Which starting scenario should you pick?

Nine playable, twelve on the screen

The start screen lists twelve rows. Nine are playable: Apprentice, Water Merchant, Fence, Gunsmith, Chemist, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer, Rat Wrangler, Rock Bottom. Three are locked and marked Work In Progress — Junker, Organ Dealer, Street Food Vendor — and two more exist in the files without appearing on the screen at all. The developers have said the locked scenarios are coming in free updates.

This matters for two reasons. First, a guide that describes twelve playable starts sends you looking for options that are greyed out. Second, the three locked ones explain the shape of the game’s future: the current nine are the shipped design, and anything you read about organ trading or street food is a plan rather than a build.

What a scenario actually sets is your opening position: credits, stock, equipment, and in some cases rent and faction reputation. It is not a class. You are choosing the first two weeks, not the whole run, and the game does not lock you out of other trades later.

The nine, by opening pressure

Apprentice is the tutorial: 550 credits on Normal, a storage bay, household goods and food, against a 200-credit first rent. It is the only start tagged Recommended For New Players, and the tag is honest — the buffer is the lesson.

Gunsmith is the sharpest opening in the game: 150 credits against 250 rent, a Class I weapon permit, and stock that brings inspections. You are not poor, you are leveraged, and the first mistake is expensive. Water Merchant sits at the other end: a water trading manual, testing and purification equipment, and water containers, which makes the cheapest inspection loop in the game available from hour one.

Fence starts with a Smuggler’s Bay, contraband stock, higher Black Market reputation, lower Security reputation, immediate access to the Janitor Underground Exchange and a higher rent line. Hydroponic Farmer starts with a manual, hydroponic systems, farming supplies and seeds, and higher rent. Aquafarmer starts with a recirculating system and tilapia stock, also at higher rent. Rat Wrangler starts with a cage, rats and food. Chemist starts with a chemistry manual and lab equipment, and is the only start that also opens the Sector 13 Cartel faction.

Rock Bottom starts with nothing: no credits, no kit, no stock. The store page calls it Extreme Challenge Mode, and it is exactly that. It is also the cleanest test of whether you understand the rent maths, because there is no cushion to hide behind.

Choose by credits versus rent

The useful comparison is not theme, it is how many rent days your opening cash covers. Apprentice covers two and a half. Gunsmith covers most of one. Rock Bottom covers none. Everything else sits between those poles, and the ones with better equipment — Fence, Hydroponic Farmer, Aquafarmer — pay for it with a higher rent line, which means the equipment has to earn before the first Sunday.

That reframes the choice: pick the start whose first rent you can pay with a bad week. A bad week is not a disaster; a bad week on a start with 150 credits and 250 rent is. If you want to learn the shopkeeping loop, take the buffer. If you want to learn a trade, take the trade and accept that the first Sunday is the exam.

Difficulty is chosen separately from the scenario, and it changes the pressure rather than the shape. Four settings exist: Price Gouge (Cozy), Mark Up (Normal, the default), Thin Margins (Hard) and Red Ink (Challenge, which sits on the second page of the difficulty screen). If you are learning a start, keep difficulty where you are comfortable; changing both at once makes the result unreadable.

Credits to rent, the number that actually matters

Divide starting credits by the first rent bill and you get how many weeks of runway the start gives you. The credits and rent figures are community-sourced; the ratio is our arithmetic. Gunsmith at 0.6× is the tightest opening in the game; Rat Wrangler at 3× is the loosest.

Where the three locked starts fit

Junker, Organ Dealer and Street Food Vendor are visible but not playable. They are labelled in the build, and the developers have committed to shipping them in free updates alongside Expeditions and new appraisal items. A guide can describe them as announced content; it cannot describe their balance, because there is no balance to describe yet.

Two further scenarios — Moonshiner and Pharmacist — exist in the files without a start-screen entry. They are not playable either. If a page lists them as options, it is reading data files rather than playing the game, and it should say so.

The practical rule: if the row is not selectable in your build, it is not a choice you can make. Nine is the number that matters until a patch changes it.