Quasimorph First Contract Guide

Your first Quasimorph contract after the Pine Gap tutorial decides whether the Magnum economy starts humming or stalls. Version 1.0 (Steam, July 31, 2026) wiped default Early Access saves — start a fresh campaign, ignore obsolete EA upgrade orders, and treat live tooltips as authority over any pre-1.0 guide. This page is the opening loop: pick operator and class together, install the first Conveyor when you can, finish the objective before greed loot, extract, then reset the ship. Pair with Getting Started, Choosing Contracts, and Ammo Types.

Save branch reminder

• Default Early Access saves are incompatible with 1.0.
• Unstable Beta saves may load.
• Backup %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Magnum Scriptum\Quasimorph\ before branch experiments.

Hotfixes 1.0.561 / 1.0.562 and Patch 1.0.1 clarified difficulty, trading, and mission prep UI — read skulls and beneficiary labels on the live briefing, not from memory.

Video guide

Step 0 — Unload and open Supply

Finish the tutorial, use Unload All, and park useful items on the Magnum before you open the System Map. If the opening cargo includes the Welder, install the first Conveyor under Supply immediately. One production slot plus one queue slot is enough to start licensed basics (for example Sorbent) so the first failed run costs less.

Do not spend rare chips on fashion Engineering projects before Conveyor, Monitoring, or Scanner solve a problem you already felt. Priority logic lives in Magnum Upgrades.

Step 1 — Read the whole briefing

Before Reward-sorting the board, note:

• Beneficiary versus victim
• Station type and floors
• Travel time versus time remaining
• Skull rating and Power Concentration
• Quasimorphic / Absentia flags

Mars, Phobos, and Deimos remain the safest first destinations because they sit in Absentia (no Quasimorphosis). Prefer short floor counts. Details: Choosing Contracts and Mission Types.

Step 2 — Operator, class, and weapon as one decision

Community 1.0 consensus for most new players:

• Percy Paladin Fawcett — high health, high pain threshold, large calorie capacity, Invincible passive (+12 all resists, melee damage scales with carried weight). Pair with Scouts of Hades for a generalist gun start or Tunnel Rats for loot and cover play.
• Kenzie Kunai Yukio — better base accuracy and dodge, strong weight-penalty reduction on dodge. Keep as a second body or hybrid later.

Match class to the firearm and ammo you can actually supply on the Magnum, not to a late perk fantasy. Load the weapon before launch, place compatible stacks, then add medicine, food, and water. Leave a slot for the mission item. Use the Loadout Planner once if weight looks tight.

Conservative first-contract kit:

• One loaded ranged primary
• One compatible ammo stack
• One melee backup
• Two Bandages and two Splints
• One food and one water
• Sorbent or Antibiotic when available
• Empty slot for the objective

Read Operators, Beginner Classes, and Builds after you survive two extracts — do not theory-craft genomes on contract one.

Step 3 — Play the floor

1. Enter in Sneak near doors; keep an action point after peeks (Combat Stances).
2. Examine before dumping magazines (Room Clearing).
3. Finish the objective first; optional rooms must justify risk to that progress.
4. Watch wounds — stabilize, then recalculate whether the route is still worth it (Wounds and Medicine).
5. Extract when Health, ammo, or Calories lose their safety margin. Partial loot beats a full backpack on a corpse.

Skip fire or gas experiments on the only corridor home — see Environmental Hazards after Mars feels automatic.

Step 4 — Reset the Magnum

After extract, Unload All again and sort into four piles:

1. Next loadout — ammo, meds, food, practical gear
2. Progression — chips, story items, Magnum components for the current upgrade bottleneck
3. Barter — surplus the next useful station wants (Bartering, Stock Exchange)
4. Dismantle — duplicates after unloading ammo

Then buy the Magnum node that removes the bottleneck you just felt: blind searching → Scanner; empty board → Monitoring; rare loot dying with the clone → Capsule; routine supply collapse → Conveyor / Scavengers; no Health margin → Clone Rank.

What not to do on contract one

• Chase five-skull outer-system jobs for Reward column dopamine
• Sell opening Secret Data without reading Campaign Overview story gates
• Ignore Conveyor when the Welder is sitting in cargo
• End turn peeking a door on your last AP
• Bring three calibers for one gun (Ammo Types)

Related reading

• Guides Hub — full tactics index
• Difficulty Settings — Normal before Unfair
• Hotfixes and Patch 1.0.1 — week-one client fixes
• Unchained Belt — later endurance exam, not day-one content

A stable opening campaign is a repeatable loop: nearby Absentia contract → matched loadout → objective first → controlled extract → one Magnum upgrade that fixes the failure you actually saw.