If you, Driver, are a pack-rat, like me, and want to loot things to the ground in Perpetual Stability zones, or just drag large armored car parts back while still in the outer zone, space is at a premium. Especially in the early game when you are still trying to unlock side racks and storage.

This is not helped by the long list of suggested and nice to have things for leaving the garage.
Well if you want no door or breakdown to stand in the way of your kleptomania, er efficient collection of Zone Resources, you are taking a large bite out of the cargo room to carry things back. Especially if the situation never comes up requiring you use some of it. However you do have a craft mat in your car, and can make things on the road. Which leads me to this, the McGuyver Road Kit. The stuff to take to make sure you can make everything you'll need.

The suggested "get into everything including trouble" road kit is as follows. This is limited to things that can be done solely with the craftmat in your car. As such, things like the Liberator, Hand-Vac, and Anchor Radar are not included. You have to make and load them at the garage to have any, unless you get lucky and find a gas station with a workstation in it.

Most of this is also on your suggested list from the garage diagnostics, or covers for one such item. Two of these need research, but only need Stable Anchor Energy to reach.

The official survival kit checklist the garage suggest is a scrapper, 1 can of repair putty, 1 battery jumper and 3 road flares. The rest of the list are so you can get into any locked doors, or handle repairs that require specific kits to fix, rather than just slapping repair putty on it.

Kits- Are stackable in groups of 3, all are single use items save Repair Putty.

Medikit- Yeah, the Zone is rough, including your car when it rolls back over you. Literal life savers.

Mechanic's Kit- Might not need it much, but remember your left front wheel when you arrived? Or if your engine gets fried.

Sealing Kit- The space efficient alternative to a spare tire, or keeping stuff from leaking in a cracked window.

Electrical Kit- For fixing shorted car parts, or opening shorted keypad doors. Research Required to unlock.

Battery Jumper- The Bunny might keep going and going, but your lights and such won't forever without one.

Repair Putty- All purpose fix it material. My personal recommendation is premix a couple cans in the garage and throwing them into cargo, unless the zone is expected to be particularly hard on your car.


Tools- Non-stackable, variable size. Lost after a certain number of uses. I suggest recycling mostly used tools in the Matter Deconstructor and starting out with fresh tools, or ones mostly so.

Prybar- The Zone Skeleton Key. Also can knock Bunnies off your car.

Scrapper- If you can't pry it up, chop it into lootable sized pieces.

Impact Hammer- When you need to knock really hard.

Relightable Flare- It's dark out there, and there are worst things than Grues in the shadows. Far, far superior to the basic Road Flares.

The Handyman's Secret Weapon

It has a light side, a dark side, and may not hold the universe together, but can do so for nearly everything else. NASA sent this stuff into space where it saved two Apollo Missions. If it's good enough for astronauts, it's good enough for you.

More relevantly for you Driver, it is used in several items, and in a pinch you can use it to make crude car parts. Which are better than nothing and letting that radiation soaked breeze blow in. Throw a stack of twenty into cargo before you leave.

Uses- First Aid Kit(4), Mechanic's Kit(1), Sealing Kit(2), Prybar(1), crude car parts (varies).


It keeps going, and going, and going out

You can't have one without the other, and this is your portable power to recharge your car, open a code paneled door, or get any light better than a basic flare or your headlights.

Take at least a partial stack of each, Driver. Or you might find the parts you need behind a door you need an electrical kit to open. Or be scrambling in the dark or in the dim glow of a flare while trying to find them.

Uses- (Battery/Wire)- Battery Jumper (4/2), Electrical Kit (1/2), Relightable Flare (1/1)


American Components, Russian Components. All Made in Taiwan!

Less common, but scrapping computers and maybe other electrical appliances can drop one.

Use- The finishing parts of the Electrical Kit and Battery Jumper, you just need one for either, but do you want to be scrambling early only to find it behind a door you can't unlock?


I'll huff and I'll puff

You only need one for a new Impact Hammer. And while they might pop up randomly from a friendly dumpster or pneumatube, the reliable place to find one is in hazardous material cabinets in ARDA trailers.

Only not every hazmat cabinet has them, and again you can easily find yourself needing the part to get through the door to get it. Stuff one or two into cargo, just in case.

Use- Only the Impact Hammer (1), but if you need it, you will feel the lack.


Of course it's sterile!

In the garage, useful for blueprints and outfitting station upgrades to your personal gear. In the field, it's bandages. If pops up in boxes and bags, but it takes four cloth to make a single Medkit. Don't be left scrambling for that last piece when you are heavily wounded and soaking in radiation. Pack a partial stack of a dozen which along with a full stack of duct tape is three medikits in the same cargo room, plus tape left over for other kits.

Use- Medkits (4), but when you need some, you really need it.

Come on baby light my fire

You'll find some in any trunk you pry open, taking these with you is partially inventory management. But a partial stack isn't out of place for making sure you can make relightable flares.

Also handy as an emergency light source if nothing better is immediately available, and useful for tourist popping to get thermosap. Or you can craft an emergency headlight with them.

Use- Relightable Flares (2), Crude Headlights (5), farming Tourists for Thermosap (1, burning down).

So seven 2x1 items, which is just under four kits in room. And really with the gas cylinder, you'd need some extensive looting to get a full stack of ten of them.

For when you are less confident in sourcing material in the field, or just expect to be short on time and don't want to waste any, here's a couple extra things you might want to add.

Edit: Having just burned through so many sealing kits in one zone? If there are specific anomalies that will eat into your car. For example things like the Spiked Puddle, you probably want to bring extra rubber and glass. Especially if you expect low visibility conditions so might miss them before a tire pops.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Outside of a friendly dumpster, tourists lobbing it at you, or other lucky find, only seen in ARDA trailer hazmat cabinets. If you find a trasmuter that gives it and have the time, trade up for them.

On the road, needed for repair putty, but given its relative rarirty, I'd consider this worth packing a couple premixed buckets, in case you find one in your looting, at your garage.

Use- Repair Putty (2)


Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball

One of the other two components a Sealing Kit, pack a partial stack if you are worried about not having a handy tire to scrap in a pinch. Throw in a partial stack if you're worried

Uses- Sealing kits (3) and crafting a Spare Tire on the spot (4)


Break in case of emergency

Relatively common, in doors and containers. The final part of the Sealing Kit, and used in Repair Putty and Crude Doors. Same as others on this list, if you feel the need bring a partial stack, fine. If not there are a few things sure to give some.

Uses- Repair Putty (2), Sealing Kits (1), Crude Doors (2)

We know it is Driver, but unless it is really bad, this is stuff better sourced on the go since it is so common.

Please remember to recycle

Common material, just take a scrapper to nearly anything. Or take a peak into most containers while looting an abandoned home or ARDA trailer. Often a byproduct of getting to the electronics, batteries, and copper wire of anything electronic you scrap. Not hard to hunt down really.

Just know what car components produce what. Crude components can drop metal, plastic, duct tape, and glass for doors. Better ones will give just metal, sometimes in plates, along special material needed for their resistance, such as thermosap from armored parts.

Tires besides rubber will drop plastic for spares, metal for Summer and Off-Road. Again, sometimes refined, into gears in this case.

About the only supply concern is to make sure to hang onto enough to rebuild any worn out tools. Getting into a "I need the material to get the material" situation for this stuff is embarrassing.

Uses- Prybar (4/0), Scrapper (3/6), Impact Hammer (9 metal only, 6 for Gears), Repair Putty (2/2), Mechanic's Kit (3/1), Relightable Flare (2/0), Crude Parts (Varies)

While you can in theory 'live off the land' if you start with decent tools, having some stacks of starter material will make life easier even when time isn't at a premium. Even if it just saves the frustration of scouring all across the map to find that one ARDA trailer with the item you need. And leave more room for all the loot, er irregularly requisitioned survival supplies.

Drive safe, and don't forget your prybar and duct tape!