Areas & Unlock Thresholds

Not sure where you should be grinding? Drop your net worth into the profit route planner and it maps the exact gap to your next unlock. To squeeze more out of every locker, run hauls through the value calculator.

Junk Yard — the free starter zone

The Junk Yard is where every hunter begins, and it costs nothing to play. Lockers here are cheap, and so is the loot inside — expect low-base items and the occasional Common or Uncommon mutation. The winning strategy is volume: bid small, win often, and sell by value-to-weight so each trip to the counter pays. Treat the Junk Yard as a training ground for reading containers, not a place to get rich. Your only target is the $750 needed to open the Back Alley.

Back Alley — your first real upgrade

Clearing $750 net worth unlocks the Back Alley, and the jump in loot quality is immediate. Containers hold better items with higher base values, which means mutations finally start paying off — a Gold roll on a Back Alley item is worth far more than the same roll in the Junk Yard. Keep bidding within your bankroll; the ceiling is higher, but so is the cost of a bad bid. Most players spend the bulk of their early-to-mid game here, building toward the Farmyard.

Farmyard — the mid-to-late grind

The Farmyard is the mid-late step between the Back Alley and the end-game Shipyard. Lockers carry rarer items and richer hauls, and it is the zone where a lucky high-tier mutation — Diamond, Gem or better — can spike your net worth in a single sale. This is also where you should be eyeing the $100,000 Time Capsule milestone — though note it rolls a mutation at random for a Gem cost rather than letting you pick one, so it is a gamble on a good item, not a guaranteed upgrade.

Shipyard — the end-game payday

The Shipyard unlocks at $125,000 net worth and holds the priciest hauls in the game. By the time you can afford to bid here you should have gamepasses that boost selling capacity and income, because the numbers are large in both directions — a great locker is a fortune, a bad one stings. Pair Shipyard loot with the Time Capsule (already unlocked at $100k) to stack a Void or Secret onto your best item for the single biggest payout available. Before you send a Shipyard-tier item to the Grader, check the grading calculator first: a Replica roll on a $80,000 haul costs a lot more than the same bad grade on Junk Yard loot.

How loot quality scales across areas

The reason to keep moving up is simple: each area raises the floor and the ceiling of what you can pull. Junk Yard lockers are cheap and hold low-base items with mostly Common and Uncommon mutations, so your profit comes from volume. The Back Alley lifts the base values, which is the moment mutations start to matter — the same Gold roll is worth far more here than in the starter zone. The Farmyard introduces rarer items and richer hauls where a high-tier mutation can spike your net worth in one sale, and the Shipyard holds the priciest containers in the game. The practical lesson is that a mutation is only as valuable as the item it lands on, so chasing better base loot by advancing areas matters as much as chasing the mutations themselves. In short, the area you play in sets the size of every payout before luck even enters the picture, which is why advancing zones is the most reliable way to grow your net worth.

Fastest path to the Shipyard

The quickest route to the $125,000 Shipyard is not to grind one zone forever — it is to graduate the moment each gate opens. Clear $750 and move to the Back Alley immediately; its better loot compounds faster than any extra time in the Junk Yard. Reinvest early Gems into Tip Jar and Price Tags for compounding income, collect the 29 lost items for the luck boost along the way, and always load your vehicle by value-to-weight. Cross $100,000 and the Time Capsule lets you manufacture a jackpot item instead of praying for a random roll — that alone can close most of the final $25,000 gap to the Shipyard. The profit route planner turns your current net worth into this exact step list.