Cargo Hold & Welding

The repair opens up once Wade Rusk puts you on the Hold It Together job, which arrives automatically after you finish Waste Not. Until then, the Cargo Hold just shows as damaged.

The repair needs exactly 15 Refined Ferrite and 6 Slag. You can contribute materials across more than one visit, but the game asks you to confirm the exact amount each time — once installed, materials can't be taken back out.

Once both materials are complete, Welding becomes available while you're stationary at the Crash Site. It takes twelve separate welding passes, each about three seconds, to finish the repair.

A repaired Cargo Hold gives you 32 slots of on-site storage at the Crash Site. You can deposit or withdraw a single item or a whole stack while you're stationary there — it's separate from what you're carrying in Inventory.

Welding isn't a one-off button for your ship. Once you've learned it, it's something your character knows how to do, and there are other jobs that need it — starting with the Crew Stop in town, which you can repair during Out of the Weather.

Every welding job works the same way and uses the same skill: install its materials, then weld it in passes of about three seconds each, with each finished pass earning the same Welding XP. What changes from job to job is what material it needs and how many passes it takes. The Crew Stop needs 20 Refined Ferrite and ten passes.

The biggest job so far is the collapsed passage at Deep Jag: 25 Refined Ferrite and 5 Power Cells to build Tansy's brace out of, then fifteen passes to weld it together. The Cells go into the jack that lifts the roof and are spent doing it — like every other installed material, they don't come back.

You can also weld with nothing at stake at all. Wade's workbench at Rusk Recovery lets you practice as much as you like, for scrap rather than for a repair.

Once you are good enough with a torch, there is paying work too. Work Orders run on the same Workbench and the same welding, for real client jobs and Credits rather than practice.

A few of your work sites let you build a stash of your own: somewhere to leave what you were about to carry back and forth. It takes two separate things — a mount welded down at the site, then a container you install in it. Carrying a container to a site never gives you free storage by itself.

You build one mount per site, and it is yours alone. Each site asks for its own Welding level, and nothing else: you never need Mining, Refining or Fabrication levels of your own to build one, and every material can be bought or traded for. Nothing about a stash shows up at a site until you are able to build it.

You build a mount the same way as any other welding job: install the materials, then weld it in passes of about three seconds each. Every pass pays the usual Welding XP, and Clean Pass works as it always does. There is no bonus for finishing. Once it is built, it stays built.

To use a built mount, install a container you are carrying and are not wearing. Any container works — your starting MYKEA, a Scrap Box or a Freight Harness — and the stash gets exactly as many slots as that container has. Items stored there have no weight limit. The container leaves your Inventory while it is installed, so it stops giving you carrying slots until you take it back out.

You can put things in and take things out only while you are standing at that site, and what you leave there stays there: it does not follow you to another site or to the Cargo Hold. Each site has a separate stash, and every character has their own. You have to stop whatever you are doing to use one, the same as the Cargo Hold.

Stored items keep their identity, so a Cutter keeps its charge. Moving things back follows the same rules as everything else: whatever you take out has to fit your carried slots and weight.

During any welding job — a repair, a practice weld, or a Work Order — moments open up where the bead is running clean and you can lay one in. How many you get depends on how long the job is: a short one might not get any at all, and a longer one can get more than one — roughly one for every five sections of welding, starting once a job reaches six sections. A Clean Pass control appears next to the normal controls for about three seconds when one comes up.

Take it in time and the work jumps forward a whole extra pass, and pays that pass's XP. Miss it and absolutely nothing happens: it costs no material, no progress, and no time, so there is never a reason not to let one go by. Every chance is decided before the job starts, and stopping and resuming never moves them or gives you another go at one you were in the middle of.