Leave eligible drinks in the fridge overnight
Putting a drink into a fridge does not mean every liquid in your shop will become more valuable. To use the fridge in Probably Stolen, place eligible merchandise inside, let it chill overnight, and check the item's condition and sale value afterward. In the demo walkthrough, the Chilled condition adds 20% to the item's price, while wine and unsealed water are excluded.
This Probably Stolen how to use fridge guide follows player experience from the demo-update walkthrough. The official Steam demo page provides the relevant demo context; the instructions here are not a claim of personally testing the upcoming full release.
Set up a simple chilling routine
The demo player finds the fridge at Dr. Jackson's shop. Once you have one, use a small batch of suitable goods to learn the routine before expanding it:
- Put eligible drinks into the fridge's chilling inventory.
- Make sure the fridge has the energy required to operate.
- Leave the goods there overnight.
- Check for the Chilled condition and the resulting price when preparing the next day's sales.
The narrated example reports the 20% Chilled increase during a sale. That bonus is a price modifier, not a guarantee of profit on anything you buy: the player also notes that goods bought during a water crisis were expensive enough to undermine the apparent gain.
A sensible comparison is therefore purchase cost plus the cost of running your equipment against the price you can actually obtain from a customer.
Do not expect wine or unsealed water to chill
The fridge description in the walkthrough explicitly excludes wine and unsealed water. The player leaves a standard bottle of high-quality water in the fridge and reports no change afterward.
If your water does not gain a Chilled condition, check the kind of product you stored before spending on more upgrades. A bottle containing your water-trading inventory is not automatically the same as an eligible packaged beverage.
Likewise, the fridge does not purify water or improve the underlying quality of wine. Treat it as a separate merchandising tool rather than a substitute for those production systems.
Expand capacity while watching power
Player experience describes using scrap metal to expand the fridge's inventory and electronic parts to improve efficiency. In that demo session, each scrap-metal expansion adds five squares to the chill zone and three additional storage squares.
More room comes with a running-cost consideration. The walkthrough reports the machine starting at 2 energy per day, then reaching 11 per day after the player's upgrades. Those are the configurations in that session, not a complete upgrade-cost formula.
Expand when the extra capacity serves goods you can sell, and check the machine's energy readout afterward. Improving efficiency can be more useful than another expansion if your current bottleneck is keeping the fridge powered.
FAQ
When does chilling happen?
The demo description says to store eligible drinks overnight. Check their condition the following day.
How much does Chilled add to the price?
The cited player walkthrough reports a 20% price increase. Your final profit still depends on purchase price and operating costs.
Why did my water stay unchanged?
Wine and unsealed water are excluded in the demo description. The walkthrough's standard water bottle also remained unchanged.
What upgrades the fridge?
Player experience describes scrap metal for capacity and electronic parts for efficiency. Check the current machine readout as you expand it.