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Even though your starting car is a true rust-ridden jalopy in Pacific Drive, it won't take all too long until you have all the tools you need to replace the sorriest bits with something... well, nicer. More useful, too. After all, there's only so far a set of spare tires will take you in the Olympic Exclusion Zone. The thing about Pacific Drive's upgrade system, though, is that it might prove elusive at first.
Notably, the vast majority of Pacific Drive's gameplay loop is very self-explanatory: take your car out for a ride, collect some resources, avoid anomalies, circle around back to the garage and stock up on gear. Simple! Well, yes, but if you're anything like yours truly, you may end up missing the fact that Pacific Drive's garage Fabrication Station has tabs (upon tabs) of optional unlocks, most of them dedicated to your car specifically!
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How to research new items and upgrades for your Pacific Drive car?
Indeed, you want to go back to your Pacific Drive garage as soon as possible once you've got a healthy stockpile of resources, and take a good long look at the Fabrication Station. Move through the different tabs with 'Q' and 'E' keys, and note that all of the yellow-glowing nodes are accessible for unlocking. You do, of course, need to have all the prerequisite resources in tow, and one of the less obvious things to note here is that you need Unstable Energy, too.
Unstable Energy is sourced by stealing Stable Anchors on your runs, identified by bright-orange nodes on your overworld map. Of course, getting those can and will be challenging sometimes, as picking them up will send various anomalies your way. Still, this is the only way to unlock exciting car upgrades, such as Steel Plating and Offroad Tires - two of our favourites so far. Once you have everything you need to unlock a research node, just click on it and the Fabricator will spit out a blueprint at a moment's notice.
How to install new car parts?
After you've researched a new car part blueprint, you're going to need to visit the Workshop and build them to begin with. Scrap Metal is usually the main resource for these upgrades, though the odds are good you'll need to refine it into plating first. No big deal, though: just hold your mouse clicked and all the refinements will be executed when you're trying to craft a specific car part.
After you've, say, built up a stock of Steel Plating, dismantle the old plates with 'R', and then just install the shiny new ones in their place. It's a simple and straightforward process after you've figured out the research side of things, so it should be no big deal at all, at that point. Quirks, however, are something else entirely.
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