Hardspace: Shipbreaker Tips for Beginners

In Hardspace: Shipbreaker, space is the final frontier, and it’s going to take a lot of brave folks to tame it. Are we going to pay them a fair salary for risking their necks in the inhospitable depths of space? Goodness, no. And they’d better not even think of unionizing. Don’t they know how much we already care about them?

Scrapping old hardware is a dangerous job in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. With nothing but some glass and fabric separating you from the void, you need to work safely to stay alive. Of course, dying just means that Lynx Corporation boots up another one of your clones and sends you back to work, but doesn’t that just send chills down your spine? Also, it adds up against your pocketbook. Here are some tips to get you to work and back with minimal workplace accidents.

Don’t sweat the debt

Right out of the gate in Hardspace: Shipbreaker, you’re saddled with colossal debt. Over a billion in costs, just for taking the job. It’s a great way to give all the adults playing instant anxiety. Stay calm. Although you’re given the goal of paying off the debt and actually starting to make money at your job, additional goals open up in later chapters that are a lot easier to feel optimistic about than digging your way out of a mountain of debt and the daily reminders of it.

Don’t be cheap

Again, Hardspace: Shipbreaker really pushes the financial side of things in your face, but just like how you shouldn’t worry about the crippling debt, you also shouldn’t be afraid to spend your money. Your life is more valuable than that. Literally, your deaths will rack up a lot more costs than if you maybe refill your oxygen and tethers before they’re critically depleted. It’s tempting to try and pinch every penny, but there’s a fine line between thrifty and foolish in space.

Take it slow

The quicker you try to work in Hardspace: Shipbreaker, the faster you’re likely going to die. Cut open a ship without first depressurizing it might result in getting blown into a wall. Reel something in too fast and it’s going to smash your visor (an additional tip is to tap the reel button rather than hold it to prevent an item from picking up to much velocity. Push the limits of your oxygen supply and you’ll see how the color blue looks on you. Jet around too recklessly and you might soon know the panic of trying to haul yourself out of the processor’s pull. There are a lot of hazards to look out for, and rushing in is the worst way to find out what they are.

It’s a good idea to do an exploratory search of the ship before you start cutting. Depressurize its sections, find where all the fuel tanks are, flush the pipes, and check if it has a reactor. It’s easier to work once you know everything is safe. Pull that reactor, safely dispose of the fuel tanks, and make sure an errant cutter beam isn’t going to send you on a longer spacewalk than you expected.

Hold on tight

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, meaning it’s pretty easy to get thrown around in zero gravity. Explosive depressurization and the decoupling of parts can lead to your tiny mass getting crushed or slammed around.

You have two buttons that bring out your grabby hands. By default, these are X and Z. Using your mitts, you can latch onto objects much bigger than you to prevent yourself from getting tossed around in the vacuum of space. It can also be useful to add to your mass when you want to get something much bigger to budge. Sometimes, thrusters aren’t enough to keep you stable.

Note that your character is right-handed, so if you want to keep working with your tools, you’ll need to grab hold with your left hand.

Don’t leave key rewards untouched

There’s technically no real penalty for stripping a ship of its most expensive parts and dumping the rest. You can just start a new workday and select a different ship to pull apart. However, you will be missing out on the higher-level rewards. Early milestones in ship deconstruction are pretty simple to make, as long as you’re putting scrap in the right bin. However, in order to get the last couple of rewards, you need to be careful about what gets destroyed.

This is especially important since the last and second-to-last rewards are the most valuable. It’s the largest amount of XP and usually comes with a bonus repair kit. Remember when I said that your debt isn’t important? Progress in Hardspace: Shipbreaker is largely based on your level, so sucking every bit of experience from every ship is more important than value. Remember that the next time you want to cut corners and shove everything into the processor.