Progression Guide
There are a number of useful things worth knowing, whether it's things that are never directly mentioned by the game, but are good ideas, or things that do become clear, but are better exploited early on.
Preface: Consider Prioritizing Progression
Other then enabling Simple Respawns in the Sandbox Settings, items in abiotic factor do not generally respawn through most of the facility. The exception to this is known as Portal Worlds, locations where items do respawn on a regular bi-weekly schedule, as long as they haven't been recently discovered and no player is currently occupying them during the reset date.
It may be advisable for players in the office sector to not spend any additional time setting down roots and starting optional side projects until the Office Sector has been completed- As near the end of the office Sector is Flathill, a Portal World that is full of staple resources. Gaining access to Flathill is the most important thing a player can do early on to enable a steady supply of materials to fuel further expansion.
Of course, there are more immediate concerns to deal with...
Obtaining Food And Water
Dealing with hydration is a little less straightforward then dealing with hunger. Getting through the cafeteria will automatically provide players with a Frying Pan. Various weapons using the Sharp Melee skill will have a tool-tip when selected in the inventory, listing their Butchering potential. Any weapon capable of Butchering can be used to chop up the various alien lifeforms intent on violence. Early on, this will likely be a standard kitchen Knife, or Shiv. More advanced recipies exist, but just putting whatever looks raw into a pan will keep you fed in the meantime, prior to expanding into the world of proper cooking with Soups and the Chef's Counter. And, of course, there's always crafting a Fishing Rod and casting into any kind of Liquid- Anything you fish out can also be placed on a pan.
More pressing, then, is managing thirst. There are few sources of standing water in the world that are safe to drink- Bathrooms will occasionally have a sink in them that containst 250ml of Water, though it refills at a very slow rate, or may have refilling disabled entirely, based on server settings. Rather then drink from them directly, it is likely more advisable to craft a Water Bottle and take the water for later.
In various places of the facility, including the Office Sector, Water Coolers can be found. These should be picked up and brought back to your base, where found. It is not advised to scrap these, as the first renewable source of liquid containers (both including clean water, and empty) is not found until the fifth sector of Cascade.
If you're just using water to drink from, you'll likely not need to produce more then you find. But if you have any interest in making a lot of soups, or using garden plots to engage in farming, you may want more for whatever reason. In this case, you can boil Tainted Water into regular Water on any stove-top. This requires a Cooking Pot.
Tainted Water is not difficult to find- Almost any standing source of water will count. The offices has tainted water available from the central fountain, as well as the pool in the gym area. Unlike water found in sinks, liquids such as Tainted Water are unlimited, and can be used to fill an indefinite amount of liquid containers freely.
Boiling water reduces it's quantity by three-fourths, and requires a full pot of Tainted Water, reducing 1000ml of Tainted Water to 250ml of pure Water. 1000ml is required for soups, so you will need to repeat this process 4 times in order to make enough water to fill up a Cooking Pot. A Portable Stove has two spots for cooking on, so a pair of them will let you boil 4 pots or Makeshift pots at once.
This is where taking all of the Water Coolers you can find comes in. Ideally, you want at least 5 of whatever liquid container you can find for your main base: 4 to fill with Tainted Water, from whatever source is most convinient to you, and 1 to store the resulting Water. Given the 4-1 ratio, this will be sufficient to fully fill whatever container you're using- Early on, this will be Water Coolers, and later on it will likely be Barrels, either the regular kind found in the world, or Crafted Barrels.
It is advisable a player wait until after Flathill is completed to worry about this. There will be more then enough water in the water coolers you find to tide you over to that point, and after Flathill is conquered and it's shortcuts opened up, the Sweet Treats Ice Cream Parlor near the start of the area contains an Industrial Stove with 8 spaces for pots and pans, the security office of the Bounty Basket next door contains a free Cooking Pot and Frying Pan (Respawning twice a week), and the fountain accessed directly above the building via the unlockable ladder contains Tainted Water that can be purified immediately below, as well as Chordfish, if desired. There are also 8 sinks containing 250ml of water in each across Flathill, which is precisely enough to fill 2 Water Bottles each visit.
On top of that, there is plenty of Canned Peas and salt in the Bounty Basket, which is sufficient for Bland Pea Soup at level 3 cooking- Which is automatically granted to players who reach the F.O.R.G.E in the Manufacturing Sector directly after Offices, and inspect the pot there.
Dealing with hydration becomes steadily more of a non-issue over progression. Boiling Tainted Water in the first sector is tedious, but free, and becomes practical and easy near the end of the first sector.
By the end of the second sector, Manufacturing, there is an area filled with mine tunnels directly next to the portal world of The Train. Traversing these tunnels and opening up the shortcut by unlocking the door reveals a pool of Antejuice.
Antejuice cannot be used for farming, and boiling water may be necessary if farming is desired at this stage, but it still has a number of potent benefits: Players can drink from it directly without needing to purify it, it restores twice as much hydration as water does, and it can be used for soups- It does not confer any additional hydration to soups compared to using water, but due to the lack of a need to purify it, a container of it can fill four times as many pots.
In the third sector, Labs, picking up the required-to-progress material of Refined Carbon will unlock the Water Filter. This powerful container will instantly purify Tainted Water poured into it into regular Water at a 1:1 ratio, though it cannot be used to directly fill containers. Keep one in your base, and pour tainted water directly into it from a held liquid container- And then fill the container you just emptied. This will tide over all but the most demanding farmers for water needs.
For the most demanding farmers, there is Moisture Teleporters, a recipe found late in the fifth sector, the Hydroplant. This will automatically fill nearby containers with small amounts of pure water at the start of every in-game hour, and can be placed next to farming planters to reduce the amount of watering that's required of them, or near an empty Barrel kept near your cooking set-up to passively regenerate water for soups over time.
But that's all getting ahead of you. You still need to get to Flathill, first, and there's a very boxy problem in your way.
Dealing with Robots
In order to progress through the game, you will need to hack through various doors, locked through keypads. Doing so will require some breed of Keypad Hacker, and crafting one- As well as upgrading one- Will involve defeating some breed of Security Bot.
What kind of security bot varies by sector- As you progress, new varients will have more health, become faster, and develop new tactics. But for the first two varients, Security Robot and Containment Robot, you will want to use traps.
The first traps available to players are the Tripwire Mine, Chopinator, and Shock Trap. Shock Traps do not require external power, but they do take a full thirty seconds to recharge. Six shock-trap activations are required to kill a security bot. Repeatedly luring a security bot over a shock trap will, eventually, kill one- Emphasis on eventually. These are useful to mix in with other traps, but should not be your only option.
Tripwire Mines are powerful explosive traps- Dealing 150 damage, they will leave a basic security robot mostly dead, as they only have 180 HP to begin with. Obtaining multiple soil Bags in the Office Sector may be difficult, however, and once the trap goes off, it needs to be reloaded with a Box of Screws before it can be re-used. Traps that need to be reloaded cannot be moved. These are a powerful tool, but unlike other traps, these cost ammunition every time they fire. A box of Screws can be crafted with two Metal Scrap after unlocking a Repair and Salvage Station.
Finally, there is the Chopinator. Unlike the other two traps, this is the most limited of the three: While the other two traps will be ignored entirely by enemies, and cannot be damaged, Choppinators will be targetted by enemies who see it, who will attempt to destroy it whether it is active or not. It's blades are also high up in the air- Too high to hit a Peccary or low-hopping Pest, exclusively able to target bipedal foes tall enough to reach the top of the trap. It also requires active electrical power- It needs to be placed near an outlet, or extension cord, and will not run at night unless a charged batter is provided. This is a problem for dealing with robots, since Security Robots ordinarily come out at night.
For all of those downsides, though, there is the potent upside: Chopinators deal a lot of damage to valid targets while active. Simply place a chopinator in the sightline of a patrolling security robot, and it will approach it and attack it.
If a player is spotted, enemies will prioritize attacking them, instead- But a player can duck underneath the blades of a chopinator and keep it between them and the robot, causing the trap to soak up the attacks. On normal settings, the Chopinator will kill the robot before the robot can kill the Chopinator.
If it takes too much damage, however, the trap will become nonfunctional. It will continue to draw enemy aggro, luring them away from predictable patrol routes, but it will no longer be able to attack them even if powered. A player who's already been sighted can hide behind the trap with a Hammer, actively repairing it even as it takes damage.
There is the problem of the fact that Choppinators only work in the day, and security robots only come out at night. This can be worked around one of two ways, if not both: Using two Makeshift battery will keep it running all night long on normal settings. Or, you could lure the robot out during the daytime- It will only leave by itself at night, but players can fight a robot in their charging bot whenever they wish by attacking the pod and doing enough damage to wake it up. This takes a sufficient amount of damage to do, so as to prevent stray fire from rousing the robot- But it's damage players can do with regular melee weapons entirely uncontested. Alerting the robot can lure it into your traps at any time of day or night a player desires.
Of course, you might break your tools before then. You can't repair a chopinator if your hammer's broken, after all. So how are you going to handle that?
Repairing Items
There are two ways to repair items.
True to real life, one of them is Duct Tape. You can fix anything with duct tape, everyone knows this. Right click an item in your inventory (Or use the equivilant on controller), and select 'repair with duct tape', if you are also carrying duct-tape on your person.
The other is the use of a Repair and Salvage Station. This requires an Anvil. Two can be found in Offices: One straightforward anvil is located late in the sector, in a storage room directly to the right of the NPC who teaches you the recipe for a keypad Hacker.
One of them, however, requires a hidden path: When first leaving the Cafeteria, the player must traverse vents on the left side of the room, leading to a small circuit to the kitchen. There is, however, one path that's blocked off by a rotating fan. There is nothing a player can do about this fan during the tutorial section, as time does not progress.
After defeating the tutorial Peccary and leaving the Cafeteria, however, time will start to move forward- And at night, the power turns off. While this does not have an effect on any other enviromental hazard of note in Cascade, this particular fan will be disabled at night- Allowing the player to move into a locked room containing a burst pipe, which will be very valuable later in progression. This room also has a storage room, which contains the second, earliest-available anvil.
After crafting a Repair and Salvage Station, players can use materials to repair items. Mousing over the items will reveal the material required to repair them, which will invariably be something cheap like Metal Scrap or Tech Scrap. This is by far the cheapest and most sustainable way to keep your equipment in working order.
Now you can keep your hammer repaired, to keep your choppinator repaired. But wait... The nearest outlet is really, really far away from the security robot you want to kill with your Choppinator. Isn't there something you can do about that?
Extension Cords
Yes! Yes, there is. When you extend a power cord too far, the placement preview will turn from green to red. Trying to place it when it's red will fail. Physically moving past it's length will cause the player to drop it entirely and have to try again from the last connection point.
You could extend it with items that both accept power, and output power, such as a battery (Makeshift), or a Plug Strip. But there's a much, much cheaper solution: Using the on-screen button option presented, you can place a cord extension, making a wire across the ground that terminates in another plug, which can be extended into another extension as many times as a player wants. Each extension requires spending one Tech Scrap, and attempting to place one will fail if you don't have any in your inventory.
Okay. You've set up your traps, repaired your gear, can keep yourself fed and watered- You can make your keypad hacker and get through Flathill and beyond. That's beyond the scope of this guide- What happens after flathill?
Looting Upgrades: On-Site Storage
Once you have access to Flathill, you'll have access to a lot of Wood Plank and Plastic Scrap. Not just lying around, but in the form of furniture. You can break down furniture by right-clicking (or equivilant) on it with a Hammer in hand, or picking it up (with a Screwdriver or equivilant in your inventory) and taking it to a Repair and Salvage Station to be broken down.
Or you could fail to pick it up, the percentage-odds displayed not in your favor, in which case it breaks down into materials when you try. Or you could smash it with a melee weapon. A number of desks drop Desk Legs when they break, which can be used to smack furniture without using up durability for a better weapon.
Either way, after breaking a bunch of computers, monitors, furniture, and trash bins, you'll have lots of basic materials lying around. But you don't really wanna haul all of that back to your base every single time your backpack fills up, right? Of course not. Instead, you should build storage near where you want to loot.
Portal Worlds reset twice a week. Native items, furniture, and entities (enemies) will respawn, but player placed items will not. (With one exception: If you leave a Frying Pan or Cooking Pot on a native cooking source, like a Industrial Stove, it will disappear over the reset- So just move your pots and pans off any stoves used in Portal Worlds when not in use.)
This means that players can establish bases in portal worlds. You probably won't want to live in one, since if you're hanging around during the reset, it won't happen, and you'll have less to loot. But crafting benches will prevent normal enemies from spawning within their safe radius (Though not things like Composers or Security Bots), and you can place storage crates around. For now, you can afford practically as many Storage Crate (Small)s as you like, though later on in progression you may want to upgrade to Storage Crate (Medium) or Storage Crate (Large). Since items always spawn in the same place, you can keep item storage right next to their spawn points.
This allows you to make regular trips through a portal world, looting whatever you feel you will want in the future, without having to dedicate time to bringing all that loot back to your base right-this-second, saving you from making multiple trips to clear out all the valuables.
Outside of portal worlds... Once you have a sufficient stock of wood and scrap plastic renewably enough to throw away, you can place down numerous storage crates in the various offices of Cascade, looting the entire room full and dumping any excess you don't want to take with you right now into the crate. This allows you to strip-mine an entire room or two, while only cluttering your inventory with the items you want to bring with you, and leaving the rest behind. Should you ever run low on materials you passed up previously, a quick trip back through these areas will have them waiting for you already, conviniently already packaged.
That makes it a lot easier to loot portal worlds, and the facility at large, if you and your friends feel the urge to loot the entire facility simply because it is there. (Understandable, honestly.) But you still need to walk back and forth between places you're looting and your base with what you DO want to take with you. Better then lugging around a Platform Cart everywhere you go.
Surely there's a way to make that faster, too?
Traversal Upgrades: Instant Stamina Refills
Sooner or later, you'll start unlocking Trams, often with Tram Station Keys. But most of the facility is not accessed by tram.
Most of the facility is accessed by Sprinting around. And that costs stamina. As you level up your Sprinting Skill, it costs less stamina. While your stamina can last a surprisingly long time, it's also very slow to naturally regenerate no matter what you do.
There is a way to regenerate it extremely quickly, though: Sleeping. Lying down on a suitable piece of furniture will refill your stamina from 0% to 100% over the course of around five seconds. You also need to sleep just to restore your sleep need, but in this case, it's the stamina refill that's relevant.
As you progress through the game, options for furniture you can restore your stamina on will expand.
In the first sector, you will occasionally find Long Office Couchs that can be crafted into Makeshift Beds. These, however, reset your bed spawn point every time you use one, which can be undesirable, and are not renewable in Flathill, and so unsustainable to use in large quantities.
In the second sector, near the end, The Train has two Lounge Couchs are renewably available. Heavy and prone to breaking when picked up, these can still be farmed when desired, despite the downsides.
In the third sector, the Furniture Store has a large amount of furniture, as expected. There are a lot of Modern Couches here, which have a much reduced chance to break, and are substantially lighter in comparison to Lounge Couches.
In the fourth sector, you end up gaining access to Canaan after a little backtracking. Canaan contains a substantial number of Military Cots, with one in the fisherman's hut, and the rest in the Witches Hut. Unlike prior furniture, these do not require a screwdriver to pick up or deploy, and are extremely light.
Though the kinds of furniture you can rest on becomes better as you progress, the question remains: What do you do with all of it? The answer is simple: Take all the furniture you can find (and screwdriver), start from whatever point you start your exploration from- Be it the entrance / exit of your base, or the tram access point, and run!
Run in the direction of wherever you want to go, wherever you want to visit regularly. Maybe it's the passage between Offices and Manufacturing, or from the Cafeteria to the elevator to Flathill. Run until you're out of stamina! (And if you have a bunch of heavy things in your inventory, like couches, that will run out quickly.)
As soon as you're out of stamina, stop where you are, and build a couch. Or anything else you can Lie Down on- Sitting is no good. If you have full stamina when you leave your base- Which is likely, if you're not getting into fights along the way- Then you're going to run out of stamina sprinting the same distances, along the same routes, at the same time, at predictable intervals. So when you have a planned route, put down a (literal) rest stop when you'll need it, because you know you'll need it.
With this technique, whenever you run low on sprinting, you'll always be able to refill it immediately. This is useful for any areas you explore regularly, such as the routes between your base and various portal worlds. There's no point picking up a full couch every single time you want a nap- It's better to just set out a lot of them near the points you'll need them, since you'll get them for free more and more as you explore. If you do want to carry around a source of portable stamina regeneration, that's what a military Cot is for.
Your carried weight affects how fast you run out of stamina. You may pass twice as many couches when lightly encumbered as you'll need to stop and rest when you're fully encumbered. You'll have a lot of furniture in the halls, but that's okay: It's not like you're gonna run out, right? And be honest: You are totally going to waddle back to base with a heavily loaded down inventory at some point. Trust me, being able to sprint with a full load with minimal pauses is definitely worth the investment.
There is one last consideration: Player-placed furniture will be attacked by enemies who see it. (Presumably they are all in a cult that believes anything that a scientist has touched is profane and cannot be permitted to exist. Yes, even the Pests.)
The solution to this is clear: Simply do not place furniture where enemies can see it. Enemies are either completely static, unmoving until something they want to attack crosses their path- Usually a player- Or they will walk a predefined patrol route. Either way, the things they can see is a known quantity, and it's not difficult to tuck storage crates and couches around a corner to keep them out of the casual gaze of those who would find and destroy them.
If only there was a way to make them stand out- The facility gets dark at night, and you'd hate to forget about them and spend the extra minutes of walking through empty corridors because it was too dark to see your shortcut.
General Utility: Lighting Up
The facility gets dark at night. And sometimes it's just dark, period. But what if there are certain things you want to see in the dark? Certain things that will persistently respawn and always be there, in portal worlds, or furniture you've built in the facility you want to have highlighted?
Well, a light source works as a natural way to visually draw attention to something. And there's plenty of those:
In the first sector, Flathill contains a number of Desk Lamps and Standing Lamps that respawn bi-weekly with the rest of the portal world's contents.
In the second sector, The Train contains a large number of Sconce Lamps. Fragile and wall-mounted, even at maximum Construction, it is unlikely a player will collect a majority of them without them breaking apart.
Also in the second sector is The Encroachment, which has Glow Tulips. These can be grown in a gardening plot far more readily then Antelights can, and are both brighter in luminocity then regular lights, but are also bright blue, making for a contrasting glow. Place these near items of interest- Any game developer can tell you a brightly glowing spot is a Notice This.
The Train also contains one Construction Lights, and the end of the third sector has The Mycofields, which adds another set of Construction Lights. The fifth sector adds Voussoir, which has 2 additional Construction Lights.
Construction Lights, unlike other lights, do not cast light directly around themselves. They instead cast light directionally in front of them in a wide area, and are effecive for lighting up substantial areas without taking up space in said area with Standing Lamps or making everything look washed out blue with excessive Glow Tulips.
It is useful to pick a light source of some kind to mark places of interest- Desk lamps provide excessive light in one concentrated spot if placed too close to the ground (as they are intended to be elevated for more even light, such as by being on a desk), and can be used to mark resources in dark rooms in Portal Worlds. (You'd not want to miss those ever-valuable staplers because it was dark in there and you forgot to use your flashlight, would you?)
Of course, sometimes exploring the dark has you bump into enemies. And sometimes your combat skill, or equipment, isn't up to par. In some areas you haven't quite fully explored, you might want to fall back.
Falling Back: Advanced Trap-Tics
After getting through Manufacturing and picking up a Fire Extinguisher, you'll unlock the Tesla Coil. This is an extremely effective trap on anything that isn't immune to electric damage.
The problem, however, is that 'anything' includes 'you'. Unlike other traps, this one has friendly fire enabled. Until you can get a Glow Shard, you're gonna have to work around that.
The solution, then, is to disable the trap when you're in front of it, and enable it you're behind it. Get an enemy's attention- Shoot them with a Makeshift Crossbow, throw a Rubber Band Ball or Throwing Dart at them, or just run up and stab them in the butt, then run away whooping like an energetic man-crab- Either way, draw attention, then leave. Enemies will follow- If you're not in sight, they'll run to where you last were in sight, and explore until they see something. Most enemies will try to attack a Tesla Coil from within the Tesla Coils range, though concealing it behind a blind corner will also do nicely.
Disabling it while the player is in front of it can be done two ways, on the fly: You can disconnect it from power, which is likely to be some breed of Battery (disambiguation) if you're exploring random places without easy electrical-outlet access, but it's much more reliable to quickly toggle on-and-off a proper lever.
Alternatively, you can throw down a Shock Trap just behind a doorway. The amount of damage it does to enemies will quickly taper off over the course of the game, but enemies who step onto one will be caught in a substantially long stun animation, giving you a chance to get a free swing in. Not bad for a trap that recharges automatically. You can, of course, lure enemies through the tripwires of Tripwire Mines, too.
Disc Turrets are a later cousin of Tesla Coils- These have a much, much shorter range, but don't target players, and can be concealed behind a blind corner such as a doorway. And, after that, come Laser Turrets- While lacking the up-front immediate damage of a Tesla Coil, they also do not have friendly fire, and have a substantially greater range. There is circumstantial evidence that they may deal extra damage when two Laser Emitters are powering it, rather then one.
Finally... If you're setting up shop in a place you'll be visiting regularly, like a portal world, or if it's too close to your base for comfort, or if enemies are just generally in your way on a regular basis... You can set up a Crafting Bench with a pair of Makeshift battery. This will keep regular enemy spawns suppressed 24/7 in it's safe radius, assuming there's an outlet nearby. (Or nearby enough, for extension cords.)
Assuming you aren't specifically showing up to kill the enemies to farm ammunition for firearms off of them, this is the easiest option. (But I find I often am trying to farm ammunition off of them, specifically in Voussoir, so don't forget the basics of CQT.)
Say, why do I keep specifying TWO batteries?
Upgrading your power system
Because one basic battery isn't enough to last the entire night for a single device.
More advanced batteries are more expensive, but can power devices for longer. These are especially useful, if you're carrying around powered equipment with you- Such as a Charging Station to keep your X-Ray Lamp or Makeshift Headlamp or Healing Briefcase or Welding Spear charged. (There's a lot you might want to keep charged on the go.)
But the more items a battery is plugged into, the faster the battery drains when the power goes out- Regardless on if the item is actively in use or not. You could put a Lever between things to disconnect them from power when not in use, but that's not much more space efficient then simply putting two small batteries between whatever appliance your base has and your wall outlet. Or, more likely, your series of Plug Strips between your outlet and all your devices.
Including batteries. Daisy-chaining batteries drains batteries exponentially faster the more of them you add, so you'd need a truly absurd amount of batteries clustered together to have one upstream power supply for your entire base to draw from.
There is a solution, though. Fairly late into the game, the Hydroplant eventually enables the creation of Laser Emitters, and Laser Power Converters. These items simplify your power grid immensely: Simply place the best battery you have for your base plugged into the wall, plug the Laser Emitter into that, and aim it directly at the Laser Power Converter directly in front of it.
The Laser Emitter is a single device, which means the battery will power it as efficiently as possible, and the Laser Power Converter will produce unlimited power, like a wall outlet during the day time. It doesn't care how many things are plugged into it, only that it's currently got a laser shining on it. With this set up, you can produce all of your base's power upstream, neatly tucked away somewhere.
Functionally speaking, basic batteries are cheap enough, and you can throw two batteries per device until the end of the game. But it's so much less clutter then stubbing your toe on approximately twenty batteries by the time you have a decent sized base going!
(Well, until you have to deal with Leeches, but that's another topic coming with Cold Fusion.)
Anything else?
Money, Grenades And You
Not much. Money is a weird object- If you pick it up directly from the environment, it's only worth 2$. But if it's hit by anything, it'll become a physics object, taking up an inventory slot when picked up instead of going directly into your wallet. And that kind of money is worth 6%. So hit your money with your melee weapon or pick it up with a Vacuum if you want to make the most of it.
What's money for? You can spend money on Snacks Vending Machines and Drinks Vending Machines. Once you reach a sufficient Strength level, a heavy weapon can be used to attack these two machines, breaking them and dropping all of their (randomized) current contents to the ground.
This is generally not worth doing, since an infinitely-resupplied vending machine is far more valuable then a one-off saving of maybe 15$ at most. There is two exceptions, though: Flathill and Voussoir are both portal worlds with these vending machines. Being portal worlds, they respawn, and you can smash these for free bonus food when you're traveling through them for loot.
You can also spend money at Slushie Machines, which produce a Slushie. These can be used to gain a temporary level of heat resistance, but one level of heat resistance isn't very valuable. They're much more useful for being crafted into Slushie Bombs, affordable throwable items that detonate on contact with the enviroment, briefly freezing any enemy that isn't immune to cold damage. This provides a brief window to line up a headshot or get one or two smacks in with a melee weapon.
Another use is to buy Coffee from Coffee Vending Machines. These are found around the place, but they're also found in Furniture Store and Voussoir. After drinking them, you receive a Empty Mug, which can be used for Mugnades. Mugnades are substantially less cheap then Slushie Bombs, as the required Soil Bags require the investment and regular use of Makeshift Toilets or fishing in Some Distant Shore, on top of butchering enemies or fishing for Bio Scrap, but their use is much more straightforward: They do about over twice the damage of a Tripwire Mine in an AOE, and make for an effective grenade against most targets, if you can afford to make them on the regular. If you're in a pinch and need to get enemies out of your way just so you can finish the area, these will often do the job.
Of course, if you want to fight enemies, it might help to level up your combat skills...
Embracing your Inner Zombie
The nice thing about melee skills, such as Sharp Melee and Blunt Melee, is that they don't actually need to be used on enemies. Using your preferred type of melee just to smash destroyables like Computers and Monitors will gain experience. You can also gain experience in Throwing by throwing things around like Throw Nets, or Rubber Band Balls without needing to hit anything. I recommend nets.
That'll take a while, though. A long while. Is there anything you can do to speed it up? Well, you could rescue Kylie (Trinket), but that'll be in the future. Right now? Brains.
Yeah. Brains. Just straight up eat a brain. Human Brains provide the Brain Drain buff, boosting your experience. All knowledge comes with a cost, though... And in this case, the cost is that you will throw up a few times directly after eating it. No, there's no way around it. There's no cooked version, no 'safe' consumable that gives Brain Drain.
But that's not so bad, if you have regular food and water to restore those values after you empty them across the floor. If you're inclined to farm a skill, salvage a brain by bringing a Human Skull to a Repair and Salvage Station and salvage it there.