Death, overtime, and gear insurance explained
A failed run removes the gear you took in and the loot you were carrying. The timer is a warning to extract, not a free return to the Safe House: once it expires, the map starts damaging you until you leave or die. Insure the equipment you cannot afford to replace before departing.
The short version
- Death fails the run. Your equipped gear and carried items are removed, and the experience you had toward your next skill level is reset. Skill levels you already reached are kept. How skill experience is lost.
- Timer expiry starts overtime. You receive Corruption Overload, which deals 10 damage every second until you extract or it kills you.
- Insurance only covers the eligible equipped items you select before departure. It does not protect unselected equipment or loot found during the run.
- Recovered insured gear returns after 24–48 minutes. It is not guaranteed if another player takes it out of the area.
- Your recent runs also decide which enemies can spawn. Clean runs unlock tougher Cookie Crumbs and Fallen Leaf Agents; deaths take them away again. How danger level works.
What happens when you die
When your health reaches zero, you can no longer move. Leaving the map after that counts as a failed run: the game clears your equipped gear, backpack, and worn-container contents, then gives you the basic starting items again. Your safe box, and your keychain with the keys inside it, are not cleared. It also resets the experience you had toward the next level of every skill; levels you already reached stay. See Skills and experience for how skills level up. The Warp Esacper talent can turn one fatal hit into survival with half your health, once per hour.
Items that were covered by insurance are handled separately. The service marks them for recovery before the failed-run cleanup, so a covered weapon, attachment, or other eligible selected item can be sent back later. Everything else you took in, plus the loot you picked up during the run, should be treated as lost.
Practical rule: take only what you are willing to lose, then insure the small number of equipped pieces that would most hurt to replace.
When the run timer reaches zero
The countdown is the time you have before overtime begins. The Forest Region allows 45 minutes, Burning Grove 30 minutes and 88 Whitegate Avenue 15 minutes. The other timelines have no countdown that matters. Reaching zero does not automatically remove you from the map and it does not make extraction unavailable.
Instead, every living player receives Corruption Overload. It deals 10 damage per second and remains active while you are still in the map. It is a different status from Dimensional Overload, so Stabilizing Powder does not remove it. Treat it as an emergency exit window: stop looting, use the extraction point, and leave before the damage finishes the run for you.
If overtime kills you, the result is the same failed-run loss described above. Do not rely on it as a way to return safely with items.
How to use insurance
- When you leave for a map that is not a Safe area and you have not already insured this departure, the insurance screen opens (once insurance is unlocked, see below). Select the eligible equipment you want to cover. Attachments fitted to a selected item can be included with it, except armour plates, which cannot be insured.
- Pay the displayed total and begin the run. Coverage applies to that departure only; a successful extraction ends it.
- If you fail to extract, wait for the recovery notice. The game schedules return of recoverable insured items 24–48 minutes later.
- Renew insurance on returned equipment before a later run if you still want that protection.
Walking through a stairs or elevator teleport into another map keeps your insurance and does not count as leaving a run, so it does not change your recent-evacuation level. Dying still ends the run.
Insurance is unlocked by a notification from the Insurance Officer. It arrives after your first failed run (the first time you leave a map by dying), or when you leave a map alive with your recent-evacuation level already at −2 or lower, which is your third successful extraction counting from the start. Collecting its reward unlocks insurance.
Each unlock covers one area of maps. The first notification unlocks insurance for the Forest maps (The Forest, Forest Region and Burning Grove). The mission План строительства unlocks it for 88 Whitegate Avenue. The mission Время застыло на 15:35 unlocks it for Grey Birch Mountain. On a map from an area you have not unlocked, the insurance screen still opens, but it shows "Coverage privileges not unlocked" and you cannot select gear.
The insurance screen says insured gear comes back "24 - 48 hours" after a failed run, but the game schedules the return in real-time seconds, 1,440 to 2,880 of them, which is 24 to 48 minutes.
Insurance is not a way to bring home run loot. The selection screen works from your equipped loadout before you enter, so a rare weapon or material found during the run is not added to the policy. An insured item can also fail to return if someone else removes it from the insurance service's area.
Insurance cost modifiers
The displayed total starts with each selected item's own price, then applies the map and recent-evacuation multipliers. It is useful to think of it as:
Total = sum of selected-item prices × map multiplier × recent-evacuation multiplier.
| Part of the price | How it works | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Item price | Each item costs 10% of its buy price, with a minimum of 10 credits. | Expensive gear costs more to protect; cheap gear still has a 10-credit floor. |
| Map multiplier | Each destination has its own risk multiplier. For example, Burning Grove is ×1.5. | Insuring the same loadout can cost more on a higher-risk map. |
| Recent evacuation multiplier | Insurance risk changes by 5% per risk level: ×1.00 at level 0, ×1.05 at level 1, and ×0.95 at level -1. | Successful extractions lower the next price; failed runs raise it. The level is limited to -5 through 5, so this multiplier ranges from ×0.75 to ×1.25. |
| Renewal discount | Renewing the same item reduces its own price by 2% each time, up to 20% after ten renewals. | Keeping a trusted item insured makes later coverage cheaper, but it does not reduce the map or recent-evacuation multipliers. |
For example, an item with a 1,000-credit buy price starts at 100 credits. On Burning Grove at risk level 1, that becomes 100 × 1.5 × 1.05 = 157.5 credits before any renewal discount; the screen rounds the final displayed total.
Danger level: how recent runs change the enemies you meet
The same recent-evacuation level that sets your insurance price also sets the danger level of the run you start. Danger level is 5 minus your risk level, so a new character starts at 5.
- Leave a run alive: danger level goes up by 1.
- Leave a run dead: danger level goes down by 1.
- Limits: it stays between 0 (risk level 5) and 10 (risk level -5).
- Safe House: leaving it changes nothing.
- Stairs and elevators: moving to another map through one changes nothing.
- Shared runs: when several players are in the same run, the highest danger level among them is used.
Danger level has one job: some random Forest Region spawns can only appear once it is high enough. Nothing else in the game reads it.
| Danger level needed | Spawn that becomes possible |
|---|---|
| 3 | Cookie Crumbs, tier 1 |
| 4 | Cookie Crumbs, tier 2 |
| 5 (where a new character starts) | Cookie Crumbs, tier 3 |
| 8 | Cookie Crumbs, tier 4 and the Fallen Leaf Agent spawns |
| 10 | Cookie Crumbs, tier 5 |
A new character has danger level 5, so only tiers 1 to 3 can appear at first. Reaching 8 takes three more clean runs than deaths, and 10 takes five. When the game picks a spawn that is above your danger level, it spawns nothing instead of choosing again, so a high danger level adds tougher enemies to the mix rather than replacing the easier ones.
Each tier's own page lists its weapons, damage and chance. See also the human groups in the dangerous enemies guide.
Before you leave
- Check the timer first and decide where you will extract before committing to a long fight or a full inventory.
- Use insurance for irreplaceable equipped gear, not every low-value item.
- After a run, notice whether your recent-evacuation assessment moved up or down; it changes the next policy price.
- When overtime starts, extract immediately. Surviving with less loot is better than losing the whole loadout.