Рубрика: Gamezone

After widespread fan requests, Marvel Rivals finally has skin customisation, but it comes with a catch. You can’t just pick any old colour you want and slap it onto your skin. No, instead, you need to get unstable molecules to buy colour palettes. Alongside chrono tokens, costume coins, and various premium currencies, this new item is yet another thing to keep track of.

On the bright side, the new Marvel Rivals costume customisation options do look great. This feature hasn’t been rolled out to every character or skin quite yet—just a handful of the most popular faces that you can likely guess right away—but more are coming in the future. As such, you’ll want as many unstable molecules as possible.

How to get unstable molecules in Marvel Rivals

Right now, you can only get unstable molecules by exchanging lattice in a one-to-one conversion. Each recolour costs 600 unstable molecules, so that’s 600 lattice you’ll have to put down. You’ll be prompted to convert your currencies when you go to buy a costume recolour, whether in the store or the hero gallery for applicable characters.

Frustratingly, you can’t buy lattice in a single 600-pack. Instead, you’ll either have to get 1,000 lattice, which costs $9.99/£7.99, or a 100-pack and a 500-pack, which will cost you $5.98/£4.78.

NetEase has commented that there will be new ways to get unstable molecules in Season 3, but whether that’s purchasing them directly (without the need to exchange), using units, earned through events, or even the battle pass, is yet to be seen. Whatever it ends up being, it can’t be more limited than it is now.

In a Japanese first for the console, the Kochi District Court has delivered a guilty sentence for modifying and selling Nintendo Switch consoles. A 58-year-old transportation worker from Ryugasaki City, Fumihiro Otobe has been met with a fine and jail time for soldering and selling second-hand Switch consoles loaded with pirated software. Though these consequences seem like a slap on the wrist when compared to Nintendo’s usual litigious tenacity.

TechSpot reports Fumihiro Otobe was arrested in January this year after his house was searched under the suspicion of modifying Switch consoles to run pirated games. Police found four modified Switch units which had their circuit boards soldered allowing them to run modified games. Though they likely didn’t even need to look with Otobe confessing immediately upon being charged saying “I was curious if people would think I was great for selling modified machines.”

Otobe does what Nintendon’t.

While far from impossible, modifying Switch console hardware isn’t easy. Even when using an also illegal premade modders chip, there’s some super finicky soldering involved that most don’t recommend consumers tackle by themselves. So, even if the police and Nintendo clearly aren’t, I’m a little impressed by Otobe’s efforts here.

After modifying, Otobe was selling these modified switches online for 28,000 yen or about $195 USD. They also came generously prepackaged with 27 pirated games which could be worth somewhere between nothing and $70 USD a pop. Given a brand new Switch is about $300 USD, and even a Switch 2 is only slated to be $450, that seems like a pretty good deal. Morally questionable, sure, but still a good deal.

What makes Otobe the great’s work really impressive here is just how lightly he got away with it all. He’s only been ordered to pay a 500,000 yen or around $3,500 USD fine, and his two-year prison sentence has been suspended for three years. This usually means as long as Otobe plays nicely for the next few years he might not have to serve any time at all. It seems fair given this we can assume his scale of operation was pretty small and you’d have to be one of a lucky few to score one of his consoles.

The small scale here is also why we see such a stark contrast in punishment when compared to other Switch hackers. In 2022 we saw one of the faces behind creating a slew of those Nintendo console modding chips we talked about earlier receive a 40-month sentence and a $14.5 million fine for his crimes. That 400,000% price hike on the fine is less ridiculous when you realise he was part of an operation that far exceeded the hobby tamperings of Otobe.

His last name is also Bowser, so it seems fair Nintendo wanted to make sure they got as many gold coins out of him as possible.

Did you receive an invitation to a Witcher 4 closed beta test? No you didn’t, according to developer CD Projekt, which says the purported invites offering an early look at the new game are in fact just a scam.

“Recently, we’ve been getting reports from some community members that they’ve been invited to a beta test of The Witcher 4—this is a scam!” the studio wrote on Bluesky.

“We’ve been taking the necessary steps to take this fraudulent messaging down. That said, if you receive any invites to or stumble upon news of one, we kindly ask you to report the scam using the tools available to you in your email client or the social media platform you are using.”

One such closed beta invitation—not a real one, remember—that apparently appeared on Instagram was posted to Reddit last week. As is often the way with these things, it looks fine in a brief, at-a-distance glance, but a closer view gives away the game through numerous spelling and grammatical errors.

But some people just don’t make it to that step: They see “Witcher 4 beta” and immediately mash the button, and the trouble begins. It’s human nature, really—as with so many things, we should know better by now, but seemingly we do not.

CD Projekt said that if it does put together any beta tests in the future, “you will hear about it first, as always, via our official social media and websites,” rather than through an ad on an external platform.

The likelihood of that happening seems slim—I don’t think any previous Witcher game or Cyberpunk 2077 went through external beta testing prior to release—and even if CD Projekt did decide to offer a closed beta for The Witcher 4, the game’s not expected to be out until sometime in 2027 at the soonest. Given that time frame, we’ve got a good wait yet before beta testing even becomes a reasonable possibility.

As I played through the tutorial of Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, I started to feel a fear very specific to videogames. You know the one: ‘If I’m already struggling in the training level, what chance am I going to have in the rest of the game?’

I know, I know, get all your games journalist jokes out of the way now. But I did have reason to be nervous with this one. It brings together the developers of unforgiving soulslike Blasphemous with the notoriously hard Ninja Gaiden series—a potentially lethal combo.

But the tools Ragebound gives you are as powerful as they are precise, and as my confidence with them grew, I found I was much more in control than I thought I was. A few hundred dead demons later, and I don’t think it’s quite as hard as you might expect—but it certainly is satisfying.

Like Blasphemous, Ragebound is a 2D side-scroller, and also like Blasphemous it’s gorgeous, though this time the slick pixel-art pops with colour instead of seething with grimdarkness. You play Kenji Mozu, a disciple of usual series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa off on his own bloody quest concurrent with the first Ninja Gaiden game.

I won’t pretend to be au fait enough with the series to understand the significance of this narrative set-up, but I suspect the story isn’t what anyone’s here for anyway. What that premise mainly provides is a very good excuse for carving your way through countless enemy ninjas, samurai, and monsters, and jumping over a lot of spiked pits.

It all feels much faster and more responsive than Blasphemous, and your strikes are more decisive. Most enemies simply go down in one slash—the challenge comes in getting in close without taking a hit yourself, often dodging projectiles along the way.

Tougher enemies require a charged attack, but finding the seconds required to get one ready can be a big ask in busy combat encounters. The trick is to look out for enemies with glowing auras—slay one of those and you ready a charged attack instantly, though you need to use it quickly or lose it.

That means encounters aren’t just about clearing the room as fast as possible, they’re about efficient tactics. The best path through is often to kill enemies in a specific order, grabbing that free charged attack when you need it and then making sure it’s immediately deployed where it can do the most harm, instead of wasted on a lesser foe.

After battling my way through a burning village and slaying a tough-as-nails fire demon boss, the preview build skips me ahead to a later section, after Kenji has somehow merged with a female ninja called Kumori. They’re a classic odd couple—she’s from the Black Spider clan, a particularly rotten lot of ninjas that he’s honourbound to oppose. But apart from letting him bicker with her ghostly manifestation, their strange synthesis has also gifted him with many of her abilities.

Playing through these later levels, it’s heartening to see how much these new powers keep things fresh and varied. Satisfying as the early going is, I had wondered if it might be a whole game of just practicing those core skills against progressively more demanding challenges. Instead, I’m learning to master new tools, including a selection of ranged attacks that hugely open up my options in battle, and a limited but screen-clearing super move for last-ditch comebacks.

Certain points in each level also allow you to let Kumori take over for brief jaunts through a demonic dimension, in order to unlock the path forward. These are essentially timed platforming levels, and they’re a great excuse to take the focus off fighting and onto the snappy movement controls for a bit. They’re no less precise and challenging, of course—particularly in sequences that require split-second use of her ability to throw a projectile and teleport to its destination.

It’s an exciting new side to developer The Game Kitchen. While I appreciated Blasphemous’ palpable atmosphere, I felt it was too slow and unfair to really hook me. Ragebound feels like something very different—a quick and clever take on retro side-scrollers that’s demanding without feeling punishing.

Publisher Dotemu likely had some influence there—they’re known for putting out excellent old school beat-’em-ups like TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge and Streets of Rage 4 (and it’s got a very cool new one coming up called Absolum).

Either way, from the hour or so I’ve played, the result is shaping up to be a retro treat for anyone who loves the satisfying ‘shwick!’ of a katana. If that’s you, you shouldn’t have long to wait—the release is planned for the summer this year.

It’s an ironclad law of Nvidia reporting that every other RTX 50-series story must begin with much opining over the state of GPU stocks. Thankfully, I can opine in a positive direction for a change, because as a born and bred British man I can proudly declare that this great nation has achieved the seemingly impossible task of having an MSRP RTX graphics card in stock not one, not two, not even three, but over three hours after launch.

Yes, an MSRP-priced RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB is, in fact, in stock in the UK right now. In fact—hold up—two MSRP-priced RTX 5060 Tis are in stock: the Gainward GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Python III for £399.95 at Overclockers and the Palit GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Infinity 3, also for £399.95 at Overclockers.

It should be noted that these are essentially the same card (thus, probably, why these two are the MSRP-priced ones in stock). Palit owns Gainward, and the two cards share the same specs and even look very similar.

The Palit card also happens to be the exact one that our Jacob R tested for his RTX 5060 Ti review. He found it to perform about 20% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti, although it is, of course, a little more power-hungry. And don’t forget that it has all the benefits of the 50-series architecture, including the ability to generate fake fra- sorry, I mean, to generate multiple frames for each traditionally rendered one.

The big thing here, though, is simply that these are £399 MSRP cards (okay, technically £0.95 over MSRP at £399.95, if we’re being pedantic) that are actually in stock a few hours after launch. And that’s not me being facetious—I don’t think we’ve seen an MSRP card in stock for so long since before Covid (back in the glory days).

Your guess as to why that might be is as good as mine. The listings do say they’re available to “UK and IE only due to high demand”, and if the little red Overclockers pop-up is to be believed, a fair few have been sold already. Perhaps Nvidia just hasn’t realised how biting the cost of living crisis is over here and therefore how low demand is—who knows?

Whatever the case, they’re here, and they seem to be staying here, at least for the moment. How long that moment will last, I’m not sure. I know it’s certainly tickling my RTX 3060 Ti-owning ‘should I?’ bone. Maybe I should hit that buy button… for king and country?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s 1.2.4 patch introduces a couple of bug fixes, like rebalanced shop prices for herbs and a new bald hairstyle for Henry. But let’s be serious, no one’s getting out of bed for those features (well, maybe the new hairstyle), when the real kicker is the new hardcore mode that’s tacked onto the patch as well.

“Hardcore mode is here, and it’s not for the faint of heart,” the patch notes say. “You won’t see your location on the map. You won’t fast travel. You won’t get surrendering enemies, visual cues in combat, or even basic directions, unless you earn them.”

There are also a few permanent negative perks which you can select at the beginning of a playthrough. This will change how you engage with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, as there are no shortcuts to victory.

“Hardcore mode has arrived to Bohemia,” a blog post says. “The new game mode is set to shake the very foundations of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for anyone ready to test their mettle against an even tougher slice of medieval life.

“You’ll also have to remix your own adventure by selecting at least three permanent negative perks at the very beginning of your playthrough. You might choose the oafish Heavy-Footed perk, for example, which increases your movement noise while also wearing out your shoe leather faster. Alternatively, Sweaty increases your personal pungency as you explore the world, while Numbskull slows your experience gains.”

Karel Kolmann, senior game designer at Warhorse Studios, explains how the devs upped the ante for this hardcore mode compared to the same mode for the first game: “In the first game’s hardcore mode, we did things like disabling your map position and removing the compass but we’ve gone further this time. We’ve added the option to ask different NPCs about your location in the world, which is something more immersive. You can run into travellers on the road and ask for directions.”

The Bashful perk disables map assistance. It doesn’t sound too bad at first, but a couple of players have pointed out how annoying it can be when combined with the Somnambulant perk, which can trigger sleepwalking, meaning you can go to sleep and wake up in a random location.

“Appearing somewhere random is really annoying when you have something you want to do nearby when you wake up,” whousesgmail says. “It’s really fucking annoying when you don’t have any map guidance. Idk how helpful asking for directions is, but Bashful stops that, too.

“I’m honestly scared to go to sleep at this point because it procs so much. Not to mention, it doesn’t really add any difficulty, just inconvenience. It would be kinda funny if it were like 10%, but it happens so often I’m expecting and dreading it, which is dumb imo.”

There are other perks you can choose from that won’t see you waking up in a random field. One alternative is the Punchable Face perk, which just increases the hostility of travellers you come across. So you may get your lights punched out in the middle of a dirt road somewhere, but at least you’ll wake up in the same spot.

What I’ve found to be a good rule of thumb is this: If I wouldn’t want my kid sister to see it, then I probably shouldn’t put it on the internet. For you, that someone may be a parent or guardian, but after hearing my own mother thoughtfully critique the writing of the Yakuza 0 side story ‘How to train your dominatrix,’ I suspect she’d be surprisingly chill. My kid sister, however, would never let me hear the end of it—and perhaps I’d deserve it too if I thought a mere pixelate filter could conceal my many folders of filthy fanfic.

Jokes aside, it turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to ‘de-censor’ videos these days. Maker Jeff Geerling—of hot dog speaker fame—threw down the gauntlet in a recent video, challenging viewers to reveal the contents of a network share hidden using a pixelating filter, and promising a reward of $50 in return. Well, his viewers delivered—in three slightly different but no less terrifying ways.

While three different folks shared their method, each one relies on a similar principle. Geerling breaks it down, writing, “The idea here is the pixelation is kind of like shutters over a picture. As you move the image beneath, you can peek into different parts of the picture. As long as you have a solid frame of reference, like the window that stays the same size, you can ‘accumulate’ pixel data from the picture underneath.”

With enough of those incomplete snapshots, a sufficiently motivated individual leveraging AI can puzzle-piece-together whatever you were trying to hide with the pixelate filter. Personally, I kind of think of this method like returning the kaleidoscope to its starting position.

Geerling explains that if he hadn’t moved the window containing the censored files around in his original video, it may have been much harder for viewers to decode but not necessarily impossible. Geerling also says that once upon a time you’d need “a supercomputer and a PhD to do this stuff” but with speedy neural networks and AI today, it’s now all too easy for computers to pattern their way through seeming chaos.

So, if the pixelate filter is out, what options are left? For one, Geerling posits that a traditional blur filter may not actually be any safer, electing himself to block out sensitive data in future videos with a completely solid colour layer mask to give neural networks as little image detail to work with as possible.

It’s a very redacted-documents-found-throughout-the-oldest-house vibe, but it may genuinely be safest. Failing that, I’m wondering whether emojis might also be viable—though I’ve no doubt that would’ve made for a very different game take on 2019’s Control.

One of my favorite things about Souls games is that sometimes the best method for dealing with tragic, corrupted knights and primordial horrors is simply hitting them very hard with a large object. It’s an ideal embodied by the Raider, the subject of Bandai Namco’s latest Elden Ring: Nightreign character reveal trailer, who seems just as comfortable using himself as a bludgeoning implement as anything else.

At first blush, the Raider looks a bit like someone’s Skyrim character wandered out of Nord country and into Limgrave. For all you Elden Ring buffs, he’s Godfrey-coded—or maybe Hoarah Loux-coded is more accurate: He’s a burly, bearded, viking-looking gent, who starts the trailer cracking his knuckles as though he’s not particularly interested in the massive axe he’s got strapped to his back.

If I was the kind of person who would casually deliver an uppercut to a dragon like the Raider does just a few seconds later, I’d probably be pretty ambivalent about my own great axe, too.

It’s unclear if the Raider’s brawling abilities are unique, or if they can be found as Ashes of War for any Nightreign character to use. But still, he has a clear passion for pugilism. He socks wyrms in the mouth. He headbutts knights wearing full plate armor. And if engaging FromSoft enemies in fisticuffs wasn’t enough to charm you, we get a shot of him enjoying a cold one. (It’s important to treat yourself between bouts of dragon boxing.)

At the end of the trailer, we get a look at what seems like the Raider’s ultimate ability. He stomps the ground, causing a damaging eruption of sharp rocks as a large stone slab bursts from the ground and lifts him into the air.

The slab provides some interesting utility. It can elevate you and your teammates above the reach of enemy attacks, and even provides a safe shooting position for someone like Ironeye, Nightreign’s archer character, to fire down at targets without risk. And best of all, the slab serves as a platform you can leap off of for a timely plunging attack, which as we all know is the coolest form of attack anyone can do.

Bandai Namco has followed up previous Nightreign reveals with longer videos providing more details about the character’s abilities, so if you’re keen to learn more about the Raider’s whole deal, keep an eye on the publisher’s YouTube channel.

Elden Ring Nightreign launches on May 29, 2025.

Overwatch 2 Stadium is a refreshing break from what I’ve come to expect from Overwatch. It’s done away with the standard matches in favour of a best-of-seven rounds type deal with smaller objective points, maps, and timings, so matches really don’t take too long. But the best part of this new mode by far has to be the absolutely wacky builds you can make.

At first, all the ability items and powers can seem a tad overwhelming. There’s an entire page for weapon, ability, and survival items and an extra one for all the powers available to buff up your character. You can have up to six items, with common ones costing 1,000-1,500 points, the rare ones costing 3,750-5,000 points, and epic ones costing 9,000-11,000 points. It doesn’t lock you into this choice either, as you can sell items and get back your points to spend on more powerful options later on in the match.

Then, every odd round, you get to choose one power from 12 options. These are like super buffs, giving your hero one really cool ability. These are what you can focus your builds around. So for Moira, there’s an example build called the “Orb Doctor” which I’ve actually found really helpful, as this focuses all your strength around your Biotic Orb ability, with the Multiball power launching two additional orbs with 85% reduced effectiveness and the Cross-Orbal power which launches an additional Biotic Orb of the other type with 50% reduced capacity.

Alongside items like Cybervenom, Extendrils, Champion’s Kit, Nano Cola, Energised Bracers, and Multi-Tool, you can launch four Biotic Orbs at 100% ability optimisation, which can kill any nearby enemy with under 300 HP. It’s pretty busted, that’s for sure.

Other cool builds include a burn build for Ashe, which puts all of her strength into her Dynamite ability, an attack speed build for Reaper, giving him the ability to tear through Tanks at a rapid pace, and roll-stun build for Cassidy, which makes both his abilities super powerful. But my favourite out of everything I’ve tested so far has to be Soldier 76 and his Helix Rocket build.

Like every hero, there are a couple of different ways to approach a Soldier 76 build. You could focus on healing and survivability, and pick items and powers that improve your Biotic Field, you can focus on attack speed and transform Soldier 76’s rifle into a rapid fire machine gun, or you can buff his Helix Rockets: my personal favourite.

To do this, I always pick the Super Visor power straight away, as this means that every time you use a Helix Rocket, you’ll get 0.75 seconds of Tactical Visor afterwards (basically auto aim). Therefore, after I land a hit on a Support or DPS hero, I can usually finish them off with this ability as they’re running away. And as the match progresses, the stronger I make my Helix Rockets, the more lethal this ability becomes. But if you’re not as confident in landing Helix Rocket shots, then you can also choose to buff your rifle instead, but it’s not nearly as fun.

It’s a pretty scary build, but one that I absolutely love using.

Other items I pick to buff my Helix Rockets include Endgame Equaliser, Bomb Diffusal Boots, Nano Cola, Iridescent Iris, and Custom Stock. I’ll also pick powers like On Me!, which lets your Biotic Field move with you while granting you 20% increased Max Life when active to help boost survivability. Then I’ll go for Double Helix, which grants you a second homing Helix Rocket that deals 70% reduced damage, and Cratered or Peripheral Pulse, which grants an increased explosion radius for Helix Rockets or lets you shoot at one additional enemy at 50% damage, respectively.

I’ve found that this build for Soldier 76 in particular can begin to snowball as the match goes on, becoming increasingly harder for the enemy team to deal with, especially if you have a sturdy frontline. It’s a pretty scary build, but one that I absolutely love using.

But I’m sure this is only the beginning of players finding completely busted builds for Overwatch 2 Stadium. From what I’ve seen so far, Moira, Reinhardt, Junker Queen, and Juno all seem pretty strong, and while the devs will probably implement a couple of little hero patches, it’s actually a lot of fun just relishing in the chaos right now.

One of the best ways to improve your income in Schedule 1 is to hire employees. These workers can be assigned to various tasks, which they’ll handle on your behalf. You’ll have to pay them a wage, unfortunately, but it’s worth it in the long run.

When you first unlock employees, you won’t want to immediately go on a hiring spree. Workers aren’t cheap, and you don’t have much room in the sweatshop or bungalow to fit everyone anyhow. Get a proper understanding of what each employee does first so you can prioritise your initial hires.

All Schedule 1 employees explained

There are four types of employees in Schedule 1, each filling a different role in your operation. While you can perform each of these tasks yourself, hiring a worker to do it for you saves a great deal of time, letting you make product faster and turn them in for cash.

You’ll need to head to the office in the warehouse to hire employees. Here you’ll find Manny behind the counter, who’ll give you the different options available to you. Select an employee type to hire them, and you’ll be prompted to select a location.

Before you can put your employees to work, you’ll first need to buy them a bed to settle in. You can purchase beds from Oscar in the warehouse for $150 each. Once placed, use the management clipboard on the employee and select to edit the “bed” section at the top of their list. Then, walk up to an empty bed to assign it to them.

You’ll see their name and coloured bedsheets depending on their role suddenly appear, as well as a black box at the foot of the bed where you’ll put their salary. If you don’t pay their wages, they won’t work and will awkwardly stand outside staring at you every time you walk by. They’ll never quit, though, so there’s technically nothing wrong with not paying their wages when they’re not needed, which is likely to happen early on when you’re getting production lines set up.

It’s worth pointing out that you can’t move or relocate workers once hired. You’ll have to hire more workers each time you move to a new location, though you don’t need to fire the old ones. They’ll hang around in case you want two operations on the go, not costing you a dime unless you put money in their box.

Below you’ll find more details about each worker, including how to assign them and some tricks I’ve picked up over the many hours I’ve spent expanding my enterprise.

Cleaners

Cleaners are the most easily ignored workers, simply because they don’t add value to your business like the other employees do. Cleaners tidy up after you or your employees. They drain your money more than they’ll ever pay you back for it, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Rubbish quickly piles up in your buildings if you’re not keeping things clean, and it’s an absolute pain trying to keep on top of it yourself. Sure, the cleaner won’t recycle the rubbish for cash like you can if you do it yourself, but it means you don’t have to run around with a litter picker all day and can instead focus your efforts entirely on production and dealing.

To assign a cleaner, all you need to do is place up to three bins and use the management clipboard on the worker to select the areas you want them to cover. Bins don’t have a massive radius, so you’ll need a few for effective coverage.

Botanists

Botanists are the lifeblood of your business, responsible for planting, maintaining, and harvesting any crops they’re assigned to. They’re not too expensive either, and they’ll quickly recover their cost once your production ramps up.

A single botanist can be assigned up to a maximum of eight crops, though you’ll quickly find out that even this can be a lot of work if you’re adding extra steps (like additives) to the mix.

To assign a botanist, use the management clipboard on them and select their stations, then walk up to any pots you want them to work on and click to assign them. Importantly, additives are not assigned to the botanist directly, but with the pots instead. To do this, use the management clipboard on their assigned pots, where you can specify seeds and up to three additives that will be added.

You’ll also want to assign a botanist a shelf, where you can conveniently stock all their items like soil, seeds, and additives, so they can automatically use them. Use the management clipboard on them once again, and select a shelving unit as a source.

Handlers

Able to move items around your building automatically, handlers are neck and neck with botanists to be the most valuable workers. Having someone move items might sound simple, but taking you out of the equation is crucial when it comes to establishing a proper production line. Think about it: you don’t have to put the increasingly important additives into mixers anymore, and you don’t need to package your drugs for distribution either.

Because of their versatility, handlers are also the most complicated workers to assign. Starting simple, you can assign handlers to packaging stations (using the management clipboard) where they will take any drugs already moved to the station and put them in bags for you to sell. For this to work, you’ll either need to use a handler to move the product to the station, or set the output of a mixer to a packaging station, which will cause a chemist to move it once they’ve finished mixing it.

It becomes much more complicated when you take advantage of the handler’s ability to follow routes. Using the management clipboard, select a handler and click on one of the empty boxes under the “routes” section. Then, you can select almost any type of station as either an input or an output, including shelves. A handler can have a maximum of five instructions, which you can quickly fill.

For example, I set a handler to collect mixing items from a shelf I stock up regularly and move them to four different mixers. I then hired two more handlers to work exclusively on packaging stations, with two simple instructions: grab bags from a nearby small shelf to stock their station, and move finished product from a mixer to their own station.

Chemists

Chemists are great for convenience; able to handle the arduous task of making meth (including combining the ingredients and baking them) and using mixing stations. You can assign a single chemist to a maximum of four stations, which is pretty generous. You could have one chemist making two batches of meth at once, while another singlehandedly mans four mixers. It’s a real time saver as your operation expands.

You can also assign chemists to stations using the management clipboard. Unlike handlers, they don’t require any extra commands. However, they won’t automatically grab necessary ingredients from shelves (and these can’t be set as inputs through the specific stations they work at), so you’ll either have to do this yourself or use a handler.

The one workaround to this is mixers, which have an output slot. If you’re mixing drugs multiple times—which you should be for maximum profit—you can actually daisychain mixers by selecting another mixer as the destination for mixed drugs. The chemist will take the mixed drugs and move them to the next mixer, where they’ll mix them again if you supply the stations with additives.