Death Stranding guide: Lost and dropped cargo

In the vast, disconnected world of Death Stranding, you’ll be making deliveries to bring the country back together again. Doing so requires you to fill out a ton of orders that are both story-related and optional, if you want to level up your connection with NPCs.

Scattered throughout the landscape are dozens of bits of lost and dropped cargo that isn’t yours. At first, you’ll find lost cargo from NPCs you’ve met throughout the game, but as you progress and become more connected to other players, you’ll begin seeing lost cargo around the map.

If you’re wondering if you should pick up and deliver lost and dropped cargo: You should! There are benefits for going out of your way, and this short guide will explain them to you.

Lost cargo

Grid View

• You can see lost cargo after you scan your surroundings with R1 Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon
• Lost cargo also appears on your map Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Lost cargo will periodically show up on your map as you make your way from one delivery to the next. Shipments that belong to a certain person or destination will show up as blue hexagons with a small icon representing a person inside them. Taking these deliveries back to their intended destination will award you likes for that facility, helping you raise your connection level with them, the same way you would if you did a standard delivery for them.

To deliver lost cargo at its intended destination, go to the facility’s terminal, select “Make Delivery” then “Deliver Lost Cargo.” You can also entrust lost cargo at any facility for another player to drop off. Doing so will still earn you some likes based on the distance you brought the cargo relative to where you found it, but you won’t receive the full amount you would have if you delivered it to where its final destination. .

Dropped cargo

Beyond lost cargo, you can also find dropped cargo from other players. This cargo appears in green (like every other online item).

Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Dropped cargo will also have a player’s name on it (also in green), so you know who it belongs to. Cargo becomes lost cargo if you drop it, and then move too far away from it. For instance, if you lose your footing in a river and your cargo floats too far downstream for you to grab again, you run the risk of losing it.

After a certain amount of time and distance, that cargo will leave your game and head to another player’s game. If you need to offload cargo but don’t want to lose it, put it in a private locker in your game. Once in a private locker, you can retire it from that (specific) locker.

You can treat dropped cargo like lost cargo and bring it back to its destination. Doing so will award likes to both of you. If you’re feeling altruistic, help a fellow porter out.

In the event the lost cargo is a usable item, you can use it for yourself. Be warned though: Once used, you can no longer deliver that item to its destination.

If you happen to lose someone else’s lost cargo, there’s a chance it might find its way to a shared locker either in a facility or in any portable, online lockers players might have left in the open world.