Survival Log Restock Times: When Locations Refill With Loot

The short answer

Go back to a floor site on the 5-day clock, and make it the Abandoned School if it is open. It puts back 18 to 36 loose items in one visit, which is more than the Hardware Store hands over across all 5 of the days in between. Everything else in the house sits on the 7-day site clock that every location shares.

Holds when: The floor is what you are going back for. 4 of the 6 sites scatter loose items across the floor and restock them on a clock of their own; the other 2 have no floor loot in the data at all.
What it costs: 4 days of waiting over the Hardware Store, which puts its 4 spots back every 1 day.
Otherwise: Take the Hardware Store only when nothing else is open. Its fast clock still yields 2.0 to 3.0 loose items a day against 3.6 to 7.2 at the Abandoned School, so the daily site is behind the slow one even on its own measure.

Where you are in the run The first days Running the house Endless

The first days

Only 2 sites open on a day rather than on the story, and both open on day 4: Hardware Store and Deserted Supermarket. Of the two the Deserted Supermarket is the one with a floor worth walking, at 19 spots against 4.

Running the house

The two richest floors, Abandoned School and Abandoned Hospital, open with the story rather than on a date. Once they are open the schedule is simple: alternate them on the 5-day clock and stop making the trip to the smaller sites.

Endless

Gas Station and Office appear only from the Endless start, and the item tables place nothing at either. There is no restock to wait for, because there is nothing to restock. See where to scavenge.

Open the locations list Every location with its Exposure budget, its entry gate and what is findable there. This opens on the Abandoned School, the biggest floor in the game.

Three clocks, not one

The site clock is shared and the floor clock is not. Every location restocks as a whole on the same 7-day cycle. On top of that, 4 sites carry a separate clock for the loose loot on the floor, and 2 carry one for the containers.

What comes back at each location, and how often.
Location	Whole site	Floor loot	Containers	Spots on the floor
Hardware Store	7 days	1 day	5 days	4
Gas Station	7 days	none	none	none
Office	7 days	none	none	none
Deserted Supermarket	7 days	5 days	5 days	19
Abandoned School	7 days	5 days	none	57
Abandoned Hospital	7 days	5 days	none	45

Three things follow from that table, and two of them are easy to get backwards.

The floor clock is 5 days nearly everywhere. 3 of the 4 floor sites use it, and the Hardware Store is the single exception at 1 day. So a return trip inside the week finds new loose loot at 4 of the 6 sites, not one.

Only 2 sites have a container clock at all, and both of those run the containers on 5 days. At the Hardware Store that is slower than its floor; at the Deserted Supermarket it is exactly the same interval. So the floor is not generally faster than the shelves. It is faster at one site.

2 sites have no floor loot, and nothing else either. The item tables place 0 findable items at Gas Station and Office. They are not sites where everything is inside a container. They are sites with nothing in them, and both open only from the Endless start.

Ruined Supermarket · First Trip — What a return trip is buying is the floor, because the floor is the only part of a site the data restocks on a clock shorter than the week.

The floor is the whole question

4 of the 6 sites scatter loose items across the floor, and the spread is not close.

Floor spots at each site, how many are filled on a restock, and what that is worth per day.
Location	Spots	Filled	Share of the floor	Restocks	Loose items a day
Abandoned School	57	18 to 36	32% to 63%	every 5 days	3.6 to 7.2
Abandoned Hospital	45	14 to 28	31% to 62%	every 5 days	2.8 to 5.6
Hardware Store	4	2 to 3	50% to 75%	every 1 day	2.0 to 3.0
Deserted Supermarket	19	6 to 12	32% to 63%	every 5 days	1.2 to 2.4

Abandoned School has 57 spots and fills 18 to 36 of them, so a single visit finds somewhere between those two numbers of items lying loose before you open anything.

The last column is the one that settles the schedule. A fast clock on a small floor does not add up to a fast site: the Hardware Store restocks every 1 day but only ever holds 4 spots, so it yields 2.0 to 3.0 loose items a day, while the Abandoned School yields 3.6 to 7.2 a day on a 5-day wait. Every day you can reach the Abandoned School, going there is worth more than going to the Hardware Store, and that stays true whichever end of each range you take.

That kills the obvious plan. Alternating a fast small site with a slow big one does not beat returning to the big one: across one 5-day cycle the Hardware Store hands over 10 to 15 loose items over 5 separate trips, against 18 to 36 at the Abandoned School in one. The Hardware Store is worth a trip when nothing better is open, not as a rotation.

Unexpected Supplies — A restock answers only whether to go. What you bring back is decided by the Exposure the site gives you and the bag you brought.

What a restock does not change

Two things are the same on every visit. The Exposure budget a site gives you does not move with the clock, and neither does the travel time. So the question a restock answers is only ever whether to go, never how much you can carry once you are there. What to bring home is the separate decision, and the locations tool puts both on one row.

How the figures on this page are worked out

A site carries up to three intervals: one for the location as a whole, one for the loose loot on the floor, and one for the containers. They are separate fields, and a site can have any subset of them. Where a field is absent this page says none rather than assuming the site clock covers it, because the tables do not say that it does.

The share of the floor is how many spots a restock fills over how many spots exist, as a range, because the game gives a low and a high count rather than one number. Loose items a day is that same range divided by the site’s own floor interval, which is what makes two sites on different clocks comparable. A site is called empty when the item tables place nothing findable at it, which is a different statement from having no floor loot.

Where this page stops: the tables carry the intervals but not what a restock puts back into a container, so there are no container yields here, only the clocks. Nor do they say whether a partial search restarts a clock, or whether the site clock and the floor clock run independently once both have started.

What to do

Return to a floor site every 5 days, not every 7 days. The floor clock is shorter than the site clock at 4 of the 6 sites.
Make Abandoned School the default trip whenever it is open. It is first on both measures: most loose items per visit and most per day.
Use the Hardware Store to fill a day when the big floors are still refilling, not as half of a rotation. 5 trips there are worth less than one trip to the Abandoned School.
Do not plan a trip to Gas Station or Office at all. Nothing is placed at either, so no clock applies.
Plan the 7-day cycle for the site as a whole and the 5-day cycle for the floor. They are different questions and the data keeps them apart.

Quick reference

Whole-site restock: 7 days, the same at all 6 sites.
Floor restock: 5 days at 3 sites, 1 day at the Hardware Store alone.
Container restock: only at Hardware Store and Deserted Supermarket, both 5 days.
Most floor loot: Abandoned School, 18 to 36 of 57 spots, 3.6 to 7.2 a day.
Nothing placed at all: Gas Station and Office, both Endless only.