profit and clean out the scrap from neighbouring stores. I produced Honey as it's a high value/weight ratio and the town directly southwest lists it as a need.

Congrats! You've started to accumulate wealth! Now go explore and let your depot fill up! Use Starlight as a central hub; you can use it to offload extra cargo and restock on water/food as you produce it. If you don't want to buy credits and lose scrap with the exchange rate, dump your extra scrap here.

This is the screen where you will be spending most of your time. It's overwhelming to look at but pretty straight forward after you figure it out.



The screen defaults to the Buildings view.

On the left is an overview of your city including prosperity, trade cutoff, population, production numbers and contents of the depot. The right side lists the buildings that can be built as well as the total number of building mats you have combined in your truck storage as well as town storage.

Apartments: upgrading increases the total population the town can hold. If you don't upgrade this in step with the other buildings and hit the population cap you won't be able to add followers to vacant jobs.

Depot: upgrading increases the total storage amount of your city, much like upgrading the storage of your trailer capacity for your truck. Unlike the truck, once the storage capacity is reached scrap/goods disappear from existence.

• Level 1 = 20000 capacity
  
• Level 2 = 40000 capacity
  
• Level 3 = 60000 capacity
  
• Level 4 = 100000 capacity

Farm: level 1 starts with two job slots, Farm or Orchard. Level 2 allows 5 job slots and a new profession, Ranch. Level 3 allows 8 job slots. Farm/Orchard require 15 Farming stat and Ranch requires 9 Husbandry.

Farm job produces one of the following per job weekly:

• Wheat x 10
  
• Sugarcane x 10
  
• Vegetables x 10
  
• Medicinal Herbs x 5
  
• Thread x 5

Orchard produces one of the following per job weekly:

• Fruit x 10
  
• Wood x 10
  
• Tea Leaves x 5
  
• Spices x 5
  
• Coffee beans x 5
  
• Rubber x 10

Ranch produces one of the following per job weekly:

• Honey x 2
  
• Chicken x 2 + Eggs x 2
  
• Milk x2 + Rawhide x1
  
• Pork x 4

Water Pump: produces 3 water per day requiring Farming skill of 5

Procurement Office: produces Ore x 5 per day with Speech skill requirement of 15. Level 1 has 2 job slots. Level 2 has 4 job slots.


Light Industry: level 1 has 4 job slots, level 2 has 8. This is the first of the processing tier buildings that takes a basic resource and turns it into an advanced good. It also is the first building that has differing completion times for the goods.

Light Industry produces the the following at their unique interval:

• Wheat x 1 = Flour x 2 @ 1 day
  
• Wheat x 2 + Water x 1 = Beer x 4 @ 7 days
  
• Sugarcane x 5 = Sugar x 5 @ 7 days
  
• Fruit x 1 + Sugar x 1 = Canned Fruit x 1 @ 1 day
  
• Vegetables x 5 + Salt x 2 = Dried Vegetables x 3 @ 2 days
  
• Wood x 5 = Charcoal x 5 @ 1 day
  
• Tea Leaves x 2 + Charcoal x 2 = Tea x 5 @ 2 days
  
• Medicinal Herbs x 5 = Meds x 2 @ 3.5 days
  
• Thread x 5 = Cloth x 5 @ 3.5 days
  
• Honey x 1 + Charcoal x 2 = Ointment x 2 @ 3.5 days
  
• Chicken x 2 + Salt x 1 = Dried Chicken x 5 @ 3.5 days
  
• Pork x 2 + Salt x 1 = Dried Pork x 5 @ 3.5 days

Advanced Light Industry: Level 1 has one job slot, level 2 has 3. Crafting level of 10 required.

Advanced Light Industry produces the following goods at their unique interval:

• Flour, Eggs, Water, Sugar (all x1) = Bread x 5 @ 1 day
  
• Fruit, Wheat, Water, Sugar (all x1) = Fruit Wine x 6 @ 7 days
  
• Charcoal x 2, Cloth x 5 = Water Purifier x 6 @ 3.5 days
  
• Spices x 2, Charcoal x 1 = Seasoning x 3 @ 2 days
  
• Coffee Beans x 5 + Charcoal x 2 = Coffee x 5 @ 2 days
  
• Cloth x 3 = Clothing x 2 @ 3.5 days
  
• Wheat, Eggs, Sugar, Honey (all x1) = Energy Bar x 3 @ 1 day
  
• Rawhide x 2, Charcoal x 2 = Leather x 5 @ 7 days
  
• Milk x 3, Salt x 1 = Cheese x 5 @ 3.5 Days
  
• Pork x 2, Salt x 1, Honey x 1 = Ham x 5 @ 3.5 days
  
• Ore x 10 = Salt x 10 @ 7 days

Foundry: Level 1 has one job slot, level 2 has 3. Crafting level of 25 is required.

Foundry produces the following goods at their unique intervals:

• Ore x 50 = Ammo x 50 @ 7 days
  
• Ore x 50 = Jewelry x 1 @ 14 days

IMO there's no need to produce jewelry as its only use is selling for scrap. If you have enough Infected Meat on your truck you will end up with enough jewelry from random encounters with the infected hitchhiker anyway. Ammo becomes very important late game where you're using 30-50 per volley after weapon and truck upgrades, so that's what I produce.

Heavy Industry: Level 1 has one job slot, level 2 has 3. Crafting level of 20 is required.

Heavy Industry produces the following goods at their unique intervals:

• Ore x 100 + Water x 5 = Building Materials x 2 @ 7 days
  
• Rubber x 1 = Tire x 1 @ 1 day

Once you have steady ore production get Building Mats up and running for road production. One outpost can produce more than enough road materials for its quadrant of the map.


Defenses: followers stationed here will be your city defenders but are not required until your town hits Prosperity level 11. Each level adds one extra defense "job" as well as wall strength. Attack skill required is 5.

Defenses work exactly like the normal attack screen. I am not sure what makes the enemy scale up in strength but it's either overall Prosperity level (increases attack percentage), defense level, or both. You will need characters with good attack and mid-tier guns as the enemies tend to be human (ranged). The wall strength is the same mechanic as your truck hull: once it's depleted you lose the battle and generally one or more of your base personnel are killed outright. If they die you will lose any equipment they have on them.

Note that you cannot change any city staffing, including defenses, if you are not physically at the outpost. Attacks are somewhat scripted and will continue to occur even with save scrumming. That means if you are too far away from an outpost with inadequate defenses when you're attacked, you might not be able to win the fight. Don't skimp on defense once you're past Prosperity level 11!

Repair is a type of defense job that has the equipped follower add a bonus to your ranged attack with a required skill of Crafting 10. Crafting 20 will get you +2 ranged damage, but IMO once you have the ammo to burn and semi auto rifles you're probably better off with an extra attacker.


If we click the "Jobs" button on the top right we'll get a detailed view of each building's production line.



Now we can see all the followers we have assigned to the city, their stat levels relative to the requirement of the building, as well as any vacant production positions. This screen is useful for seeing overall production at a glance as well as any vacant or under performing positions. Sometimes I've thrown a lackey into a job thinking some production is better than none and totally forgotten about it, but using the Jobs screen I can quickly swap them out for someone better in my crew.

I ran out of characters in the last section. If you're still reading... good for you!

• Each job has a production time as indicated. This time will reset if you remove the person producing it, but it will NOT reset if you swap the person out for someone else. If you want to switch people around because of their stats or you're bringing in new blood to level, don't remove the first person but instead swap them out.
  
  
• Speaking of leveling, followers gain EXP every time they complete an action. For production, they will gain every time they produce a good regardless of if its daily or weekly. This is a very easy way to grind skill points and it's not unusual to have 10+ points after a couple of weeks in game. Use this to your advantage; if you have some characters with high attack that you don't want to drive around with due to no other skills throw them on the Water Pump (daily production and low skill requirement) and stock up on books while you're out and about. When you return you can sink all those skill points into their attack for late game boss monsters.
  
  
• Speaking of required production skills, they're not actually required; it's a metric for efficiency. Using the water pump as an example: the production of the building is 3 water per day, with a Farming "requirement" of 5. If you put someone with a Farming skill of 2, you'll produce 2/5 of your quota, or 1 water per day. This scales directly up to 200% production. So, a follower with 10 Farming skill will produce 6 water per day, but a follower with 30 Farming will also only produce 6 water per day. Note that a character with 0 skill points will never produce anything, as well as if the ratio of skill to produced item is less than one. (e.g. if you need 10 crafting to make 5 items, 2 crafting will produce 1 item, but 1 crafting will produce 0.5 items and therefore nothing)
  
  
• Related to above, a secondary good like ammo (50 ore = 50 ammo) will also scale with the crafting skill, but the initial good won't. So with the Crafting requirement of 25, a worker with 15 Crafting will need 50 ore to make 30 (3/5) of the ammo from it. A worker with 30 Crafting will make 60 (6/5) ammo, and a worker with 50 Crafting will make 100 ammo from 50 ore.
  
  
• If you didn't notice, one city can't make all of these goods at the same time without changing production lines. It makes sense to have each city producing specific goods if you really want to min/max this. You don't really need to as there is no onus to expand your production portfolio; by the time you have more than two outposts at full capacity you'll be so rich you won't need to bother unless you just want to RP as a wasteland trucking and manufacturing empire.
  
  
• Keep an eye out for bar characters with weirdly high stats in Crafting/Farming/Speech/Attack. There are some good deals out there as well as some very overpriced S tier chars that you can poach late game when you have lots of scrap. In the beginning you can get by with labour market workers/farmers/ranchers, but remember you'll need some characters with decent speech to get your ore production up and running.
  
  
• Remember that the happy status will give you bonus attack and defense for defenders. Status bars are frozen for outpost characters so they will have a permanent 20% boost so long as they're assigned.

Trade is the end game of the outpost. Each outpost can trade with its neighbouring cities, each of which has its own unique commodities that it wants to buy. This is where the passive scrap income finally begins and the game becomes significantly easier again, setting the stage for your road building empire and late game travel.

The trade menu is on the left bottom side of the main outpost screen.


Each surrounding city to your outpost has a list of four goods that they are willing to exchange scrap for. You only need to produce one of the goods in an agreement to trade initially, but as your outpost grows you can trade any and all goods to the unique city you have an agreement with.

Using Great Oilwell as an example, it's a great first agreement for a new outpost as you will be producing water via the pump and vegetables are available to be produced via the farm building (water pump and farm will likely be the first two buildings you build). The first number (5~7) indicates that Great Oilwell needs a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 7 Vegetables in storage per week. This won't be a problem as a farmer with the required farming stat will produce at least 5 Vegetables per day. The second number tells us the minimum scrap that Great Oilwell will pay (minimum of 27) per vegetable sold, per week. There is a bit of RNG here; one week you may sell 5 vegetables @ 27 scrap = 135 scrap while the next week you might sell 7 @ 30 scrap = 210 scrap. To my knowledge there is no way to influence this and it is totally random within those parameters.

Taking the example of SM city, we see the four goods that they are looking to trade (ointment, ammo, cloth, meds). Using Ammo, the top number (20~30) means that SM city is looking for an order of ammo no less than 20 and no greater than 30 per week. However, Ammo is a secondary/refined good that requires ore and therefore two buildings and workers (procurement office = ore, foundry = ammo). Here's where we need to do some mental math to be sure we can produce enough to satisfy the agreement: the foundry turns 50 ore into XX ammo per week, so not only do we need an ore production line cumulatively making 50 ore, we would need at least two followers with minimum Speech to produce the ore (5 ore per day per worker = 35 ore per week per worker) as well as a follower with minimum crafting to turn that ore into ammo at the foundry.


Trade agreements become very lucrative as they're established and your production lines can fulfill more than one of each city's required needs. They reward not only scrap but clout and positive relations points. Relations are important to trade; the Relations and Distance values under each city are directly related. The longer the distance, the higher your relations have to be to start a trade agreement. If you don't have enough relations to begin trade there is no penalty but a popup will let you know the requirement.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the goods are removed from your depot storage on a first come first serve basis: if you have two cities that are trading the same resource but not enough to fulfill both, the first will drain the depot and the second will not have enough and cancel the contract.

Cancelled contracts will sour relations with whatever faction it was with, and contracts can be cancelled automatically if you do something during gameplay that brings your relations under the threshold needed for trade with a far off neighbour. An example is if you lose relations with a faction by trying and failing to recruit a member at the bar.

Protip: remember that creating a new trade agreement for a particular good at the same time you're starting production of the good is risky, as if the caravan shows up before the production cycle is over, you won't have anything to sell and you will lose relations when the contract is cancelled. If you don't want to revisit your town in a week of in game time to start the agreement, just pick up some of the good somewhere else, and put the maximum amount needed in your depot. That way should the caravan show up early you're covered and you don't have to micromanage it while you're off on the other side of the map.

I hope this guide wasn't too long winded and that most if not all of it was correct. I did some guestimation on things but I'm fairly confident that it's not wrong. Please correct me if I'm wrong in the comments and I will add and credit you!