The short version
Buy Shovels. At 30 credits they are the only weapon cheap enough to arm a whole crew on day one.
Then learn the part that matters more: the Shovel does nothing to five entities. Carrying a weapon into those five situations is how crews die while holding a solution they do not have.
What the store sells
Prices and behaviour from the game’s item list:
| Item | Price | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Walkie-Talkie | 12 | Map-wide communication, uses battery |
| Flashlight | 15 | Light source, low charge |
| Lockpicker | 20 | Opens locked doors, takes 30 seconds |
| Pro-Flashlight | 25 | Larger battery than the standard flashlight |
| Shovel | 30 | Damages monsters |
| Stun Grenade | 30 | Flashbang, disrupts entities briefly |
| Spray Paint | 50 | Sprays a line of paint |
| Boombox | 60 | Plays music, counts as a sound source |
| Extension Ladder | 60 | Drops a climbable horizontal ladder |
| Radar-Booster | 60 | Visible on ship monitors, can be pinged or flashed |
| TZP-Inhalant | 120 | Move faster, use less stamina |
| Zap Gun | 400 | Scans for monsters and stuns them |
| Jetpack | 700 | Lets you fly |
Only two of these are weapons in the ordinary sense: the Shovel and the Stun Grenade. The Zap Gun stuns rather than kills.
The five things a Shovel cannot touch
This is the single most useful weapon fact in the game.
The Shovel does damage to monsters excluding Coil-heads, Ghost Girl, the Giant, the Earth Leviathan and the Jester.
So for those five, the weapon slot is dead weight. The answers are different in each case: keep a Coil-head in sight, walk out when Ghost Girl appears to you, and leave before a Jester finishes winding up.
A crew that learns this stops buying a second Shovel for a problem a Shovel cannot solve.
Scrap that doubles as a weapon
Some weapons are free, because you find them in the facility and they sell as scrap afterwards.
| Item | Scrap value | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen Knife | 35 | 0 lbs |
| Stop Sign | 35 | 24 lbs |
| Yield Sign | 27 | 42 lbs |
| Shotgun | 60 | 16 lbs |
The Kitchen Knife is the standout. It weighs nothing, so it costs you no carry capacity at all. You can also sell it at the end of the run.
The Stop Sign and Yield Sign are the opposite trade. They hit things, but 24 and 42 pounds of your load is a lot to spend on a weapon when the quota is close.
The Shotgun, and why it disappoints
The Shotgun is found in the facility and sells for 60 credits at 16 pounds, so it is decent scrap.
As a weapon it has one documented gap worth knowing: Manticoils take no damage from it at all. A melee weapon kills them in one hit instead.
That is a fair summary of the Shotgun’s problem across the board. It is loud, and the noise it makes is often a bigger cost than the damage it does.
What to carry by crew size
Solo. One Shovel and a flashlight. Nothing else earns a slot, because you cannot fight your way out of anything anyway and every pound you spend on gear is a pound not spent on the quota.
Two divers. Two Shovels. That is the point where you can actually free someone from a Snare Flea or a grabbed teammate, which is the main reason to carry a weapon at all.
Four divers. Two or three Shovels, one Stun Grenade, and one person deliberately travelling light. The grenade buys the exit when a corridor goes wrong, and the light traveller is the one who gets the haul back.
When a Stun Grenade is worth its slot
The Stun Grenade costs the same as a Shovel and disrupts entities for a short time.
That sounds worse than a weapon and in a straight fight it is. Its value is as an exit button: thrown at the moment a corridor stops being walkable, it buys the few seconds that get a crew through a door.
Treat it as a consumable you plan to spend, not as gear you carry all run. A grenade still in your pocket at the end of the day was a wasted 30 credits.
What not to buy early
Zap Gun, 400 credits. It stuns, it does not kill, and it uses battery. It is a luxury for crews whose quota problem is already solved.
Jetpack, 700 credits. It is a flying machine on a game about walking back before midnight. By the time you can afford it without hurting the quota, you already know whether you want it.
TZP-Inhalant, 120 credits. Faster movement and less stamina drain is genuinely good, but it is a comfort purchase. Gear that keeps you alive comes first.
Mistakes crews make
- Buying a weapon for a problem it cannot solve. Five entities ignore the Shovel entirely.
- Carrying a Yield Sign as a weapon. Forty-two pounds of load for damage you may never use.
- Firing a Shotgun indoors. The noise is the actual cost, and it is paid in attention you did not want.
- Skipping the Kitchen Knife. Zero weight, sellable, and it kills what a melee weapon is supposed to kill.
- Arming everyone. One person travelling light gets more value out of a run than four people carrying equal gear.
If you can only afford one weapon
The tier list ranks weapons; it does not tell you which one to buy when the budget allows exactly one slot.
- You can fight what you meet (Coil-heads, Ghost Girl, Giant, Earth Leviathan, Jester excluded): buy the Shovel. At 30 credits it is the only weapon cheap enough to arm a whole crew, and it frees a hand for light and scrap.
- You need to escape, not kill: buy a Stun Grenade. Same price as the shovel, and its job is to buy the two seconds that get a crew through a door. Spend it, don’t carry it.
- One big entity is pinning the crew and you have spare credits: the Zap Gun holds it, but at 400 credits it is a late-game tool, not a first purchase.
Control vs output: the Shovel is output (it ends a threat you can fight); the Stun Grenade is control (it creates the window to leave). Early crews need control more than they need kills, because most deaths come from being caught, not from losing a fight. The buy order guide places the shovel in quota 1–2 and the zap gun at 5+ for exactly this reason.
Related guides
- Best equipment tier list — the full buying order for a new crew.
- Best scrap tier list — what your remaining weight should carry.
- Monsters database — check which entities you can actually fight.