Probably Stolen Luck Guide: Where Luck Comes From, What It Changes and When to Drink Liquid Luck

Luck in Probably Stolen is a hidden number that starts at 0. The Lucky perk adds 15, the Gambler's Coin 5 and Liquid Luck 75, so the most you can have is 95. It only does five things: better Scratcher Tickets, a second lottery draw, richer locked crates, fewer scavenging injuries and inspectors who miss what they find. Negative luck does the opposite. To get the most from a bottle of Liquid Luck, drink it on a Thursday morning before the Lottery Representative arrives, with your locked crates still sealed.

Where does luck come from?

Four things change your luck, and they add up.

Source	Luck	How you get it
Lucky	+15	Positive starting perk, costs 1 point. Cannot be combined with Unlucky.
Unlucky	−15	Negative starting perk, gives 1 point back.
Gambler's Coin	+5	Start scratching 10 Scratcher Tickets, or take Gambling Addiction. Counts in your inventory or Dossier.
Liquid Luck	+75	From Georgio only: 1 free on Day 27, 3 for sale on Day 32. Lasts 3 days per bottle.

Lucky and Unlucky are starting perks, so you choose them once per run and they cannot be combined. The Gambler's Coin counts while it is in your inventory or in the Dossier; anywhere else in the shop it does nothing. You get it the morning after you have started scratching your tenth Scratcher Ticket, or from the start with the Gambling Addiction perk. It also makes the scratching brush bigger, so tickets go faster.

Liquid Luck comes only from Georgio: one free bottle on Day 27, and three more on Day 32 for 240 together. Drink it from your inventory. Each bottle gives you 3 days, the day you drink it included, and the bottle is left behind empty. A second bottle only adds 3 more days; luck stays at +75. On the last night it wears off as you go to sleep, before anything that happens overnight.

What does luck do?

Luck is only checked at a few moments, and it has no effect on prices, customers or how fast anything grows.

• Scratcher Tickets. Every symbol is more likely to be the one you want.
• The lottery. Luck is the chance of a second set of winning numbers, and you get whichever set pays you more.
• Locked crates. Every item chance is multiplied by 1 + luck ÷ 100.
• Scavenging. With positive luck you may dodge an injury; with negative luck a good search may come back empty.
• Inspections. When an inspector finds something, your luck is the chance they let everything go.

Every one of these except crates tells you when luck changed the result, with a message such as "Your luck saved you from an injury!"

Pick your perk, coin and Liquid Luck below to see what your luck does to each of them.

How does luck change Scratcher Tickets?

A Scratcher Ticket costs 20 and has three symbols. Two of a kind pay 10 and three pay 75. Nutrifruit is the special symbol: two Nutrifruit pay 30 and three pay 350, which also unlocks the Jackpot achievement.

Each symbol has a 20% chance to be the one that helps you, and luck multiplies that 20%. At 75 luck it becomes 35%.

1. The first symbol hopes for Nutrifruit.
2. The second symbol hopes to match the first.
3. The third symbol hopes for Nutrifruit if you already have one, otherwise it hopes to match the second.

When a symbol misses, it is one of the other four symbols at random, and luck has no say in that part. That is how the third symbol can still match the first one.

A Scratcher Ticket needs 40 luck to pay back its 20 credits on average. Lucky and the coin together reach only 20, so without Liquid Luck every ticket loses money. The Thief sometimes sells a Stack of Scratcher Tickets (5) for 80, 16 a ticket, which breaks even at 22 luck. That is still just out of reach without Liquid Luck.

You get Scratcher Tickets from the Lottery Representative, five each visit. Scavengers bring one 20% of the time, some food barters offer two, and the Security Department Evidence Locker has a 33% chance. Once you start scratching a ticket its value changes to whatever it has won so far, so sell it before you scratch if you want the 20 back. A winning ticket can be cashed anywhere: double-click it when every symbol is scratched.

How do Scratcher Tickets reroll with luck?

A ticket's symbols are decided when the ticket appears, using your luck at that moment. When you start scratching, the game checks your luck again, and if it is now higher, it throws the symbols away and rolls new ones with your current luck.

• It is a full reroll. You do not keep the better of the two results.
• It only happens before the first symbol is scratched.
• It never happens if your luck has gone down since; lower luck cannot spoil a ticket.

So buy tickets whenever they are offered and keep them unscratched until Liquid Luck is active. A Stack of Scratcher Tickets (5) works the same way: the five tickets inside keep the luck the stack had when it appeared, and each one rerolls when you start scratching it.

How does luck change the lottery?

The Lower Levels Lottery opens after Day 14, or from the start with the Gambling Addiction perk. The Lottery Representative comes every Thursday, first on Day 18, with Lottery Tickets for 25 each, and a new one appears on the table every time you buy one. A ticket has six numbers from 1 to 49. The winning numbers are drawn overnight on Friday and announced in Saturday morning's newspaper. Double-click a winning ticket to cash it.

Luck does not change your numbers. It is the chance that the game draws a second set of winning numbers and keeps whichever set pays more across all your tickets that week. With negative luck, the second set is kept if it pays less. The night log tells you when luck changed the draw.

The draw uses the higher of two values: your luck that night, and the luck you had when each of your tickets appeared. So tickets bought while Liquid Luck is active keep its +75 for the draw, even if the bottle wears off before Friday night.

The more tickets you hold, the less each one gains from the second draw, because one set of numbers cannot be good for all of them at once. Even at 95 luck a single ticket only just pays back its 25 credits.

When should you drink Liquid Luck?

Plan around Thursday, the day the Lottery Representative comes.

1. Before Thursday. Buy every Scratcher Ticket you are offered and keep it unscratched. Keep your locked crates sealed.
2. Thursday morning. Drink the Liquid Luck before the Lottery Representative arrives. The tickets she lays out are made with your new luck.
3. Thursday. Buy your Lottery Tickets, scratch the Scratcher Tickets you saved and open your locked crates. Each one rerolls with your higher luck.
4. Friday night. The draw. A bottle drunk on Thursday is still active, and the tickets remember it anyway.
5. Saturday. The last day of the bottle. Use it for scavenging runs, or for days you expect an inspection with contraband in the shop.

You can also reload. If a crate opened under Liquid Luck disappoints you, load the save from that morning, drink again and open it again: it is filled from scratch every time.

How does luck change crates, scavenging and inspections?

Locked crates. A crate is a list of separate item chances, for example a Surgery Toolset at 25% in the Medical Bay Supply Crate. Luck multiplies each one, so at 15 luck that Surgery Toolset is 28.75%, and at 75 luck it is 43.75%. Items a crate always contains, such as the genuine Immunivax Injector in a Medical Bay Supply Crate, are not affected. A crate's contents are fixed when it appears, but like Scratcher Tickets it is filled again from scratch if your luck is higher when you open it with a keycard. This does not happen if you have looked inside with a Portable XRay Scanner, and the game does not tell you when it happens. The supply crates guide covers what each crate holds and a calculator for its value.

Scavenging. With positive luck, your luck is the chance to avoid an injury when a search would hurt you; you still find nothing on that search. With negative luck, it is the chance that a search which would have found something comes back empty.

Inspections. If your luck is positive and the inspector finds something, your luck is the chance they overlook everything, contraband included. It is one check per inspection, not per item. You do not get the +3 Security reputation of a clean inspection that way, and negative luck does not make inspections worse. See Contraband, Heat and Inspections for what inspectors look at.

Is gambling worth it?

Not on average, and not for long. Without Liquid Luck both Scratcher Tickets and Lottery Tickets lose money on every purchase. With it, Scratcher Tickets pay back about 1.5 times their price, but you only ever get four bottles, 12 days of luck in a whole run. Buy tickets with spare money, keep them for a Liquid Luck day, and never touch rent money for them.