Getting Started in the New Open Sewer

This guide covers the basics of your new life in the Open Sewer District. Will be updated as I figure out more about the game; contributions welcome.

Intro to Obenseuer

So, you've just landed yourself in a slum. Congratulations. What was it that got you thrown in here? Was it the booze, or the smokes? Nahhhh, we all know it was the shrooms. Well, you're in it now, so here's how to not end up dead in one of the district's eponymous Open Sewers.

Please keep in mind that as an open beta, the game's contents, and thus the contents of this guide, are subject to frequent change; this guide may make reference to changes that have been implemented and are being playtested, but have not yet been released on the public branch. A list of upcoming changes can be found here[github.com] at the Obenseuer issue tracker[github.com].

Entering Obenseuer

You start your journey into filth in the waiting room of a border-control facility. (Which you should definitely loot for starting cash.) Your first task is to answer questions from the faceless welcoming committee; this gives you the chance to select some details of your backstory, and to select your addictions.

Let me start by making this clear: you can, if you're very lucky, get away with suffering from only two of the three main addictions from the start. Picking the "Random" options gives you the opportunity to avoid getting all three, but there's no guarantee you won't end up worse off. It's up to you to choose whether to gamble, or spread your addictions out.

With that being said, mushroom addiction is definitely the worst one to deal with, both in terms of effects and availability. Alcohol and nicotine addiction are easier to source, less damaging, and easier to fix your addiction to.

Once you've completed the interview and collected your care package, you're into the slums! From here, it's time to get yourself settled in, start earning money, and making yourself a fixture of the area.

First Steps

Now, friend, the shrooms haven't baked your brain just yet. You're a pretty sharp cookie, aren't you? You can figure out a few things on your own, right?

Well, even so, there are quite a few things you can do to get a head start on things in the district. So, let's go down the list.

First, take the advice from your first encounter: go get yourself a bowl of soup. Head in the direction of the Bazaar sign, past the Street Market; the soup kitchen is to the right of the Bazaar gate. Yes, the soup kitchen guy makes you pray before giving you the soup. No, this doesn't seem to have any in-game effects. Also, hit the O-Market and drop off some bottles to get used to your most reliable source of income. That should complete the "Survive in Obenseuer" task.

Next, enter the Kolhola building; the door's to the right of the soup kitchen. Head up the stairs until you find an Axe embedded in someone's door. First tool get, and it's free! Feel free to search the rest of the building, except for the tarped-off apartment; that one has great loot, but no lights and an unfortunate infestation of bear traps. Just make sure to check your inventory before leaving the building to be sure that you haven't stolen anything you didn't intend to; some items may be mislabeled. (Though you'll need plenty of cleaning supplies later.)

Next, go to the Workshop stall in the Street Market (next to the Firewood stall) and buy a Sledgehammer if he's got one in stock. If you don't have enough OC, go around the area gathering bottles & cans to recycle in the O-Market until you can afford it.

You'll need both of these; there are some doorways in the game, including in your tenement, that are blocked off by boards or bricks. These areas usually have better loot, so having both tools available is very convenient.

Now that you're equipped, it's time to go view your Tenement. But first! Go into Deekula A (the one with the green sign for Dr. Pena) and find Jonasson. This is the guy who will be renovating your tenement (and taking most of your money in the process). More importantly for the moment, to the left of Jonasson is a HUGE storage box; Jonasson lets you use it for free, and it never empties (unlike the trash bins). Any building materials stored there are automatically counted towards Tenement reconstruction; however, for now just dump all your non-tool items in there. You'll be clearing out the Tenement next, you'll need the storage space.

Finally, go out the back door of Deekula A and turn left (or out the front door and make a double-right), and go to the Toll Bridge. (Check your Map if needed; it's the bridge over the north end of the sewer.) The Toll Bridge costs 10 OC to cross every time you're going to the Tenement side; after paying, the gate opens once you step in front of it.

(Lifetime free passage can later be purchased for the low, low price of 800 RM; it's not worth it until after you're much more well-developed. There's also a bridge on the southern end, but it's behind a locked door; to open it, you need lockpicks and a high skill level or good luck.)

Once you're through, it's time to visit your Tenement.

Your Tenement

Your tenement is… a wreck. That's the most generous thing that can be said about it. It's an incomplete shell of a building, missing a basement and a complete stairwell. It's lacking even doors on the apartments; it's unlit, unheated, and has a nasty shroom infestation on top of that. But it's yours, to repair and rent.

Your first job is to survey your property. This is important for two reasons: first, the tenement is full of recycleables, supplies and loose building materials, and second, you need to survey every room of an apartment before it becomes available for renovation. You can also clean out the shrooms without taking damage by crouching and approaching carefully.

On the third floor, you'll find the Tenement's only other living inhabitant (not that he pays rent). Talking to him gives you the Building Plans, a quest item that unlocks Tenement Renovation; it also unlocks the Greenhouse questline, a much better source of OC than bottle-recycling.

Finally, it unlocks the Apartment Management interface. You can use this to, well, manage your personal apartment; pick up the trash, arrange the furniture, clean off the graffiti, etc. However, this process isn't free; you'll need cleaning supplies to get rid of all the filth:

• Clean graffiti: requires Cleaning Spray
  
• Remove garbage bags: requires Disinfectant
  
• Remove rot piles: requires Bleach

(In ver. 0.3.24 onwards, you also get access to the Cleaning interface, a stripped-down Apartment Manager interface that lets you clean out the trash in the entire tenement and take away all the loose furniture. Again, helpful for getting components.)

All of these can be bought at O-Market (and sometimes the One Stop Shop), or scavenged from the environment.

Furniture items go into your Inventory, but don't take up inventory slots; they go into the non-inventory column on the right. You can also disassemble some of them at Jonasson's Workbench for building materials, or sell them at the One Stop Shop.

Finally, you can buy furniture at some shops, or make it yourself at a Workbench if you've found the blueprints.

With this, you now have an uncomfortable and marginally safe place to sleep, and to store your stuff. Note that when sleeping in the "Bare"-level starter apartment, your bed is "Unsafe", and you run a high risk of being stolen from; upgrading the apartment to "Makeshift" lowers this risk to "Safeish", while upgrading to "Shabby" removes it entirely. You can risk sleeping here, or spend a few paying nights in the Kolhola Hostel.

Now that this most critical of needs has been secured, it's time to start working on thriving in the Open Sewer.

Being a Slumlord

Now that you've claimed your tenement, your next big job is to buy, scrounge or steal the cash and materials to start renovating your roach motel. This is a big deal because in addition to gaining a reliable source of income, your first renovation also unlocks two new areas (Pentti's Speakeasy and Deekula B), opens up new quests, and provides new sources of income.

Many of the materials you need can be scavenged in the environment, bought at the One Stop Shop or the Street Market's Hardware stall, or crafted in the various stations around the map. (See Shawn's guide for a list of what can be crafted.) The cash, well, you're going to have to grind your way up to that point; if you decide to start stealing stuff, that's up to you. Be warned, though, that while Samuel the Tenement Fixer doesn't care where his construction materials come from, nobody in the early game will buy stolen goods.

Your first choice of renovations should be to upgrade the Walls of Apartment 4. This is because:

• I've only found two renters so far who will rent an apartment with only the Walls 1 renovation.
  
• Of the two, one (Pate Rantanen, in the Street Market) has a higher base payment rate (600 OC to Sara Claine's 200 OC). He wants a Small apartment, and Number 4's the only one available for now.

All renters take 24 hours to move in before they start generating rent. Actual rent income from apartments is calculated as "Apartment Charge" (derived from apartment value) plus the tenant's "Basic Income". Renters currently have no maximum cap on rent, but this has been hinted as a {Planned} improvement.

What comes after this? Well, now it's time to actually make a plan. There are basically three directions you can go:

• Fill more of your currently available apartments
  
• Open up more of the tenement
  
• Improve your own apartment

See, not all renters are equal. (Case in point: Pate and Sara have the same requirements, but Pate pays better.) Obenseuer has more homeless people than you have free flats. And most tenement upgrades don't require you to build each tier of improvement in numerical order; as long as you meet the requirements and have the resources, you can skip the inferior upgrades (and their non-refundable costs).

This means that if you're buying the cheapest renovations to get what I call "desperate" renters right away, you'll be paying more down the line when trying to improve them for higher-paying tenants. You need to juggle these competing pressures, preselect your renters and plan your upgrades.

For example, Sara Claine, Agnes Takala and Leon Borg all want a Medium apartment. You have two mediums available to renovate (3 and 6), so someone's getting disappointed. However! They all have different requirements and pay different amounts, like so:

Name	Requirements	Basic Income
Sara	Walls 1	200 OC, 0 RM
Agnes	Walls 1, Bathroom 1	50 OC, 55 RM
Leon	Walls 1, Bathroom 1, Heating 1	400 OC, 20 RM

So what do you do? Do you:

• Rent one to Sara first, then upgrade while she's living there and kick her out once it's ready for Leon?
  
• Skip Sara, rent directly to Agnes and Leon, but only improve the bare minimum for now?
  
• Save up for some higher-value renovations like Heating II, so as to save money and earn more rent?
  
• Screw them, fix your own place first so that you're not paying for that hostel bed?

Well, that's up to you, turnip head! That being said, once you've started at least six renovations, it triggers a questline that unlocks more item-filled locations and the game's only stolen-goods store, so taking the cheap renovations at first might be more profitable in the long run. Your call.

Down in the Dumps

In addition to the problems of food, water and shelter, you also need to fight Depression. Basically, you're living in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and everything is terrible. Get too depressed, and your character will start suffering injuries; it's implied that they're cutting themself to feel something. Keeping yourself from becoming depressed is a never-ending battle in this game, although as in real life, it gets way easier once you've gotten enough money.

There are many ways to reduce depression, but most of them share the same flaw: the more you rely on a single source of depression reduction, the less it helps. In fact, overuse of any one anti-depression method can start having the opposite effect and make you more depressed, not less. On top of this, if you're already in a depressed state, some items become less effective by default.

To identify whether something is helpful or not, look for the "face" indicator on the item's sidebar in the inventory. A green smiley face indicates that using the item will reduce depression, while a red frowny face means that this item will make things worse. The number of plus-or-minus symbols beside the face shows how much of an effect the item will have. A yellow, unsmiling face indicates very little effect one way or another - but be warned: very little is not the same as none.

There are many methods and items for reducing depression:

• Food
  
• Drinks
  
• Alcohol
  
• Smokes
  
• Green Shrooms
  
• Antidepressants
  
• Sleeping in a nice bed
  
• Using a sauna

You need to mix-and-match methods to stay ahead of the grinding despair. However, misuse of some of these will have their own negative effects. Which brings us to Addictions.

Kicking The Habits

Your addictions are a never-ending problem. Anyone who has an addiction in real life knows this. Addictions are expensive, damaging to your health, and distract you when you have other things to be doing; however, if you don't feed it and manage it, you could die from the deprivation.

Fortunately, in this game, your addictions are numerically quantifiable. You can get rid of them, (and get in-game achievements for doing so,) as long as you play it smart.

First, focus on kicking one habit at a time. The more needs you're experiencing at the same time, the faster your Depression rises. You can fight Depression with Antidepressants (regular or prescription), but these items work best when they're only fighting one major source of depression. Pick one to run up to the 100% wire before filling, and try to juggle the other two at around 50-60% until the targeted addiction is cured.

Second, feed your addictions as little as possible. The non-visible "addiction" stat is separate from the visible "need" stat; addiction governs how fast your need rises.

Each of the need-filling consumables has an associated stat:

• Smoking: Nicotine
  
• Alcohol: Alcohol
  
• Shrooms: Magic

I'm not 100% sure of the formula yet, and I'm not sure whether it applies equally to all addictions/needs. However, for alcohol items at least, 1 point of alcohol content knocks 10% off your alcohol need; drinking an Osmo Olut Can, with its 10 pts of alcohol, will clear out a maxed stack of alcohol need, while drinking an OS Energy Drink will reduce it by 20% per can. In other words, drinking an Osmo Olut Bottle, with its 15 pts of alcohol content, will increase your addiction more than a OO Can while only doing the same job at solving your alcohol need.

If you can get rid of shroom addiction first, do so. Shroom addiction gives some benefits at higher levels, like getting healing from Glowing food, but it also reduces the benefits from regular food. Consuming any sort of glowing mushroom products increases your Fungal Infection, and there's no cure for that condition. You can reduce it, but as far as I know, it never completely goes away.

The best item for enduring & clearing shroom addiction (that I've found so far) is Winstead Cigarettes, bought in the O-Market. These shroom-contaminated smokes give only 5 pts of Magic, lower than anything else found in the game thus far. Avoid raw shrooms unless you have no other choice, or specifically want high shroom exposure.

Also, using the Sauna around the back side of your Tenement can alleviate needs and depression. It doesn't directly affect the actual addictions, but letting you go longer between doses has the same effect. You can find plenty of burnable fuel outside the sauna, but bring lots of water and be ready to duck out before the heat gets injurious.

Finally, think carefully before picking up the Blue Duck. It causes Duck addiction. (Yes, really.) Duck addiction basically means that you start feeling the need to carry around armfuls of rubber ducks to stave off depression; the more ducks you carry, the less depression you feel. A full ten stacks of ducks will keep you depression-free forever; if you feel that taking up that much inventory space is worth never having to buy antidepressants again, it's up to you.

Making Money

I'm going to go into more detail on this some other time, but for now, here's a quick overview. There are a lot of ways to make money in this game; some easy, some complex. The easiest and most profitable, once you have your flats in order, is through renting out your tenement; even the cheapest renter pays enough to cover your daily needs. However, upgrading your tenement will require an ungodly amount of money, resources and time. So! How to afford all of that?

First, there's scavenging and selling crap. The O-Market's bottle exchange is the obvious example, but most of the stalls and shops in the game will buy at least some things; the wood guy in the square buys junk wood, the One Stop Shop will buy most household goods (and, for some reason, sawdust), etc.

Selling stolen goods is a bit trickier; there is currently only one shop in the game that buys stolen items (for RM), but they only become available further on in the game, after getting far enough in the renovations process. The current version also allows you to "launder" stolen goods by washing them with Dishwasher Powder in a Dishwasher station, which can be bought from Jonasson at the Tenement Shop. You can also just make use of stolen items in the crafting system; the outputs won't register as stolen.

Speaking of which, the next big source of income is crafting finished goods from raw materials. For example, you can use an axe to get wood logs, which you can turn into planks, then to furniture parts, then into actual furniture which you can then sell. Tin cans can be smelted into steel bars, then converted into a whole array of products and materials, etc. Any finished good should have a higher resale value; it just demands a time investment on your part.

FYI, the most profitable furniture items are the Vegetable Crate and the Stolland Clock. The Crate has such low material costs as to be very profitable, but with the newly increased crafting time, may not be worth the wait; the Stolland Clock is one of the few craftable furniture items that sells for RM. The most profitable material items are Glass Panes and Mechanical Parts, which can be made entirely out of tin cans; finally, watches can be sold for both OC and RM. (How to make watches? You'll have to figure that out for yourself.)

Also, don't be afraid to invest in better production machines. Jonasson sells a rotating list of crafting stations; the Lathe costs over 3400 RM, but is hands-down the best way to make money in this game, especially when combined with the 1300-RM Gas Furnace.

There are several other jobs that become available over the course of the game; the Kurahaara brothers' greenhouse can be used to grow and sell veggies, the speakeasy will buy any mash you can produce (for RM), and the market booze stall will buy your liquor. The telemarketing job in the Kolhola building pays okay once you've leveled up your Bribery skill, but it's soul-crushingly depression-increasing, so mixed bag there.

Basically, work hard, comrade! Your labors will be rewarded with a tenement that smells less like ♥♥♥♥ and mushrooms!

Hints & Advice

At this point, you should have enough to go on to ensure your survival, as long as you play it smart. I don't want to spoil too much of the game; however, here are a few hints to give more direction.

First, some areas are inaccessible until you've progressed far enough in the main story. For example, Pentti's Speakeasy (in the basement of Tenement A) only becomes accessible once you've bought your first Tenement renovation; going there also unlocks the doors of the Deekula B building.

Second, some quests in the game are unfinishable in this build. There's a list here that you can check. Assume that none of these quests can be completed until the next major update is ready, which should include access to the Mines and/or Bazaar maps.

Third, you should work on grinding your skills. All skills can be levelled by performing the associated activities; however, I haven't found all of the places or stations to perform these activities in. There's no way to view your skill levels in the game without using console commands; you'll only be notified when you cross a level threshold.

So far, the skills I know of (and their related crafting stations) are:

Skill	Station
Carpentry	Sawbuck, Table Saw
Chemistry	Chemistry Lab
Cooking	Any kitchen, microwave or cooker
Distilling	Distillery
Drinking	CHUG CHUG CHUG (also smashing bottles)
Farming	Any planter
Lockpicking	Locked doors/containers
Machining	Lathe, Angle Grinder, Drill
Manufacturing	Drill press (and others?)
Mashing	Mashing tun
Paperwork	Printing press, Copy machine

Lockpicking should be done in areas without anyone watching, including security cameras; otherwise, it will increase your Crime counter. However, if you unlock an apartment, it doesn't count as burglary unless you actually take anything. (Though it does possibly count even if you're only taking trash.) Keep in mind that the One Stop Shop will not purchase stolen goods; you'll need to find another buyer...

The easiest Chemistry Set to find first is the one inside a bricked-off room in Deekula A. The easiest way to level this is to get three Plastic Containers, fill one of them with dirty water from any hose, and use the Chemistry Set to purify the dirty water. (This may have an associated bug; I'll double-check and file a bug report later.) Although if you just want Clean Water, you're better off filling a Large Plastic Container at the clean sink in the Kolhola basement.

One task you can start early is to recover your bank debit card; this can be started by trying to use the ATM in the Street Market. Once you've got the recipe for the order form, you can create the order form at a copy machine; the one in the Kolhola Hostel is easiest to access. Be patient; you'll receive the response in the mail pile at your apartment... eventually.

Also, if you get lucky enough to come across a backpack in the early stages of the game (stolen or not), make a separate savefile just in case. Backpacks are incredibly useful; they add an extra three rows of storage space to your inventory, saving you a lot of backtracking time.

Keep in mind: in the current build, it's entirely possible to run through all the finishable quests before renting out a single apartment. We're all looking forward to the Bazaar being opened, but until then, the main activity is going to be accumulating the money and materials to renovate and rent your entire tenement. This includes buying high-end crafting stations from Samual, like the Gas Furnace or the Lathe; they're expensive, but so very worth it.

Have fun, and try not to go blind from the booze!

[EPIC2X]

@FantomDestroyer (this is part 2 of my last comment) also make sure to check that the antidepressants actually have a smiley face with a plus symbol next to it, they can actually harm mental if used improperly, and lastly try not to use anything that lowers mental
(Theres some other minor things to do that i dont remember right now but i got most of the bigger stuff)

[EPIC2X]

@FantomDestroyer well the problem is that you are using painkillers to fight depression, when you should be using anti-depressants :). as for actually fighting depression you want to keep your needs filled, rest in a good bed, eat good and varied food, use the blue duck addiction to give bonus happiness (you only need 8 ducks [unless its been changed] to not suffer negative effects of the addictions, any more ducks then that give bonus happiness) and use the sauna; which to do that is that you let the sauna heat up until the thermometer is around 60ish then use the bucket and ladle to throw water and create steam, the more steam the better and try to use the sauna for about 10 or 15 mins a day and that helps.

[EPIC2X]

(I know im replying to so old comments, but theres a good chance new people will look at this guide and might have the same questions)
@The Gortash He only accepts pizzas that you make, not the frozen microwave pizzas.

@breadyloaf you can sell a number of stolen goods to Passmore, whom you meet doing the passport quest


@Menumorut right now (as far as i know pre mines update) your only choice would be Passmore, but he does not always have enough money to buy them so its kinda random, also make sure that you are not trying to sell it to him in a stack ie: make sure that you try selling to him 1 item at a time since a stack of items is more money and when he can, he can only afford generally 1 gold item at a time.

[Menumorut]

Where can I sell gold watches? they are of the best quality and they are valued at 156k OC, and no one wants to buy them.

[Yung Venuz]

This isn't using either of the things that you mentioned but if you buy the most expensive bed a full nights rest put me all the way to full mental health

[FantomDestroyer]

My health symbol is nearly down passed 10%. Could you expand on how to fight depression using the sauna or another method. The doc has been an expensive route and these prescription painkillers aren't working anymore

[Adoring Fan from Oblivion]

As of the latest update, disinfectant is now sold at the pharmacy instead of the O-market.

[breadyloaf]

anyone know how to sell stolen goods?

[The Gortash]

Does anyone know how the pizza guy works in Kolhola? I can't sell frozen pizzas to him

[Hellkidd]

How do I make mash?