Five Bomb Appétit missions come with needy modules: Pressure cooker, Full boil, Back of house, No substitutions and Double shift. They range from a single Pressure Vent beside four regular modules to three needy panels on the biggest case. Each one rewards a team that names its needy watcher before the clock starts.
Which missions have needy modules, and how many?
Five of the twenty missions carry needy modules. Pressure cooker and Full boil each have one, Back of house has two, No substitutions has one, and Double shift has three. The first three sit in Section 3, House specials, and the last two in Section 4, Chef's table. Every one of them uses rule seed 1.
The table pulls each mission straight from the mission data. The last column is an invented example of who might watch the needy panels for a team of one Defuser and three Experts called Ana, Ben and Cleo. It is a suggestion to adapt, not a rule of the game.
| Mission | Needy | Needy pool | Regular modules | Clock | Example watcher |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pressure cooker | 1 | Pressure Vent only | 4, from a pool of 6 | 6:00 | Cleo, who also reads Recall |
| Full boil | 1 | Discharge Lever or Pressure Vent | 6, from a pool of 9 | 7:00 | Cleo, with the vent page open |
| Back of house | 2 | Two of Pressure Vent, Discharge Lever, Dial Alignment | 8, from a pool of 9 | 9:00 | Cleo for the needy pages only |
| No substitutions | 1 | One of the three | 10, from a pool of 11 | 10:00 | Ben, who also owns the short pages |
| Double shift | 3 | All three, one of each | 14, from a pool of 11 | 15:00 | Cleo for needy, nothing else |
Two patterns stand out. The needy pool widens as the missions go on, so a team meets Pressure Vent alone first, then a choice of two, then all three. And the watcher's other duties shrink as the bombs grow. On Pressure cooker the watcher can carry a regular module as well. By Double shift, watching three needy panels is a full job.
The mission cards on the missions page print the same counts in short form, such as "4 modules + 1 needy", followed by the clock, the strike limit and the manual seed. The card also lists the modules the bomb may draw from, which is the quickest check before you start.
If you have not met needy modules yet, start with what needy modules do while the others are being solved. That guide covers what each of the three asks for and how long it gives the Defuser.
Pressure cooker: a first needy mission with one vent
Pressure cooker is the first mission with a needy module, and its needy pool holds a single entry, Pressure Vent. That design choice keeps the lesson narrow. Every team that plays it faces the same kind of interruption, a yes-or-no question with a countdown, so the only new skill is answering it without dropping the regular module in hand.
The rest of the bomb is gentle on purpose. Four regular modules come from Wires, Big Button, Glyph Keypad, Color Echo, Word Grid and Recall, all six met in the first two sections. The deal never repeats a module until the pool runs out, so four modules from six means four different ones. The clock gives six minutes and the team has three strikes.
A useful way to treat Pressure cooker is as a rehearsal of a routine rather than a test of speed. The vent first wakes somewhere between 20 and 45 seconds after the bomb starts, then gives 40 seconds to answer. That pattern repeats until the bomb is defused. Practise three habits during this mission:
- The Defuser calls "vent" the moment it opens, even mid-sentence.
- The watcher answers from the vent's page while the other Experts wait.
- The Defuser repeats the answer, presses it, and says which module they are returning to.
A team that finishes Pressure cooker with a strike from the vent should play it again before moving on. The point is to make the interruption boring.
Full boil and the lever-or-vent draw
Full boil carries one needy module, but the bomb picks it from two: Discharge Lever or Pressure Vent. The team cannot know which until the Defuser looks at the case. The answer is to prepare for both. The watcher keeps the vent's page ready, and the Defuser knows the lever needs no lookup at all.
The two needy modules ask for opposite kinds of attention. Pressure Vent needs a quick conversation, because the Defuser reads a question and an Expert reads back the answer. Discharge Lever needs no conversation. Its manual page says it needs no expert help: the meter fills, and the Defuser holds the lever to drain it before it is full. A full meter is a strike.
So the prepared team agrees on two plans before starting. If the vent is on the case, the routine from Pressure cooker applies unchanged. If the lever is there, the Defuser takes sole charge and the watcher's job becomes reminding. An Expert in an online room cannot see the meter, but a gentle "check the lever" after each solved module costs nothing.
The regular side of Full boil also grows. Six regular modules come from a pool of nine, adding Blinker, Tangled Wires and Wire Panels to the six from Section 2. The clock is seven minutes with three strikes. Six different modules in seven minutes is about seventy seconds each, so the needy module must not eat the margin.
Back of house: two needy modules and the back of the case
Back of house puts eight regular modules and two needy ones on the small 3x2 case. Add the timer and eleven of the case's twelve slots are filled. Both faces are in use, so the Defuser must turn the bomb to find every module, including needy panels on the side they are not facing.
The mission's blurb tells the Defuser to check the back of the bomb, and it means it. A needy module on the far face is easy to forget, because nothing about it is visible while the Defuser works the front. The fix is a turning habit:
- Read both faces aloud at the start, naming the two needy modules and where they sit.
- After every solved module, turn the case and look at the needy panels before choosing the next module.
- If the Discharge Lever is one of the two, glance at its meter on every turn.
The two needy modules are always different, drawn from the full set of three. That gives three possible pairs, and the watcher should have every needy page ready. Eight regular modules come from the same pool of nine as Full boil, and the clock is nine minutes with three strikes.
A team that clears Back of house has met everything the later needy missions ask, except scale. No substitutions adds a two-strike limit, and Double shift adds a bigger case. The guide to three needy modules on the big case explains what changes when the panel count jumps to seventeen.
When is a team not ready for needy missions?
A team is not ready for a needy mission while it still takes strikes on regular modules it has already met. Section 2 ends with Rush hour, six modules in six minutes. A team that defuses it has the pace and the manual split that needy missions build on.
Signs a team should stay in Section 2 a little longer:
- The Defuser loses track of which modules are solved.
- Experts argue over which page a module belongs to.
- Symbols on Glyph Keypad still take several attempts to name.
- Defusals happen with seconds left, not a minute.
Each of those gets worse when a needy module interrupts. A Defuser who loses track with no interruptions will lose track faster when a vent opens in the middle of a Word Grid.
Section 3 also contains two missions with no needy modules, Signal fire and Spaghetti. They introduce Blinker, Tangled Wires and Wire Panels, which Full boil and Back of house later draw from. Playing them first means the needy missions only add one new thing at a time.
The final mission is a different test altogether. It has no needy modules at all, but it allows a single strike and uses a manual nobody has practised. The guide to the one strike challenge at the end of the missions covers how to prepare for it.
The needy mission mistake: assigning the watcher after the timer starts
A team that waits until a needy module wakes to decide who handles it has already lost seconds it cannot spare. The vent's countdown starts the moment it opens. If three Experts all reach for the page, or none do, the window shrinks while they sort it out. Name the watcher before anyone presses start.
The decision takes ten seconds in the lobby. Read the mission card, count the needy modules, and say aloud who owns them. That person opens the needy pages first and keeps them close for the whole round.
Who to choose depends on the team. With one Expert, the job is theirs by default, and they should agree on an interrupt word with the Defuser. With two or more, a calm reader who is quick with short tables suits the job. The guide on who should watch the needy modules weighs the Defuser against an Expert for the role.
Also decide what the watcher does between interruptions. On Pressure cooker they can carry a regular module as well. On Double shift they should not. Saying this before the start avoids the moment when the watcher is deep in a Labyrinth and the vent has thirty seconds left.