Snowed Under Shovel upgrade planner

Use this planner at base camp after you dump scrap. The long explanation is scrap and upgrades and How to Dig. This page is the short order.

Default spend order

1. Digging power until far snow is tolerable. Distant snow is harder. A Better Tool should be your first pop. Do not buy huge pockets while you still chip ice.
2. Stamina until you can walk home from the nearest landmark without eating panic cans. Pairs with food.
3. Carry capacity until the 50–100 trip joke stops being funny.
4. Finish the shovel tree for Fully Equipped before you obsess over 100 scraps.
5. Coin gacha (Lucky Upgrade) whenever you have coins. Never bank a whole night on a roll.

Decision checks

• If a trip dies in hard snow two minutes from camp, you needed digging power, not pockets.
• If you reach a building and cannot swing, you needed stamina or a can.
• If you walk home empty because you left scrap on the floor, you needed carry.
• If Fully Equipped is done and boxes feel pointless, stop buying power. Loot for documents and charms instead.
• If you are heading to the steel tower, you need power and stamina more than a last pocket tier.

What this planner will not do

It will not list unpublished scrap prices. Chilla’s Art did not put a public spreadsheet on Steam. Patch 1.05 changed map scrap counts, so video numbers may be wrong. Spend until the next achievement or the next landmark, then reassess.

It will not rank “best PvP shovel.” There is no PvP.

Session template

1. Save.
2. Farm the soft ring until the backpack is full.
3. Dump. Buy the next item in the order above.
4. Push the highway one building farther (landmarks).
5. Home, talk to Kai, save.

Repeat until A Signal in the Snow is realistic. Then stop optimizing and play the walkthrough ending stretch.

If upgrades feel like they erased the horror, that is a known Mixed-review beat. You still need them. Keep a tunnel wall if you want the old claustrophobia.

Cross-check badges on the achievement tracker. Cross-check bugs on known bugs if a dump did not register.

If you bought the game during the intro discount and feel rushed, this planner is how you stop wasting the sale window on the wrong stat. A night spent on pockets while the shovel is still a spoon is how two-hour stories become four-hour grudges. Spend, test one highway, spend again. The mountain will tell you which bar was lying. When Fully Equipped finally pops, change jobs: you are a document-and-charm hunter now, not a miner. That job change is the whole point of having a planner instead of a generic “upgrade everything” slogan.

If you are following a streamer who bought pockets first, you can copy them, but expect the hard-snow tax. This planner is opinionated because launch week did not give us a public spreadsheet. Opinionated and labeled is better than a fake cost table. Revisit after 1.05-style economy patches; the order of stats should survive number tweaks even when pile sizes change.

If two friends argue about the order, run a split test on a second save: one file buys pockets early, one file buys power. The power file will reach the bus faster. That experiment costs minutes, not a theory thread. Then delete the pocket file if you like. The mountain is short enough to allow a stubborn test without becoming a second job.