HOPE 01 Early Loadouts Ranked

Early loadouts in HOPE 01 are not fashion. They are the smallest kit that can loot fabrics, scan blues, and hit a live extract without emptying your military bricks. Use this page after Getting Started and before you copy a streamer’s boss rifle. Rank the pieces against Weapons and Gadgets, then tick the door test on the Loadout Checklist.

The game is single-player. You are not racing a squad for air drops. You are racing hunger, darkness, and the Manorial timer.

Design rules for every early kit

1. Everything equipped should be scanned or so cheap you accept losing it. Unscanned uniques ride in the bag, they do not replace the primary.
2. Print food before a second gun body. Public fabrics exist for this.
3. One spare mag, pre-loaded. Drag ammo in the hideout. Controls.
4. Light in the utility slot until a mounted light exists.
5. Grid holes. Leave a rectangle for bricks and one blue item. Tetris is a wipe condition.
6. Named extract. If you cannot say which rail you will use, you do not have a loadout, you have a picnic. How to Extract.

If a kit violates two rules, it is a mid-game fantasy. Put it back.

Kit A — First extract (hour one)

Goal: touch Hab Rail and come home with any fabrics.

• Primary: the first scanned pistol or compact gun whose ammo you actually hold.
• Melee: accept that Space melee and knife-on-click will happen.
• Utility: handheld flashlight, hold left click.
• Consumables: whatever food you printed or found (canned goods, juice).
• Bag: empty on purpose.

Do not print a second body. Do not bring heavy-round mags for a gun you do not have. This kit exists to teach the timer, not to clear the Bureau. Walk it using the Beginner Walkthrough.

Kit B — Fabric farmer (hours 2–4)

Goal: medical or public bricks, second extract learned.

• Primary: the same workhorse, now with a reprint sitting in stash so a wipe is annoying.
• Mag: two loaded, one seated, one in grid.
• Utility: light still.
• Consumables: food plus one medical print if medical fabrics allow.
• Optional: caloric converter only if food is stacked.

Route: a district you already mapped on the Hab Cluster Map. Peel one new door, not five. Leave when bricks are good, not when you feel lucky.

This is the kit that funds the Fabricator. If print costs scare you, stay on Kit B until they do not.

Kit C — Clean bag boss attempt

Goal: learn one boss tell without donating a library.

• Primary: scanned gun with honest penetration or the stat that failed you last time. See the four-stat write-up on Weapons.
• Mag: two loaded.
• Utility: mounted light if printed; otherwise handheld and the discipline to swap.
• Consumables: food, a heal, converter if calories exist.
• Bag: almost empty. You are not looting sofas mid-phase.

Read Boss Fights before you drop into a one-way room. If the bag still has blues, you are on Kit B whether you like it or not. Extract, stash, come back.

Kit D — Courier / quest

Goal: move a quest item or an unscanned unique to stash.

• Primary: boring S-tier workhorse.
• Utility: light.
• Consumables: food only.
• Bag: the quest object and nothing cute.

Fifty-plus quests will keep handing you this kit. The mistake is turning a courier run into a shopping run. If you see military fabrics on the floor and they fit without dropping the quest item, take them. If they do not fit, they are not your loot today.

What not to wear early

• Two gun bodies and zero mags.
• A heavy platform whose ammo you have not scanned.
• A caloric converter as a personality and an empty stomach.
• Armour that fills the last grid hole you needed for bricks.
• A gadget that occupies the light slot in a district you have not lit yet.
• Anything you would cry about reprinting. Early Access will tune fabric amounts; crying is not a plan.

Stat shopping on a budget

You do not need the best of all four weapon stats. You need one gun whose worst stat you can live with:

• Close dark rooms: RoF, accept melee.
• Halls: muzzle velocity.
• Boss: penetration and reload discipline.
• Always: a mag that exists.

If two floor guns tie, keep the one that uses the ammo you already print. Ammo type is a loadout, not a footnote.

Hideout sequence before you leave

1. Stash yesterday’s keepers.
2. Scan leftover blues.
3. Print food, then mag, then nothing.
4. Seat a mag, seat a light.
5. Confirm HUD knowledge (timer lives at the top; B or Tab).
6. Name the extract out loud like a lunatic. It works.
7. Leave.

That sequence is also the Loadout Checklist. This page is the why; that page is the tick boxes.

When to graduate

You may copy richer kits when:

• Two extracts in a row were boring.
• You can reprint the primary without emptying a fabric colour.
• You own a light that does not eat the fire button, or you have made peace with the swap.
• You can dodge (double-tap A/D) on command.

Until then, Kit A and Kit B are the meta. HAB 01 is a long RPG. Early Access playtests sat at 50–70 hours for a first ending. There is no prize for a stylish wipe in hour two. There is a prize for a hideout that looks like a workshop.

When a patch changes costs, re-read Updates Hub and keep the rules. The names in your fabricator will change. The rules will not.