Inferno Protocol Settlement, Trade, and Camps

Official Inferno Protocol copy: people live in here. Not many. There is a settlement at the center where you can farm, build walls, and craft. Outside it, smaller camps survive in the corridors. Some will talk, some will trade, some will not wait for you to draw first. This page is that social layer — traders, quests, cooking, beds, building — so the maze has a reset that is not a corpse. Marks still matter; read maze navigation so you can find this place after a shift.

New players should finish getting started and the Prologue first. The notebook is hidden during that chapter on purpose.

The settlement is a warehouse, not the win

Use it to store, cook, sleep, and trade. Do not empty every chest onto the dirt. Demo quality-of-life lets you craft from items still inside chests and stashes. Building and crafting UIs have a name filter. Quick merge is a double-click. Quick item use works from the inventory screen. That is how you avoid inventory paralysis before a six-player Jungle run.

“Home Sweet Horrifying Home” is an achievement-shaped joke. Build walls with facing direction visible (a later demo pass added that). Leave a door you can find in the dark. Place wall torches on the outside so returning squads can see home after a shift. Do not wall off the trade interior; NPC traders have dedicated rooms.

If a teammate goes down, pull back to these walls, not to a random Junkyard alley. The co-op guide assigns an Anchor on purpose. Boring is the job.

Traders and the part economy

Press kit: central safe zone with NPCs available for trading. Money is not the economy. Parts and intel are. July 2026 added a full trade UI, effects, animations, and configurable inventories per NPC, plus trade interiors in safe zones.

Practical rules:

• Peek before you assume a vendor. Corridor camps may shoot first. Treat unknown humanoids as combat until you see the trade UI.
• Send two, keep four on overwatch. A six-stack walking in with guns up is a diplomatic incident.
• Proximity voice off in the street. Walkie on. Enemies hear you; so do people who have not decided you are friendly.
• If a recipe is starving you of an organ, trade before you inject unlabeled glass. Crafting and injectors are cheaper when the trader has the plate you need.

Quests and the Prologue

Quest hints and progress tracking were added in the demo content update and folded into the Prologue. A later fix unblocked some initial quests that could not progress on first entry. A quest list bug was patched in July. If a board looks empty, it may have been that class of bug — check patch notes before you assume the system is flavor.

Do the Prologue quests. They teach inventory, marks, and tone. “Finish The Prologue” is a Steam achievement because the studio wants you in that loop. Sound recordings (audio black boxes) hide story in the world; they are not a map, but they are why you stop sprinting past every interactable.

Cooking, rain, and beds

Cooking was rebuilt for netcode. Campfires and cooking tables both work. Fire barrels light with a torch and cook; rain extinguishes them. Food can be cooked, overcooked, or eaten raw, with consequences. “Feel Like a Chef” exists because this is survival, not restaurant RP. Leather flasks come empty and filled.

Co-op: one player cooks, others guard. Smoke is a beacon. In Swamp, tables under roofs win. Eat before you inject. Rage on an empty stomach is how people tunnel into a camp wearing a cowboy hat.

Beds improved in the same window; the gamepad cancel button actually cancels. “Beauty Rest” is on the achievement list. Sleep at home, not mid-grab. Save-anytime is a Steam feature — use it at the settlement.

Building and traps as architecture

The Better Building update showed facing direction and placement effects. Physics, ladder-exit stand-ups, and interior fall-throughs were patched because building collided with netcode. Launch-week reviews still mentioned falling through floors. Re-log, check the last bed, and do not store your only shotgun in a physics-suspect interior until a note says the room is safe.

Traps are crafts you plant and abandon: bear traps (no trigger while climbing), teleport traps that carry explosives, fire barrels as area denial until rain. Mark trap tiles in the notebook so teammates do not donate a shin. Weapons ranks traps as honoraries because they are the best DPS you are not holding.

Camps that are not home

Smaller camps are content and a threat. Some trade. Some wait. Some do not. Official line: the rules of the maze cost more than ammo. If you take a camp, stagger the first melee, shotgun the second, leave a wall torch on the way home so the shift does not steal the haul. Then dump parts into settlement storage and cook.

The settlement does not complete the game. It lets you walk maze layers long enough to hunt the exit. If you cannot find home, you do not have a base. You have a rumor.