The route confirmation screen is the last moment where changing your mind is free.
Everything that kills crews on expensive moons is decided before that click: what they bought, what they checked, and whether they agreed on what happens when something goes wrong.
Step one: read the weather
Check the forecast before you buy anything.
Fog, storms, flooding and eclipsed change how the trip feels, and none of them raise scrap value. A moon that is comfortable in clear weather can be a different facility in fog, because the thing you were relying on — seeing something before it reaches you — is gone.
The weather guide is the full version. The short rule is: bad weather means shorter trips, so plan for that before you pay the travel cost.
Step two: buy for the moon, not for the crew
On a hard moon, every player needs a light. There is no version of this trip where somebody walks a hostile facility in the dark and that works out.
After lights: at least one shovel, ideally two if the crew will split at all. Walkie-talkies for everyone, because the ship player and the pair inside are exactly the people who cannot hear each other.
A radar booster is worth 60 credits on large or hostile facilities, because it is the only thing that turns a lost player into a found one.
Step three: check the spawn picture
Know what the moon throws at you before you land.
Some moons are hostile in both zones — the surface and the facility are both dangerous — and some are hostile in only one. The moon guides carry the spawn rates, and the important question is not “what is there” but “what is there that we cannot answer.”
A moon where the crew has no answer for any listed entity is a moon you land on to learn, not to farm.
Step four: agree on the plan out loud
Before confirming the route, the crew should be able to answer three questions:
Where is the exit? Not “we will find it.” The actual door, or at least the plan for finding it in the first minute.
What do we do when something appears? Leave. On a hard moon the answer is almost always leave, and saying it before you land stops the mid-chase argument.
What is the turnaround time? A number, agreed by everyone, that ends the trip even if it is going well.
Crews that cannot answer these three are not underprepared because of their gear. They are underprepared because they have not agreed on anything.
Step five: buy less than you think
The most common expensive-moon mistake is buying the whole store and then dying with all of it.
The gear that matters is lights and a shovel. The gear that feels good — the zap gun, the jetpack, the inhalant — is gear you lose in the facility along with everything else.
Land with what keeps you alive, not with what makes the trip feel fair.
When to turn around instead
If the crew is still dying to basic threats, the honest preparation is to go somewhere cheaper and come back.
The expensive moon will still be there tomorrow, and it will be easier then, because the crew will have one more cycle of equipment and one more cycle of experience. The crews that rush expensive moons spend their first week re-equipping.
Related guides
- Moons tier list — the full ranking and what each moon throws at you.
- Weather guide — what the forecast does to a trip.
- Best loadout — what to buy, in order, for any crew.