over the hill vehicles and upgrades are two systems that touch everything else in the game, because traction is the resource you are always spending. The demo shipped three vehicles, all three officially confirmed as upgradeable and customizable, and the upgrade that carries a stated mechanical benefit is tires: the developer confirms a grip gain. Everything else about the build system has to be read more carefully than the marketing suggests.
This page is about how the build behaves rather than which part to buy first. It splits what the developer confirmed from what players assume, so a setup you build for one kind of terrain does not quietly fail on the next one.
The three demo vehicles
The roster is worth naming precisely, because most written coverage gets it wrong. The names visible in the demo UI were Protector, Burro and Trail Burner. The names Roamer and Sentinel, which appear widely in written coverage, are not in-game names — they are press guesses made from bodywork, and mixing the two sets is the most common error on this topic.
All three are unlicensed, toy-like takes on 1960s to 1980s off-road classics rather than replicas, which matters for expectations: there is no real-world specification sheet to reason from. Vehicles unlock by completing trail challenges, and the demo carried three challenges, two of which unlock a vehicle beyond the starter.
What an upgrade actually changes
Mechanical confirmation in the sources is narrow and specific, which is why upgrade choices resist a simple ranking. Tires are the one part with an explicit developer statement behind them, and even that comes without a percentage and without a promise that a given slope becomes climbable.
| Part or field | Status |
|---|---|
| Tires | Developer confirms a grip benefit, with no figure attached |
| Winch strength | Not planned as an upgrade benefit at the time of the developer AMA |
| Engine and suspension | Cost-to-benefit ranking is unverified |
| Full parts price list | Not published |
| Per-vehicle specs (power, weight, clearance) | Not published |
The absence of a price list is the practical constraint. Without published costs, any "best order" is a preference rather than a measurement, and the popular tires-plus-winch advice is a community suggestion rather than a tested result. The advice still works as a starting preference: a player in the community thread on the final demo trail reported completing the whole map in the starting vehicle after prioritising tires and a winch, though the loadout, line and bindings were never recorded.
The winch does not get stronger
This is the single most useful boundary in the vehicle system, because it inverts a common assumption. In the developer AMA the team said upgrading the winch to increase its pull strength was not planned at that time, and that base winch strength was still being balanced. A "winch upgrade" should therefore not be read as more pulling power.
What the winch needs is geometry, not power. It recovers a vehicle where a tree or other fixed point is close enough to reach, and no amount of line helps where no anchor exists. Where the terrain offers nothing, portable winch anchors and a jack are equipped at the merchant instead, which makes them the answer to a spacing problem rather than a strength problem. Rebuilding a route so that an anchor point stays within reach is a cheaper fix than any purchase.
Mounting, unmounting and the refund question
Upgrades can be mounted and unmounted, which the developer confirmed in the AMA. That makes experimentation structurally possible: you can fit a part, run the same obstacle, and take it back off without the change being permanent.
Whether unmounting returns the Pebbles you paid is a separate question, and the sources do not establish refund behaviour. Treat unmounting as reversible fitting rather than as a refund, and assume the currency is spent until a source says otherwise. That distinction decides whether a build experiment is free or costs you a farming trip, so it is worth knowing before you buy a part you are unsure about.
Customization is confirmed, its form is not
Customization is officially confirmed to exist — the demo's three vehicles are described as upgradeable and customizable, and the August progress update states that both upgrades and appearance were still being adjusted. That second point is the important one, because it means the balance and the cosmetic options seen in June should not be treated as final.
Some appearance content is sold rather than earned. The Supporter Pack, priced at US$9.99, is described as containing cosmetics, name tags, a unique camping spot, a printable map and wallpapers. What the in-game customization screen actually offers beyond that is not documented in the collected sources, so the extent of free cosmetic options remains open.
Preparing the vehicle for the terrain ahead
Traction is the variable that ties the build to the map, and it moves for reasons beyond your parts list. The official FAQ states that both weather and tire condition affect grip, which explains why a slope can refuse a climb on one attempt and feel ordinary on the next without anything about the vehicle changing.
Damage is the second environmental pressure. The FAQ states that vehicle damage reduces performance and that repair kits are limited, with buying a new upgrade explicitly not established as a substitute for repairing. That reframes a hard hit as a resourcing problem rather than a cosmetic one. Since dynamic weather and a day/night cycle run over the same map, the same trail is a different difficulty at different hours, and a build that works in dry daylight is not automatically a build that works in the dark and the wet.
The Pebbles economy underneath the build
Pebbles are the demo's unlock currency, and the developer answered a direct question about funding a full build by confirming that a player can earn enough to fully upgrade all three demo vehicles. In the same answer the meteorites were described as infinite, which supports repeatable income — though no spawn timer or earning rate has been published, so the pace of farming is unknown and any budget plan is guesswork.
Extraction has a documented procedure and is the part of the economy you can execute exactly: park with space away from the rock, run the winch from the rear of the vehicle, attach the far end directly to the meteorite, then hold throttle and pull while driving away. In multiplayer every assisting vehicle must attach directly, because chaining them does not work.
A build test you can run yourself
Because no price list and no measured ranking exist, the only reliable method is a comparison you control. Name the failure first — wheelspin, being stuck, damage, or an effect you cannot identify — and record the vehicle, the current fit and the terrain. Then change one relevant variable, read the in-game description and price before buying, and retest on the same obstacle with the route and conditions as close as you can make them. Only spend again once you can say whether the original problem improved.
Comparison against a fixed obstacle is the only way to learn which parts matter to the terrain you actually drive.
What remains unknown before release
The per-vehicle specification sheet is the largest gap: power, torque, weight, wheelbase, ground clearance, turning radius, differential and drivetrain behaviour, and the factory tires and suspension of each vehicle are all unpublished, as are the effects of individual upgrades per vehicle. Because the August update confirms upgrades and appearance were still being adjusted, June's trade-offs should not be read as the final balance.
Two smaller items are 待确认. Whether unmounting a part returns its cost is not established, and the full set of in-game cosmetic options is undocumented beyond the Supporter Pack contents. A third anecdote — community screenshots showing garage entries that cannot be driven out — points at placeholder or locked vehicles, but no explanation has been published.