How to Not Starve in hardcore

[Halla]

So today I made three hardcore attempts with random landing sites for extra spice. First death was of thirst, a silly mistake and highly preventable, but the other two... well. I starved both times because it takes so long to unlock the little food grower machine, and I could never find enough food to sustain myself until I got there. In my last attempt I literally starved as I was staring at my half grown crop, I got so close!!

Anyone here who's played hardcore got any tips on how I can survive long enough to make it to where I can grow my own food? How rng dependent is it? The second time I lasted longer because I spawned near a wreck that I could scavenge for some extra snacks, but that still wasn't enough.

[Padgey]

The only way is to go to as many chests as you can find or do a wreck and hope to find enough ready made food to survive and get the food grower going there isn’t really any tips and seeing as it’s random to get what’s in a chest I would say it’s purely gonna be luck based, maybe someone could actually answer how many space foods you need to survive on till the food grower is ready and that would give you some idea on how many you need to find luckily to get through the beginning part

[Zewtastic]

Now that they patched meteors, hardcore might be doable. I had too many deaths due to direct hits, even inside my building.

[Admiral Ikhlas Jr]

You have got to stay close in, get the basics built, and search for all the initial blue crates, as close to home as possible. Otherwise, toasted is what you will be. They have food.
Try the free build option. Unlock all. As a terraformer, you should have all of the best tech at the start. Right? Otherwise failure is the way. And I have a secret. Explained in another post.

[EleventhStar]

simply make more machines, i didn't have that much trouble unlocking it at 0.1 terraform speed.

remember you can make oxygen huts wherever you want to extend your range, and obviously rush jetpack.

[Padgey]

I would only try hard core mode if they added more achievements linked to the higher difficulties as I don’t have a reason to stress that much in a game and I’ve done the 55 achievements now

[Steve]

I'm nearly finishing a playthrough with 0.2/2/2/2 settings in custom. I turned of save file deletion because it's easy to get stuck, but I haven't died yet.

I found that the chests in the original start area and the 2 wrecks close to it are more likely to contain food, but that might have been rng.

You need a bit of heat to get the T1 plant grower, then just spam those till you get enough oxygen for food growers. Get some golden seeds from gold chests early for max effectiveness.

The large wreck in the desert has plenty of plant seeds, including one golden iirc, so go pick those up while oxygen is accumulating. Just grow beans to start.

Always have 3 iron, 2 titanium and 1 silicon on you so you can create a room and door quick if meteors come or wnen low on oxygen, and of course craft a load of water before exploring, and keep any food you find on you too. You don't need to pick up everything, just the things you need. they'll all still be there later.

Ofc, it goes without saying that it's best to do a standard playthrough first so you're used to the map, item placements and game mechanics.

[Stellar Remnant]

Hardcore is more of an exercise in tedium than anything else. Once food production is attained, it's just regular mode with super fast food/water/etc decay.

If you want an eating/drinking simulator, then sure.