Economy
Salvage is the difficulty dial nobody explains
Every animatronic you bring home pays you once and then spends the rest of the run trying to kill you. This is how to price that trade across all four locations.
Verified against v2.0.2
Quick answer
Between nights you visit one of four wrecked locations and salvage animatronics. Each one pays tokens and then becomes active during subsequent nights. Your guard sets how many you must take from each location: Jeremy 1, Mike 2, Vanessa 3, Fritz 4.
Tokens buy office upgrades and route items. Harder animatronics pay more, so the correct pick is always the hardest threat whose cue you can already recognise, not the scariest name on the list.
Quota by guard
| Guard | Tier | Per location | Effect on the night |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jeremy Fitzgerald | Easy | 1 | Slowest animatronics, cheapest upgrades. |
| Mike Schmidt | Normal | 2 | Faster movement, two threats per salvage. |
| Vanessa Shelly | Hard | 3 | Three per location, sharper audio cues. |
| Fritz Smith | Lunatic | 4 | Four per location at maximum aggression. |
Quota is mandatory, not optional. On Fritz you are not choosing whether to add four threats, only which four. That is why Lunatic is a planning difficulty rather than a reflex difficulty.
Freddy Fazbear's Pizza
The teaching location. Every threat here introduces one office system, so the nightly cost stays predictable while you build a token base.
What makes it dangerous: Two mechanics punish the same reflex: the endoskeleton and Springtrap both react to your flashlight, and Golden Freddy punishes lowering the monitor.
Route advice: Best first stop on every route. Take one withered, bank the tokens, and only open the safe room once you are comfortable with the flashlight timing.
Roster: Withered band · Golden Freddy · Endoskeleton · Springtrap
Fazbear's Fright
Attrition location. Most of the roster cannot kill you alone, which makes it the cheapest way to add real pressure to a night.
What makes it dangerous: Scrap Baby drains power from Parts and Service and is the one direct killer here. Lolbit quietly inflates shop prices.
Route advice: Use it to farm disruption on a Money route, but clear Parts and Service before the drain turns a winnable night into a blackout.
Roster: Scrap Baby · Molten Freddy · Lefty · Lolbit
William's Woods
The story location. Notes and rooms here carry the Afton material that the endings lean on, and the plush roster is genuinely dangerous.
What makes it dangerous: Nightmarionne kills on eye contact, Dreadbear demands a specific candy, and Nightmare punishes any long interaction. All three at once is a trap.
Route advice: Do not stack all three plush threats. Pick the one you have already learned, and read the lore rooms on a run where you can afford the time.
Roster: Nightmares · Plush line · Lore rooms
Circus Baby's Entertainment & Rentals
The token engine. This is where a Money route is actually funded, and where a careless Ultimate route dies.
What makes it dangerous: Funtime Freddy refuses to attack while both doors are shut, so turtling fails. Ballora is audio-only. Every rental is a boss in a normal salvage slot.
Route advice: Salvage one rental per night maximum. If you need two, take a night off from optional threats and bank the surplus.
Roster: Circus Baby · Ballora · Funtime Freddy · Funtime Foxy · Funtime Chica · Yenndo
How tokens actually work
Tokens are earned per salvage and scaled by the difficulty of the animatronic. They are spent in the shop on office upgrades and on route items. Two consequences follow, and they explain most failed runs:
- Token income is front-loaded. The early nights are the cheapest place to earn, because your nightly threat list is short. Farming late is expensive.
- Route items compete with survival upgrades. Every token spent on a comfort upgrade is a token not spent on the purchase your ending needs.
Four rules that decide the night
1. Salvage is a loan, not a purchase
Every animatronic you bring home joins the night. The tokens are real; so is the extra door check at 3 AM.
2. Difficulty pays, comfort survives
Harder animatronics are worth more tokens. The correct pick is the hardest one whose cue you can already recognise.
3. Quota is per guard, not per night
Your guard decides how many you must take from each location. That number is the real difficulty setting, not the label on the menu.
4. The shop closes
Late-game nights remove the shop entirely. Any purchase tied to an ending has to happen before that lock, which is why route planning starts on Night 2.
A salvage order that works
- Night 2: one withered from Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Cheap, loud, and teaches the door-plus-camera rhythm.
- Night 3: a Fazbear's Fright disruption threat if you want pressure without a direct killer, or your first mask search if you are chasing the Good route.
- Night 4: William's Woods only if you have already learned the plush cues. Otherwise skip it entirely; the lore rooms are worth more on a second run.
- Night 5: one Circus Baby's rental to fund the files. Never two.
If a night feels impossible, the fix is usually one salvaged animatronic too many on the previous night, not a missed door. The threat index lists which cues to memorise before you take the next one.