Void Bastards

The Off the Hook achievement requires you to set the difficulty to Hard Bastard and use only one client (your character) throughout the whole game. Note, that while the description says no deaths, if you have and use the Heart Starter, it will not void the achievement. This means you can have a buffer of 1-2 lives.

The early game may make you think "this is impossibly hard". Juves - one of the weakest enemies - hit for 20 damage PER shot and you only have 400 starting health. What you should keep in mind is that while yes, the enemy damage is increased dramatically, your damage is not altered in any way. One Juve headshot on normal or Hard Bastard will kill them; as long as your aim is on point, you have a fighting chance.

The basic idea in the beginning is to get enough fuel and food to move around comfortably. Look in the FTL for fuel - there should always be at least one canister and look in the break room or Dine (if on a Lux ship) for food. Any ship that has Tourists on it is your best friend; they are the easiest enemy to deal with and save you ammunition (simply run near them then run back). It doesn't matter if the pre-mission says there are "shedloads" of them, they are never a problem unless you are careless. It is critical that on missions where you aren't in much danger (such as with any amount of tourists, few enemies etc) that you take full advantage of the freedom it provides. Loot absolutely everything you can!

Stay in Nebula Depth 1 until the salvage you need for your non-objective upgrades are no longer in your depth and you have enough fuel and food to move without too much concern. You can get the objective items and continue exploring, it's only when you craft the item that you will be moved to a lower depth (although you can still move up if you want). As you play and explore, focus on why you boarded a ship. Did you go for fuel? Then go to the FTL, get the fuel and if it's too dangerous to continue exploring, leave immediately. Did you come for an objective item? Then go to the objective location (detailed below), get the objective item and if it's too dangerous to continue exploring, leave immediately. Sensing a pattern? If you ever feel like you are in danger of losing too much health, leave the ship. Many times I have entered a ship, encountered a Screw in the very first room and/or a turret and promptly turned and left. Unless leaving will put you in dire straights for fuel/food, do not risk it.

Below is the list of objectives and their locations.

Objectives

The objectives are *always* found in the same location, regardless of ship type. The locations are as follows:

Citizen Card
Line Printer - Cubes
ID Card - Sec

HR Computer
Wiring Diagram - Helm
Tacputer - Tubes
Mouse Ball - File

Water Cooling
Water-Based Lube - Suite
Body Fluid - Drier
Cool Pops - Break

Transmitter
Lette Wheel - Spin
Handset - Helm
Atomic Clock - Drier

Reg Certificate
Ink - Sec
CNT Stamp - File
Laminator - Sec

*The random salvage gene may alter objective locations.

Below is a list of the primary locations for resources on the various ships in the game.

Ships

Lux
Primary resource: food
Where: Dine

Krell
Primary resource: fuel
Where: FTL

CNT
Primary resource: merits
Where: Serv

WCG
Primary resource: bullets, zap charges
Where: Tombs

Secondary: Gene therapy
Where: Gene

PAC
Primary resource: Torpedoes, explosives
Where: Tubes

Otori
Primary resource: Kittybots
Where: Pet

Xon
Primary resource: Health replenishment
Where: Theater

Weapons, Devices and Upgrades

In terms of weapons and devices the pistol, bushwhackers and zapper are solid throughout the whole run. Upgrade to the hefty pistol, upgrade to the cow zapper and upgrade the bushwhackers. There is honestly very little need for any other guns until your get towards the lowest depths. Even then, you could still handle it with that loadout, as most of what you're doing is trying to evade combat. Engage if absolutely necessary, otherwise walk/run past enemies. If you're ever running low on your main ammo, cycle the stapler, bangers and kittybots in.

Prioritise non offensive upgrades in this order:

Part Locator>Fuel Scavenger>Padded Jacket>Ammo Subsidy>Travel Subsidy>Heart Starter>

You want the chance of extra fuel as soon as possible. Then enough health to make your way to a second life in Heart Starter. NEVER GO TO BUILD MODE AND BUILD ANYTHING. You will be tempted, trust me, but in the long run when you're at the end of the game and can simply craft the final couple of items, it's entirely worth avoiding temptation. It will save you from dealing with the toughest enemies. Do you really want to wrestle with a ship full of ZEC and Hardened enemies? Me neither, so it's in your best interest to keep all your Plaz, data etc. When you're at the final objective, feel free to scrap any excess salvage to try and reach the amount required to craft.

Enemies

The enemies and how to deal with them. Note, I have placed them in order of preference - which ones I would prefer to have on a mission. Screws move toward the top if the mission states "few" but otherwise they are a pain to avoid.

Tourist
Attack: They begin to wobble on the spot and after a few seconds explode, dealing a lot of damage to anything nearby.
Approach: You should save your ammunition where possible by getting close enough to begin the wobble (they will also glow blue), then legging it as fast as you can back away from them.

Glowtrotter
Attack: They begin to wobble on the spot and after a few seconds explode, dealing a lot of damage to anything nearby and leaving a puddle of radiation behind.
Approach: You should save your ammunition where possible by getting close enough to begin the wobble (they will also glow yellow), then legging it as fast as you can back away from them. Try to avoid the radiation puddle they leave behind.

Juve
Attack: They shoot single shots towards you and call you "Butt face" over and over, trying to break you down mentally.
Approach: A single pistol shot to the head will do the trick, or two to the body. Also, tell yourself you're beautiful.

Janitor
Attack: They shoot single shots towards you.
Approach: Three shots to the head or five to the body will end their life. You can pop in and out from behind a wall etc to avoid taking damage.

Spook
Attack: They shoot rapidly at you when you're not facing them. If you are facing them, they will typically disappear and then reappear at a later point when you're not looking.
Approach: I paid very little attention to these. Face them, they disappear, you continue onward to a different room and you probably don't see them again. If they are in a room that you need to loot, simply back yourself against a wall or keep looking behind you and they won't spawn. If they do, you can shoot them with your zapper then follow up with the pistol.

Scribes
Attack: They shoot three shots in quick succession at you or alternatively, look at you and begin floating backwards.
Approach: If they are in the shooting animation (their face contorts) then get behind cover and pop back out with three pistol shots to the head. If they float away, great, you either won't need to deal with them again or can deal with them later.

Friendly Tourist
Attack: They glow pink, begin to move towards you then wobble on the spot and after a few seconds explode, dealing a lot of damage to anything nearby.
Approach: You can't take the same approach as with the other tourist enemies. To be safe, you need to keep your distance and fire a few shots to explode them.

Patients
Attack: A swarm of heads chases you and if it makes contact with you, it can deal large amounts of damage.
Approach: The pistol and stapler are useless against patients; it takes far too many shots to defeat them. Avoid missions with patients, or alternatively, take bangers/bushwhackers and throw them directly at your feet as you run. The blast will generally take the patients out. Even if you have the rivet gun, if it's not upgraded don't bring it along on a mission unless it only has patients. It is too weak against other enemies, opening you up to damage.

Senior Scribes
Attack: They float away, dropping bushwhackers as they go. They can also shoot.
Approach: Be very careful! A few careless encounters with these scribes and you're dead. Shoot the bushwhackers when you see them (they are blue, as opposed to your red ones). Shoot the scribes as normal to kill them.

Screws
Attack: Spikes form and get bigger until a burst of them is sent forth, dealing huge damage around the screw.
Approach: Stay away! Use the zapper if you really must get past, otherwise, find another way. Try to keep them locked in a room so you don't need to worry about them for the rest of the map. Watch out for the "Stomp" when one is behind a door. Lock it and quickly nope out of there.

ZEC
Attack: Holding a large shield in front of them, they are invulnerable to any damage from the front. They will blast many - what seems like - explosive shots at you. They are your worst nightmare.
Approach: Your only options are to shoot them from behind (good luck sneaking up on them), avoid them or throw explosives behind them to hopefully blow them up. Kittybots can be a useful distraction if you get stuck.

Security
The most common enemy and the most likely to end your run. There are security elements scattered throughout the majority of maps. For turrets, in the early game, you're going to want to throw a bushwhacker near to them (while staying out of their line of sight) and then shoot the bushwhacker with your pistol, exploding the turret. As you progress and explosive turrets appear, your options are to stun with the zapper, then subvert if you have plenty of credits, stun and then destroy with bullets or explosives, or turn off security. On Hard Bastard, the shutdown only lasts for 20 seconds, thus you will want to get a move on to wherever it is you need to go.

Cameras- if they see you - will sound a siren giving you about 5 seconds to destroy them before a Secbot is called to your location. Secbots are bad news! If a Secbot is coming and you already have the main thing you came to the ship for, immediately bail. Otherwise, make your way to the security section of the map with your zapper ready (in case you happen upon the Secbot) and shut off the security as quickly as possible. This will reset the Secbot. If a Secbot is active and there is no security section on the map, the choice is made for you.

Final tips
Don't underestimate the importance of merits. The 25 merit authorisations are generally fine to use, but try to keep merits spare for emergencies. Pirates for example will end your run if you do not have torpedoes at the ready. This is why I spent many of my merits at the Krell Marts on torpedoes, as well as on authorisations in the tubes for extra torpedoes (25 for 2 is a good deal). If you get low on food/fuel, a Krell Mart may be your saving grace. Additionally there are CNT ships that have supply vans which can provide you with 10 fuel or food (or a mixture of both) if you have merits to authorise it. That can be huge.

All of the good genes are fine, though some are clearly better than others (sixth sense, cannibal, etc). However, the bad genes can be game ruining. If you get the "S.T.E.V." moves the wrong way 25% of the time or gunpoints are active, then get to a gene therapy ship with haste and remove them. Genes like poor peripheral vision, black and white vision or overly familiar don't have a huge effect so they can be ignored until it makes sense to go to a gene ship. Perhaps if there is something there that you need.

Avoid "on fire" ships if you can or those that have many hazards. If you can't resist, then get to Hab and pay the merits for immunity to all hazards.

Best of luck. You can do it! At the very least, the location of the objectives should be handy for those attempting this.

There isn't a foolproof way to do this so I'm just gonna give a few tips. Firstly, craft the heart starter as soon as possible as you get one per care package once you craft it and it does NOT void the achievement.
Early on, save merits and spend them on opening a crate or two on ships and for buying zapper and regulator ammo. Opening crates in the beginning is usually going to net you an item you are going to need, on my run it got me the resistant pad on my third ship. Later, it's useful to spend merits on overriding security, and for buying/restocking torpedos. Also, save your ammo on tourists by running up to them and then running away.
As far as enemies go, I used the regulator/stapler for janitors, scribes, and juves, the zapper for spooks and turrets, the rad spike for patients, any explosive for zecs, and I zapped and ran from screws.
It's important to save a lot of resources from junk for the last action item, as depth 5 is a really dangerous place, and the fewer stops you have to make the better. It's also important to remember that you can always turn around and leave(with a few exceptions) to save your run. I often would enter a ship just to see how far the good stuff was from me, and if it was too far, I would just leave. Don't forget that all you need to keep going is food and fuel, towards the end I looted Lux ships for food and Krell ships for fuel and ignored everything else until I got a good action item ship
Don't be in any rush to go to a deeper depth too soon. You could technically keep going in depth 1 until you felt satisfied with all the equipment you have.
That's really all I have, I wish everyone all the luck, this was a pretty nerve-wracking achievement and probably my most proud.

Just an add-on to the other guides, which are really helpful. You can dashboard if you die/are about to die on the ship. When your screen goes red, don't click anything. Just immediately dashboard and close down the game. You should be back to before you boarded the ship.

The game even tells you this itself in one of the loading screen tips - it doesn't auto-save while you're on a ship. Used to this to save my run once when I got snagged by pirates and screwed up detaching them.

The other guides are really helpful when it comes to how to tackle this achievement, my main point to focus on is as follow:
1-"Make backup to your save":
what does that mean, you can for like every 2-3 ships quit the game, let the game save syncs with the cloud then when you feel like you have a bad RNG route or faced something unexpected "a whale or pirates" you can press xbox button then "manage game and add-ons" you can see there is a folder called "saved data" press that and select your profile save then select to delete from CONSOLE...DONT PRESS (Delete Everywhere)
once you delete your save file from console, restart the game and it should sync back to your backed up save file, let say it was 2-3 or more movement before, then you can make a new movement route or hope that you get a better RNG movement for the enemies.

2-hunt those DNA germs moving and try to keep spamming it to find the gene "Sticky fingers"..this gene allows you to automatically pickups any dropped loots without u pressing A or anything, by the end game of this i had so much garabage that allowed me to just crafte the last part and end the game instantly without me going around looking for the required parts

3-you are asking how can you spam those gene germs floating around, once you get attacked by one, look at what was taken from you and what DNA you recieved, if you liked the odds then press (ok) if not hit menu and go back to main menu, then press continue, you will be back before you get hit with this DNA germs and you will get a new RNG gene, you can keep doing this until you are happy with what u have
my main genes where "Sticky fingers, Airlock Tech and Security Expert"
i felt Security Expert is really amazing cause i can see where are the Security elements on the map and if there was a turret in my way i just back out to menu and board the ship again and get a better route, i can't tell how many times my run got ruined with one of those damn turret specially at the lower depths

Good luck guys

THE key upgrades to have are the Infiltrator or Security Expert genes. The biggest wakeup call on Hard Bastard is that without Infiltrator peepers activate the Secbot after just a few seconds - and the Secbot will kill you pretty much instantly until you've put on several layers of armour upgrade. Fortunately, you can stay in nebula depth one for as long as you like until you manage to bag one or both of these genes. If you lose it lower down in the nebula later in the game you probably want to head back up to a higher level until you pick it up again. If Power Engineer comes up, grab that too - knowing you can turn round and bail out the airlock instantly means you can afford to stick your nose into almost any ship and see if there is any easy loot. It's a very big advantage at lower depth. Get all three of those genes and you are in a much safer position. Brawny (+200hp) is very helpful if it comes up early game, but once you've got the first two health upgrades it can be swapped out. The one other really interesting one is Sticky Fingers, automatic pickup of items, since it means you pick up the stuff you didn't even notice and can rinse levels on the run. It makes a noticeable difference, at least 20% and maybe as much as 50%, to your material collecting efficiency in the late game - definitely more than the last tier of the bonus material upgrade. That said, it does not help your raw survival except in that you need to visit fewer ships in the material-sweeping phase.

There's a massive difficulty cliff right at the start and a smaller one each time you start venturing into the next depth. Once you've picked up a couple of armour and weapon upgrades and get enough fuel and food to pick and choose your targets it gets easier again - but never relax and never rush. By the time you have 1450 health, one of the security genes, the key weapons and some hacking upgrades then most ships that don't have Zecs or shedloads of enemies can be investigated with caution but confidence. But you WILL STILL DIE if you don't spot a group of Tourists and they go up on top of you, are surrounded by four veteran janitors or locked in by a watcher with the warbot in the room, so the caution part remains critical. Don't forget that just because you have all the health upgrades, if you walk in somewhere with 350 health because you took some hits on the last ship you are wimpier than you were on the first mission.

Manage your starmap resources carefully. Aim to get a big fuel / food buffer, at least 10 of each and preferably 20, and have a couple of torpedoes and warp keys, then focus on part or material hunting with almost complete freedom to move around the map and find easy targets. Otherwise, prioritise getting your buffers back - look for a ship you can safely top up on and grab food / fuel / material nodes. Remember that a heartstarter doesn't save you from a void whale - if you hover around one and have no torpedoes you are risking immediate game over.

You never need to go to depth 5 - it's much easier to just hover on the border between depths 3 and 4 and pick up materials, optimally from 'easy' ships that have only rifts, subverted security, one type of citizen allied or radiation hazards, all of which mean few hostiles and so a reasonably easy time. In depth 4, rinsing 200 materials from a ship is fairly common, you only need about 3000 to build the last few upgrades, you'll already have at least 1000 from earlier explorations - so you can do it in 10 ships, without being forced to go onto a ship with tougher enemies than you would like. You should aim to have enough materials to finish the current tier if it will dig you out of a hole with no food / fuel, followed by a pirate or no choice but to hit a gene scrambler. It's probably not necessary to actually collect any of the last two tiers of upgrade from a ship (and the lette wheel is the only one that can be found at depth 4). And don't get blinkered into focusing on upgrades - once you have armour, one heartstarter, the upgraded regulator and stapler, the rad spiker for patients and the container hacking upgrade there really isn't anything else you need. If the ship isn't easy, ask yourself "Do I really need this part?" because the answer is usually no.

Merits are really valuable because the locked containers greatly increase the rate at which you acquire parts, if rather randomly. You won't get many completion parts this way, but it will help a lot to find upgrades because locked container parts can come from a depth one greater than the depth you are in. It helps to know the list of what's found in each ship room (it's listed on the wiki at https://voidbastards.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Parts ) to know if you want to open a locked container for a part, but it's usually worth it. Late game you won't be looking for so many random parts, so save them to buy in the level 4 and 5 K-marts when you know exactly what you need - 80/160 mats for 40 merits is a great deal. Buying mats in the K-mart above depth 3 is usually a bad deal - save it for opening locked containers, or a key food / fuel / torp if you are have an immediate need.

Finally, data is the scarce resource in the late game because you need 960 of it to craft the last two tiers of items. In contrast, you usually have an excess of bio (480), and are OK for plaz (640, of which 160 is in the lette wheel), slag (640, 80 in the lette wheel) and volts (640) and bio in particular is found in vast quantities in the Xon marts. 320 Bio can therefore be deployed to build the Distended Testicle you need for the second heartstarter without any worry, and it's worth considering if you want to build the lube and body fluid for tier 3, neither of which use data, if you are comfortably ahead of the part curve.

On my completion run I completely lucked out on the genes - I had Power Engineer right at the start then found Infiltrator and Brawny early doors and was able to swap Brawny for Sticky Fingers after getting to 950 health. I lost Power Engineer two thirds of the way through, but by then I had all the key weapons and armour, so I still managed to finish with one heartstarter spare. As well as 30 fuel and 50 food! As soon as I picked up the lette wheel I sold all my spare parts and only needed to top up a few materials at a K-mart to finish it off.