Pacific Drive | Beginner Tips & Tricks (Best Early Researches)

Pacific Drive is sure to make waves in the indie scene, or at least that’s my 50+ hours of driving around in awe at the world and its anomalies tell me (not even beating it, just enjoying the drive). The wonders of single-player exploration of an almost alien landscape that still manages to look down to earth are something to not be understated. And with so many different variations and combinations of hardships to encounter in The Zone, we have prepared a Beginner’s handbook that should ease you into the experience.

Keep in mind that this is intended for beginners, so we’ll only cover what is most relevant to the first few rounds, and are also focusing to the drives that we’ll do in the first area. Once you’ve made it across the midwall, you are far from a beginner and should already be a seasoned driver with loads of anomaly avoiding experience!

Looking for more Pacific Drive content on KeenGamer?

1. Pacific Drive | Tinker Station Guide (How to Fix Quirks)
2. Pacific Drive Review: A Supernatural Road-Like (PS5)

Loot the Friendly Dumpster, Scrap the Abandoned Car

Keeping in mind that Pacific Drive has a Roguelite core to it, you are going to be seeing the Auto Shop a lot, every time you complete or fail a run. Failing or quitting a run means that you won’t get to keep all or any of the resources you collected while on your drive, but the game throws you a bone with the Friendly Dumpster and the Abandoned Car. 

The Friendly Dumpster should be visited each time you’re back at the Garage

Simply put, you should make it a habit to check on the Friendly Dumpster and to Scrap the Abandoned Car every single time you circle back. The Abandoned car will be a consistent source of Scrap Metal, Rubber, and Glass Shards. With some luck, you will even find the occasional Duct Tape or Steel Sheet! Don’t forget to check the trunk and gas tank, as well. 

The Friendly Dumpster offers random resources, from the all-too-common Textiles to the valuable Chemicals and Anything in between, at least from the basic resources that you can find in the first area, anyway. It could provide exactly what you need in a pinch. 

A regenerating source of materials? Yes, please

Remember also that there is a computer and a radio behind the Abandoned Car in the shelves, and these will consistently yield Electronics, Plastic, Batteries and the much more valuable and scarce Copper Wire!

Make Sure Your Scrapper is Making Sparks

It is somewhat easy to find yourself scrapping away at a door or panel in a car only to find out that you weren’t close enough to it to actually scrap it properly. This is because the item’s name shows up on your screen by just looking at it from a little farther away than the scrapper’s effective range. And sadly your tools durability goes down simply by using them, and not necessarily using them correctly.

The sparks mean that is working

This may not be a big deal most of the time, since a Scrapper is pretty easy to make with only 3 Scrap Metal and 6 Plastic required for one. But it is increasingly frustrating if you are at the beginning of a run and your scrapper dies on you and you don’t yet have the resources to make another one. It happens, you’ll forget to bring a spare more than once, so just make sure you are seeing a lot of sparks when using it.

Engage Your Parking Brake, Save Your Battery

You will inevitably forget to engage your parking brake when you are stopping, but it is a fundamental step to the exploration and you want to make it a habit for your peace of mind. Not only will the stick keep your car from rolling away like any car would due to gravity, but it also makes it far less vulnerable to some anomaly grabbing it and doing some more serious damage than just a fender bender. 

Parking is your friend

Depending on what you’re stopping for, your resources and time, and how quickly you may want to get away from the place you’re at, you may want to leave the engine running or not, but I can’t think of a situation where leaving the brake unengaged would work on your favor, so develop that habit fast. 

As far as your battery goes, all of your lights (Headlights, Floodlights), your radio, and your abilities are going to drain your battery at different rates. It is going to be a while before you can substantially increase your battery capacity, so you want to be conscious about it and only use it when completely necessary. You’ll get a chance to create a Small Turbine that will help you recover some lost power, but still, the initial 50 points you get is not a lot to go around.

Focus on Your Tires First

When taking those first drives into The Zone in your beat-up Station Wagon, you are likely to feel like everything hits pretty hard. And it is true that the Crude Panels the car starts with are pretty flimsy and everything will damage them significantly and you are not yet used to avoiding damage, so that is going to happen and your parts are going to decay. Still, however tempted you may be to up your durability by getting the Steel Panels or Steel Doors, you should first focus on upgrading your tires. From the original Spare Tires you can upgrade first to Summer Tires, which already makes for a smoother ride, but if you can, you’re gonna want to upgrade all the way to Off-road tires.

Summer Tires (front), and Off-road Tires (rear)

Instead of increasing your defense and overall durability, I’d argue that being able to navigate the anomalies effectively (meaning, avoid them) outweighs withstanding the damage that you may get here and there. On top of that, racing to the gateway is always going to depend more on the state of your tires, so you should aim to upgrade them first. 

Your original Spare Tires only have 125 points of durability. Besides that, you get a C in performance in both off-road and water ratings. An A in road rating is pretty respectable, so they’re not entirely terrible for a starter item, but the difference from C to A or even B in rating is exceptional and it does bring a lot more control and maneuverability to the car. 

All Summer Tires

Besides the poor handling on anything other than pavement, your main issue with the Spare Tires is the durability. So you should upgrade as soon as you can to have all 4 tires be Summer Tires. These have improved handling on Road (AA), and while the off-road and water handling are still a C for each, you get an additional 50 points of durability for a total of 175. The two bumps on road handling and on durability really make a difference and you’ll be fixing tires less often. To unlock Summer Tires you’ll need to install the Scanning Antenna and to have researched Gear. Then you’ll only need 1 piece of fabric and 0.5 Stable Energy from the anchors.

All Off-road Tires

However, if you really want to be set, you need the off-road tires. These will drop your handling on roads all the way down to a B, which is lower than even the Spare Tires, but still workable. The trade off is worth it, however, since you get a AA rating off-road and A on water. Most importantly, you get a whooping 250 points in durability. Off-road tires are tough as nails, which means you’ll spend less resources in maintaining them, freeing you up to spend those valuables on other expenses. To unlock the Off-road Tires you’ll only need 1 piece of fabric and 1.5 Stable Energy points.

Are there better tires? Yes, but the rest are locked until you can get your hands on some Unstable Energy, and by that point you are no longer a beginner, so it’s out of the scope of this guide. But heed my words, Off-road Tires are the way to go. 

Prioritize Scavenging ARDA Buildings and Cars

When you are first starting your drives, you are going to have to rely on Repair Putty and Sealing Kits to keep your car running. Both of these tools for maintenance use Glass Shards, and the Repair Putty also uses Chemicals in its composition. Because you are given the first couple of Putties, you may be tricked into a sense of safety in regards to its availability, but don’t fall for it, you are going to run out of it rather quickly. 

These rectangular ARDA buildings, as well as the observation towers, tend to yield valuable resources

Glass Shards are easy to find, since every vehicle that has a door will have a good chance of dropping some when you scrap them. This also counts for the Abandoned Car outside the Garage, so always remember to scrap it. If you are out on a drive and run across a car but don’t have the time to scrap all the pieces, I would suggest focusing on doors and tires. This way you are getting Glass Shards, Scrap Metal, and Rubber. 

Chemicals are a bit trickier and far more scarce, even after considering the Day One patch Ironwood released increased the availability, they are still valuable resources. You want to look for them in ARDA buildings, which are the grey, rectangular-shaped ones or the towers with antennas. They tend to have anomalies happen near them, but you can still find some that are pretty clear. Once inside, you want to look for the rusty green cabinet with crate doors, which are more often than not, locked with a chain. Bring a Prybar or an Impact Hammer to open them and loot what’s inside. The chemicals are cloudy glass jars. If your inventory is full and you are in a rush, always pick the chemicals and bolt out of there. 

Keep and eye out for ARDA utility vehicles, always worth a scrap and loot

Build the Matter Regenerator ASAP

The Matter Regenerator is probably the one thing you should focus on using your chemicals for when you are getting started. Once you have it up and running you can drop whatever parts need fixing that you can fit in it and leave for your next drive. They will be repaired when you get back, which means you no longer have to rely on Repair Putty. Note that permanent debuffs on damaged parts (Fragile, Worn Out, blown Out, etc…) will not be removed, and those pieces are better off being recycled on the Matter Deconstructor.

You won’t get far without a Matter Regenerator

To build the Matter Regenerator you will need: 30 pieces of Plastic, 10 pieces of Rubber, 6 Chemicals. You’ll also need to already have the Craft Mat and the Matter Deconstructor. having to rely on the Rapeir Putty for all your repair needs is absolutely terrible and you can’t sustain it very long, believe me. Repeat after me: Repair Putty is for the road.

Park Away from the Anchors Zone of Influence

When you are driving towards an anchor, make note of the yellow circle around it. I suggest zooming in on the map, even. This way, you can make sure to leave your car outside of this yellow circle. This is recommended because once you pull the Anchor, you are disrupting stability, and the zone immediately around the anchor is going to go haywire until you feed it to your ARC device.

Parking right outside the yellow circles minimizes (but don’t eliminates) risks to you car

If your car is within the zone of influence when things start to get hectic, it may be thrown up in the air or electrocuted or heavily damaged. Then you are going to find yourself comically chasing after your passenger door trying to get it to open and trying to feed your ARC with the core while battling the damage you yourself are receiving. In order to minimize this chaos, I suggest parking away from the anchors.

I’ve found that parking at least 50 meters away and walking to and from the anchor is probably the standard for safe distances. Some zones of influence appear to be different in size, though, so for good measure, make sure you park outside of the yellow circle. It also doesn’t hurt to park in such a manner as to make a quick getaway if you need to.

Plan Your Route, Consider Timing, Zoom in on Your Map

Before making a jump to a new junction, take a look on the right side of the screen. You’ve probably notice already that it tells you the density of the anchors to be found. Just above the Anchor cue, there is also a clock icon. It tells you also about how much time you have before the storm begins and you have to rush to the exit. Pay close attention to it before you enter the junction, as it does not show up again while you’re driving in it.

When entering a junction, the green light indicates the gate behind you is still open. This is a good moment to do repairs and such

It’s unclear to me if the time starts running immediately when you appear in the junction or if it starts running once the lights at the entrance turn red, which happens once your car has advanced one or two meters. In any case, I recommend parking and shutting off the car, get out and make the repairs or crafting that you may need to do, and look closely at your map to plan out your route. If you checked how much time the clock indicated, you can get an idea of how greedy you can get with your exploration. You can zoom into the map and when going back, the zoom will remain, which can make it easier for you to see where you are and where you go.

For example, a “Low” signal in the clock icon gives you about 15 minutes before the first Stormwave appears, this is the yellow one that is not necessarily lethal. It’ll bring some atmospheric changes and/or new anomalies you would normally see after you made it across to through the second wall, but nothing unmanageable. The first wave then takes about 10 minutes to cover the junction. Then it’s time to run for real, because the second wave, the red one, comes in way faster than the yellow one, and this one is lethal. 

Once you’ve started moving, the gate closes, the light turns red

So if “Low” gives you about 25 minutes, more or less, assuming you don’t mind driving on the first Stormwave, then you know anything more than “Low” will give you some more time, and anything below gives you less time. If you are dealing with a “Swift Storm” anomaly, then you want to not waste any time and get out of Dodge as soon as you can.

Get Greedy on the Early Junctions

As you progress through The Zone, your upgraded Station Wagon and your own experience as The Driver will let you reach junctions that are farther away from the Auto Shop. The Anomalies and conditions tend to get worse the farther you are from the Garage, which naturally means the ones that are closer to it tend to be the most mellow and tranquil. 

You should aim to collect all Anchors in the first one or two junctions in your run

Once you start to plan out drives that are longer, and therefore more challenging, you should spend as much time as you can on the early junctions and scavenge as much as you can, and particularly, you should farm all of the Anchors you can. You don’t want to be facing a later junction with little time and dangerous conditions and have to collect 2 or more anchors to get out. Scavenging all you can in the first junction or two frees you to focus on the objective or on running away on the later stretches of your drive.

Also, if you are short of a certain resource, go out to one of the Early Junctions and come back, nothing wrong with abusing the more peaceful Junctions for your benefit. Some resources are mid and deep section specific and you’ll have to make it all the way there to farm them if you need them, but that’s another story.

Mind Your Scanning

It’s easy to get enthralled by the stunning world and the driving around to forget that you should and even can scan what you see. Scanning is not only for you to fill out your logbook and get rid of all the “unknowns” in it, but the item descriptions offer insights into the story of The Zone, so you definitely want to scan your surroundings if you are lore-oriented. 

However, the most important aspect of scanning has to do with progression. A lot of the upgrades have a pre-requisite of scanning some anomaly or element out in the world. And since you are unlikely to know even their names without having scanned them first, you want to keep an eye out on that icon. 

Scanning will get you ahead

The simplest way to do this is, if you see something to scan and the area immediately around that something is more or less peaceful, get out of your car, look at it, maybe walk a little closer, and at some point, without having to be extremely close to it, you’ll see a couple squares pop up on the lower side of the screen. They say “Photo” and “Log” respectively. You want both of those boxes filled. If either one or both are still blank, it means you haven’t scanned it, use the scanning button to add it to your log. You may scan all the anomalies, the abandoned cars and trucks, some of the buildings, and the resources. 

Upgrades (Researches) to Focus on for Beginners

Once you’ve acquired the blueprints for the original Antenna and are given access to the locked door in the Garage, you’ll be able to use the Fabrication Station, or “Fabristation” to start putting your energy and resources towards the betterment of your life and overall productivity out in The Zone. This is the computer that lets you unlock the new, better pieces. However, it can be a little overwhelming at first, having so many options and categories to choose from. These are the categories from which you can choose upgrades, keep in mind that each of these have multiple options to choose from:

• Garage – Upgrades to the Auto Shop itself, to your home base. This is arguably the most basic one, as the upgrades in this category dictate most of the meta progression, and a lot of other upgrades are predicated to you having already unlocked some or a bunch of these.
• Refine – Where you’ll be able to unlock blueprints for new materials like Bulbs or Steel Sheets, that are in turn used for higher tiered parts and tools.
• Survival Tools – Your trusty prybar, your bulky Scrapper, your magical Repair Putty, and everything else you actively use for exploration and car maintenance, you’ll find in here.
• Lights – From your makeshift flashlights, to your flare guns, headlights and flood lights, they are all here.
• Car Body – Doors and Panels of different alloys, resistances and durabilities.
• Wheels – Where you’ll upgrade your tires. Respect your connection to the ground, always take care of your tires.
• Expansion Racks – Side-mounted, Roof-mounted, and Seat-mounted. Expansion Racks allow you to carry expansions and very useful tools and abilities.
• Car Storage – The more the merrier. As your trips become longer and longer, your pockets should be deeper and deeper.
• Fuel – Additional tanks to be mounted on the Expansion Racks, will increase your gas to varying degrees.
• Battery – Additions to battery life such as actual bigger and better batteries, as well as ways to charge your battery on the road.
• Utilities – A variety of different passive or active abilities that can greatly modify how a run goes. None of these are essential, but they are fun to play with. 
• Engines – Different engines that provide a different mileage per gallon and resistances, as well as other perks. Also not that essential for beginners.

Upgrading your garage and car is your meta progression

Inside each of these categories, there are at least 4 and a maximum of 32 upgrades to choose from. Now, not all of these upgrades are available to you at first, and as a beginner you are limited to what you can upgrade by using only Stable Energy and basic resources. Still, the options are numerous and it is easy to pick something not quite as useful as you would have hoped. Below I’ll list the first 10 upgrades you should focus on as a beginner, ranked in order of relevance. 

Note, by the time the fabristation is unlocked, you have already been given the basic trunk storage and the craft-mat, also for your trunk, as long as the Gear blueprint. Then the game will tutorialize you in the use of the fabristation by making fetch the Broadcast Transmitter and build the Scanning Antenna with it as a mission. With these, you were taught about blueprints, so we’re starting from right after you get your hands on them. Some of the following recommendations are Blueprints for you to craft the piece whenever you need them, and some others are Installation Kits that do not require crafting.

• Refine – Gear. The Gear is the quintessential refinement piece that you are going to need for your first couple, complex crafts. The blueprint for the Gear requires you already have the Craft Mat, 1 piece of fabric and 0.2 Stable Energy. The blueprint is freely given to you when unlocking the fabristation. Once unlocked, craft it at the workbench for 3 Scrap Metal.
• Garage – Matter Deconstructor. This one being also a forced improvement, it unlocks for you to choose once you’ve researched the Gear. You also need to research it in order to access to a lot of the other required upgrades of this list. The deconstructor is useful for you to scrap car parts that you have no use for, this way you can get their components back. Research it with 35 Scrap Metal, 4 Gears, and 4 Electronics, paired with 0.8 Stable Energy. Once unlocked, grab the equipment and just place it in the indicated spot in the garage.
• Wheels – Summer & Off-road Tires. Mobility is going to be key. As I stated before, rather than fortifying your car pieces to withstand damage, is best to invest into being able to out-maneuver the things that could damage you. For this purpose, you are going to use 1 Fabric and 0.5 Stable Energy for the Summer Tire research. Then you’ll want the far more resistant Off-road tires, and they go for 1 Fabric and 1.5 Stable Energy. The Off-road tires will carry you to the mid-game, no problem, and with a lot less instances of them being damaged or punctured. Craft a Summer Tire for 2 Scrap Metal, 8 Rubber and 1 Gear each. Craft Off-road Tires for 4 Scrap Metal, 12 Rubber, and 1 Gear each.

  

  Summer Tires

  

  Off-road Tires

  
  
• Garage – Outfitting Station. Next in the list is the Outfitting Station. Improving your car is all well and good but you are also going to be out and about, so you want to cover your bases. Unlocking the Outfitting Station for 7 Scrap Metal, 15 Plastic, 2 Chemicals, 2 Gas Cylinders and 0.3 Stable Energy will allow your to use 20 Fabric to craft a Medium Backpack, increasing your carrying slots and your quick slots, too. These will be a godsend. You can also very easily craft the Powered Boots, Padded Parka, and the Personal Airbag, all of which you can craft with basic resources and will help you survive outside your car. Once unlocked simply place it in the indicated slot across from the Fabristation.
• Garage – Matter Regenerator. By now you have probably been keeping your car from falling apart by just throwing Repair Putty at it each time you return to the Auto Shop. What you need to realize is that the Repair Putty is meant to help you while on drives, and should not be used constantly in the Garage. Instead, you should gather 30 Plastic, 10 Rubber, 6 Chemicals and 0.3 Stable Energy to unlock the Matter Regenerator. This way you can automatically fix car parts you leave inside while you’re gone, and in turn, save a lot on chemicals. Remember to loot ARDA buildings to find chemicals. Once unlocked grab the installation kit and place it in the indicated slot next to the deconstructor.

  

  Outfitting Station

  

  Matter Regenerator

  
  
• Refine – Bulbs & Steel Sheet. Moving on, you can now start to invest in your car’s rigidity. For this, you need to reach the Steel Sheet research, for which you need to go through the Bulbs research first. They are both pretty cheap, so you should be able to do them at once. They each take 1 Fabric and 0.2 Stable Energy to be researched. We wanted the Steel Sheets for the Steel car parts, but the bulb is also going to pay off for the Headlights. Craft Bulbs at the workbench for 2 Glass Shards, 1 Pressurized Cartridge, and 1 Copper Wire. Craft Steel Sheet with 6 Scrap Metal.
• Car Body – Steel Doors and Panels. Barely more durable and more resistant that crude panels, you do want to invest in some Steel Panels and Doors for your car. They bring 10 more durability points and 5% impact resistance. Not a lot by any means, but with these you are slowly carving your way in the world. To unlock you only need 2 Fabric and 0.5 Stable Energy for each one. Once unlocked you can craft a Steel Panel simply with 2 Steel Sheets. The Steel Door, however, will take 2 Scrap Metal, 4 Glass Shards, and 1 Steel Sheet.

  

  Bulb & Steel Sheet researches

  

  Steel Panels, Doors, and Bumpers

  
  
• Survival Tools – Hand-Vac. Stop picking up every single component with your hands one by one. Specially when you have little time in your Junction. Unlock the Hand-Vac so you can scrap all around a car or truck or inside a building and leave everything on the floor, then suck it up quickly with this useful tool. To craft you’ll only need 1 Fabric and 0.9 Stable Energy. Craft the Hand-vac at your workbench for 4 Plastic, 4 Rubber, 2 Pressurized Cartridges, and 1 Electronic.
• Survival Tools – Anchor Radar. This is one you are going to want to have and not use, than to need and not have. If you followed my advice and park your Station Wagon away from the Anchor you are fetching, more than once that is going to mean a lot of trees or other physical stuff in between you and the anchor (not to mention some particularly annoying anomalies that influence its positioning). Luckily, you have your Anchor Radar, so you don’t have to be wandering about, and it only cost you 1 Fabric and 0.8 Stable Energy to research. Craft it using 2 Plastic, 2 9v Batteries, 1 Copper Wire, and 1 Electronic.

  

  Hand-Vac

  

  Anchor Radar

  
  
• Lights – Headlight. Better light, better durability, same energy expenditure. Not to even mention that they look way better, you’ll want to research the Headlight in the Fabristation for 1 Fabric and 0.5 Stable Energy. I suggest crafting 4 Headlights as soon as you can, and when one gets damaged, toss it in the Regenerator and swap it for one of the back ups. Save yourself headaches this way. Craft the Headlight with 2 Glass Shards, 3 Copper Wires, 1 Electronic, and 1 Bulb.

These are what I consider to be the most relevant blueprints and Auto Shop improvements that will put you in the right track as a beginner. There are of course several other options out there that you can get early on like the Relightable Flare, but I just didn’t consider it essential, since you find regular Road Flares with ease and those do a good enough job at illuminating and you can drop on the floor while you manipulate another tool, for instance, which you would normally not do with the Relightable one.

There are also the expansions such as the generators for the battery or the additional tanks for fuel, but those also require that you research the Expansion Racks and all that which escapes the scope of what a beginner should be focusing on. Don’t get me wrong, though, if you can get your hands on a Small Turbine and hook it up, by all means do. But that requires a circuit board which may represent a big expenditure of resources for someone early on. 

In any case, these tips and suggested researches to focus on should hopefully help you start out your bizarre journey into The Zone with the right foot. Godspeed, Driver.