Survival is a weight equation with a monster attached
Lethal Company does not have a health bar worth planning around. It has a carry weight, and the scrap table quantifies it: 7 items weigh 30 lbs or more, 16 of 70 are two-handed, and the facility you are walking out of has a 70% indoor median hazard rating. Survival is what happens when those three numbers are on your side.
Every figure here comes from src/data/lethalcompany-scrap.json and src/data/lethalcompany-monsters.json, both parsed from lethalcompany.wiki.gg. No invented percentages, no fake stat blocks.
The three weight tiers
The table splits cleanly, and the split is the whole survival model:
| Tier | Items | Weight | Best example | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weightless | 24 | 0 lbs | Zed Dog, 99 credits | Free — always take |
| Light | 31 | 1 to 19 lbs | Toilet Paper, 73 credits | Take, stays mobile |
| Mid | 8 | 20 to 29 lbs | Gold Bar, 155 credits | One at a time |
| Heavy | 7 | 30 lbs and up | Cash Register, 119 credits | Exit-adjacent only |
Twenty-four plus thirty-one is 55 of 70 items that a diver can carry without becoming a liability. That is the survival budget: the other 15 items are the ones that get crews killed, and they are not hidden — they are the rows with big numbers in the weight column.
The heavy seven
Everything that weighs 30 lbs or more, with what it pays for the trouble:
| Item | Avg value | Weight | Credits per lb |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash Register | 119 | 84 lbs | 1.42 |
| Gold Bar | 155 | 77 lbs | 2.01 |
| Yield Sign | 27 | 42 lbs | 0.64 |
| Chemical Jug | 57 | 32 lbs | 1.78 |
| Apparatus | 80 | 31 lbs | 2.58 |
| Heart | 61 | 31 lbs | 1.97 |
| Panting | 91 | 31 lbs | 2.94 |
Seven items, 328 lbs combined, 590 credits combined. That is 1.80 credits per pound across the entire heavy tier — versus 10 to 14 for the light tier. You are paying five to eight times more survival risk per credit for the privilege of carrying these.
None of them is worthless. The Gold Bar at 155 is the highest average in the file. But every one of them is a last-room item, and two of them are genuinely bad: Yield Sign at 0.64 per lb and Cash Register at 1.42 with a two-handed flag.
The drop order
When something closes and you need speed back, do not deliberate. Drop in this order:
- Cash Register — 84 lbs, 119 credits, two-handed. The single worst thing to be holding in a chase.
- Gold Bar — 77 lbs, 155 credits. Painful, but 77 lbs is 3.85 times the weight of the whole light haul.
- Yield Sign — 42 lbs for 27 credits. This should never have been picked up.
- Chemical Jug / Apparatus / Panting / Heart — 31 to 32 lbs each, all two-handed except the Heart.
- Mid tier — Bottles 19, Egg 19, Cash-lite items. Keep the Egg if you can; 6.26 per lb is the best of the 19 lb group.
- Never drop — the 24 weightless items. They cost nothing, so they are never the reason you are slow.
Two heavies is the practical ceiling. Dropping one 77 lb item recovers more speed than dropping every light item you own, which is why the first decision is always about the biggest number in the weight column.
The 70% rule
Survival is not only about leaving. It is about knowing when the walk stops being optional.
Eight entities in the bestiary rate 70% or higher: Maneater (1000%, a joke entry), Jester 90%, Thumper 90%, Circuit Bees 90%, Coil-head 80%, Baboon Hawk 75%, Bracken 70%, Butler 70%. Six of those eight are indoor, against a 16-entity indoor roster. That is a 37.5% chance that any given indoor row is in the top band.
The practical rule: a confirmed 70%+ entity converts the run into an exit run, immediately and without debate. You do not finish the room, you do not grab the last item, you do not check the corridor behind you. Eight rows is a short enough list to memorise, and six of them live where you are looting.
Two are absolute. The Jester’s HP field reads “Invincible”, so no amount of gear changes the outcome; its own log says “You cant hide from it, just evacuate.” The Thumper at 90% has no documented HP value at all, which means no kill threshold exists to plan around.
Banking in two trips
The safest haul is not the biggest one. It is the one that gets sold.
Compare two plans for the same 20 items:
- One trip: 20 items at 47 average = 940 credits, carried in one load. A typical mixed load of that size includes several 19 lb items, so you are slow for the entire return.
- Two trips: 10 items each = 470 credits per trip. The first trip is banked before the second begins, so a wipe on trip two costs half, not everything.
Two trips also let you sell in between, which means the quota is already reduced when you go back out. The quota guide works through how to size each trip against the target.
The 470-credit trip is the unit to plan around. It is ten items at the table average, or eight if you bias toward the ratio column, and it is light enough to move at speed.
Storms and the 23 conductive items
Twenty-three scrap rows carry the conductive flag, and 18 of those also weigh something. A storm turns metal scrap into a liability on the walk back, which is exactly the moment you are slowest and most exposed.
The survival answer is ordering, not avoidance:
- Before the storm hits, move conductive scrap to the ship. Gold Bar, Fancy Lamp, Robot Toy, Wedding Ring, Brass Bell are all conductive and all worth having.
- During the storm, carry the non-conductive light tier. 24 weightless items are mostly non-conductive, and Easter Egg, Hairdryer, Coffee Mug and Old Phone are all non-conductive too.
- Leave the conductive heavy tier for a clear day. Cash Register and Apparatus are the two that hurt most to abandon, and both are exactly what you do not want in the open during a storm.
The weather guide covers reading the forecast before the door opens.
What survival is not
Survival is not fighting. Only 3 of 25 bestiary rows have an HP value at all — Bracken and Nutcracker at 5, Jester at “Invincible” — so for 22 entities there is no documented kill threshold to plan a fight around. A guide that tells you to duel a Coil-head is guessing.
Survival is also not speed for its own sake. The table’s best carrier is 14.60 credits per pound and the worst is 0.45, a 32-fold gap, and the fastest way to convert that gap into credits is to carry the light tier twice rather than the heavy tier once.
The how to carry heavy scrap page does the trip maths in more detail, and the how to find the exit page covers the navigation half of getting home.
Related guides
- How to carry heavy scrap — trip maths for the 77 and 84 lb items.
- How to find the exit — navigation under pressure.
- Scrap guide — all 70 items by ratio.
- Weather guide — the conductive-scrap risk.
- Co-op guide — splitting the weight across a crew.