Loot in an extraction shooter is a weight problem disguised as a treasure problem. The instinct is to pick up everything that looks valuable and sort it out later, and the instinct is wrong, because “later” is a walk through a map with other people on it. Value per slot is the only number that matters, and it is not the number the interface shows you.
Slot cost, not rarity colour
An item occupies a number of slots and is worth a number of credits. Divide one by the other and you have the only figure worth comparing. A high-rarity item that fills half your pack can be worth less per slot than a stack of something ordinary, and a stack is what your pack is actually made of.
The practical version: when you open a container, do not ask “is this good?”. Ask “is this better per slot than the worst thing in my pack right now?”. If it is not, close the container and keep moving. That single question removes most of the time you would otherwise spend standing still in the open.
Stacks change the arithmetic
Anything that stacks has a value per slot that scales with how many you have, which makes partial stacks a trap. Picking up three of something that stacks to twenty is a decision that only pays off if you find seventeen more. If the container is behind you and the route ahead is unknown, three is a slot you spent on a hope.
The exception is anything a workbench upgrade needs in quantity. Those are not sold — they are consumed, and their value is measured against the upgrade they unlock rather than against their sale price. Knowing which materials those are for your current workbench tier is worth more than any general loot guide, because it turns a whole category of pickups from “maybe” into “always”.
The full-pack problem
A full pack is not a success state. It is a weight penalty and a decision you have already made badly, because a full pack means you cannot pick up the thing you will find two rooms later. Raiders who extract with a full pack of low-value items have usually walked past something better while their hands were full.
There is a second cost that is easier to miss: a full pack makes you slow, and slow makes you take fights you would otherwise avoid. The correlation between “carrying a lot” and “dying in a doorway” is not a coincidence. The pack is a combat stat.
The discipline is to leave one or two slots permanently empty as a buffer. Not because you expect to find something better, but because an empty slot is what lets you take the opportunity when it appears without stopping to repack in the open.
What the objective changes
Value is not absolute; it depends on what the run is for. A material that is worthless to sell may be the exact thing your workbench needs, which makes it the most valuable item in the raid. A high-value item that sells well but that you already have three of is, on this run, just weight.
This is why the loot hierarchy on any given raid should be written down before the launch, not discovered during it. Two lines is enough: “these three things are instant pickups, these things are pickups only if the pack is under half, everything else is scenery.” A raider with that list moves faster than a raider deciding per container, because the deciding has already happened.
When to dump and when to push
Somewhere in the middle of a raid you will face the choice between keeping what you have and going for what you came for. The default should be to keep. A raid that extracts with 60% of the available value is worth more than three raids that die chasing 100%, because the dead raids are worth nothing and each one costs a kit.
The exception is a run whose entire purpose was the objective. If you launched for a specific quest item and it is in a known location, the calculation is different: the quest step is worth more than the pack, so the correct move is to dump weight, go fast, and accept a higher risk of losing the rest. That is a decision to make before the launch, not in the room.
The habit that carries over
The loot skill that transfers to every later raid is not knowing prices. It is the habit of asking, at every container, whether the thing in front of you beats the worst thing you are carrying. That question works in the first hour and it works in the five-hundredth, because it is a question about your pack rather than about the game.