The Extension Ladder costs 60 credits. The store describes it in one line: it drops a horizontal ladder that you can climb.
That is a vertical tool, and vertical is the direction most crews never search.
The mistake this item fixes
Crews search a facility the way they walk through a building: rooms, hallways, ground floor. They grab what is reachable and leave.
Facilities are not flat. Raised areas, upper walkways and ledges exist, and some of the best scrap in a building sits somewhere you cannot reach by walking. Every trip you make without a way up is a trip where you looked at the reachable half of the facility and called it complete.
The ladder does not make you faster. It makes you stop leaving the top half alone.
Where it earns its credits
- Reaching raised platforms. If a facility has an upper area with loot on it, the ladder is the difference between seeing it and taking it.
- A safer route out. Some layouts are quicker from above, and being able to come down where you choose is worth having when something is below.
- Getting a stranded crewmate down. A player stuck somewhere high is a player who cannot reach the exit, and a ladder turns that into a walk.
- Crossing something you cannot walk across. A horizontal climbable line is a bridge, and bridges matter when the floor route is blocked or longer than you have time for.
How to place it
Place it where the climb will actually help, not where it is convenient.
Climb toward loot, not away from it. If the ladder takes you up but the scrap is past a gap you cannot cross, you have spent 60 credits on a view.
Plan the way down before you go up. The ladder is horizontal and climbable, so the route it creates works both directions. Know which end you are coming back to.
One person up first. Send the scout, confirm the platform has something worth carrying, and only then bring the crew and the empty hands.
The cost problem
Sixty credits is a real amount. It buys a Radar Booster plus a Stun Grenade plus a Boombox, and two of those three help a crew more often than a ladder does.
So the question before buying is simple: does the facility you are landing on have raised areas you cannot reach without it?
On a moon where the layout is shallow and ground-level, the ladder is dead weight. On a facility with an obvious upper floor, it is the highest-value item in the store for that trip.
A cheaper habit that replaces it most of the time
Not every vertical problem needs a ladder. Look up before you spend.
- Check whether the platform is reachable from somewhere else. A ramp, a stair or a climbable pile nearby is free.
- Check whether the loot above is worth the trip. A single small item on a high ledge is not 60 credits.
- Ask whether the ship player can see it. If the monitors show an upper platform, somebody already mapped the route.
The ladder is the answer when all three come back no.
Where it sits in the buying order
Below the Shovel, the lights, the Walkie-Talkies and the Radar Booster. Above the Boombox, because a route beats a song.
Buy it for a specific facility, with a specific plan, after the basics are covered. That is the only situation where 60 credits on a ladder is money well spent.
Related guides
- Best equipment tier list — the full buying order.
- Map guide — reading a facility’s layout before you commit.
- Best loadout — what the rest of the crew should be carrying.