Expedition

Characters must embark on expeditions in order to find most of their supplies. However, there is also a chance of running into wild animal or other survivors along the way, and not all survivors are friendly.

## Planning

To plan an expedition, right-click on the map/radio workstation in your shelter. Choose one or two characters to send out (plus a pet, if you have a companion animal that can accompany your expedition). After that, choose what equipment will they use and what they will they carry on the party's shared inventory. Early in the game, each survivor has one weapon slot, two accessory slots, an inventory expansion slot, and six inventory slots. Special items such as the Rucksack can be equipped to the inventory expansion slot to increase the number of item slots of a character has.

While setting up the expedition, the characters that are involved cannot be using hazmat suits since they are too delicate for the wasteland.

### Water

The expedition costs water, with the amount of water required increasing the greater distance you assign your party to travel (the number of waypoints doesn't directly affect water costs, only the distance to be traveled).

### Camper Van

Characters can move faster and carry more items if they can fix the camper van, but for that, they need to find the missing parts. Once the parts are found, the camper van requires petrol. How much petrol depends on the distance to be traveled. Choosing to use the camper van means that inventory increasing items, such as the Large Rucksacks, cannot be equipped; however, a two-character party using the van has 72 item slots.

### Recall

To end an expedition early, recall your expedition party back to the shelter by clicking on the radio transmitter and clicking on recall. This can be useful when the party's inventory has run out of space. How long it takes the party to reach the shelter depends on their distance from the shelter. This can be checked by right-clicking on the radio/map and choosing View Map.

## Situations

There are different situations that are triggered by arriving at a location or searching a location such as meeting a group of people / a person who wants to trade. They are all notified through a radio transmission that you can either accept or reject.

As can happen with games that are still in development, there is a bit of a bug where if you save/exit then load the game the characters who were on an expedition will not get Perception experience for locations that they visited before saving/loading. They will get Perception experience for locations visited after the load just fine. In general, it's best to save/exit your game when everyone is home in the shelter.

There is a limit of 4 expedition parties at once. If there are 4 parties out and you try to start another expedition, you will be presented with the people who are already on the 4th expedition, starting from the final screen instead of the normal character selection screen. Notably, if you back out of this with the ESC key instead of using the X in the top right corner, you will end up de-equipping the 4th expedition party members. This can be a problem if you had them wearing a mask as they will arrive home with radiation sickness. You can't use this bug to empty their inventory, only to alter what they are wearing.

**Arriving at a location**

**Being signaled by a survivor**

or if your Perception/Dexterity is high enough:

 File:Signal Survivor Sneak.png
**Fighting a survivor**

 File:Survivor Fight.png
**Talking to a survivor with the option to trade, recruit, or bully them.**

 File:Survivor Option.png
**Finding items**

## Mechanics and Timings1

*This section is for a variety of tidbits that could use some better organization or are somewhat rough estimates.*

When setting up an expedition to visit locations that you have already visited, as long as the sites you want to visit clearly touch the line of travel, they will (generally) be visited. This is easier to control if you tick to non-diagonal lines of travel. In other words, you can visit multiple sites by selecting the first and last site.

For locations that have not yet been visited there is a chance when the party comes near enough (the circle around the party) that they will offer to visit the location via radio.

It's not certain that every location that is unknown will be visited if it's on the line of travel.

### Fuel (Van)

Fuel usage is pretty simple. Formula: (Water-1)/4. In words, take how much water the game states you will need, subtract 1, then divide by 4. This is regardless of 1 or 2 person party.

### Water and Time

Since Anti-Radiation Tablets only last 4 days it's useful to know how far you can send members who are pre-dosed against radiation. That distance is nearly 40 water units for a 2 person party or 80 water units for a 1 person party. Since this is the in-game value it already includes water needed for the return trip.

#### Caveats

* Best shave a couple of water units off as the data is based on the moment both members of the party have left as well as when they first reach the hatch.
* This estimate is rather rough at the moment and takes into account, not mere travel but also scouting and combat.
* This does not take into account visiting previously unvisited locations (displayed as '?' on the map).
* The more precise estimate of daily travel is currently 10.23 water per day (the game will display this as 11). That is for 2 people, double the number for a lone individual.
* This doesn't take into account travel in Van or party members who have either the Proactive or Lazy Traits.
* No data as yet on 2 person parties both with Proactive.
* No data as yet on 1 person Proactive party.

#### Really Rough Estimates

* The Trait Proactive appears to shave about 30% off the travel time. So 1 party member with Proactive should enable a 2 person party to travel 14.68 water units per day or about 56 water units while protected by Anti-Radiation Tablet. Again double those if the Proactive person is alone.
* Van appears to allow in excess of 70 water units within 4 days.
* The Trait Lazy likely will apply a roughly 30% reduction in distance traveled or only 7 units of water per day, 28 units for 4 days.

## Loot

When you visit a location a random amount of items will be generated, then your Expedition party will discover each item using their Perception skill and support items. Only the highest Perception skill is considered when calculating discovery chance, Party of two members with level 20 Perception skill have the same chance as a party with 1 member with level 20 Perception skill.

Every item has a default 60% chance to be discovered. Every 1 level in Perception adds a 1% chance, equipped Metal Detector adds 20%, and pet Dog adds a 10% chance.

1I've been fiddling with this stuff for a while and recently have enough confidence to post some details. I've gone ahead an posted some details I have less confidence in, such as the "Really Rough Estimates." I've tried to cover the gaps in my data in the "Caveats" section. -Profound\_Darkness (talk)