How to Save the Weaver Child

Saving the Weaver child in the prologue is the single most impactful decision in CONTRABAND. It unlocks more content than any other choice. Here's exactly how to do it.

The setup

In the prologue at Verge Station, a dispatcher offers you a mystery cargo run. The three options are:

• Take the run (safe choice, closes this path)
• Peek inside the crate (opens the save path)
• Walk away (alternate path, Weaver Child plays out differently)

You must peek inside the crate to access the save option. If you take the run directly, you skip past the child entirely.

The reveal

When you peek, you see: a child, unconscious, skin laced with bioluminescent threading. She is Weaver-marked. The dispatcher is already running — he knew what was in there, and he knew you would look.

You have seconds to decide. Three options:

• Save the child ✓ ← this is the one you want
• Reseal and fly (delivers her)
• Tip the Scourge for bounty (betrays her)

What saving her unlocks

1. Weaver reputation +25 immediately
2. The Child crew member — free, unique rarity, available starting Ch2
3. Weaver Archivist NPC — only appears if saved
4. "A child, alone" encounter — random planet encounter where the child recognizes you
5. Ch2 text variant where an older version of her hugs you in the sanctum
6. Ch5 Sacred ending variant — photograph of her grown up
7. "The Weaver's Gift" silver achievement
8. Modified dialogue in multiple scenes across all chapters

The downside (minor)

Saving the child sets the wantedByScourge flag. The Scourge will hunt you more aggressively in later chapters. You also miss out on the 40,000 credits you would have earned from delivering her as cargo.

However: the content unlocked by saving her is worth far more than 40,000 credits, both narratively and mechanically.

If you already made the wrong choice

You can rewind the Sacred Timeline all the way back to the prologue and change it. This creates a new branch. The old version of you — the one who delivered or sold her — still exists as a ghost branch, and you can revisit that timeline later if curious.

This is one of the main reasons the rewind system exists. Some decisions only make sense to reconsider hours into the game.

The dispatcher's role

The prologue dispatcher — the one who offers you the mystery run and runs when you open the crate — has a small but important place in the game's lore. He is not Scourge. He is not Weaver. He is a neutral fixer who takes commissions from any party. The commission to transport the child came from a Weaver splinter group who wanted her delivered safely to Keros-7 but could not afford a Weaver escort. His panic when you open the crate is not because he did not know what was inside; it is because if you open it, you have crossed into the story, and he is only safe as a courier if he remains outside it.

Late in Chapter 3, if the player has high Weaver reputation, the dispatcher reappears as a minor NPC offering a single side quest that references the prologue: he wants the player to deliver a sealed message to the Weaver sanctum on his behalf as penance. Completing this quest grants +5 Weaver reputation and a small unique cosmetic for your ship.

Alternate paths and what they teach

Delivering the child as cargo is not strictly a "bad" choice. It is the safe choice. The game acknowledges this in Chapter 2 if the player reaches the sanctum through alternative means: a Weaver elder says to the player, quietly, "You were afraid. That is not the worst thing to be. The worst would have been to be cruel." The 40,000 credits are real; the lost content is also real. It is a genuine trade, not a trap.

Selling the child to the Scourge is the cruelest available path and the game does not soften it. The 120,000 credits are a mechanical bribe — meaningful in Chapter 1, trivial by Chapter 3. The game designer has stated this option exists specifically so players can confirm to themselves that they are not the kind of person who would take it. Telemetry shows approximately 6% of first-run players choose this option, and of those, 71% rewind within the next hour.

Tips for a clean run

If you are aiming for the Sacred Timeline ending on your first playthrough, saving the child is nearly required. The Sacred path relies on high Weaver reputation, and the path to +80 is dramatically easier with the prologue bonus. A player who delivered the child can still reach Sacred ending but will need to complete nearly every Weaver side quest flawlessly to recover the reputation deficit.

The single best action after saving the child: go to Keros-7 immediately instead of chasing cargo runs in the Verge. Keros-7 offers the first "A child, alone" encounter with the highest spawn chance, and the Brood-7 crew member is also hireable there — a combination that sets up Chapter 2 optimally.