This guide has been written after the release of the Healer DLC (with Osmium Edition updates), which has been declared as the final DLC for Sword Of The Stars: The Pit. Barring any future updates, this guide should be accurate indefinitely.

The guide assumes you have all the DLC, but if you are missing some of it, you can ignore the parts that don't apply to you.

This guide also contains minor unmarked spoilers relating to the secret character added in Gold Edition. (That is, Sgt. Gunny.)

Blue Rooms, Safe Rooms, Metagaming Rooms, or whatever else you like to call them - unless you're having a really hard time, you've probably seen them on your playthroughs. They always generate on floors 5, 10, 15, and 20, even if Quick mode is enabled (on Fast mode, only the floor 5 and 15 rooms spawn, as you skip over floors 10 and 20).

UPDATE: As of the Osmium Edition, you can start a game in Fast Mode on floor 10 or floor 20. When you do this, you skip all the odd-numbered floors instead of the even-numbered floors, so from 10 you go directly to floor 12.

Each room only contains exactly two things: a Locker, and a Stasis Pod. You can put experience into the stasis pod, and items into the locker, but you cannot take them back out. However, they persist between files even if all your active characters are killed, and any character starting on a floor can take them back out.

At first, this seems only marginally useful; wouldn't those items and experience be better used on THIS character? Unless you find equipment you can't equip, of course.

But no, there are many uses for the Safe Rooms, and this guide aims to be the definitive resource on them and their uses. New players and old players alike will hopefully find something useful here.

Every safe room is completely separate from all others. The safe rooms on floors 5 and 10 are separated, so their lockers and stasis pods do not share inventory. In addition, the Floor 5 Safe Room for Easy difficulty is separated from the Floor 5 Safe Room for Normal, and all other difficulties, so you can't dump in items on Easy and then use them on Seriously?.

When you start a new game in a Safe Room, all of its doors are unlocked, and no monsters will appear. It also spawns a ladder up at your starting position, but it is always sealed, preventing you from going to the upper floors of The Pit.

If you enter a floor with a Safe Room after starting at an upper floor, it is locked and the doors must be picked or broken open. Additionally, monsters may spawn inside. The Locker and Stasis Pod, like all props, can be destroyed if they take enough damage, so if you intend to use them, watch your fire (and enemies' fire) and don't toss grenades into the Safe Room. If Confused enemies (like the Tarka Test Subject) spawn in the Safe Room, they might destroy the props before you even get there, which can be infuriating - but it hasn't happened to me (yet).

You cannot start a game in a Safe Room until a character has reached it on that difficulty level, but it does not need to be the same character - you can use the Floor 10 safe room with the Marine even if you originally found it with the Scout.

You must interact with the safe room contents in order for the game to flag it as one you can start from - either deposit XP, or deposit an item. After you have done this, you can start a game from that floor.

The Stasis Pod, shown right (picture taken from the wiki) stores experience. When you interact with it, you can store experience by using the slider under "Deposit". For each point you spend, 5 points are added to the pod's storage - a substantial return on investment. The only restriction is that you can only spend XP earned since the last level you claimed by pressing 'C' to open the character sheet. You can deposit multiple times if you want to, and still have XP left, but you cannot withdraw any.

When you start a character on this floor, you can withdraw some or all of the XP in the pod using the "Withdraw" slider. The "Deposit" slider is disabled when you start on that floor, so you can't take XP out and put it back in for infinite experience. The character will advance from level 1 to whatever level their new XP total puts them at, and the stasis pod is then disabled, preventing you from making a second withdrawal. This is somewhat annoying as the slider is inexact (each tick on the slider's scale is 1% of the total amount), particularly with large XP counts, and (as you'll see in the next section) you're going to want very specific XP counts.

After you have withdrawn XP and pressed 'C' to level-up (if you withdrew enough to level), you can spend stat and skill points as normal. However, for this one time only, you can get a skill increase for 1 skill point in any skill, instead of the normal 2 points you would have to spend for not having used the skill at all. All future level-ups behave as normal.

The obvious benefit to the Stasis Pod is the 1:5 ratio of experience in to experience out. You can make small deposits each time you find a stasis pod, or you can do a setup run (detailed in a later section) to dump in a large amount of XP at once, potentially enough for multiple characters.

XP withdrawn completely ignores the different XP gain rates for different characters. This is fantastic for characters such as the Mercenary who earn less XP than other characters. It's less useful for the Engineer, who earns more XP than anyone else.

Nothing is stopping you from throwing hundreds of thousands of experience points into a stasis pod, taking them all out, and immediately rocketing to level 50. However, this comes with some serious caveats:

• You can spend stat points freely, pumping your Might/Finesse/Brains/Power as high as you want, but you can only put X skill points into any given skill, where X is the floor number you start on. So if you start on Floor 5, don't expect to get 100 Manifestation right off the bat; at best you'll get +15 if you are ridiculously lucky and get +3 Manifestation from all 5 points. After that, the skill-up button is disabled for that skill and you'll have to spend the points elsewhere.
  
• This means that you can't spend any more points until you gain another level... and that will be a long, long time coming. You will either have to spend skill points all over the place, thus wasting them, or you will have to bank them and wait until your next level. Either way, your skills will be far, far below what they should be at for a level 50 character (or whatever high level you ended up at).
  
• Because you're not going to level up for a loooong time, you miss out on a lot of free HP refills, which means you'll have to rest more (using up more food) or heal more (using up more items). You also miss out on Psi refills that might be very helpful to some characters.

As a result, the optimal strategy is to gain just enough XP to advance to the level of the floor you're on (plus one), without quite going over to the next level. That is, on Floor 5 you want to be Level 6 and as close to Level 7 as you can be without actually going over. These are the values you want to try and withdraw from the stasis pod, but make sure to take LESS than the upper limit:

• Floor 5:Between 7,500 and 10,500 XP
  
• Floor 10: Between 27,500 and 33,000 XP
  
• Floor 15: Between 60,000 and 68,000 XP
  
• Floor 20: Between 105,000 and 115,500 XP

These should put you at levels 6, 11, 16, and 21 respectively, giving you 5, 10, 15, and 20 levels' worth of stat and skill boosts out the gate. You can spend 5/10/15/20 skill points without wasting any - and if you got close to the target number, you'll level-up again very soon after starting your run, letting you punch your surroundings with impunity knowing you have a HP refill on hand.

So, what do you do with those levels? This largely depends on the character you're playing, but remember the following general guidelines:

• Every 10 points of Might expands your inventory 6 slots. More slots = more items you can pass along from previous characters.
  
• Every 5 points of Might, Finesse, or Brains increases all related skills by 1. (This does NOT apply to Power)
  
• Every point of Might increases your maximum food level by an amount varying per character.
  
• Every point of Brains increases your maximum Psi by 1.
  
• Brains is also used for spotting traps.
  
• Every point of Power increases your maximum Psi by 2, and improves your resistance to Psi attacks.
  
• Finesse provides no benefit unless you hit a multiple of 5.

Because you can only spend 1 skill point per floor skipped, you'll probably want to powerlevel 1 skill for each point earned by the character - but it's up to you, depending on your strategy. Here are the various characters' point growths for reference (assuming the latest version of the game):

• Marine: +3 Stat, +4 Skill
  
• Engineer: +2 Stat, +6 Skill
  
• Scout: +1 Stat, +8 Skill
  
• Psion: +2 Stat, +6 Skill
  
• Ranger: +3 Stat, +4 Skill
  
• Warrior: +2 Stat, +4 Skill
  
• Seeker: +2 Stat, +5 Skill
  
• Striker: +1 Stat, +3 Skill
  
• Shepherd: +1 Stat, +6 Skill
  
• Mercenary: +2 Stat, +3 Skill
  
• Lich: +1 Stat, +5 Skill
  
• Medic: +2 Stat, +5 Skill
  
• Sgt. Gunny: +2 Stat, +3 Skill

There are many possible ways to spend these, and I won't lead you in any particular direction with character-specific suggestions. The following are some general notes on the skills that might help you come up with your own strategy.

First, remember that all non-psionic skills have a chance to go up when used (up to 45 base - the grey number on the left). Psionic skills can go up from use all the way to 100, but it seems like different skills have different chances of an increase - for instance, TK Fist can often bump Telekinesis, but you can cast Psi Shield all game long and never see "Resistance Skill Increased" pop up. Most of the time you'll only get Psi increases via levels.

Secondly, non-combat skills will always (or almost always) go up when used successfully - Lockpick, Electronics, Computer, etc. They have a random chance to increase when unsuccessful, but usually won't. They still won't increase past 45.

As a result, you'll want to pump points into any psionic skills you want to use, especially if you don't have the first-tier power yet. If you're feeling like taking a Nuclear Option, do this first, before taking any equipment from the locker - if you get terrible level-up rolls, discard the character (and the XP they consumed) and try again. This is really only viable on early floors due to the huge XP requirements of starting on lower floors.

After psionics, you'll want to spend points in stats that are already 45 or more. Only if you have points left over after this (as the Scout might) should you spend points in skills that are below 45. You'll want to get at least one combat skill (based on your starting weaponry) to reduce the likelihood of your weapons getting damaged. Whether you go for crafting skills or for looting skills is up to you, depending on your desired build.

Some skill-specific notes, particularly on spending Safe Room points on them:

• Lockpick: This is always useful. It's also extremely easy to raise to 45 because there are doors everywhere, so don't level it unless it starts at 45 or more. It's used to open secured ammo crates and weapon lockers, so even fighter characters like the Warrior and Mercenary can find this useful.
  
• Electronics: Important for many crafting recipes. Easy to level as long as you find lab tables - you can use them up to 5 times and each successful use should give you Electronics +1. It's also used for repairing many objects, so it's more useful on higher difficulties where props spawn in damaged states more often.
  
• Mechanical: Easy to level in the early-game. Used for freezers, regular ammo crates, some repairs, and some crafting. Not important to get above 45 unless you're doing a crafting-centric build.
  
• Computer: Easy to level if you have a purifier and some moldy cheese/fat strips. Used on computers, naturally, but also - importantly - for armor lockers. Some other items use it too. Not super important but nice to get to 45, especially if you have a Digital Assistant.
  
• Engineering: Everyone except the Engineer and Striker starts with this at 1. Unless you're one of those characters, don't bother. For those two, though, you will want to powerlevel this in the Safe Room even at the expense of other skills because opportunities to actually use it (and thus, level it for 1 point instead of 2) are very rare in the early-game. You'll want it to be high once you hit lower floors and find Neural Enhancers, Mod Works, the various Towers, and more. Best paired with Telekinesis, so you can fiddle with towers from afar.
  
• Pistol, Rifle, Aslt Weapon, Hvy Weapon: As combat skills, it's hard to level these to 45. Your best bet is to pick one (for a weapon you actually have) and beef it up.
  
• Decipher: Most useful in early runs when you have undeciphered messages to interpret. Less useful later, but it's still used for Ammo Dispensers, Tesseract Wells, and other devices. Don't bother unless you start above 45.
  
• Knife, Blade, Spear: Same as the ranged weapons. Pick one for a weapon you have so that you do more damage with it, and take less durability damage on it.
  
• Traps: Traps is a bit of an all-or-nothing skill. It's insanely useful to be able to pick up Wormhole Traps over the course of the game and then use them to rapidly skip the bottom floors of The Pit (especially if wormholing into Floor 40 puts you close to the final boss's room), but otherwise, setting traps and turrets is a rarely-used skill. Not helpful unless you also have the Brains to spot traps, as well.
  
• Medical: Very useful, but easy to level with medkits. Higher Medical score means your meds fail less often and heal more damage. Even more useful with the Healer DLC, which adds some stupidly powerful medkits that can heal hundreds of hit points... as long as you have a decent Medical skill to get around the failure rate. It's also used for Neural Enhancers, which can give you a permanent Brains increase.
  
• Melee: Used on unarmed attacks, the Tarka Warhammer, and also dictates accuracy of thrown grenades (a little-known feature). You'll probably level this naturally if you start on an earlier floor, as you'll want to punch stuff to conserve ammo and supplies for later floors. Probably not worth spending points on - unless you're using the Tarka Warhammer. In which case, bump that skill nice and high!
  
• Foraging: Dictates success with desks, recycling bins, and rot piles. Also dictates how much loot, and what quality loot, you get from all other containers! The important values for Foraging are 40 and 80 - at these (effective, not base!) values, you get extra loot rolls, meaning you could get 3 stacks of ammo from an ammo crate with 80 Foraging. As a result, you'll often want to bump Foraging to 80 and then stop putting points into it. It also increases very quickly, given that it has a chance to go up on every single container. The bonus loot chance, however, makes it a viable candidate to be levelled, even if the base value is less than 45.
  
• Biotech: Used for crafting food, and for protein baths in the deeper floors of The Pit. Easily levelled by cooking raw meat 1 steak at a time - especially if you have an EZ Cooker and don't have to rely on cookers spawning. You can survive well enough with 45 Biotech but a lot of the better recipes (like the Epic Bacon Sotswich) will have scary failure rates unless you pump it higher.
  
• Empathy: Fear tends to level Empathy quite often - but Psi Drain is an excellent, maybe even mandatory skill for a psionics-heavy class, and you get that at 65 Empathy.
  
• Telekinesis: 25 for Manipulation is great for anyone who would like to not be standing next to a cooker, ammo dispenser, medbay, or anything else that might explode on a failed check. Doesn't apply to disintegration bays - these can still instakill you on a failed check via telekinesis from a distance. 45 for TK Fist gives you an excellent attack that will level Telekinesis often - don't spend points on Telekinesis if you have TK Fist unlocked.
  
• War Mind: War Mind has a high entry cost, and Berserker is extremely unhelpful. Unless you start with War Mind above 1, you probably don't want to bother putting points into it. However, if you can actually hit 99, the final boss is basically free.
  
• Redaction: 20 is enough to get you Heal. It won't heal much initially, but each point into Redaction will heal for more, so you'll want to keep investing for the whole game. It does level fairly often through use, too.
  
• Manifestation: The entry requirement of 50 skill makes this an all-or-nothing skill, and the real gate is at 60, where you get Fire; after that, it will level on its own fast enough that you can stop shoving points into it.
  
• Mecha Empathy: Mechasense almost never levels the skill, so the real gate is 45 to get Shutdown. ME is a very heavy skill to invest in, but on the other hand, mechanical enemies are some of the most dangerous in the game.
  
• Resistance: These abilities have very long cooldowns and don't level the skill very often, so you will be investing points in this forever. However, every skill is useful.
  
• Necro Tech: Never level this. The Necromancer starts with it at 70-ish (which is plenty) and everyone else starts with it at 1 (and will never find most of the components they need anyway).

The Locker is the more complicated of the two Safe Room objects in terms of what you can accomplish with it. It serves as an extra 8x12 inventory (so 96 squares) that carries over between games.

As with the Stasis Pod, when you start on an earlier floor, you can only deposit items into the locker. You can rearrange items freely and stack them, but you cannot withdraw them. After bringing up the locker's inventory, you can drag an item into the locker, or you can double-click something to send it over. Be aware that if you double-click, items won't stack - if you have 3 raw meat in the locker, and double-click 5 raw meat, they'll be in separate stacks (which you can then drag onto each other to stack them into a single stack of 8). Be careful not to accidentally deposit anything you meant to keep, because you can't get it back out after you put it in. No take-backs on item deposits!

When you start on the floor, you can only withdraw items, so you can't fill the locker with Energy Cells by starting the Psion repeatedly. You can drag or double-click items out of the locker. Mind your inventory space as you do so.

You can make partial withdrawals or deposits only by dragging an item onto a partial stack. If you have 7 raw meat in the locker and drag a stack of 4 from your inventory, only 3 will be deposited (as raw meat has a max stack size of 10), leaving the leftover 1 in your inventory. This works with withdrawals, too.

Lockers are separated by floor and by difficulty, but not by character. So you can have the Mercenary deposit items and have the Ranger pick them up.

If you run out of space in the locker, you can clean it up (see below) or, if the setup character and the intended character are different classes, you can start the new game, remove items you want to use, Save & Quit and go back to the first character, put in the remaining items, and continue doing this until all desired items have been stored.

You cannot deposit bio mods or mutation serums (they "cannot survive reality distortion"). You also cannot deposit weapons or armor containing bio mods.

Sometimes the locker's just full of junk.

The fastest and easiest way to clear junk from a locker is to start the Marine on the floor of the locker you want to clear. Have him pull all the junk items out of the locker, dropping on the floor if necessary. Then remove his armor and have him throw grenades next to himself until he dies to clear out his save file.

This is where things get very interesting.

The various characters of The Pit start with a varied and versatile set of equipment spread across them. This includes things like Nano Reconstructors - the best source of repair in the game, second only to the Living Steel Patch which only works on medium or heavy armors. Or EMP grenades, which can one-shot or heavily damage many incredibly dangerous mecha enemies such as Heavy Morrigi Drones and Von Neumann Probes. Or Tarka Field Surgeries, which don't consume a turn to use.

Of course, these are all scattered across the different characters. The Locker's purpose is to bring all these together (inventory space permitting) to get the best of all worlds, and substantially improve your chances of winning not dying until you get past floor 20.

Here are some general notes to each character's inventory:

• Marine/Sgt. Gunny: The assault rifle is the only starting weapon that uses rifle rounds.
  
• Engineer: The electronic toolkits, digital assistant, motion sensor, and (maybe) crowbar are good to transfer to other characters.
  
• Scout: Those 2 lockpick sets are useful for everyone.
  
• Psion: The laser pistol is a very powerful, albeit fragile, pistol. The Vibro Blade is a good step up from the Blade but requires energy cells.
  
• Ranger: The Sar is an excellent Blade, as it hits an area in front of the user.
  
• Warrior: 120 High Calibre rounds is nothing to sneeze at. The Kheraizen's melee attack is very powerful and scales with Pistol skill, too.
  
• Seeker: At 200 food, the seafood platter is the best starting food, not counting crafted stuff. But the Seeker's best item is the Liir Edu-Pet. They start with only 1, but +8-12 in a random mental skill is a tremendous boost (non-Liir characters might suffer -1 Power, which is easily ignored).
  
• Striker: Starts with the only mundane spear. The Protection Array offers great bullet protection - important for facing off with security bots. The Scanning Analyzer means not worrying about analysis consoles or diagnostic chips. The med drone converts energy cells into HP. The motheregg subverts robots (but non-Morrigi need to use a turn to activate it).
  
• Shepherd: Master Kits restore both HP and Psi on a moderate Medical check. Starts with the most HE rounds.
  
• Mercenary: The Tarka Warhammer is an extremely good melee weapon. The Kak'urdu Sal is the only starting weapon that uses flechette rounds. He also has a set of skill-boosting equipment that anyone can use: Digital Assistant (Computer), Digital Interpreter (Decipher), and Hiver Multi-Tool (Mechanical & others). 5 Grenades are handy for clearing out bots, especially the scavenger bots summoned by the Maintenance Master, and 5 EMP Grenades makes short work of tougher robotic threats.
  
• Lich: 5 EMP Grenades means 5 Heavy Morrigi Drone or Von Neumann Probe kills. The Prai-Blade is fantastic on ANYONE as it gives them a melee-range Psi Drain. The Prana Dagger is essentially a healing source. But despite all this, the best thing he has is 5 Nano Reconstructors - that's 5, in-your-pocket, no-skill-check-needed, no-time-consumed, 90% efficient repairs. No character should start without these.
  
• Medic: Anti-venom and Antibiotics are good on low-Might characters. She also starts with a Purifier, which not only helps with food, but can train Biotech and Computer.

The Ranger, Seeker, Striker, and Medic all start with a Utility Belt, which is useful to all characters for getting a few more inventory slots at the expense of the belt slot.

You can get an equipment boost to many skills just from starting items.

• Lockpick: Lockpick Sets are Engineer x1, Scout x2, Striker x1, Shepherd x2, Mercenary x2, Lich x3.
  
• Electronics: Hiver Multi-Tool and Electronics Toolkits.
  
• Mechanical: Hiver Multi-Tool and Crowbar.
  
• Computer: Digital Assistant.
  
• Decipher: Digital Interpreter.

Although nobody starts with the Pocket Doc (Medical) or Bourdox (Biotech), these are both common enough items that you might find some on the first few floors while doing setup runs. The Doohanulator (Engineering) and Maser Scanner (Foraging) are quite a bit rarer, and you aren't going to find any in the upper half of The Pit.

You can also get most of the ammo types in the game from starting characters (doesn't include ammo that can be unloaded from guns):

• Pistol Rounds: Marine (60), Engineer (100), Scout (120), Sgt. Gunny (100)
  
• High Calibre Rounds: Ranger (40), Warrior (120), Mercenary (80)
  
• Darts: Seeker (120), Medic (120)
  
• Rifle Rounds: Marine (90), Sgt. Gunny (240)
  
• High Explosive Rounds: Shepherd (100), Lich (50)
  
• Shotgun Shells: Seeker (40)
  
• Flechette Rounds: Mercenary (200)
  
• Energy Cells: Psion (10), Striker (8), Medic (20)
  
• Fuel Cells: Warrior (9)

The ammo types you can't start with are AM Cells, Heavy/Poison Darts, Energy Backpacks, Goop Rounds, Heavy Slugs, and Rockets. In some of these cases you may need to see if you can craft them instead, if you got lucky and found the corresponding weapon(s).

- Energy Backpacks: Electronics: bindings + 4 energy cells. Bindings are impossible NOT to find and many characters start with energy cells. Electronics is easy to boost.
- Goop Rounds: Mechanical: ? pistol rounds + ? pistol rounds + exotic proteins + giant mitochondria. Common ingredients but the gun that fires them is not.
- Heavy Slugs: Mechanical: molecular neutronium + shell casings + element X. The neutronium is hard to find, the rest not so much, especially as shell casings can be crafted too.
- Poison Darts: Mechanical: chemo slug + injector fangs + poison sac + poison sac. Chemo slugs and injector fangs are extremely rare. And even if you had them - why are you even using these? Poison weapons are generally terrible.

Since the hardest enemy in the game is your character's stomach, you'll want to consider your food options. The starting foods are generally unimpressive:

• Marine, Engineer, Scout, Psion, Medic Sgt. Gunny: Sol Force Rations. 80 food for humans, 50 for others, stacks to 5 in one space.
  
• Ranger: Tarka Warbread, Ku'sulto Lobstercake, both for small amounts. More useful in crafting (see below).
  
• Warrior: Kutar Oatmix, Zytokot Fungibar, Hiver Cheese. The fungibar does Unpleasant Things to non-Hivers. The others are more useful in crafting.
  
• Seeker: Seafood Platter gives 200 to everyone, and stacks to 5. Wuuna Sea Cucumber is useful for its poison/radiation cure.
  
• Striker: Ice Gems, Tarka Warbread, Ku'sulto Lobstercake, Bh'azhnazh Fruit. Better used for crafting, especially because the Striker goes through food at a ridiculous rate due to his 1 Move speed.
  
• Shepherd: Stale Bread, Wuuna Sea Cucumber. The bread's best used for crafting.
  
• Mercenary: Ku'sulto Lobstercake, Tarka Warbread, Ko'grappa Stonecrab, all good for crafting.
  
• Lich: Raw meat. The Lich uses food in a completely different way to the other characters.

You'll also find raw meat all over the upper floors, which is easily turned into cooked meat. You might even be able to enter the pit from the surface with a full stack of it if you murder enough defenceless bunnies.

Using a Purifier (Medic starts with one, they're also easily found) you can get Safe Meat, Safe Cheese, Stale Bread and Star-Bacon.

This list isn't exhaustive as I don't have all the crafting recipes unlocked, but here are all the recipes you can make from these alone:

• Hero Sotswich: Tarka Warbread (Ranger/Striker/Mercenary) + Cooked Meat + Hiver Cheese (Warrior). 300 food, stacks to 5, takes up 1 space? Even the Striker will be set for a long time with a stack or two of these.
  
• Imperial Special: Ku'sulto Lobstercake (Ranger/Mercenary) + Ko'grappa Stonecrab (Mercenary) + Bh'azhnazh Fruit (Striker). 200 food and guaranteed +1 Might - but it doesn't stack, so be wary. If you have an EZ Cooker, you can just make these on demand and eat them immediately to save space.

To help you plan accordingly, here are the default hunger rates on Easy-Insane:

• Sgt. Gunny: 1 Food / 3 Turns (0.33)
  
• Marine/Engineer/Scout/Psion/Medic: 1 Food / 2 Turns (0.5)
  
• Ranger: 1 Food / 2 Turns (0.5) but moves at Speed 3
  
• Warrior: 5 Food / 7 Turns (0.71)
  
• Seeker: 3 Food / 4 Turns (0.75)
  
• Striker: 2 Food / 3 Turns (0.66) but moves at Speed 1
  
• Shepherd: 1 Food / 1 Turn (1.0)
  
• Mercenary: 1 Food / 1 Turn (1.0)
  
• Lich: N/A

Note that Seriously? makes you hunger at 120% of the normal speed. And like everything else in The Pit, decimals get tracked, so the Shepherd uses 6 Food every 5 Turns, for example.

You can never have too many grenades.

• Grenade: Marine x1, Engineer x3, Psion x1, Warrior x3, Shepherd x1, Mercenary x5, Lich x3, Medic x2, Sgt. Gunny x1
  
• Frag Grenade: Marine x2, Scout x2, Warrior x3, Sgt. Gunny x1
  
• HE Grenade: Marine x2, Warrior x3, Sgt. Gunny x1
  
• Stun Grenade: Scout x3, Medic x3
  
• EMP Grenade: Psion x2, Shepherd x2, Mercenary x5, Lich x5
  
• KO Grenade: Psion x2
  
• Disruptor Grenade: Shepherd x3

The Ranger, Seeker, and Striker do not start with any grenades, unless they take some from the locker.

Stun Grenades and KO Grenades are next to useless and can be thrown away to make room for other equipment. Disruptor Grenades are so highly situational that you may wish to discard them too.

Each HE Grenade can translate into a destroyed manufacturing bay, and each EMP grenade can translate into a dead Heavy Morrigi Drone, Von Neumann Probe, or a roomful of heavily damaged medium/heavy security bots. They are extremely useful as mechanical enemies are extremely dangerous. Plus, since there's no Loa character (and probably never will be) you can safely throw them right at your feet without harming yourself. In general, 1-2 grenades can pull you out of most emergencies.

Character starting skills and stats will impact your choices on what to give them; what works for one won't work for everyone.

Marine/Sgt. Gunny:
- Ranged: High Might means you can start with lots of ammo for your weapons.
- Melee: High Might and good Melee means you can get a lot of mileage from the Tarka Warhammer.
- Crafting: Mechanical only starts at 20 (+Might, your best score), but is used for weapon/ammo crafting; bring a Hiver Multi-Tool for an extra +15 bonus. Biotech 25 likely mandates bringing a lunch.

Engineer:
- Ranged: Pistol is your only decent fighting skill, so bring lots of pistol ammo - the Psion's laser pistol and lots of energy cells also complement you nicely.
- Melee: You have few options. You can replace your Knives with Duraknives but don't bother much with knives otherwise, as they're terrible.
- Crafting: This is your forte. Leave space in your inventory for stuff you find. Make use of Tesseract Wells (and the Mercenary's Digital Interpreter) to store things to make up for your small inventory.

Scout:
- Ranged: Steal the Marine's stuff; your Pistol (50) and Rifle (35) are both decent.
- Melee: Despite having 45 Melee, you'll never have the Might for the Tarka Warhammer (55). Go Blades instead, and/or take the Medic's combat baton.
- Crafting: 45 Biotech means you can take less food and scavenge more later, or bring the ingredients for 10 Hero Sotswiches and craft them at the first opportunity.

Psion:
- Ranged: Pistol (35) is all you've got; bring a spare laser pistol and lots of energy cells.
- Melee: Same as the Scout; you've got 30 Might but 60 Melee, so grab a Combat Baton.
- Crafting: Your skills here are bad; either don't invest in crafting or pick just one thing.

Ranger:
- Ranged: Steal the Mercenary's Kak'urdu Sal and a ton of flechette rounds - you've got 55 Aslt Weapon and no racial penalty! Steal some HCal rounds from the Warrior too for your pistol.
- Melee: You have many options. Your Sar is an excellent blade. Bring a second one, or steal the Striker's Spear - you've got 40 in it and having Reach plus 3 Move speed is insanely good. Either way, pilfer the Mercenary's Tarka Warhammer; you start with exactly enough Might to wield it and have no racial penalty.
- Crafting: You don't excel in anything, but your low food consumption means you can take less with you. If you want, invest in Mechanical, and try upgrading your Sar to a Lightning Blade and then an Adamantium Sword.

Seeker:
- Ranged: Racial penalties pretty much restrict you to the Darter and the Harpoon Rifle, if you find one early on (they are surprisingly common).
- Melee: Take the Striker's spear for a mundane spear to complement your Ayma. You have 45 Blade for some reason, but ignore it; racial penalties on you are very severe.
- Crafting: 70 Biotech! You'll easily be able to make some high-end foods (and you'll need them). 70 Decipher, combined with the Digital Interpreter, should let you make liberal use of Tesseract Wells to offset your tiny inventory size.

Striker:
- Ranged: Your starting pistol is amazing, but fragile; bring a spare. Keep an eye out for heavy weapons; you can use them without needing power armor (an undocumented feature). If by some miracle you have one in an Item Locker, take it!
- Melee: Your claws are vicious! Use them as much as you can for the first half of The Pit. A Starlance is a fantastic thing to take from a locker, but failing that spare Spear will make up for its low durability.
- Crafting: You MUST invest in Biotech to survive as the Striker; with Large size, a slow movement, and reliance on psionics, you will burn through lots of food. But, you only start with 35 Biotech. Get it up, and then make some Hero Sotswiches.

Shepherd:
- Ranged: Pistol is your best bet here. Steal someone's energy pistol if you can.
- Melee: Grab the Lich's Prai-Blade, so you can steal psi with it; you start with 60 Blades, so the Marine's blade would also be nice.
- Crafting: Your best is Computer, so you can potentially skimp on armor and hope to find something later. Bring a Digital Assistant to help hack into stasis chambers for extra food.

Warrior:
- Ranged: You start with high Might, so bring lots of ammo. LOTS of ammo - crafting more is exceedingly unlikely. You probably won't find many fuel cells for your flamer, so you'll need to start with a lot.
- Melee: A spare Kheraizen may be very helpful since it's an excellent melee weapon that you'll want to use whenever your arm-blades aren't good enough. A second Ri may or may not be helpful.
- Crafting: The Hiver Multi-Tool gives +20, so you might be able to roll Mechanical with a lot of work, but you have a long road ahead of you.

Mercenary:
- Ranged: More ammo. Your starting weapons are already fantastic; just load up on ammo! You've got at least 75 Might to work with, after all.
- Melee: Dat Hammer is more than enough for your purposes. Take a second if you're paranoid.
- Crafting: You can make Mechanical work, but you already start with a Hiver Multi-Tool. You can probably discard the Digital Interpreter if you have all the messages unlocked - your Decipher sucks, so even with the DI you'll still fail Tesseract Well checks, which will likely destroy items inside.

Lich:
- Ranged: Pistol. Your inventory is TINY. Pistol rounds and energy cells are the most space-efficient ammo, and pistols themselves are small.
- Melee: Blades all the way. Maybe Knives - only because your Prana Dagger is an excellent knife, draining HP and attacking twice per moment.
- Crafting: Your tiny inventory limits your options here severely. Pick a goal and aim for it; don't try to hoard ingredients.

Medic:
- Ranged: Throw away the Transfuser and take some real pistols - it has low damage, low penetration, and rare ammo.
- Melee: Knives are still terrible, even with 75 skill; try Blades instead. The Combat Baton is exceptionally good. If you go Baton + Vibro-Blade, grab several stacks of energy cells, as they'll go through them fairly fast (even more if you took a laser pistol).
- Crafting: You have very good Biotech so you can go light on food. If you can start with a Bourdox and level up Biotech as you go, you can have a decent chance of successfully using Protein Baths, which will refill your food to maximum!

So, with all this in mind, and your very limited inventory space, how do you decide what to take?

Bear in mind each character's strengths and weaknesses, as outlined above. High Might means you can probably make do without anti-venoms or antibiotics - toss them to make more space. Crafting characters are going to need leftover space to carry ingredients, and will have to go light on medical supplies, weapons, and armor. Just because you start with a particular weapon, doesn't mean it's a good choice for that character.

Also, you never have enough ammo.

Also bear in mind that some racial penalties come very steeply, and you're more likely to damage a weapon made by another species, even if you have high skill. Sometimes this is worth it anyway; sometimes it's not. Finally, take into account the character's starting skill when assigning weapons, as giving the Marine's assault rifle to someone with 1 in Aslt Weapon is going to mean a lot of missed shots and wasted ammo, even if they're also human.

• Always transfer a utility belt from another character. It's a free few extra slots and you'll need every slot you can get.
  
• Get the 5 Nano Reconstructors off the Lich. Your equipment will last so much longer.
  
• Get the Striker's Scanning Analyzer. No need to experiment with bio-mods or mutagens, just ID them and destroy the bad ones.
  
• A stack of energy cells from the medic is nice to have for recharging your usable equipment without having to wait for a charging station.
  
• Most of the starting armors are pretty bad, except the Ri Xhichizzak, but it's Hiver-only. You'll want a Digital Assistant to boost your Computer score so you have a better chance of successfully looting an armor locker. A spare set of armor, if you have space, can be helpful. If you stumble across armor for another character, try and transport it to a Safe Room.
  
• If you don't already have good melee skills for a specific weapon type, take the Tarka Warhammer. Its knockback is invaluable. It has a 55 Might requirement, though.
  
• Try to secure at least a stack of really good food, or a couple of stacks of mediocre food. Tarka Warbread is very rare to actually find once you're in The Pit.

So, this information is all well and good, but how do you fill the Stasis Pod and Locker in the first place?

The easiest way is to make chararacters whose One Job is to make a beeline for the Metagaming Room you want to fill up. The typical example is going from the Entrance to Floor 5, which generally does not result in horrible death on lower difficulty levels (barring an out-of-depth enemy spawn). If you're only going Entrance -> Floor 5, then play on Fast mode; you'll only need to clear two and a half floors to find the Safe Room. Otherwise, play in Quick mode to generate smaller floors, making finding the exit easier.

During a setup run, you'll probably want to avoid taking character levels, or only take one or two - just don't press 'C' after a level-up (unless not doing so is going to get you killed). This will maximize the amount of EXP you can dump into the Stasis Pod. If you already have more than enough, you can take the extra levels for safety, particularly on squishier characters.

Along the way, try to focus on doing anything that can garner extra equipment. Rot piles, ammo crates, secure ammo crates, weapon lockers, etc - you could find something highly helpful to the character you're setting up.

You'll also want to try not using some (or, on an Entrance -> Floor 5 run, all) of your damageable equipment, to maximize its durability when you arrive at the Safe Room. You can easily get everything to the Floor 5 safe room in pristine condition if you don't step on any mine traps or get attacked by any proteans.

If this is proving too difficult, focus on getting only one thing (food, weapons, armor) in a single run and feel free to use the other equipment to your heart's content. If your character has psionics, use them as much as possible to save on equipment.

Generally I recommend only doing all this elaborate setup at the Floor 5 room (effectively starting a normal game with a really powerful inventory), but if you have really good equipment sitting in lockers further down because other characters couldn't use it, then press onward and set up at a lower floor. The other benefit of only doing setup on Floor 5 is that it allows the Nuclear Option, as mentioned before, of restarting any character who gets really bad skill-ups in an important skill (such as certain psionic skills).

Additionally, you can relay items and experience across multiple characters by getting a run to floor 5, stopping, starting a new character there, going to floor 10, etc. If you're going to Floor 15, you might want to use Fast mode to go straight from Floor 5, crossing the same number of floors. This is a good way to transfer items from noodly/squishy/wimpy characters like the Seeker, Shepherd, or Lich to someone with lots of inventory space and the muscles to survive the trip, like the Warrior, Marine, or Mercenary. I personally recommend the Mercenary because of his huge HP pool, his high Strength (which means lots of inventory slots) and his ability to crush basically everything in the first half of the game with the Tarka Warhammer he starts with.

The fastest & safest way, therefore, to get items and XP down to the Floor 20 Safe Room is:

• Entrance -> Floor 5 (Fast Mode; Any Character, use this to get stuff from flimsy characters)
  
• Floor 5 -> Floor 15 (Fast Mode; Sturdier Character)
  
• Floor 15 -> Floor 20 (Quick Mode; Sturdy Character)

This covers a total of 15 floors: Floor 1, Floor 3, Floor 5 (twice), Floor 7, Floor 9, Floor 11, Floor 13, Floor 15 (twice), Floor 16, Floor 17, Floor 18, Floor 19, Floor 20. If you're lucky you won't need to cover the entire floor to find the Safe Room on floors 5 and 15.

UPDATE: In Osmium Edition, you can start on floor 10 or floor 20 in Fast Mode. This doesn't affect much in the routing unless you want to shuffle items from floor 10 to floor 20, or start a character on floor 10 for setup purposes and get them to floor 20 (this is not recommended due to the XP they would need to consume to have a chance of getting there, however).

Once you've sufficiently armed yourself, and assigned the stats from your starting XP, it's time to roll out and actually play the game.

If your Lockpicking started below 45, try to open every door you come across until it hits 45. Especially when starting on floors 10, 15, or 20, your Lockpick is going to be way below what it should be at that point in the game, and you need to find a good weapon at some point to have any hope of taking out the final boss, which is the one thing you are almost never going to set out from the blue room with. Your best shot for good items is Weapon Lockers, which are a relatively high Lockpicking test. Stuff to look for: you want weapons with at least 100 penetration, and as much ammo for them as you can find. Heavy sniper rifles, high-end laser rifles, energy cannons, rocket launchers, etc.

If you stockpiled up food ingredients, keep an eye out for a cooker to combine them at.

Tesseract Wells won't show up on the early floors, so you'll be stuck with your initial inventory space for a while. If you're running a Crafting-heavy character you'll need to make space for ingredients you want; try to figure out the recipes you want to make and hoard the ingredients for those, bearing in mind that some ingredients are lot easier to find than others.

Unless you started on floor 20, you'll stumble across the other blue rooms along the way. If you find more really good equipment for another character, you can stash it. Once you're on floor 21 though, even if you find PBA you can't use, you'll have no choice but to just leave it there.

You'll also need to work on ID'ing door traps. Unless you're happy playing russian roulette with your inventory, you'll want to drop everything and pick up a junk item before walking through each one in order to ID "Destroys Random Item" (the nastiest trap). However, you might also bump into "Teleports", which may potentially drop you on the far side of the level with none of your gear; this is why it's critically important to ID the door traps as early as possible, so that you're fighting things like zuulings ♥♥♥♥♥, and not high-end security robots. If you want, you can leave the doors until you've full-cleared the floor for safety (and also you can check the map; Teleports reqiures another door trap of the same type).

If you're feeling really cheesy, play in the middle of December.

Around this time, on floors 5, 10, 15, and 20 (coincidentally enough), a special enemy called The Gronch will spawn (unless you disable holiday events in the options). It looks like a green Gigantopithecus and isn't nearly as formidable as it looks but can steal items from you like scavenger bots do. It's basically a loot piñata that, when killed, drops a huge pile of items. (UPDATE: In Osmium edition, it drops a present box, which is coded as a harmless, stationary enemy. When killed, it drops the loot that the Gronch previously dropped) This loot can contain:

• Rib Sandwiches (stacks to 3, 130 food each)
  
• Morrigi Flavor Oils
  
• Avian Carcasses
  
• Birds of Feasting (250 food, doesn't stack, causes sleep when eaten & drops 3 Leftovers for 80 food each)
  
• Bio Mods & Mutation Serums (which are not transferrable)
  
• Hofnuts (restores some food, health, AND psi when eaten)
  
• Egg Nog (120 food)
  
• EZ Cookers
  
• Brawler PBA (yes, really!)
  
• Other food and small items

Multiple Gronches can spawn on a floor, and handily enough, they spawn on floors with Metagaming Rooms. Either kill them and carry the loot to the locker or get their attention and get them to follow you to the blue room before killing them. Take whatever your current character needs and dump the unusable/excess items into the locker (space permitting). Chances are you'll fill the locker up so much and STILL have loot left over that you might want to create more characters on that floor just to free up space for additional items. Just be careful they don't cause the problem again once they get to the next floor Gronches spawn on.

This is substantially cheesier than regular metagaming given the sheer number and quality of these items and their all-but-guaranteed status while the event is active. It may or may not be affected by your computer's clock if you want to do this all year round (I haven't tested it myself).

Is this cheating? Hardly (though abusing Gronches gets pretty close). It's an intended mechanic of the game; added as part of Gold Edition, the Safe Room has been around longer than many of the DLC character classes, and some of them seem to have been designed with the Safe Room in mind, such as the Striker's ludicrous food consumption, the Seeker's dependence on hydrating armors, Sgt. Gunny's huge ammo reserves, the FIVE Nano Reconstructors on the Lich, the species-specific medkits in Healer, and so on.

It's not without its downsides. The deeper you start, the harder it is to get around because your Lockpick skill is going to be sub-45 when it normally would be 45 or more (on most classes), and the doors get harder the deeper you go. Classes that normally earn lots of XP will also be lower than they would be if they had just come from the surface.

Essentially, the Safe Room and tactics for using it are part of advanced play. Just as you learn to use melee weapons to conserve ammo, to raise stats in increments of 5, to hold off on level-ups until you really need that HP/Psi refill, and to naturally raise stats to 45 before spending points on them, you must eventually learn how the Safe Room works and the benefits of using it. This game is brutally hard, even on Easy, and manipulating your start with the Safe Room is all part of the strategy of it. It's not like it's a free pass; with the limit on how many skill points you can spend, you can't steamroll the entire game by just jumping to a high level; in fact, you'll make the game even harder by doing so.

Even the most extreme strategy - farming numerous stacks of Liir Edu-Pets - only increases your mental stats and can drain the Power of non-Liir characters, making them more susceptible to psi attacks, which can be very deadly (chain Fear stuns, Paralysis, etc). And if you get around the Power drain by playing the Seeker, you're still playing a glass cannon who relies on not having their armor get shredded in a game where armor gets damaged if you so much as look at it funny.

In the end, it's up to you if you want to use the Safe Room or not. But when you do, this guide ought to point you in the right direction.