Skip the Jetpack Until Quota 3: Lethal Company’s Optimal Equipment Buy Order by Budget (2026)

Verified on v64 (September 2024). Base prices shown — the in-game store applies daily randomisation of roughly ±20%, so always check the terminal before buying.

Your first six purchases in Lethal Company cost under 170 credits combined and will keep your crew alive longer than anything you buy afterward. Your first mistake — buying the Jetpack before quota 3 — costs 700 credits and frequently kills the buyer.

This guide builds your equipment progression from Day 1 through late quotas, using credit efficiency rather than abstract tier rankings. Every item below is evaluated by the same question: how much death does this prevent per credit spent? If you want to know which moons make each piece of gear shine hardest, our Lethal Company moons guide covers every moon’s risk-to-reward profile.

Quick Start: Your First 5 Purchases

Drop into the game with 60 credits and every dollar has to earn its place. Buy these before Day 1 ends — in this order:

1. Pro-Flashlight (25c) — Double the battery life of the standard model for 10 more credits. Being blind kills more crews than any monster.
2. Walkie-Talkie (12c) — Zero weight, immediate team communication. A crew that can’t hear each other in a split facility wipes.
3. Shovel (30c) — Your only reliable melee weapon. Kills or stuns Bracken, Hoarding Bugs, Thumpers, and Snare Fleas.
4. Lockpicker (20c) — Removes the key hunt from every run. 30-second cooldown. Pays for itself in scrap recovered behind locked doors.
5. Belt Bag (45c, added in v64) — 15 additional item slots your teammates can access while it’s on your waist. Carries consumables without burning your main inventory.

Total first-day spend: 132 credits. That leaves 30–50 credits as an emergency buffer depending on your starting pool.

Complete Equipment Reference

Prices are base values from the in-game store [1]. Weight affects movement speed — anything over 50 lbs combined carry weight noticeably slows a player.

The Buy Order Framework: Survival Per Credit

The problem with tier lists is that they answer the wrong question. Knowing the Pro-Flashlight is S-tier doesn’t tell you whether to spend 400 credits on a Zap Gun or 375 on a Teleporter when quota 3 hits. Tier rankings treat equipment as a wishlist. Buy order treats it as a progression.

The metric this guide uses is survival efficiency: how much does each purchase reduce the probability of a full wipe per credit spent? Items that stop deaths directly — the Shovel ends a Bracken threat, the Teleporter recovers a downed player, the Walkie-Talkie warns a separated crew member — score higher than items that improve scrap yield from a position of safety.

Three purchase stages track quota progression:

• Stage 1 (Quotas 1–2): Budget under 300c per day. Every credit is load-bearing. Zero tolerance for situational or comfort purchases.
• Stage 2 (Quotas 3–4): 300–700c available. Ship upgrades become viable. Defense layer deepens.
• Stage 3 (Quotas 5+): Surplus credits allow high-cost tools like the Jetpack — with conditions.

Stage 1 Buy Order: Quotas 1–2 (Under 300 Credits)

At quotas 1 and 2, your only purchase criterion should be: does this item stop a death that would otherwise happen? [2]

Priority sequence:

1. Pro-Flashlight (25c) — The standard Flashlight at 15c runs out of battery faster and is dimmer. Ten extra credits for double battery life is the highest-ROI upgrade in the game [3]. Buy the standard version only if 25c is literally the difference between also buying a Shovel that same day.
2. Walkie-Talkie (12c) — Zero weight means zero tradeoff. A crew that goes silent because someone entered a dead zone loses coordination and splits unknowingly [4]. One per player who enters the facility.
3. Shovel (30c) — Your only repeatable damage dealer [2]. The Stop Sign and Yield Sign found as scrap deal identical damage but have slower swing speeds. A Shovel at quota 1 is worth more than any other 30c purchase in the game.
4. Lockpicker (20c) — Removes the key hunt entirely. On facility runs, locked doors often contain the high-value scrap that closes the quota. The 30-second cooldown is irrelevant in most scenarios [2].
5. Stun Grenade (30–40c) — One per player who enters facilities regularly. The 3-second fuse + 5-second stun gives you seven seconds to disengage or reposition [2]. This beats the Shovel in Bracken encounters, where the melee hitbox is notoriously awkward.
6. Belt Bag (45c) — Once your core four items are covered, the Belt Bag’s 15-slot inventory lets you carry consumables (Stun Grenades, TZP) without displacing main equipment [1].

Full Stage 1 loadout for 4 players at base prices: 4× Pro-Flashlight (100c) + 4× Walkie-Talkie (48c) + 2× Shovel (60c) + 1× Lockpicker (20c) + 2× Stun Grenade (60–80c) = 288–308 credits. Achievable after a solid first quota.

Skip at Stage 1: Boombox, Radar Booster, TZP-Inhalant, any Ship Upgrade. These are not survival purchases — they’re efficiency purchases, and efficiency only matters when you’re already surviving.

Stage 2 Buy Order: Quotas 3–4 (300–700 Credits)

Quota 3 changes the game in two ways: the scrap targets are higher, meaning moons like Rend and Dine become viable; and you finally have enough credit surplus to afford Ship Upgrades without gutting your daily run budget.

Priority sequence:

1. Teleporter (375c) — The single most impactful Ship Upgrade in the game. An operator on ship can extract any player — alive or dead — on a 10-second cooldown [3][5]. Recovering a dead teammate’s body eliminates the death fine. One operator running teleporter extractions can hold a squad together through situations that would otherwise end the run. Buy this before anything else at Stage 2.
2. Radar Booster (50–60c) — Place it inside the facility near a high-traffic corridor. The Flash command stuns nearby entities; Ping locates it for your operator [2]. In a 4-player squad with one person on ship, this is effectively a second set of eyes inside the facility at low cost. Skip it if nobody is staying on ship.
3. Second Shovel (30c) — Before the Zap Gun. A second Shovel costs 30c and adds redundancy for 30c. The Zap Gun is a stronger combat tool at 400c, but it requires a teammate with a melee weapon to be useful — you need the Shovel first [5].
4. Boombox (60c) — Placed near the ship before departure, it distracts Forest Giants and Eyeless Dogs during approach and retreat on heavily-populated moons [5]. Most useful on Rend and Dine exterior approaches.

Jetpack status at Stage 2: skip it. You do not have the credit surplus to absorb losing one to an explosion. At 700c, a Jetpack wipe costs more than the Teleporter you should already own. The Jetpack also weighs 52 lbs [1] — heavier than a Shovel and Lockpicker combined — making it a significant movement penalty for an item that only works safely outside.

Stage 3 Buy Order: Quotas 5+ (700+ Credits)

Late-game surplus finally opens up high-cost tools. A productive squad can accumulate 700+ credits between quotas by quota 5.

Priority sequence:

1. Zap Gun (400c) — A sustained beam that stuns for up to 60 seconds when maintained, paired with a teammate making melee attacks [5]. Required for coordinated play on Titan and Rend facility interiors where solo shovel is not reliable against multiple threats. The 11 lb weight is negligible [1].
2. TZP-Inhalant (120c, 0 lbs) — One per squad by quota 3–4. The speed boost enables late-night sprints when the facility is saturated with entities [4]. Use it only when you are already committing to a full evacuation sprint — the audio-visual distortion it causes creates a real vulnerability window.
3. Signal Translator (255c) — Allows typed terminal messages to reach players inside the facility without Walkie-Talkie battery [4]. Secondary to the Zap Gun but useful when Walkie-Talkies die mid-run.
4. Jetpack (700c) — Now viable, but only under specific conditions. The Jetpack weighs 52 lbs and cannot be used safely inside facilities — wall collisions trigger detonation, and extended use causes automatic explosion [7]. It is strictly an exterior tool, most effective on open moons like Rend and Titan’s outer areas. Buy it only with a 1,000c credit cushion so a crash does not derail your next quota [7]. In practice, most squads find the Zap Gun and Teleporter combination produces more consistent quota clears than the Jetpack.

The Inverse Teleporter (425c) sends crew to a random destination inside the facility — including directly in front of turrets, inside locked rooms, or above open pits [4]. Its 3.5-minute recharge time and random-destination mechanic make it an entertainment purchase rather than a survival tool. Buy it with surplus credits if you want chaos; skip it if you want to make quota.

Ship Upgrades: Priority Order

The Loud Horn at 150c signals everyone to evacuate — a blunt but effective tool when someone plays without audio. It is superseded by Walkie-Talkie discipline in squads that communicate, but it earns its cost in squads that don’t. Buy it after the Teleporter.

Buy Order by Player Type

The correct buy order shifts depending on how you play. Equipment that is essential for a four-person squad with an operator is dead weight for a solo run [3].

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the standard Flashlight worth buying if you can’t afford the Pro-Flashlight?

Only if the 10-credit gap is literally the difference between buying a Shovel on the same day — which almost never happens. The Pro-Flashlight at 25c doubles battery life and increases brightness, letting you spot entities from further away [3]. The standard model at 15c is not a budget alternative — it is an inferior tool. If you genuinely cannot afford 25c, you have bigger problems than flashlight tier that one Stun Grenade worth of scrap will fix.

Does the Radar Booster actually help, or is it a novelty?

It genuinely helps under exactly one condition: a dedicated ship operator actively running the Flash and Ping commands [2][5]. Without that, it is an expensive decoration. In a 4-player squad where one person stays on ship, the Radar Booster is close to S-tier — the Flash command stuns entities near the booster, which placed near the main entrance becomes an active defensive tool. In a 3-player squad where everyone extracts together, skip it entirely.

Should I buy multiple Stun Grenades or upgrade to a Zap Gun first?

Multiple Stun Grenades first — unless you are at quota 4 with a squad that can coordinate. A Stun Grenade at 30–40c removes one threat for five seconds, then it is gone. A Zap Gun at 400c stuns for up to 60 seconds when sustained, but it requires a teammate making simultaneous melee attacks to deal damage [5]. An unsupported Zap Gun operator is immobile and cannot defend themselves. Buy Stun Grenades for every player entering the facility, then graduate to the Zap Gun once you have the squad size and credits to use it correctly.

Sources

Research and price data sourced from:

1. All Items and Prices — Game8
2. All Equipment And How To Use Them — TheGamer
3. Lethal Company Item Tier List — Game Rant
4. All Items in Lethal Company — Dexerto
5. Best Items To Purchase — TheGamer
6. Most Useful Items Tier List — Prima Games (primagames.com)
7. How To Get And Use The Jetpack — TheGamer (thegamer.com)
8. Lethal Company v64 Patch Notes — SteamDB

Michael R.

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.