Abe rushes past the final slig of the section. Your thumbs move at lightning speed. A quick glance towards the live split: all golds. Sweat begins to form as the pressure intensifies (making you glad to have a low-resolution camera). One movement left before you split. Abe approaches the 60-moolah door and presses the button. Nothing happens. You stare at the locked door, confused. What happened? You don't have enough moolah!

Don't let this happen to you! Hopefully this guide will offer a helpful hand in avoiding this crushing defeat at the hands of those greedy greedy glukkons!

In this guide, we'll take the scenic route through Phat Station, pointing out the sections, pay-doors and places to redeem that five-finger-discount. Here we'll dump data on you like a Looney Tunes piano! Your bruises are then soothed with some analysis, where we present a few approaches that you speed-demons may wish to adopt in your runs.

Phat Station is a level that needs (and deserves) little introduction. The love held among our community for this ten-stage gauntlet is incomparable in all Oddworld. On the journey to his first ever train hijacking, Abe must pay through the nose to progress past four doors. The overall price-tag is a whopping 180M, and Abe must amass his funds from a random loot pool that has a 1-in-17-septillion chance of giving you as little as 191M. (I hope you are not so unlucky!)

Given the loot pool's random nature, it's inevitable that the luckiest will be the fastest. But when we're knee-deep in an intense run, how can we answer that age old question: “to loot, or not to loot?” First, we need to know where the loot is.

Before Abe enters the first tank, there's two secret areas beneath the sharp snipers on steroids. These contain crates that give a nice consistent stash of 12 and 9 empty bottles respectively. Each bottle nets you 1M at your friendly recycling vendor.

Abe then progresses into the first of four tanks, the loot pools of which are presented in Table 1. This only includes sources that are guaranteed to give you moolah. For example, we omit the round bins, because they may give you bottles or may have been already been emptied by another over-zealous mudokon. For Tank 1A, there are four lockers in a secret area which many may which to ignore, so the loot is counted separately. This should be read is 'main loot + loot from secret'.

Table 1

The first thing to note from Table 1 is that the minimum possible loot between third and final door totals to 48M. The final door requires 60M. So for the unluckiest among you, that's a softlock (and a paddlin'). To be absolutely sure you'll make it through, you need to enter Tank 3D with at least 12M.

So say you're about to pay 50M to get out of Tank 2D. To be safe, you need to carry 12M over to the next tank, making the effective cost of that door 62M. Table 2 gives the effective cost for each door.

Table 2

Great! So now you know how much you'll need for each door (unless you're the gambling type), how do you get it in the fastest way possible?

Of course, the fastest way is the luckiest way: if a locka gives you more dolla, then the fewer you need to holla. From the get go, there's 11M you don't need to collect, which translates to 11 lockers in either Tank 1D or 2D! However, you may decide the 9 bottles from the second set of crates on entry isn't worth it (given you need to shimmey between mines to get to it). Then you've only got a 2M cushion.

Personally, I won't go for those crates or hit the secret! That now means the lowest possible loot pool is 174M! So, during my run I need to count the number of times a locker/dumpster is kind to me and gives me an extra 1M. This needs to happen 6 times to avoid the softlock, which should be fine. That's like asking to land heads 6 times out of 118. No one is that unlucky, right? (Right??).

In fact, you should get even luckier! You should find that you loot much more than this minimum, So now it becomes unnecessary to loot every single locker, saving you that sweet sweet time. If you keep a track of how much moolah you have in excess, you should be able to determine how many lockers you can skip.

Ultimately, which lockers/dumpsters you skip is up to you. I recommend hitting all lockers in Tank 3D because they give you at least 3M, so they're worth three lockers in Tank 1D. It's a similar story with the lockers in Tank 1A.

At the time of writing, I think it's worth looting all lockers in Tank 1A (apart from the secret). At the end of the tank, take the moolah you have and subtract by 66, the effective cost of the door. Keep this number in your head: that is the number of lockers you don't need to hit in Tanks 1D and 2D. Of course, you'll hit some, so every time you get lucky with a locker in those tanks, add 1 to that number in your head. Every time you skip a locker/dumpster, subtract 1. Ideally, you want to get to the end of Tank 3D with that number being zero. That way, you won't softlock, nor would you wasted time looting more lockers than you need.

Of course, the above is difficult and cumbersome. But that's the best I've got :( . Hopefully I'll be updating this as I think up better ways of trimming the Phat Station. I hope this has been helpful nonetheless!

Also: a big thank you to @UltraStars3000 and @HimmDawg for their work on gathering data and discussing tactics!

• GeekyLucii