Over the Hill Upgrades and Tips: Spend Pebbles Right

The second rule is newer. When the game launched, players worried that pebbles would dry up once the map was done. The October 16 update fixed recovery missions and challenge trails not paying out on later completions, so a finished trail is income again. At least one popular fan database was built from the launch build and still says those rewards are paid once. It's out of date on that point.

Screenshot: over the hill Steam store page

Every upgrade and what it costs

There are 16 upgrades in seven lines, all bought from the Mechanic. Each stage needs the one before it on the same car. Once you own a part you can take it off and refit it for free, which makes testing painless.

All 21 cars take the same 16 parts. Your class choice decides the base numbers: our Over the Hill car list has the class table and the trail that unlocks each vehicle.

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1. Buy the 25-pebble stages first, tyres before engine

The first stage of every line costs 25, so 75 pebbles buys Stage 2 tyres, engine and suspension. On r/overthehillgame, Swiftish7 put the case for engine and Level 2 suspension bluntly: "For 75 pebbles it basically doubles your cars capablities". That's a player's feel, not a measurement, but the price is hard to argue with.

We'd start with tyres. Weather only changes one thing about driving, grip on a wet car, and the +0.08 from Stage 2 tyres covers the rain penalty on most ground (wood planks, bricks, metal, logs and quicksand lose more). osman-pasha reached the same conclusion from the driver's seat: "Strongly recommend upgrading the tyres first. There's just too much slippery terrain everywhere when you slide back on slopes." The same player found engine stages help more on the flat than on climbs, where grip runs out first.

2. Spend 25 on a second tool slot

A stock car carries one tool. Each slot is one use, and it only comes back when you reach the Mechanic or pull into a cabin. With one slot you choose between a repair kit and a way out of a hole; with two you stop choosing. Tool Slot 2 costs the same 25 as a tyre stage. The full line to four slots is 150 pebbles, which we'd finish only on the car you take into the hardest areas.

You can't buy or find extra tools. All seven are in your inventory from the start: three repair kits, three portable winches, three sets of planks, three meteorite radars, and one each of the jack, the camp tool and the Cloud Clearing Bell. A slot can repeat a tool up to the number you own, so a four-slot car can carry three repair kits but never two jacks.

GODEEPER: Not sure which region you're about to drive into? The five areas, from Emerald Lake to the Algerian desert, are laid out in our Over the Hill map guide.

3. Match the tool to the way you're stuck

In one r/overthehillgame thread from October 16, a player posts a car stuck on a cliff side, and the replies read like a checklist:

• On your roof or wedged: the jack flips the car upright and moves it to a spot you pick, up to 7.5 m away, as long as there's about 2 m of clear ground. You own exactly one. Save it.
• Nothing to hook onto: the portable winch plants an anchor anywhere inside your winch reach, which is why Winch stages matter more than they look. The October 19 update fixed anchors that sometimes couldn't be winched even inside the radius, so a refusal before that patch wasn't you.
• A gap or a ditch: planks lay a pair of 8 m boards up to 10 m away. UKMatt2000 went back to the same cliff "with my planks and got through, just", and admitted that for two of the gaps he crossed on a single plank with a run-up.
• No planks at all: Borzoinks' fix was to reverse "fullspeed over the gap and let the overhang of the bed be my plank". Creative, and very much a last resort.

Screenshot: Funselektor's official "How many times has the winch saved you already?" short (YouTube), 0:08

The short above is 10 seconds long. The first truck goes over the ledge at about 0:03, both are on their roofs by 0:07, and the yellow car, the only one still upright, pulls up to the drop at 0:10. That's the jack's job, once per car until the next cabin.

4. Replay trails for pebbles now

This is the tip that changed this month. Competitive-Half-863 described launch-week pebbles as enough "for like 4-6 cars", with meteorites the only income once the map was done. Three days later Dragon5x replied in the same thread: "you can now repeat trails and recovery missions for more pebbles". Crapdullah's answer set expectations: "Yeah but they get you 5 pebbles".

The game data agrees with both of them. overthehilldb.com's earnings page, rebuilt from the patched build on October 17, lists repeat rewards of 5 or 8 pebbles on the 17 trails that unlock vehicles. Midgar Ascent, Elvis Rim Trail and Hermit Trail are among the eights. Recovery mission repeat payouts aren't confirmed in that data yet. A repeat trail won't fund a car on its own, but it's steady money on a route you already know.

5. Make meteorites a team job

Meteorites are the income that never runs out. You hook on as many winches as the rock needs, one per car, and it comes out after 8 seconds of pulling, counted only while every rope is tight. The pebbles go to everyone who had a winch on it plus anyone within 10 m.

Bigger rocks fall when more players are in the session, which is why co-op doesn't shrink your share much. In a solo session, the spawn table tops out at Medium. The meteorite radar points to the nearest one that has already landed, at any distance; it can't see one still falling, and it isn't used up if there's nothing to find. The October 16 patch also moved meteorite spawn points in every area, so a spot list saved before that date is stale.

6. Leave Protection for last

Protection is the one upgrade we'd skip until everything else is done. Damage only comes from crashes: hits at 5 m/s (18 km/h) or slower do nothing, and a car drives normally until it has taken 70% damage. Even at full damage it still moves, at half top speed. Pulling into the Mechanic or any cabin repairs it completely, and a repair kit does the same for you or a teammate within 20 m.

So Protection's 15% and 30% cuts mostly buy time between cabins. That's worth 75 pebbles on your main car eventually, after tyres, engine, suspension, a second tool slot and a longer winch.

7. Wait out weather with the camp, clear it with the bell

The camp tool skips 12 in-game hours in about 44 seconds and repairs every car in the session by 25 health. Everyone has to be within 15 m of each other. Weather keeps rolling while time flies, which makes camping the easy way to wait out a storm, and the October 16 update fixed weather effects that didn't speed up while camping.

The Cloud Clearing Bell turns the weather clear for everyone at once, but it does nothing for the dark. If the problem is night, camp. If it's a whiteout and you want to keep driving, ring the bell.

Screenshot: Funselektor's official "How's your mountains exploration going?" short (YouTube), 0:03

That short runs 8 seconds. The mountain trail is bright and clear until 0:02; at 0:03 the same climb is a blizzard, and by 0:08 the truck is barely a shape. Snow is a Canada problem: Algeria's weather list has no snow storm at all, and by overthehill.app's count Canada is wet a quarter of the time against 4% in Algeria.

GODEEPER: Checking whether your PC or Steam Deck can handle Canada's snow? The system requirements and Steam Deck guide lists the official specs and the Deck status.

8. Buy Water Resistance only for river routes

Stock cars flood after 8 seconds with the air intake underwater. Water Resistance moves the intake up and stretches that to 10 and then 12 seconds. The intake sits at a different height on every car, so the same upgrade means more on some than others. If your routes keep you on dry ground, this is the second-to-last line to buy, just ahead of Protection.

Our take

Spend like the game wants you to settle down with one truck. Tyres, engine, suspension and a second tool slot for 100 pebbles turn a starter into something that climbs, and the winch line does the rest. The patch took the panic out of it: with repeat trails paying again, "wasting" pebbles on a car you end up not loving costs you an evening, not the endgame. And keep that one jack for the day you need it.

How we checked this

We haven't played Over the Hill ourselves, so none of this is a handling impression. Upgrade, tool, meteorite and damage numbers come from two fan databases built from the game files: overthehill.app (Steam build of October 14) and overthehilldb.com, which match on every upgrade price. Because overthehill.app predates the October 16 patch, we took repeat rewards from overthehilldb.com's post-patch data and from Funselektor's patch notes. We stepped through both official shorts frame by frame on October 23, 2026 for the timestamps above. Player quotes come from two r/overthehillgame threads posted after launch.

For the launch facts, see our Over the Hill release date and price page and how the launch went. Everything else in the cluster is linked from the Over the Hill guide hub.

Related reading

• Over the Hill guide hub
• Over the Hill car list: all 21 vehicles
• Over the Hill co-op guide
• Over the Hill trailer breakdown
• Funselektor, the studio behind Over the Hill

References

• over the hill on Steam: Funselektor Labs
• First Post-Launch Update Is Here!: patch notes, October 16, 2026
• October 19 Minor Update: patch notes, October 19, 2026
• over the hill upgrades and tools: overthehill.app
• Pebbles earnings guide and vehicle upgrades: overthehilldb.com
• r/overthehillgame: Upgrade or Wait
• r/overthehillgame: I may be stuck
• How many times has the winch saved you already?: Funselektor on YouTube
• How's your mountains exploration going?: Funselektor on YouTube