ROB RUN Game Guide: Everything You Must Know to Play Better

ROB RUN is all the rage right now, and I’m here to make sure you’re not going to end up rage-quitting. You only have seven days to make things stick, because everything resets afterwards and everybody has an equal, new shot at becoming the next big thing.

And I am here today to help you with exactly that: the full guide that prepares you for everything, from your first hour in the game to all the tips and tricks you should know to make sure you truly get the most out of it.

First, Know about the Weekly Wipe!

Before you fall for your first stack of cash, know that it has an expiry date. A Federal Raid happens every seven days and wipes plots, bases, weapons, and cash, and your bank balance goes with it, because deposited money is safe from other players but not from the reset.

However, this raid leaves you with some important things.

Whatever you owned is converted into jail time, which carries over between wipes and unlocks some Shipments, and richer players pile up more of it. Cosmetics, your player name, tutorial progress and settings also survive.

Lenny’s Motel and Your First Hour in the Game

You begin in the district jail with everything confiscated, which is the game’s way of saying welcome and stay humble.

Once you’re out, you land at Lenny’s Motel, a safe zone that doubles as a black market, a money stash, and a free car rental place.

The first thing you’ll have to deal with is jailbreak: talk to the Tattoo Artist first, then use an escape point.

After your first sale, go back to Lenny to close out the tutorial. Weapons aren’t allowed at the motel.

The laptop there gives you access to the Black Market, where you order basic gear, and it takes cash only. It is also your progression board. Weapons, equipment, housing documents and the police sergeant’s badge all go through Lenny: you unlock them first, then you buy them.

Your first purchase should be the basic pistol – it costs almost nothing, and walking around without a weapon is not smart, as you will quickly see if you try it. A Civilian can’t use weapons, so the pistol is for the moment the mask goes on.

It isn’t returned to you after you die, so treat it as a consumable you’d prefer not to consume.

Wearable gear is another thing you have to care about: it goes into equipment slots, and you also have armor, bags and recovery items that are sold separately from guns.

Find the things that work for you, but I recommend starting to build your character around medium armor, a sports bag for increased inventory space, spare plates and medical supplies.

Next, take the free rental car and drive to Looty Bay. A Civillian loses nothing on death, gets treated for free and can wander around scouting at leisure. Until you put on a mask, dying in the city costs you nothing, which makes this the easiest way to get accustomed to the city (and you should do it for a while, as boring as it might sound).

ROB RUN’s world is split into separate locations: Lenny’s Motel, Looty Bay, the desert where settlements live, and the prison.

Crossing the edge of a location opens the global map, where you pick your next destination. The rental isn’t a one-time gift either: if you lose your ride, a free one waits at the nearest Parking Terminal.

Next, while you’re still a Civilian, open an account at the Central Bank of Looty Bay. It costs 5,000, and without it you can’t launder money, pay off a cop or join a clan, so skipping it is a decision you’ll regret the moment real money shows up.

Shopping also works in the Civilian role, so you can spend your cash without a mask on your face.

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Pick a Role Before Looty Bay Picks One for You

You choose a role every time you enter Looty Bay, so the decision resets with every trip.

Role	What you can do	Limits
Civilian	Explore the city safely, get free healing, lose nothing on death	Can’t use weapons
Criminal	Put on a mask and rob	Everyone’s enemy; the loot has to be taken out of the city
Cop	Free gear and a car for the shift	Can only shoot criminals

Everyone in a group has to pick the same role in Looty Bay, so settle the plan beforehand.

Becoming a Civilian again only requires leaving the city, with one catch: cops can close the bridges and stop you from getting out, so don’t always take this for granted.

This means that the mask comes off only after the raid is over. Once it’s on, you’re a Criminal until the run ends, and dying in it costs you everything.

What Dying in ROB RUN Means

It’s pretty easy once you have a few games under your belt, but if you’re just starting, here’s how it goes:

Situation	Equipment	Bag
Death in a mask	Lost	Lost
Arrested or surrendered to the police (Q key)	Kept	Taken
Death as a Civilian	Kept	Kept
Death in a settlement	Lost	Lost

A settlement has no police, which sounds safe until you notice that dying there costs you everything. Your purchased car doesn’t disappear when you die, and mods installed on it don’t drop either.

If you get caught carrying good gear, surrendering with the Q key beats dying, because only the bag is taken. You can also offer the cop a bribe from your bank account, and if the cop accepts, you walk away with both the bag and the gear.

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Your First Payday

Start small and stay close to the buyer. Dumpsters are the early method for making money.

Houses and small shops near the buyer are the next step up the ladder. Before you walk into anything, find the alarm panel (usually at the back or on the side of the building) and disable it, then put on the mask. Grab what you can, hand it to the buyer and leave quickly.

Put the cash in the stash at Lenny’s. It holds up to 150,000 and nothing inside it can be stolen. This is basically your resever, because everything you carry outside it burns on your first death.

Junk, bottles, small change, and anything that won’t fit in the stash should be sold immediately and they have no other value or use in-game.

Robbing Without Waking the Whole City

A clean robbery in ROB RUN follows a specific order, and skipping steps will increase the chances of police catching you. Here’s what to do:

Scout first, as a Civilian: find the panel, the cameras, the exits, and where the cops are standing.

Next, disable the alarm, then mask up and go in.

If a camera sees you or the panel hasn’t been touched, the alarm triggers in about 10 to 15 seconds, and cops see it on the map along with the distance to you.

This means that your Civilian scouting trip is extremely important. Note where the bank, the fences and the Sales Center sit, which small stores could be a first target, where you can park, what side roads exist, and where the city entrances and exits are.

When the moment of switching comes, park facing your exit before you mask up. When the place is cleaned out, head to the buyer or straight out of the city.

Speed matters once you put the mask on, so work quickly and keep the staff at gunpoint the entire time.

You do need to take some time to study the keys, though. Each key’s description says what it opens, and the gas station in Downtown, for example, has two hidden rooms, left and right, with a separate key for each.

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Notoriety and the Wanted Bar

One is good, one is bad. Notoriety is the good one and has 5 levels, growing from any type of crime.

The higher it climbs, the better the buyer pays, and at high levels you also get extra valuables more frequently.

Notoriety climbs with every crime in one visit, so a streak of jobs pays better and draws harder attention in the same breath. Higher notoriety improves fence deals, but the risk climbs with it and cops press harder.

In a group of two, you start at level 2 Notoriety, with a +10% revenue bonus at the buyer. It increases to +20% at level 3, +35% at level 4 and +50% at level 5.

The wanted level is a separate bar. Every civilian you kill adds 1, and at 3 you become “Most Wanted,” at which point the whole city can see your marker. So try to pull the trigger only when it is needed.

What’s Worth Carrying Out and What to Drop

Loot comes in gray, green, purple and gold, and keys and cargo come in different colors too. There are some things you should never sell. Here’s what you should know:

• Keys: A key points to a safe or a room in a specific building on the map. The buyer gives about 500 for it, while a safe opened with it pays about 100 to 150 thousand.
• Cargo: Keep it if your base has a workbench to open it, because the loot inside is worth more than the crate’s price.
• Police badges: Keep them if you plan to play a cop; they unlock equipment for senior ranks.
• Plot documents and blueprints: They offer a direct path to a house.
• Gold safes: These are worth a lot. If you spot one, drop the small stuff and take it instead.

Cargo, for the record, is anything your character carries in their hands rather than in the inventory. The purple and yellow (gold) ones pay out heavily when turned in, so grab them whenever the route allows.

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Where the Loot Goes

Looty Bay has various buyers, and since everyone can see them, cops included, they get camped like popular parking spots. Here’s what to expect from each:

• Fence: buys Stolen goods, pays cash based on your Notoriety and loot’s value.
• Smuggler (van): buys Cargo, without opening it.
• Sales Center (aka Distribution Center): buys Loot at better prices, but only to residents renting a plot in that district

Selling doesn’t deposit your money. You collect the cash from the counter yourself, and if you walk away, it sits loose where anyone can grab it or the cops can confiscate it.

Surviving with Money

The walk to the buyer is the most dangerous part of any run, because the buyer is where everyone waits.

Search the whole area and every bush near the fence for players camping the spot before you step out.

If you’re coming back with a large haul, a better method works wonders: switch to the global map, then return to Looty Bay as a Civilian and travel to the fence that way. Even if you are killed this way, you keep both your gear and bag.

If you go head first and get cornered, you might still have a chance to exit: drive out to the global map and re-enter if bridges allow it, or surrender in a quiet place and just your bag is taken, or just hide in closets and bushes, which obviously works just if you’re not spotted.

The Rules of Money

Everything you steal starts life as dirty money, and the rules are simple:

• Cash in your bag and in your trunk is lost on death and on arrest.
• Cash sitting at your base can be stolen too.
• Lenny’s stash is protected (up to 150,000).
• Bank account – all money there is protected.

How to Launder Money in ROB RUN

Laundering takes three steps, in this order:

1. Open an account at the Looty Bay bank, because you can’t launder without one.
2. Get your own plot and house.
3. Load cash into the Laundering Desk at your base, and clean money goes to your account.

The desk feeds your account in portions and keeps working while you’re offline. Banknote Counters speed it up, and desk upgrades make it faster and let it process more.

When you want cash back, use an ATM or a bank employee.

If you don’t have a desk yet, you have two options for smaller amounts:

• launder at Lenny’s (but he takes a cut).
• do it yourself early on, but lose 50%.

The settlement owner takes a tax from the laundering and black-market purchases of every resident, and the district clan takes a share from settlement owners. The settlement owner gets a percentage of each laundering operation you run there. Taxes must be physically collected and delivered.

Your bank account is also your bribe fund. Paying off a cop comes out of it.

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Your First Plot and House

Getting your first plot should be done as fast as possible, as it unlocks laundering, shipments and a car.

Plots usually go super-fast, so make it your #1 priority to get one while supplies last.

After the latest patch, plot rental and a level-1 settlement are paid for with documents, not cash. The documents are called the Land Plot Title and the Settlement Title, and they can also drop as loot, which is why you never sell one you find. Plots in level 2 and 3 districts need special Black Market documents.

Here is how to do it:

1. Unlock and buy the housing documents through Lenny’s laptop.
2. On the global map, find a settlement that has an owner. You can’t enter one without an owner.
3. Open the settlement map, which shows residents’ houses and free spots.
4. Walk to the “For Rent” sign and sign the agreement, then exchange your documents for a house.
5. Place the house and other structures on the plot plan.

Two warnings. The title’s level must match the district’s level. And don’t buy a title in advance: look at the map for free spots in your state first, or you’ll own an expensive piece of paper with nowhere to put it.

If you want to live next to a friend, rent plots in the same settlement. When you move, everything in your base moves with you.

Renting makes you a Settlement Resident, which opens the Sales Center and more Shipments.

Pressing H opens the Shipments tab, where some unlocks need a base in a settlement of the required level and others need jail time.

If you buy a settlement and rent out its plots, you collect a share of tenant spending and laundering, but only in person, and the cash you carry away isn’t safe.

Getting a Car in ROB RUN

Without your own house, you can’t have a personal car, although you can rent one through a parking terminal.

Once you have a house, put the keys in a free slot of the key locker and the car appears in the garage, where it drives out by blueprint. The advantage is that a purchased car survives your death, mods included.

Keep in mind: A lockpick opens another player’s trunk, police cars included, but gets you only the trunk contents, not the car. Opening a trunk counts as a crime, so it feeds your notoriety.

Also read: Scavland Guide: Tips & Tricks to Survive

Building Your Base: What to Build First

Your base is a respawn point, storage, a garage and a black market. A medkit there heals you and lets you choose a respawn point in your settlement.

But since you won’t be able to build everything in one go, here is the order based on importance:

1. Laundering table (and a bank account) because it protects your money.
2. Garage to get your own car.
3. Banknote counter – speeds up laundering
4. Workbench for opening cargo (better profits)
5. Fuses on the door and gates (to discourage or at least slow down raiders)

After that comes a lift for car modules, a plantation, a laboratory, a workshop and a warehouse.

The district decides your shopping options. The trade laptop’s tier equals the level of the district where your plot is, and with no plot you get only tier I. During a raid on your base, the laptop and traders are blocked.

Defending Your Base and Raiding Others’

Stolen goods belong in your base, since Lenny’s stash holds only cash, which means they can be raided.

Fuses in your Security System make attackers spend more time and resources, and defense modules can alert your allies mid-attack, but neither makes you immune.

A raider needs a decoder, which grants temporary access to the building through the Security System.

The window is short, the owner can repair the system and lock the raider out, and stronger fuses make the hack take longer.

Decoders aren’t sold in regular shops. You barter for them at Lenny’s Suspicious Door in the motel: one Action Camera for a decoder, and three decoders plus 10,000 for a higher grade one.

Playing Cop: Badge, Salary and the Cap

To join, talk to the officer at the Looty Bay police station. For the shift, you get free gear and a car, and your personal belongings are stored and returned after duty.

Dying as a cop costs you only department-issued equipment, which explains why it’s so popular at the moment. Cops can only kill criminals.

Without a badge, you get only basic equipment. Badges are single-use: you find them around the city or buy them in the Trade Laptop after research.

Unlock and buy the police sergeant’s badge from Lenny, and keep any you find if you plan to play cop, since they unlock equipment for senior ranks.

Badges can also be bartered: 10 sergeant’s for a lieutenant’s, for example.

Cops are live players who respawn in the city, so a lone criminal is almost always outnumbered, though the city now caps police at 4, and the cap per server means a queue now and then. (This can also change with future patches).

For the first 30 minutes after a server starts, patrol officers carry only pistols. During a shift, you’re paid into your account and receive confiscated goods to sell. Rewards are noticeably smaller than a criminal’s, though.

A temporary bonus comes from an order to surrender, a siren, or answering a backup call.

Wrapping Up

It feels like I wrote a mini book here, and these are just the basics, with just a bit of in-depth data. But it was fun and I sure hope that my guide answers most of your questions, if not all.

But if you still have any other questions, or if you want to share some of your own tips with fellow players, do so in the comments below.