First, a naming note
Players search for the "shop", but the game calls it the Outpost. Official descriptions and player discussion both use that term. If you are looking for a menu labelled Shop, you are looking for Outpost upgrades.
Room upgrades are the only permanent stats
This is the single most important thing about the Outpost. From the character level thread, where a player asked why levelling up does nothing:
"the idea is to level up your outpost for stats, not characters"
Character level only unlocks cosmetic badges. Everything that makes you stronger comes from Outpost rooms. Players report reaching level 10 rooms.
What you can build
⚠️ We have not verified a full blueprint list. Guides circulate detailed inventories of wooden furniture, generators, metal structures, lighting and storage equipment — we could not trace those lists to a player report or official source, so we are not reproducing them.
What is confirmed from the official description: what you carry home unlocks interactive furniture, stat upgrades, and rescued survivors.
One concrete unlock does have a player source — a flamethrower, obtained by levelling the shop, mentioned as an alternative to possessing the firefly bot for clearing floor 2. The required level is unknown; a player asked in that thread and got no answer.
The basement caps at level 5 — and does less than you'd think
There is a dedicated thread on this because the basement's effect is easy to misread:
"It caps at level 5, and it just removes the odds of a blank rune. At the cap, you no longer see blanks, but the odds of good/bad runes won't change."
So upgrading the basement does not improve your odds of good runes. It removes blanks from the pool, which means more runes overall — both good and bad.
Players disagree on whether that is desirable. One argued the opposite:
"I would rather have a blank instead of the chance of one extra good OR bad symbol. I seem to have an easier time on my world where the basement actually has a -400ish value from cursed bears n such"
We are not going to declare a winner. If you want fewer swings, blanks are not your enemy.
Decoration and XP
One player observed that a room built entirely from small boxes would yield more XP per used area — implying furniture XP is calculated against floor space.
⚠️ This is a single player's observation about how the numbers seem to work. No formula has been documented, and we have not verified it.
What is not confirmed
- The exact stat values each room level grants
- Whether room levels cap at 10 or players simply have not gone further
- The full rune list, and what individual runes do
- Whether "cursed bears" are a specific item type or a category