How to become a fence (Playtest Guide 8/10/2026)

[ExiledToBronze]

- Start however you like with whatever perks. (ideally reputation gains as this hinges a lot on rep)
- Start of the game you want to visit Dr. Jackson ASAP. Look for lamps to put in your storefront. You can/should aim to get 3 eventually (anything more is excessive). The lamp % chance stacks as long as they are all set the same
- Set each lamp to food thieves. Food buyers are plentiful and you don't get inspected early so you'll be able to flip food pretty quickly
- If you struggle with income still pick up a water sign and getting glacier mining events makes many sellers show up with High Quality water ONLY (no need to test it). You can then sell it straight after for a small profit or wait for water shortages for larger profits.
- ABSOLUTELY DO NOT sell anything with heat. This will come to bite you later. Even after getting the joe wilds upgrades you'll need later for the fixers and the arrest protection
- As you build up reputation with the black market your % chance for thieves will go up. In order to gain more rep as you build up a bank give a 10% discount to each thief to 2x their reputation gain. As you get more money you can do a 50% discount for 3x but only if you want to and can afford it.
- Once your reputation is high enough to support regularly getting petty thieves you can often find ones selling meds. Flipping these is your ideal as you get them quite cheap. This is also your way to upgraded smugglers bays (buying the basic ones from Dr. Jackson.) and then putting it in (idk if it must be empty so i empty mine) the trash with 8x Oxymore injectors (with janitor service on) before sleeping.
- Keep flipping meds and keeping an eye on your Security record as you don't want to have too much of a bounty for some things you flip. Any Contraband will usually net you some kind of bounty even with fixers.
- Eventually your rep gets high enough to get a 60% chance or so (caps at 95%) for having a regular thief come by. You can also get one 100% once a week due to your black market rep. These will ALWAYS have a security box for 150 credits. You can always trade them for a small profit if things are still tight however you want to get card printing going through a Cryptographic Desequencer (bought from Dr Jackson). This will allow you to regularly open these crates. Open every single one. It will always profit. I've opened crates of no less than $500 in value all the way up to $1950+ with some good luck.
- Open crates ASAP. They have more slots than they take so keep them around for storage if you want. Outside of that EVERYTHING INSIDE has no heat and it will no longer be considered contraband hence why you open them asap (contraband items inside will stay as such)
- Enjoy you're now a fence.

Final tips here:
- Stock up on meds using a medical neon sign for upgrading your Smugglers Bays.
- You get tons of batteries from crates so get a recharging setup going
- The more bays you have the larger stockpiles you can buy in bulk of heated goods to let the heat come down.
- Keep reputation with everyone as high as possible. It increases customers and budgets.
- You'll struggle to offload the amount of product you have so 10% discount to increase their budget by 20% before selling
- IF YOU DO GET ARRESTED you can re-load the save and start on that day. Get protection from it from Joe OR pay the cost for them to destroy evidence and impede the investigation. Jumpscare tho lol. Just remember you still need to bring your bounty down before the investigation builds back up or you will be out of luck after that.
-75 progress per day is a good breakpoint for making keycards. Between the bats you get and having multiple recharges you can sustain this well and make a card you used one of in 2 days max. I tend to keep 1 of each card except ones i can't make yet. And then once i use one i start making another and otherwise i keep a few blanks around but i don't wanna fill up my storage with keycards. Blanks aren't contraband and can stay in regular storage.

This was how i got my store to be worth 20k by about day 60 and got the permit one week after it was offered to me. IMO this is probably the most profitable strat but lmk if anyone works out any of the other paths to being as successful. You can flip and make about 1k per 2 days JUST by opening a crate and instantly selling without even waiting for shortages.

[Ark555]

Great detail. Much thanks for walk through