That tutorial is kinda stupid

[Vahnkiljoy]

So, you don't teach us how to acquire water/food but just build things while slowly dehydrating ourselves? I love games like this and usually play on the harder difficulty, not hardcore obviously but seems really stupid to die of dehydration while being told to build a heater of all things with a resource that is nowhere near the crash site that I can see. You give us food in the life pod but no water, that seems kinda stupid.

[maestro]

To be fair, they are probably assuming you are going to check your pod.

In your pod, you will see that you have space food, water bottles, and o2 canisters and that you have a crafting machine.

In that crafting machine, you will see that you can make water out of ice.

I don't see the problem here? Do you need the game to TELL you to make water out of ice before you dehydrate? If you can't figure out that you walk out there, and mine the ice, and take it back to the crafting machine before you go through your starting meter + 2 bottles of water, I dunno what to say.

Also, why would you be playing Hardcore on your first playthrough? Playing on Permadeath on your first save in any game is kinda.... not ideal, especially on an Early Access game.

Heck PD+EA is never a good mix even if you are experienced.

As for the heater question, well. If you take a look around where you start, no matter where you start, you WILL find said material if you explore a little. Maybe not right away, but you have other goals first, like, building basic survival gear?

While you're doing that, and perhaps setting up shelter, you will likely find what you're looking for as you go looking for materials.

[Pesky]

I think you picked a difficulty which was too hard for a first-time player, or you chose a difficult landing site (or let the game choose one randomly) which made things too difficult for a new player.

The game starts with you in a landing pod. One of the instructions which appears on the top left of the display tells you how to make water. A gadget inside your landing pod is one that can make water. In the blue chest inside your landing pod are packs of space food. There are blue chests scattered all over the map, and in some of them are packs of space food. There are also wrecks all over the map you can get into and loot, and it's clear that they will have many useful things in. You are told to build this and that, which should familiarise you with what you can build and how to build it. The main instruction given to you, again by a gadget in your landing pod, is to terraform until you've reached a certain situation.

I don't see the things you're complaining about as big problems. It's a free-roam exploration and building game. You do have to roam, and you do have to build, otherwise you can't play. Perhaps start a new game on a less difficult setting, and/or with the easiest landing site. Use that to gain familiarity with how the game works. Then you can try the more difficult settings you are used to.

Most of your learning experience with the game is exploring the (currently unchanging) map, and learning how to do things. After that, apart from permadeath mode, it's easy. It's mostly a relaxed graphics show with no time constraints or combat.

[Merlin69]

Food packs are a problem for the new starter as you can't make them and could starve before finding a blue box!

[maestro]

Originally posted by Merlin69:

Food packs are a problem for the new starter as you can't make them and could starve before finding a blue box!

Unlikely.

Assuming you didn't pick "hardcore" as your starting option, even if you did die (you get a LONG time), you'll respawn at your pod (or your base if you built one) with half food.

A food meter lasts how long again? 10 minutes at least?

And IIRC, you spawn with two of them in your starting pod, giving you a full 30 minutes before you die of hunger?

If you haven't found a blue chest (they seem to almost always have food that early in the game, usually two of them) by then (there's 2-3 of them in the starter locations in both the starting valley and the grand rift, dunno about the others), you are very clearly not even trying to explore, like, at all. Also, if you start in the Starting Valley, you can likely see a wreck or two very close to your starting location and surely would be curious about it. Both of them have enough chests to give you a minimum of 6-8 space food.

My first start I remember unlocking the food grower way before I even got close to running out of space food, I think I had a dozen of them left about the time I was growing two eggplants which is enough to keep you going almost perpetually (might need 3, but by then I found a beans seed and a beans+eggplant is definitely enough, even with a T1 grower).

[Pesky]

How easy it is to starve before growing your own food varies depending on your settings. If you set everything to difficult, expect to work very hard to survive. It is a survival game, after all, even if it's considerably easier once you've started growing your own food. Don't forget the second challenge – one for which you can only blame yourself.

[Vahnkiljoy]

Well I mean obviously one knows going in on the hardest(not hardcore) setting it will be rough but the fact the games own tutorial fails in even doing what a tutorial is meant to do doesn't help. I still need iridium for this stupid heater, game randomly gave me the achievement, haven't seen ♥♥♥♥ though.

[nagball]

Just because the game suggests building a heater there is no initial need to do so. I would suggest forgetting about this and concentrate on getting a small base built and collecting resources required to survive. Yes you will need to produce heat eventually to unlock things but usually they are not required straight away.

[Rufus]

I think you're right, I am playing now and have used my last food with no idea how to get more. It's the first survival game I've played with not a single hint about food. Esp. because it's not on Earth so normal logic does not apply. I'm sure I'll work it out eventually but repeated dying is not something I enjoy in a game and it's all down to whether I quit before I discover the apparent secret to getting food.. I've started again twice because of it but it's unlikely I will bother starting again too many times !

[nagball]

Originally posted by Rufus:

I think you're right, I am playing now and have used my last food with no idea how to get more. It's the first survival game I've played with not a single hint about food. Esp. because it's not on Earth so normal logic does not apply. I'm sure I'll work it out eventually but repeated dying is not something I enjoy in a game and it's all down to whether I quit before I discover the apparent secret to getting food.. I've started again twice because of it but it's unlikely I will bother starting again too many times !

You can find more food by opening the blue chests dotted around the landscape. This will keep you going until you can grow your own food

[Rufus]

Originally posted by nagball:

You can find more food by opening the blue chests dotted around the landscape. This will keep you going until you can grow your own food.

Yeah I read that above but the only blue chests I've seen after playing through the tutorial three times are the storage chests. I even made a couple of them. But no sign of any others.
Honestly there may as well be a countdown clock, just not enjoying this. I want to explore in my own time not die before lunchtime.

[nagball]

Originally posted by Rufus:

Originally posted by nagball:

You can find more food by opening the blue chests dotted around the landscape. This will keep you going until you can grow your own food.

Yeah I read that above but the only blue chests I've seen after playing through the tutorial three times are the storage chests. I even made a couple of them. But no sign of any others.
Honestly there may as well be a countdown clock, just not enjoying this. I want to explore in my own time not die before lunchtime.

If you have started playing the easy option there are several (at least 3) blue chests close to where your capsule is. Build up your oxygen and water and explore close to where you are. Leave a bit of space in your backpack to collect items in the chests. They are there give it another go.

[trygve]

On the harder modes, focus on building windmills and drills, to get the terraforming started, and if you have a plant sprout(plant in a round case) you build a grower for it as quickly as possible.
If you don't have a plant, that will be your highest priority.

If you're at the default starting location, build some stairs in the middle of the area. Get yourself some altitude and overview.
And it doesn't matter that the valley will flood later. It happens MUCH LATER in the game, so it's OK to put up windmills and drills and whatever else you want in easy reach from the lander. Get the Terraforming process running, get yourself sorted with what you need, then build a permanent base.
But yeah, you want to move up on the plains beyond that triangular rock formation within the first hour or so.

[moonl7tshadows]

Blue chests contents are RANDOM....most that I have opened have NOT had food or water(I get more seeds in them than anything else) though the starter ones usually just have starter level ore and minerals.

Plenty of Ice in the starter area for water crafting.

First DO NOT build more than a very basic base in the starter area for reasons I am not going to mention for spoiler reasons.

Upgrading Oxygen should actually be a top priority as that unlocks the Food Grower. You will unlock The Atmosphere Water Collector which gives 4 waters every couple minutes pretty early as well (probably before the Food Grower) or around the same time

Build Lockers for each resource and fill them(after crafting the initial upgrade for Oxygen pack and Backpack).

There is no reason you should be running out of Food before you get the Food Grower


PS. Plants in the circular containers are for Oxygen tubes and Plants in packets are for Food

[FallingOut]

I don't think that the short list of things to do at the start of the game are meant to be a tutorial. It is merely a guideline for new players listing a few things that are important to do in a new game. There are so many beginner guides on YouTube that it would be a waste of a developer's time to spend time on developing tutorials instead of the game itself.

Playing on hard or even hard core mode is an admirable accomplishment, but it makes sense to familiarize oneself with a game before attempting it. This game has a lovely relaxing mode that makes it easier to explore and figure things out without dying of thirst or oxygen deprivation.

Originally posted by Rufus:

I think you're right, I am playing now and have used my last food with no idea how to get more. It's the first survival game I've played with not a single hint about food. Esp. because it's not on Earth so normal logic does not apply. I'm sure I'll work it out eventually but repeated dying is not something I enjoy in a game and it's all down to whether I quit before I discover the apparent secret to getting food.. I've started again twice because of it but it's unlikely I will bother starting again too many times !

In this game it really is possible to run out of the space food that you can find in chests if you dally too much and do too much exploring without tending to your real mission, which is to terraform the planet. I am a new player and I restarted my first game because I realized that I would soon run out of food and I hadn't worked towards obtaining a food grower.

You should have already built a screen in your base that shows you all the blueprints you have unlocked. The screen has a padlock symbol on it. If you mouse-over the locked blueprints in this screen's interface, you can read the names of all the blueprints that you can unlock. The blueprints become unlocked as you progress. If you mouse-over the blueprints in the section with an Oxygen prerequisite, you will find one called Food Grower. This machine will let you grow your own food from a seed, but it won't be available for you to build until your oxygen level reaches a certain level which will unlock the blueprint.

This is really something to works towards, so concentrate on increasing your oxygen production.

[trygve]

Even I can manage a Hardcore play...
Here's my first not-very-optimised play in the default area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61q8CNNB4_Y
(Actually, it's somewhat sucky... and not just because of the bad framerate. Sorry about that but HP Business laptop... )
Please notice that I had a plant in the chest in the lander, and yet I still wasted so much time before actually building a machine to put it in.
I should have put up a base halfway up the slope to put that in, and the advanced crafting station. Then I could have done the base design a bit more leisurely.

Also, notice how the equipment improvements came pouring in almost from the start?
Because I got the pressure going so early.

I open a Golden Chest in this session, but other than that one, I have NOT memorized where they are.
And yeah, I knew where the Iridium cave is.
This is pretty much stuff I would have found while playing around on the kindergarten level.

Note that this is from 0.5, and they've adjusted the food to last slightly longer on the 0.6 release.