Lost But Found Guide: Tips to Get Started

Losing your belongings at airport security checkpoints can be a distressing experience. I know how it feels. But thanks to the hardworking officers at the Lost and Found office, you get back your valuables safe and sound.

In the Steam game Lost but Found, you take on the role of an airport officer responsible for managing lost items. Unite lost belongings with their owners, and in return get generously tipped by them. All sorts of weird and wonderful items get turned in at the conveyor belt. Organize them in a top-down table and be quick in serving distressed passengers.

There are a few twists and turns in the game, like getting robbed by a burglar, men in black tempting you to auction off lost items at the market and security personnel entrusting top-secret documents. Choose whether you remain to be an upright officer or get tempted and compromise on your principles. Upgrades provide valuable assistance in organizing and distributing lost items to passengers, making your job easier and boosting your earnings. If you are new to playing Lost but Found, this guide may improve your efficiency in managing passengers and organizing items. I will also help you choose the right difficulty mode, and prepare for the highest difficulty level.

Choose your Game Mode Wisely

Lost but Found has four game modes/difficulty levels:

1. Chill: Perfect for beginners. There won’t be any timers, so you can help passengers find their lost items at your own pace. This game mode is ideal for a practice session—give it a try.

2. Relax: Fewer items to find for your passengers. Items and passengers will arrive a bit faster than chill mode. At times you will have to face more than two passengers simultaneously for finding their lost items. But they will tip you well.

3. Normal: Not for beginners. Much faster challenges and more mini games than relax mode. Expect more and more passengers requesting lost items at a time. Higher impatience, which means you will have to find and submit lost items faster. Of course, the tip will also be higher, but you will get tired at the end of the shift.

4. Mayhem: As the term suggests, it’s the most brutal game mode and should be tried only when you have mastered the game in normal mode. You will be in the middle of a busiest day at the airport. Everyone’s losing their belongings and its extremely chaotic. Play at your own risk!

If you are just starting out, then I would recommend choosing the chill mode. Cozy gamers who dont like to be stressed out should only stick to the first game mode. The game’s addicting, but a higher difficulty setting would clearly make you feel tensed. Even the Relax mode can be overwhelming for many! Once you have practiced enough, you can start playing at higher difficulties only when you feel comfortable.

Getting Started

Three items will arrive on the conveyor belt. You will have to be quick to place them on the table. If there’s no space to keep them, then some items will remain on the conveyor belt, only to be replaced by 3 more items. Dont let the belt pile up. You will face penalty, and money will be deducted from your total cash pile.

After placing items on the table, hover the cursor over them to view their names. You can also organize the items by moving them across the table by using the mouse, rotating them using Q and E keys. And if you think the table is cluttered too much, just press the tab key to reset.

When passengers approach the counter, they will request their lost items. Keep an eye on the blue bar below their speech bubble and provide the requested item quickly before the bar empties. Failing to serve a lost item before the blue bar runs out will upset the passenger, causing them to leave and increasing the stress-o-meter.

The stress-o-meter, a small thermometer in the lower right corner of the screen, indicates rising impatience and collective anger among passengers. If it begins to heat up, you’ll need to act fast! Serve the correct items continuously to cool it down. If you keep serving the wrong items or fail to serve them, it will cause the thermometer to reach its limit, and it will be GAME OVER. Don’t worry, though—you will start from where you left off.

Sometimes the lost item requested by a passenger may not be on your table. Click on “Don’t Have” below the speech bubble to send the passenger back. Don’t worry. You will get their phone number on a sticky note. Call them when the item arrives at the conveyer belt. Your smartphone can be found on the lower-right corner of the screen. Hover the mouse cursor over the top portion of the phone slide it up and enter the phone number to call the passenger.

Don’t send people back for no reasons. You might think this could be a good strategy to pacify them and avoid angry passengers, but that’s not the case. Every time you press that Don’t Have button, the stress-o-meter heats up a bit. Send them back only when you can’t find an item. And make sure your table is well organized and free of clutter.

If too many sticky notes pile up on the table, it will be difficult for you to remember which number is associated with the lost items. Just hover over a sticky note to get the name of the item, and call the passenger if that item is in the conveyor belt or on your table. Once you have fulfilled their request, throw the stickey note into the trash can.

Happy passengers leave a tip on the extreme right side of the table. Click on the blue notes to collect them. Total cash earned will be displayed on the lower-right corner of the screen, below the thermometer.

Robbers will appear from time to time. Be quick to use the pepper spray on them, else money will be siphoned off from your cash pile. Some robbers can also be seen scattering items around. Won’t be a good sight, especially if you have organized them neatly on the table. The pepper spray is located above the timer, on the lower-right corner of the screen. Just drag it over the robber to fend them off. He will flee only when the bar below him fills up. So make sure you keep it over him for some time until he runs away from the counter.

Special items at the conveyor belt will have an exclamation mark on them. An exclamation mark suggests a mini game that fetches additional cash. While it’s not mandatory to play that mini game, earning extra bucks won’t hurt, will it?

If you see an exclamation mark on an item, right-click it to start a mini-game. Each item type features its own unique mini-game:

Apparel: They feature the cleaning mini game. Just drag the soap over the dirty spots on a cloth to clean it.

Top-Secret Files: A top-secret file features a signature mini game. Trace the signature using your mouse cursor to sign a document.

Combination Cases: Bit tricky. You will have to right-click on a briefcase, enter the correct combination of numbers and earn extra money to open the case. I guess you can enter random digits to open it? I usually throw it in the trash can as they take a lot of space on my table, plus I pay a very small fine for getting rid of this bulky thing off my table.

Items with Stickers: Some items will have stickers on them. Right click on an item with stickers. Next, drag the stckers from the item to the empty spots on the right hand side.

You will earn an additional $10 upon completing a minigame.

If you don’t clean the clothes, passengers won’t tip when you serve them the same spoiled apparel.

While serving passengers, keep an eye on the “Homeless Man”. You can give an item to him when he appears at the counter. In return, he may provide some tips and shortcuts that may help you manage lost items.

The clock on the lower right corner of the screen displays a timer. Once the countdown is over, your shift ends. Right Click on the journal to check your statistics.

It also has a separate sticker tab containing all stickers you have collected so far. Dont forget to complete the sticker packs.

After reviewing your stats, click the “End the Day” button. This will bring up a map displaying key locations, including the Shop, Black Market, and Home. I will cover everything in detail in the following sections but first let’s start by exploring the home area on the map

Click on Home to leave some in-game cash for your family members at the start of each new day. If you ignore giving money to your family for three days straight, it’s Game over. The three X marks on the bottom of the white box denote ignored days.

Organize Lost Items

Here’s a useful tip to help you organize items more effectively on the table. Can be specially helpful when playing Lost But Found on higher difficulty levels, such as Normal or Mayhem modes:

Group similar items together. This is a much better way to stack items on the table to make sure you hav enough space. You can keep one set of items on the first row, another set on the second row and so on. Here’s what I do:

• Electronics Items, such as laptops, power banks, chargers, earbuds, headphones tablets go to the first row

• Small accessories, beauty products, keys, mementoes etc. are stacked on the second row.

• Gifts, cards, toys, collectible items are grouped together on the third row.

• Important files, documents and books are on the fourth row.

• Apparels or any clothing item are stacked on the fifth row. I also keep briefcases and travel bags on this row.

I found that organizing items this way has been quite effective in helping passengers locate their lost belongings. The table stays less cluttered, and since I’ve memorized where each item is placed in a particular row, I can quickly hand it over to the passenger.

Toss These Items into the Trash Trolley

The trash can is located above the conveyer belt, on the upper-left hand side of the screen. To keep your table clutter-free, you can kick these items into the bin:

Boarding passes: Seriously, the toughest of the lot. Can’t easily find them when someone requests a particular country’s boarding pass. Also, you will earn only 5 cash if you successfully serve the right pass to a passenger. Throwing it away into the trash can has only $1 penalty. Get rid of them ASAP. Not worth the effort.

Luggage and Backpacks: They take too much space and the penalty of tossing them into the bin is next to nothing. Throw’em away!

Tiny Items: These are small objects, such as gemstone, diamond ring, keychain and souvenir (duck). They are so small, that I had a hard time dragging and dropping onto a passenger, let alone finding them. I don’t like wasting my time on such trivial items. I would rather throw them into the trash can or quietly put them in the cardboard box and sell them at the black market.

Auction Belongings for Extra Cash

In Lost but Found, it’s okay to steal some items and auction them at the black market. Put some items in the collection box – It will slide up when you hover over the corner of the table on the lower-left hand side of the screen. At the end of the day, click on the black market on the map. Put the items on auction by dragging them from the collection box to the empty counters. DO NOT put them in the shopping cart. You get instant sales, but the money earned will be very less.

After putting the items in the counter, you can set their prices by dragging the slider to the right. Don’t set them too high. The auctioned items will fail to attract any customers. Prices should be reasonable if you are looking for faster sales.

You will need 5 Black Market (BP) points to unlock the auction feature. To earn BP points, keep returning lost items to passengers during the main game. Successfully locating all lost items on a given day will reward you with 1 BP point at the end of that day.

Get the most out of your Upgrades

Upgrades help you manage lost items and passengers quite efficiently. There are three upgrades at the black market:

1. Art Piece ($1800): Increases the wait time of the passenger. The blue bar below a passenger’s speech bubble will decrease at a slower rate.

2. QR Code Reader ($1000): Drag and drop the customer’s number onto the QR code reader. It will call them automatically and destroy the sticky note after calling.

3. Black Marketeer Tie ($1200): Easier minigames.

To purchase an upgrade, drag and drop it to the shopping cart and the cost of the item will be debited from your cash pile.

The Shop has way better upgrades. You can find it’s location on the map. Here’s what you will find at the shop:

1. Court Order ($1500): Buying this upgrade will eliminate the need to send cash to your family at the end of the day.

2. Tip Box ($1500): Increases the passenger’s chance of tipping by 25%.

3. M4ZO Music Player ($300): Allows you to change the background music.

4. Fan ($1200): Increases teh blue patience bar below the passenger. More wait times. WIN!

5. Table Expansion ($2400): Larger table. Will make it easy for you to stack/organize lost items.

6. Wall Clock ($1700): Extra 20 seconds to the overall time in a day.

To purchase, drag and drop an upgrade into the shopping cart.

There are a few more upgrades in the Security Office:

1. Cash Register ($3000): Prevents money from been stolen.

2. Security Guard Badge ($1200): Easier security minigames.

3. Security Certificate ($3000): 10% income bonus

You can visit the black market, security office and the shop only once in an in-game day.