Which start should you choose? Nine scenarios and separate difficulty choices

Pick the first system you want to learn

For a first run, Apprentice is the developer’s beginner recommendation. Learn what a customer wants, inspect an item and complete one understandable trade before adding several machines. A specialist kit is useful when you actively want to manage that system from the beginning. Official scenario descriptions

Start available in 1.0	Main focus	First useful check
Apprentice	General counter trading	Offer inspection and ownership
Water Merchant	Testing and treating water	Current patch, test result and treatment tool
Fence	Stolen goods	Storage and inspection limits
Gunsmith	Firearms and modifications	Permit, printer instructions and the actual order
Chemist	Chemical processing	Composition and the processing stage
Hydroponic Farmer	Crops and growing equipment	Seed, water, nutrients and powered equipment
Aquafarmer	Fish in recirculating tanks	Tank filling, care and food
Rat Wrangler	Animal care	Cage, feed and the animal’s requirements
Rock Bottom	Start with nothing	Whether you want a resource-constrained challenge

The roster is release-confirmed. The kit descriptions below come from the developer’s October preview, not our inventory inspection. Release roster · Kits

Check the kit rather than assuming a whole business is ready

The official preview describes Gunsmith with a Class 1 permit, firearms and ammunition; Hydroponic Farmer with growing equipment and supplies; Aquafarmer with tilapia and recirculation equipment. Each still needs the appropriate operating conditions and a buyer. Owning equipment is different from having energy, compatible inputs or saleable output. Official starting equipment

If the Gunsmith printer lacks its instruction note, check the installed version: 1.0.0.2 adds the missing note to that start. The note is a better first reference than a guessed printer recipe. The patch does not promise to reconstruct every item in an older save. Printer fix

Choose difficulty separately

The developer confirms four options after the scenario selection. Read their current modifiers before committing, especially selling margin, suppliers, service costs and rent pressure. Keep the chosen mode with any cost notes: a price from another mode is a poor basis for an upgrade decision. The official preview image is a pre-release build, so its numbers are not used as a current difficulty calculator. Difficulty sequence

Rock Bottom plus the hardest option stacks two kinds of pressure. In a launch-day discussion, a player on Red Ink described early failures and a later successful run helped by favourable events. That is evidence of a demanding, variable experience, not proof of a universally best perk combination. Dated player report

Do not spend time finding a roadmap start

Junker, Organ Trader and Street Food Vendor are announced later additions. Their absence from the 1.0 selector does not establish a bug. For other differences between a carried-over save and a fresh run, see the release and save overview. Roadmap