Delivery & Beyond drops you into a warehouse with a vacuum, a debt counter, and zero explanation. You’re a hyena — the game calls you a “yeen” — working off a contract for &Beyond, a delivery company that pays you in scrap for objects most people would call garbage. The chaos everyone talks about (furniture as vehicles, physics ragdolling, a delivery job that doubles as a demolition derby) isn’t actually the hard part. The hard part is that solo developer FailCake ships new content faster than documentation, so the systems that decide whether you survive round 6 are buried in patch notes nobody reads. This guide pulls from the developer’s own update logs and two independently maintained community guides, cross-checked against each other rather than restated from a single source.
Verified against Update V2.1.0, the current build at publication. FailCake updates solo, so exact numbers below — shop prices especially — can shift between patches faster than in most co-op games; treat the mechanics and priorities here as stable, the specific figures as a snapshot.[1][2]
Quick Start: Your First Round
Do these six things before you touch anything else, and you’ll survive longer than most first-time hosts.
- Your first round will load on the Apartments map automatically — the developer force-locks new hosts into it until they’ve cleared it once, specifically so you don’t get thrown into a harder map blind.[2]
- Vacuum everything that isn’t bolted down. Furniture, electronics, and clutter all convert to scrap, and there’s no penalty for over-collecting — the delivery list never runs out.[3]
- Watch the debt counter, not a health bar, as your main pressure gauge. Deliver items worth more than the number on the counter before the round timer hits zero, then pull the lever.[4]
- Don’t carry a fragile delivery across a hazard you haven’t identified yet — items take damage (and lose you money) from wall impacts, drops, and hits, not just from your own death.[4]
- You can only buy from Stan’s Store while your ship’s shield is active — plan upgrade purchases around that window, not mid-run.[4]
- Playing solo? You get two automatic respawns per session as of Update V1.4.0. You are not one mistake away from restarting the whole contract.[2]
The Actual Loop: Debt, Scrap, and 10 Rounds
Every contract runs exactly 10 rounds — the debt on your counter clears for good on round 10, which is also what unlocks the “Master Mind” achievement. That fixed length matters more than it looks: it means every upgrade purchase is a bet on how many rounds you have left to earn back its cost, not an open-ended investment.[4]
Scrap and money are two separate resources, and mixing them up is the single most common new-player mistake. Scrap comes from vacuuming objects and only becomes useful once you convert it into a delivery at the Delivery Maker. Money is a separate currency you earn by completing deliveries, and it’s the only thing Stan’s Store or a teammate revive will accept — a pocket full of scrap does nothing if your money total is zero.[3]
Prop Surfing, Actually Explained
Prop Surfing works like this: grab an object with your Physgun while standing on top of it, and you ride it as a makeshift vehicle instead of just pushing it around. The developer explicitly tuned this across Updates V2.0.0 and V2.0.1 — patch notes describe prop surfing as made “more stable” and add an X/Y rotation invert option for the Physgun itself — a sign the mechanic is meant to be a core traversal tool, not an exploit.[2]
The decision that separates new players from everyone else: prop surf only when you’re crossing something you’d otherwise fall into or get hit by — a marked gap, a hazard zone, an area with a posted “no surfing” warning sign nearby that tells you the opposite is true and you should walk instead. On open floor, walking is faster and doesn’t risk slamming a carried delivery into a wall, which damages it. Prop surfing is a tool for specific obstacles, not a default movement mode.[2]
What to Upgrade First
Ship upgrades are permanent and shared across the whole crew, so the order you buy them in should match how your group actually plays — not a single “best” list. Here’s the honest breakdown by player type.
| Player Type | Buy First | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New player / cautious host | More Cargo | Raises your vacuum’s max capacity by 100 per purchase (buyable twice). Fewer trips back to the ship means fewer chances to die mid-run before you’ve even learned the map.[3] |
| Casual, wants less busywork | Extra Slot | Lets you carry a delivery item and your vacuum at once instead of choosing one. Removes the most repetitive part of the early game — constantly swapping tools.[3] |
| Hardcore / optimiser | Speed Dial + Vacuum++ | Speed Dial auto-selects the most cost-efficient delivery command; Vacuum++ sucks up scrap faster and from a wider area. Stack both once the crew can afford the round-6+ scrap volume they’re built for.[3][4] |
| Completionist (going for round 10) | Extra Bailout | Lets you miss quota once without ending the contract, initially capped at two uses. This is the actual mechanic protecting your Master Mind achievement run, not raw skill.[4] |
Skip Extra Time in the early game specifically — it only adds one minute per purchase and costs far more than that minute is worth before round 4 or 5, when maps are still short. It becomes worth it later, once maps get bigger.[3]
Stan’s Store: What’s Worth Your Money
Of the 13 purchasable items, most new crews overspend on cosmetics-adjacent sprays and underspend on the two that actually prevent a wipe.
| Item | Effect | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| D-Safe | Prevents your next death once, teleporting you back to the ship instead — confirmed directly in the developer’s own patch notes.[2] | Buy every round you can afford it |
| Medkit (Big) | Heals a larger amount and can be reused up to three times per pickup, versus a single-use Cookie.[4] | Better value than Cookies once money allows |
| Skates | Increases move speed with a sliding effect — strong on open maps, less useful in tight hazard-heavy rooms.[4] | Situational, map-dependent |
| Shield | Reduces incoming enemy damage. Useful against repeat-hit enemies, does little against one-shot hazards like lasers or the industrial press.[3][4] | Buy once your crew is taking chip damage, not before |
| Switcher | Swaps your position with a random teammate — multiplayer only, unavailable solo.[4] | Situational, group play only |
| Delivery Boy | Makes the item currently in your hand immune to damage or destruction — strongest in the late game when deliveries get more fragile and more valuable.[4] | Late-game priority buy |
The Enemies That Actually Kill New Players
The environmental hazards get all the attention in trailers, but player-documented damage numbers from the community show the pattern clearly: enemies that chase you do far more cumulative damage than the one-shot traps everyone warns you about, simply because you can’t out-walk them. Treat these numbers as player-reported and cross-checked, not developer-confirmed exact figures — FailCake hasn’t published a damage table.[3][4]
| Threat | Reported Damage | How to Handle It |
|---|---|---|
| Blob Cat | ~10 HP per second while chasing, cannot be jumped over | Break line of sight fast — this is a sustained-damage chaser, not a single hit |
| Ram | ~30 HP per charge | Easily avoidable if you’re watching for it; the highest single hit on this list |
| Chicken | ~10 HP per hit, chases on sight | Stay out of its line of sight entirely — jumping over it still costs you HP |
| Moving Laser | One-shot | Wait for the gap in its cycle; never attempt to prop-surf through it |
| MineBot | 5–100 HP, scales with your distance from the blast | Trigger it from range with a thrown prop instead of walking up to it |
| Wall Gatling Turret | ~5 HP per bullet, telegraphed lock-on first | Outrun it during the lock-on phase, or block line of sight with a large object |
Fail-Safe Advice: If You’re Behind on Debt
If round 6 or 7 hits and you’re nowhere near quota, don’t panic-buy random items — check whether your crew has bought Extra Bailout yet. It’s the one upgrade built specifically to let a bad round happen without ending your contract, and most guides bury it as a late-list option instead of the safety net it actually is.[4]
If you personally die mid-round, having D-Safe selected in your item slot triggers before the death actually registers, teleporting you back to the ship instead of costing your crew a respawn. Pairing it with the Extra Slot upgrade is the difference between always choosing between D-Safe and a delivery item, and never having to choose at all.[2][4]
FAQ
Is Delivery & Beyond just Lethal Company with a vacuum?
The comparison holds for the surface loop — enter a hazardous area, collect valuables, meet a quota before a timer runs out — but the mechanism is different enough to matter: Delivery & Beyond’s Prop Surfing makes traversal itself a skill-based physics system, where most other games like Lethal Company keep movement simple and put the challenge entirely in resource and enemy management.
Can you actually play this solo?
Yes, and the developer has tuned around it directly — solo players get two automatic respawns per session (versus relying on teammate revives), and several multiplayer-only items like Switcher get single-player alternatives like Spring instead of being simply unavailable.[2][4]
How many maps does the game have?
At least five core maps were confirmed by community documentation (Apartments, Trenches, City, Fracture, Train — Train unlocks starting round 3), with the developer adding further maps and templates in Update V2.0.0. Treat any exact total as a moving target given how actively this game is still being updated.[2][4]
What actually happens if you don’t pay off the debt in time?
You don’t get a soft failure — this is why the debt counter matters more than tracking your HP early on. Prioritizing whichever delivery clears the most debt per trip, rather than whichever is closest, is the actual skill the quota system is testing.[4]
Sources
- FailCake / HyenaQuest. Delivery & Beyond — Store Page. Steam
- FailCake. Delivery & Beyond Update Announcements (V1.4.0–V2.1.0). Steam Community
- SpicedSchnitzel (D3lta). Game Guide – Delivery & Beyond. Steam Community Guides
- (Almost) Complete Guide – Delivery & Beyond. Steam Community Guides
- GameRant. New Free Co-Op Games Like Lethal Company: Delivery & Beyond
- GamingOnLinux. Delivery & Beyond Is a Free New Chaotic Physics-Based Co-op Game
- Notebookcheck. New Physics-Based Free Co-op Game Goes Trending on Steam Thanks to Pure Chaos
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.