[OUTDATED] Advanced Guide to Moons

Every moon is unique- learn their quirks, optimize salvage runs!

[Not updated since 2023- sorry]

Intro

One thing to know right away is that the official Company-assigned risk ratings are useless.

Still, the moons are different, and many players do recognize general differences in each moon- you probably know that the difficult snowy moons that cost money to travel to generally reward more valuable treasure, the forested moons spawn beehives and Brackens more often, and that desert moons don't usually have Giants.

The truth is that each moon is actually completely unique in every respect.

• Each moon has a set of stats that determine the enemy and treasure spawn rate and a set of tables that determine what enemies and treasure types are allowed to spawn, with individual spawn probabilities for every listing in the tables.
  
• The max headcount of enemies on each moon is determined by a predetermined "power" value, with different monsters costing different amounts of power to spawn and some monsters additionally being "unique" (only one spawns per moon).
  
• Treasure count is determined by a simple range of values defined for each moon.
  
• There is also a facility size multiplier that determines the size of the facility interior and the facility switch probability that determines the chance that the industrial interior will be swapped for the mansion or vise-versa, but it's minuscule (~1-2% chance) on every moon but Titan (18.6%).

Knowing this technical data allows you to accurately assess the risk/reward of each moon, actively plan and adapt to the likely situation both in and outside the facility, and potentially avoid enemies you're not equipped to deal with by strategically selecting each moon for your current situation.

Data

Each moon has a table like the one below. The meaning of each data point is explained here.

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
Decimal #	Range of #s	#	#	Weather Types

Facility Size

Every moon's facility is procedurally generated during each individual visit to the surface. This value influences the size of the facility and the number of rooms. The larger it is, the bigger the facility and the easier it will be to get lost. The smaller this number is relative to the potential scrap range, the easier it will be to find loot.

Potential Scrap

A range of two values that determines the minimum and maximum number of loot items present in the facility. This number does not include the Apparatus (which is spawned as part of map gen on Factory interiors), any Beehives on the surface, or any Shotguns dropped by Nutcrackers (which can account for a substantial increase over the nominal loot count on moons where they are common).

Indoor Power

A value that determines the maximum number of hostile enemies that can spawn in the facility. Note that enemies have different power requirements, and some are also marked as unique and can only spawn once in the facility, so this number (and the Nighttime Power rating) should not be treated as a simple max headcount.

Every indoor monster takes 1 power except the Bunker Spider, Thumper, Bracken, and Jester (which take 3) and the Ghost Girl (who takes 2). Power is only consumed by monsters that are currently alive, so killing one will free up the power that it was taking and allow more monsters to spawn.

Nighttime Power

A value that determines the hostile enemies that spawn outdoors at night. Note that while Masked and the Ghost Girl can go outdoors, they can only spawn indoors and are thus accounted for by the Indoor Power rating.

Dogs and Worms take 2 power, Giants take 3, and Baboon Hawks take 1.

Weather

A simple list of the potential weather types that can affect the moon. Rainy is playable as long as you watch for quicksand, Foggy is annoying and can make avoiding enemies difficult but isn't inherently dangerous, Stormy is dangerous and makes hauling scrap difficult, but can also kill Dogs for you, while Flooded and Eclipsed are extremely dangerous and should be avoided if at all possible.

A full accounting of the treasure and enemy tables for each moon can be found at each moon's individual pages here, at the Lethal Company Wiki.[lethal.miraheze.org]

One thing to note: the percent chance assigned to each enemy and item in the spawn tables is not the chance that you will encounter it on each visit to the moon, but rather the probability that the game chooses that thing when a spawn occurs. For instance, while the Bracken has a 26.14% chance to spawn on Vow, you'll encounter one almost every visit due to Vow's interior being capable of spawning 4-7 monsters.

41-Experimentation

The easiest of the easy moons, your ship will always be orbiting Experimentation when loading into a new save or starting a new contract period.

While many players recognize that it's a low-risk, low reward moon and generally avoid it, the numbers show it's probably worse than you think.

I should also note that, while it's extremely rare, the main entrance area has a massive shutter door that can come loose and will eventually slam down over the entrance, forcing you to reroute through the fire exit. It has a roughly 3% chance to move every time someone walks under it and it needs to move 4 times to block the door.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.0	8-11	4	8	Rainy, Stormy, Foggy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

Apart from having the lowest possible scrap count of all moons, it also possesses the worst loot table, being heavily weighted towards heavy low-value objects like engines, axles, and metal plates. Unlike some other easy or even medium moons, however, Cash Registers and Gold Bars are capable of spawning here (with low odds).

The small saving grace of this moon looting-wise is the fact that you only have a short trip to the ship to deposit all these from either door and you get a bit more time to do it safely. It *might* be valid to choose Experimentation if you only need a small amount of loot to meet the next quota and all the other low-risk options are Eclipsed. If you do, make sure to try to go for as much loot as possible to make the most of the lower risk.

Enemies

The indoor enemy pool is quite nonthreatening, mostly consisting of spiders and fleas, and the low indoor power of 4 means there's not going to be many of them. In fact, a spider spawning eats up 3 power and means there can only be 1 other enemy. However, very small spawn chances do exist for the Ghost Girl and Nutcracker to put the fear of god into any clueless intern who spends too much time blundering around here.

Unlike most moons which start spawning outdoor enemies at around 3 PM, this moon is unlikely to spawn anything until around 5 or 6. Also unlike most moons, only Eyeless Dogs and Earth Leviathans can spawn.

220-Assurance

A basic desert moon. Just going by the numbers it's often considered the best of the easy moons, and experience has yet to dispute this.

Many players drop loot right outside the fire exit, which makes retrieving it difficult, and dropping it off the cliff can easily get it stuck. Instead, go to the left and jump up on the pipe, then drop loot from there.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.0	13-16	6	8	Rainy, Stormy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

Assurance has the best scrap-to-size ratio in the game, making it the easiest moon to find loot items.

Its actual loot pool is fairly decent for an easy moon. A fair amount of scrap is two-handed- Bottles are unusually common here (perhaps the facility used to be a bottling plant?)- but it has a better distribution of good items than Experimentation or even Offense does.

Bees can also be found here, though far less commonly than Vow and March. The lack of plant life means a good vantage point such as the pipe that leads to the fire exit can make the hives easy to spot when they do spawn.

Enemies

Assurance is absolutely lousy with Snare Fleas, Hoarding Bugs, and Bunker Spiders, in that order (pun intended). Make sure to bring a shovel, or stick close to the guy who did. Also, check your wallet every thirty seconds. The actual enemy count is not much higher than Experimentation, and the enemy spawn table is only marginally more aggressive at spawning actual threats. The Hoarding Bugs can complicate looting efforts somewhat, though a sufficiently well-armed crew can fight them off and take the hoard without too much issue.

The outdoors is mostly populated with Earth Leviathans and Eyeless Dogs, in a roughly equal split favoring the worms. The rest is accounted for by the occasional Baboon Hawk scouting party, though there is a very rare chance for a presumably very lost Forest Keeper to appear and throw a wrench into your plans.

56-Vow

The forested moon of Endor. Home of the Bees and Brackens, and a rickety-ass bridge leading to the main entrance.

The specific mechanics of the bridge have been better analyzed elsewhere, though its presence and the fact that newbies will inevitably destroy it if you're not proactive about preventing them from doing so will account for some expected efficiency loss with less experienced crews.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.15	10-12	7	6	Stormy, Foggy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

Vow's interior loot is generally less valuable in terms of both numbers and value than anything but Experimentation, but the potential for beehives can make up for this if they spawn and if someone on your team is capable of hunting them down without killing themselves.

Enemies

The Bracken is a near-guarantee indoors, with the three different bug enemies (fleas, hoarders, and spiders, in that order) following behind it in commonality. Keep your head on a swivel, stick together, and keep shovels at hand.

The outdoors will almost certainly spawn a giant (maybe more than one) once night falls. A radar booster and/or teleporter is recommended to save whoever inevitably gets grabbed.

21-Offense

A medium-difficulty moon and generally a place you will want to avoid. The fire exit can only be accessed with a ladder or with a jump trick that can only be done during the ship's descent stage (jump onto the large elevated pipe as you fly over it). In general just existing on this moon for any length of time feels awkward.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.25	14-17	12	8	Rainy, Stormy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

In a word, it's [s]crap. Like Experimentation it loves to spawn heavy, low-value scrap metal items like metal sheets and large axles, but unlike Experimentation it can't spawn Gold or Cash Registers. For that matter, the top-end loot in general is far less common on Offense than the danger level would imply. It technically has a higher scrap count than every other non-paid moon, but it's only slightly, and the scrap value and density are both below average, so in practice it's one of the least lucrative moons (keeping in mind this is before accounting for equipment loss and casualty fines).

Enemies

As the name implies, there is a lot of fighting here.

Thumpers and Spiders predominate indoors, with a chance of Snare Fleas. Brush up on your shovel-fu before entering, though don't go completely rambo because Hygroderes and Coilheads are also present and will box you in if you're not careful.

The outdoors is the territory of Eyeless Dogs, though there may also be Baboon Hawks who will dispute that. If you see them brawling, take advantage of it to move unnoticed, but don't blunder into the middle of the fighting because the dogs are more than capable of eating both you and the birds at the same time. Worms can also show up a fair amount of the time, and to cap off this gigantic fracas you also have the same rare-lost-Giant chance that Assurance does.

61-March

March is a fairly unique moon purely on the merits of its layout. It has 3 fire exits, permanent quicksand locations that exist no matter the weather type, and features the largest interior of any moon but Titan.

It also features the highest beehive spawn rate of all moons, though the fairly large map size and heavy tree cover means finding them can be hit-or-miss. For whatever reason, March is the only moon to completely lack a chance of facility switch, meaning it's always industrial, though again most other moons have an extremely small switch chance anyway.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
2.0	13-16	14	12	Stormy, Foggy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

Kind of weird to talk about. The facility is huge, which theoretically means terrible scrap density, but the extra fire exits means it's easy to systematically search the place in a much lower time than any other moon and you're much more likely to be able to reach an exit when being chased by something awful.

Enemies

Like Offense, March is infested with Thumpers and Spiders, with a side salad of Brackens. Snare Fleas are also present so once again splitting up is dangerous, though the presence of so many fire exits makes self-rescues and shovel-less assisted saves more viable. This is also the first moon that can spawn Jesters, but thankfully it's pretty rare (0.33%).

Due to their high spawn rate and the generous nighttime power rating, this is the only moon where you are likely to consistently see large packs of Baboon Hawks. This means you will be far more likely to encounter them in an aggressive mindset, so keep this in mind and do not travel the surface alone if you can.

85-Rend

The first difficult moon, with the cheapest travel cost of 550 credits. It is a permanently snowy moon that uses the Mansion interior. The persistent blizzard makes visibility outdoors genuinely awful, though at least the route to the main entrance is marked by a series of lamps. The fire exit is in a crevice that can be reliably found by turning right at the end of the lamp series with the crevice entrance marked by a single lamp.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.2	18-25	10	6	Stormy, Eclipsed

Loot

A major change from the moons you've seen before, the Mansion moons like to spawn lots of medium-high-value one-handed trinkets with good value-to-weight, plus the useful two-handed Fancy Lamp. The low-value scrap metal is very uncommon here, so chances are whatever you find has at least decent value overall. Possessing the smallest facility size of the paid moons makes it the best for mid-game quotas but if you are good enough you can stretch this moon fairly far due to its relative compactness and high loot density, not to mention the potential for Nutcracker farming.

Enemies

The facility is pretty dangerous, being full to the brim with Nutcrackers. However, this can work in your favor if you're good enough to kill one with melee, since Nutcrackers are very vulnerable to Shotguns. If you can get your hands on one, it becomes progressively more viable to farm them for additional Shotguns, giving you both the ability to kill the other threats in the facility with ease as well as a substantial additional payday from the spare shotguns.

However, doing this for long periods is ill-advised due to the Jester also being a common spawn. Hang around and you will likely be forced out of the facility since Jesters are of course completely immune to damage.

Outdoors you'll most likely see Eyeless Dogs, though them teaming up with a Giant is not at all uncommon and Worms will also sometimes appear. You won't get too many outdoor monsters in total but the long walk between the ship and facility and the poor visibility (for you) means the outdoors is still extremely dangerous late in the day. Baboon Hawks are also completely absent.

7-Dine

Dine is the second difficult moon with a travel cost of 600 credits. Like Rend it is also permanently snowy and has a Mansion interior. The exterior route marked by lamps is both significantly longer than Rend's and it is also not a straight shot to the main doors, meaning a cut through the blizzard is required to optimize looting speed unless you are using the fire exit (which requires either a ladder or a specific, semi-reliable jump exploit strat that may be patched out in the future).

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
1.3	20-28	15	6	Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

Dine possesses a loot pool that is overall very similar to Rend, with a slightly higher loot total but also a larger facility size, meaning roughly equal loot density.

Nutcracker farming, however, is not really viable here due to their low spawn rate.

Enemies

Compared to Rend, Dine has far fewer Nutcrackers and Brackens but far more Jesters and Spiders, and unlike both other difficult moons it can't spawn live Masked (masks themselves will however still spawn), making it generally more predictable in the interior. However, the fact that Jesters are invincible rather than simply dangerous means you're far more likely to be completely forced out of the facility.

Outside, it features the same preference for Eyeless Dogs as Rend but trades the bias towards Giants for one for Worms. Baboon Hawks are again absent.

8-Titan

Titan is the final, most difficult moon with a travel cost of 700 credits. Like the other two difficult moons it is snowy, though unlike them it uses the industrial facility interior by default. However, as mentioned in the intro, Titan is the only moon with a facility switch probability worth talking about- 18.6%, meaning slightly less than 1 out of 5 Titan visits will have mansions. The enemy and loot tables remain the same regardless of the interior type, however.

Despite the description claiming it's easy to get lost, it's essentially impossible due to the ship landing a stone's throw from the facility entrance (or rather at the base of a scaffold leading to it). The facility interior is a different story however due to it being the largest in the game by far.

Stats

Facility Size	Potential Scrap	Indoor Power	Nighttime Power	Weather
2.35	23-37	18	7	Stormy, Foggy, Flooded, Eclipsed

Loot

By far the richest moon in terms of total treasure, though with two main caveats. Firstly, while it has more total item spawns than Rend and Dine, its loot pool has a larger selection of low-value items and like Offense it actually lacks both Gold and Cash Registers (though the other high end items are more common than average to make up for this). Items are also scattered across the largest interior size of any moon in the game, meaning that Titan theoretically has the potential for the highest payout but also the highest payout variability of the difficult moons, to say nothing of the fact that it is also bar none the most dangerous moon in the game.

Enemies

As expected, Titan has the most aggressive interior spawns in the game and the largest interior power capacity of all moons meaning things can very quickly spiral out of control. Its spawn pool is a no-holds-barred compilation of the most dangerous enemies in the game, with Jesters, Nutcrackers, and Brackens headlining the list. It also has fairly high occurrences of both Masked and Ghost Girls, meaning that no-one and no-where is ever safe.

The exterior is a very short route due to the vertical nature of the scaffolding, but the Dogs and Giants that spawn here can both climb the scaffolds and appear right next to the doors, so this is a double-edged sword. There is also a minor chance of a worm, though the layout makes them relatively ineffective so this more of a relief than anything.

Conclusion

Special thanks to the Lethal Company Wiki[lethal.miraheze.org], as well as you, for viewing this guide.

Hopefully this information as well as the in-depth information available at the wiki will help you navigate Lethal Company's exomoons with greater efficiency.

Remember, The Company requires all employees to complete all tasks with 100% efficiency!

[RaindropperinG]

Was a nice read.

Think that mentioning, at least for Dine, the high spawn rate of sentries and mines would be worth considering.

[Mr. Krab Owl]

thank you my friend thinks offense and march are the best moons but I can finally prove that assurance is the superior choice and that offense sucks

[Bank y]

🗣️🗣️

[DaytimeSaturn5]

Very helpful and informative, will be using some of the knowledge in future runs.

[dorpenguin]

go to march, the hives are good and the baboons are the most harmless

[Rinn]

cute