Pearls are not a complex game mechanic, but I wish I knew some things before starting the game. Por ejemplo, how a pearl’s status influences its contents or how to increase the chance of car accessory drop.
This guide is pretty much useless in the late game, as there is a garage upgrade that allows you to get new accessories from there, but at that point you don’t have much of the game left to enjoy new stuff.
Basic info
Pearls are basically compressed loot that can look like this:
The size of a pearl only affects the amount of items received. Round pearls are fully formed and will give the most items, while chunks will give only small amounts.
Where to find
Pearls can be found in friendly dumpsters and malevolent dumpsters (simply named dumpsters, but they spawn bunnies along with pearls), found on most gas stations:
Can be extracted via Hand-Vac from the Beach Ball anomaly, found in the Deep Zone:
Or found in pneumatic deposit boxes, ARDA investigator trucks and abandoned squire’s trunks (the deeper into the zone, the bigger the spawn chance):
Statuses and specific loot
To get the loot stored in a pearl you will need a Matter Deconstructor, which must be built first:
You can also break pearls using Impact Hammer or Magnetic Hammer, but this is not only the waste of tools (1.5 magnetic hammers needed to break the smallest fragile pearl), but also reduces the loot recieved to 1/3 of usual amount.
Pearls come in different statuses, each status guaranteeing specific drop, sin embargo, todo pearls drop metal scrap and steel sheets, y todo pearls can drop paint, accessories and bulbs. The list below only shows which status increases specific item drop:
- Wet pearls drop electronics and circuit boards.
- Cracked pearls drop copper wires, pressurized cartridges and bulbs.
- Burned out pearls drop marsh eggs, red balloons, swamp corals, lead platelets, thermosap crystals and circuit boards/plasma (these seem to be mutually exclusive).
- Charged pearls drop plasma, rubber, gas cylinders and more paint and decals than other pearls.
- Peculiar pearls drop tools and random resources. The bigger the pearl, the better tools will drop. You can see a thermal vacuum and two liberators dropped by this pearl.
- Oxidized pearls drop fabric and chemicals.
- Unreliable pearls drop food, MRE and decals. One might think this is the most boring pearl imaginable, but I think it’s the best pearl there is, I’ll explain below why.
Increasing accessory drop rate
By now you have probably noticed that some statuses have possible «fix». Fixing a pearl will change its status to unreliable. While these pearls offer only basic resources, they have the biggest chance of dropping paint, decals and car accessories. 8 out of 10 unreliable pears have dropped an accessory. 4 fuera de 8 pearls dropped two accessories.
Even non-fixable pearls can be turned into unreliable (sin embargo, I don’t recommend sacrificing peculiar pearls, as they are rare, but you do you). He aquí cómo hacerlo:
1. Take a pearl you don’t need. Let’s say, la cargado uno.
2. Smash it with an Impact Hammer, it turns into cracked.
3. Apply a fix with Sealing Kit, the pearl turns into unreliable.
4. Put it into the Matter Deconstructor.
5. Enjoy your new accessory.
This is the only status change you can get. You can’t get a pearl charged by throwing it into an electrical anomaly or get a pearl wet by throwing it into the puddle. Only hitting them with a hammer yields results.
