Lethal Company drops you into debt with no tutorial, hands you a flashlight, and tells you to scavenge abandoned moons for scrap. Miss the quota and your entire crew gets fired — which, in Lethal Company, means a violent end and a fresh start. The game sold four million copies in its first month on Steam Early Access and built a reputation as one of 2024’s most chaotic, terrifying, and genuinely hilarious co-op experiences. This guide covers everything a new player needs to know: what the game is, how the quota system works, which moons to visit first, what monsters will kill you and how to avoid them, and how to think about the numbers so your crew survives long enough to celebrate a quota met.
What Is Lethal Company?
Lethal Company is a 1–4 player co-op horror game developed by solo developer Zeekerss. You play as contracted workers employed by a shadowy corporation known only as The Company. Your job is straightforward: travel to abandoned industrial moons, collect scrap left behind in derelict facilities, return to your ship, and sell that scrap to The Company to meet a rising monetary quota. Fail the quota and your entire crew is terminated. In Lethal Company, termination is not a metaphor.
What separates Lethal Company from most horror games is its proximity voice chat system. Monsters do not just sense movement — they hear your actual voice through your microphone. Speak too loudly near an Eyeless Dog and it will charge toward your voice. Panic on the radio while a Bracken is nearby and you may be dead before you realize the danger. Voice chat is not optional flavor in Lethal Company; it is a core survival mechanic that punishes communication as much as silence can save you.
The game’s tone oscillates between genuine dread and absurd chaos. One run your crew coordinates a flawless extraction. The next, someone picks up a haunted shotgun, accidentally shoots the only person with the flashlight, and the entire team dies in darkness to a creature nobody could see. Both outcomes are Lethal Company doing exactly what it intends to do.
The Quota System Explained
Every run in Lethal Company is structured around a quota: a monetary target you must reach by a set deadline. The first quota is typically around $130, a manageable figure that a single run to a safe moon can cover. After you meet it, the next quota increases — and it keeps increasing with each cycle. By the time you are three or four quotas deep, the numbers become demanding enough that your crew must make harder choices about which moons to visit and how much risk to accept.
The quota deadline is measured in days. You have a set number of in-game days to collect and sell enough scrap. Each trip to a moon costs a landing fee for premium moons, and each day that passes without selling scrap is a day of opportunity lost. Managing time against the quota total is the central skill of Lethal Company — not any individual monster or mechanic, but the discipline to know when to push deeper and when to return with what you have.
If your crew fails the quota at the deadline, the game ends and you restart from the beginning. All accumulated credits, purchased equipment, and progress reset. This is not a soft failure state — Lethal Company is a game about runs, not persistent progress. Learning what to do costs you runs. That is intentional and expected.
The most important early lesson: selling is what matters, not collecting. Scrap has no value on the ship. It only converts to credits when you fly to The Company’s moon and actually sell. New players frequently collect far more than needed, run out of days, and fail the quota with a ship full of unsold loot. Sell early, sell often, and keep a mental tally of where you stand against the quota number.
Your First Ship Setup
Before you land on any moon, spend a few minutes learning the ship’s terminal. The terminal is your command center for navigation, purchasing equipment, and gathering intelligence on moons. Type HELP to see the full command list, but the essential commands for new players are:
- MOONS — displays all available moon destinations with current conditions (weather, creature activity)
- ROUTE [moon name] — sets a flight path to a specific moon
- STORE — opens the equipment shop where you spend crew credits on gear
- BESTIARY — shows creature entries for any monsters your crew has previously encountered
- SCAN — while on a moon, scans and displays the total scrap value present and how many items remain
Equipment purchasing is where most new crews make their first mistake. The instinct to hoard credits and land gear-free costs runs. The minimum viable loadout for a four-person crew is:
- Flashlights — mandatory; facilities are completely dark without them; one per player minimum
- Walkie-talkies — allow voice communication between players when the game’s proximity chat would otherwise cut them off; essential when your crew splits between inside the facility and the ship
The Pro Flashlight is a direct upgrade to the standard flashlight — brighter and longer-ranged. Upgrade your crew as credits allow. The standard flashlight is adequate for early quotas but the Pro version makes a meaningful difference in darker facilities and during night operations.
The ship monitor on the wall shows a camera feed from the facility entrance. The crew member who stays on the ship — the designated monitor — can warn teammates about creatures approaching from outside. Not every crew runs a dedicated monitor, but on harder moons with exterior creatures, having eyes on the entrance saves lives.
First Moon Recommendations
Lethal Company has a tiered moon system that separates beginner-friendly locations from death traps. New players should stick to the safe moons until the team has practiced the basics and read the bestiary entries for the creatures they have encountered.
| Moon | Travel Cost | Scrap Value | Difficulty | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimentation | Free | Low | Beginner | Best starting moon; small facility, few creatures, forgiving layout; ideal for learning basic mechanics without dying constantly |
| Assurance | Free | Low–Medium | Beginner | Slightly larger than Experimentation; more scrap but also more creature activity; safe second step for new crews |
| Vow | Free | Medium | Beginner–Intermediate | Outdoor scrap on the surface makes early loot possible without entering the facility; Forest Giants become a hazard outdoors at night |
| Offense | Free | Medium | Intermediate | Higher scrap value but more unpredictable interior creature spawns; not ideal for first several runs |
| Rend | 550 credits | High | Hard | Dangerous creature roster; avoid until your team is experienced |
| Dine | 600 credits | High | Hard | Very dangerous; not beginner territory |
| Titan | 700 credits | Very High | Expert | The hardest moon in the standard rotation; do not attempt until your team is fully experienced and well-equipped |
The free moons — Experimentation, Assurance, and Vow — are your training ground for the first two or three quotas. The scrap values are lower, but so is the danger. Use these moons to practice facility navigation, learn creature behavior, and build the team’s communication patterns before the quota pressure forces you onto harder ground.
For a complete breakdown of every moon ranked by scrap value, danger rating, and optimal quota phase, see our Lethal Company All Moons Guide.
Weather conditions change the difficulty of familiar locations. Flooded, stormy, and eclipsed moons spawn significantly more creatures than their default state. Always check the moon’s current condition on the terminal before routing — an eclipsed Assurance is a very different proposition from a calm one.
The Stay-Together Rule
More new players die from splitting up than from any single creature. Lethal Company is built around the assumption that players will be tempted to cover more ground by separating — and then it punishes that decision severely. Three core threats make solo exploration near-suicidal for new players:
Playing with friends? like lethal company covers everything you need.
The Bracken targets isolated individuals. It stalks quietly through facility corridors, staying just outside your peripheral vision, and snaps a player’s neck when the opportunity presents itself. Against a full team that can cover each other’s backs and maintain awareness of the creature, the Bracken is manageable. Against a solo player navigating dark corridors, it is one of the most lethal threats in the game.
The Coil-Head is a mannequin that moves at terrifying speed the instant no player is looking at it. With two players, one can maintain line of sight while the other moves to safety or finds an exit route. Alone, breaking eye contact to check your flashlight, open a door, or navigate a corner gives the Coil-Head the moment it needs. Solo players cannot handle a Coil-Head safely.
The Forest Giant patrols outdoor areas on larger moons and specifically targets players who are outdoors and isolated. The Giant is slow enough that a group can scatter and most survive. An isolated player outdoors at the wrong time has no realistic chance of escape once the Giant has locked on.
The practical rule: move in pairs minimum at all times inside the facility. One player can stay at the ship to monitor, but the players going inside should not separate. Scrap moves slower in pairs than when solo, but slower and alive beats fast and dead every time.
Creature Guide for Beginners
The Bestiary fills in over time as your crew encounters each creature, but new players benefit from knowing the basics before discovering these threats the hard way. These are the five creatures you will most likely encounter on beginner moons:
| Creature | Location | Behaviour | How to Survive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bracken | Interior facilities | Stalks isolated players; snaps neck for instant kill on attack | Brief, deliberate eye contact deters it; do not stare continuously (aggravates it); back away slowly while maintaining intermittent eye contact |
| Coil-Head | Interior facilities | Moves only when not observed; extremely fast; kills anything it reaches | Maintain constant line of sight; never let it out of someone’s view; one player holds it while the other unlocks an exit |
| Hoarding Bug | Interior facilities | Collects scrap into a personal hoard; becomes aggressively territorial when players approach its pile | Avoid approaching its collected pile; if it aggresses, retreat immediately; do not attempt to fight without a shovel |
| Thumper | Interior facilities | Charge-attacks at high speed in a straight line; fast enough to outrun most players | Dodge sideways when it charges — its turning radius is poor; side-stepping is far safer than trying to outrun it |
| Eyeless Dog | Exterior areas | Completely blind; hunts entirely by sound; highly sensitive to voice and footstep noise | Stop moving and stop talking when one is nearby; crouch to reduce noise; coordinate silently with teammates via hand signals or typed chat |
A note on the Eyeless Dog specifically: this is the creature that most exploits proximity voice chat. When a Dog is patrolling outside, speaking — even at normal volume — will attract it. Teams that go silent and wait for a Dog to wander off survive. Teams that continue verbally coordinating about where the Dog is, in the presence of the Dog, do not.
Scrap Priority and Weight
Not all scrap is worth carrying, and carrying too much slows movement to a dangerous crawl. New players often try to take everything, which creates two problems: reduced movement speed and the cognitive overhead of managing a full inventory during creature encounters.
The weight system in Lethal Company is intentionally punishing. Each piece of scrap reduces your movement speed. Heavy items — large axles, double-sided signs, metal sheets — significantly cut your speed even in small quantities. Light items — comic books, bottles, small electronics — allow you to carry several without major movement penalty.
A practical priority framework for new players:
- Always carry: High-value items regardless of weight when you have time and a safe path back to the ship
- Consider leaving: Low-value heavy items when creatures are active or you are deep in the facility and need speed to extract
- Use the SCAN command: Before committing to a full sweep, scan to check total remaining scrap value vs items left — if the number does not justify the risk of continuing, leave
- Carry for the exit, not the inventory: Your carrying capacity is not the ceiling; speed and survival are; carry what you can move with safely
The ship departs on a schedule. If you are still inside the facility when the remaining crew triggers departure, you are left behind. Heavy loads slow your extraction pace significantly. New players who overload on scrap frequently miss the extraction window — surviving the facility only to watch the ship lift off without them.
Quota Math and Deadline Management
The most underrated skill in Lethal Company is basic arithmetic. Knowing where you stand against the quota at any given moment changes every decision your crew makes about risk and routing.
The formula is straightforward: Quota Target − Credits Already Sold = Remaining Deficit. If your quota is $400 and you have sold $220 worth of scrap, your deficit is $180. That number tells you whether to risk another moon run or head to The Company to sell what you have.
Key deadline management principles:
- The Company’s buy rate fluctuates: The Company pays a percentage of scrap value that changes daily — check the monitor on The Company’s moon for the current rate; selling at 80% or above is a good deal; selling at 40% is often worth delaying if you have days remaining
- Never sell everything at once if days remain: Sell enough to cover the deficit, keep a small buffer for equipment emergencies
- Final-day desperation kills crews: Attempting a hard moon on the last day to cover a large deficit is the most common way experienced players die; better to accept a smaller return from manageable moons than a catastrophic wipe from an overreach
- Treat early quota runs as practice: The first few quotas are low enough that almost any approach works; use them to practice communication, navigation, and creature encounters rather than optimizing credit efficiency
The quota cycle is designed to escalate pressure gradually. Early quotas are learnable. Later quotas require the coordination and risk management that come from experience. New players should not expect to extend runs indefinitely — losing a run is how you learn what the next run requires.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you play Lethal Company solo?
Yes, but the experience is significantly harder and less rewarding than with a full crew. Several creatures — particularly the Coil-Head — are extremely dangerous to manage alone. The game is designed for 2–4 players. Solo play is possible but recommended only for players who already understand the core mechanics from multiplayer runs.
Does voice chat have to be enabled?
Proximity voice chat is built into the game and active by default. Monsters can hear your microphone input. You can use text chat or a separate Discord call instead, but you lose the authentic creature-avoiding tension and some of the emergent comedy. The full Lethal Company experience requires voice chat.
What happens when a player dies?
Dead players respawn on the ship at the start of the next day. Any items they were carrying are dropped at the location of death and can theoretically be recovered, but doing so often requires returning to a dangerous area. Dead players can still participate via the ship monitor and walkie-talkie while waiting for the next day.
Is Lethal Company finished?
As of 2026, Lethal Company remains in Steam Early Access. Developer Zeekerss continues to update the game with new content. The Early Access state does not diminish the experience — the core loop is polished and complete — but expect additional moons, creatures, and mechanics to be added over time.
How do you reach quota faster?
Quota increase rates are fixed by the game. What you can control is efficiency: running profitable moons, selling at optimal Company rates, and avoiding credit waste on unnecessary equipment. Focus on the free moons until your crew has enough experience and equipment to safely run higher-value paid moons.
Ready to expand the experience? Our Lethal Company mod installation guide walks through both r2modman and manual installation methods, including how to share your exact mod profile with the whole group.
For every hostile creature explained with threat levels and survival strategies, see our Lethal Company creatures guide.
For the best mods to install before your first session, see our Lethal Company best mods guide — covering More Company, Skinwalkers, and all the essential Thunderstore picks.
For 15 non-obvious tips that the game never explains, see our Lethal Company tips and tricks guide.
For a complete strategy guide to managing quota, calculating sell timing, and surviving high-value moon runs under deadline pressure, see our Lethal Company quota guide.
Looking for alternatives? See our guide to the best games like Lethal Company for co-op horror and survival alternatives to try with your squad.
For 20 non-obvious survival tips organized by phase, see our Lethal Company tips and tricks guide.
Lethal Company is one of the top picks in our guide to the best co-op survival games in 2026 — covering 15 games across every sub-genre from horror co-op to long-campaign sandbox survival.
Sources
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.