Rock Bottom
Nothing, and maximum difficulty.
An empty counter, no stock, no safety net. The scenario designed for players who want the lease to be the antagonist.
Rock Bottom removes the starting inventory every other scenario hides behind, which turns the first rent payment into the whole game.
Rock Bottom is less a scenario than a difficulty contract. With no stock to sell on day one, the early game becomes a hunt for a first profitable item rather than a search for the best margin on an existing shelf.
It is also the cleanest way to learn the economy, because nothing is subsidised: what a shift earns is exactly what the counter produced.
Counter protocol
- Treat the first rent as the only objective; everything else is noise.
- Luck perks move further here than on any other start.
- Do not stack the hardest modifiers on a first run.
Related stock
Where this comes from
Rock Bottom is the maximum-difficulty scenario that starts the player with nothing.
“Rock Bottom: You start with nothing. Maximum difficulty.”
A post-launch patch changed how much the luck perks shift the odds for challenge runs.
“Lucky and Unlucky starting perks now change luck by 15 instead of 5 (new runs only).”
Tier 1 is the developer or publisher speaking, tier 2 is a large structured reference, tier 3 is player-made material. Anything a player measured rather than read is labelled as community-reported on this page.