Guide to Playing Desertum at Insane & Chaos Moon Setting

[TALONI]

Desertum Insane difficulty is actually quite easy if u know how to build flamethrower by day 5.

I managed to complete the game by year 3 with just 12 flamethrowers & 4 auto turrets.

Day 1 - 5 Research Activities (Research & create 2 Flamethrower)

Research Tech Tree #1: Observe Grain Grass -> Harvest Grain --> Research Oil Extract --> Build Oil Extract --> Create veggie oil --> Research Fuel --> Craft Fuel (need 20 fuel by day 5) --> Research Flamethrower

Research Tech Tree #2: Research Metal Refinement --> Build Furnace --> Refine 20 alloy per flamethrower (need at least 40 alloy by day 5).

Day 1 - 5 Food Activities (U only start with 5 emergency rations)
Food will be high priority but not as high as research activities. You can survive to day 5 if there are lots grain grass nearby. If not and you like your seed, observe & harvest 1 type of veggie plant. You only have time to observe & harvest two plant items (grain grass + 1 more) before day 5.

Day 1 - 5 Resource Collections
Need 150 sticks (bushes)
Need 100 hay (blade grass or giant grass)
Need 30 wood (one oasis tree)
Need 100 grain (5 grain grass for fuel)
Need 100 scrap metal (Best to have Ken in party)
Need 300+ stone (more if have time)
Need extra grain & veggie (200 total for 5 days of food, then insect meat if desperate)

Day 1 -5 Construction Sequence
8 ground storage outdoor (construction material in 4 x 2 format)
8 ground storage roofed by 2 hay & stick shelter back to back in 4 x 2 format
Stone table & 4 stone chairs (before day 1 meal time)
4 ground beds roofed by 2 hay & stick shelter (8 square away for quiet sleep)
Stone hearth (10 stone & stick) for cooking. (deny survival celebration at 17:00).
Research Desk & Craft Desk (20 wood, put them by cooking fire for extra warmth).
Stone Furnace (20 stone & sticks, u need to get 40 alloy ASAP once have scrap metal)
Oil Mixer (10 wood)

14 x 14 stone walls with 3 full square opening face toward most likely attack direction.
(This 14 x 14 defence area will be at the corner of your 50 x 50 walled base eventually)
(use sticks for fence gates at the backside. Dont use wood as wood are rare items).

Line up the flamethrower at both side of opening so the green AOE cone touch each other. (should be 5 square of opening between the two flamethrower) (make sure 1 square of space behind flamethrower for refuel purpose).

Put in traps between the flamethrower if you have extra scrap metals.

Ready for First Combat (Day 5)
The first wave of bug will be 20+ mini bug. Its tough as all 4 survivors will have only little knife on them. Hopefully you have your two flamethrower up and traps and 14 x 14 stone walls. Stand your survivors behind the flamethrower green AOE cone area. So the bugs will be roasted even if get pass the traps.

Congrats you survive your toughest first 5 days if you win your first battle without any bloody bandage wounds (because you dont have any medical supplies till day 10).



Day 5 - Day 10 Urgent Priorities
It get much easier from now on,
1. Increase flamethrowers to 12, 6 x 2 line format and put in traps in the middle. This will need 500 scrap metals. You can probably get by with 8 flamethrower till year 2 (until Juno & Scissorhands), but I prefer to finish defence first and go 100% on lifestyle construction.

1.1 Double stone wall the 14 x 14 defence area. Especially the front area! The rear area is important too if your survivor has range weapon & start shooting & aggro mob. The aggro mob will charge directly toward the attacking survivor(s) through walls & ignore the frontal wall opening.

1.2 Get at least one range weapon to clear the last few bugs that attacks walls instead of walk-through the flamethrower. Hopefully u can get a pistol or sniper from scavenge (pulse rifle don't count as it only does stun). If no luck, research weaponsmithing & get a crossbow (10 alloy + 10 wood). Short-bow really sucks with low accuracy.

2. Observe bright-leaf plant for clothes. Harvest 100 clothes from the wild if you can (50 for balloon & rest for bandage & arms chairs).

3. Observe red point plant for silicon. Harvest once to unlock Electric crafting.

4. Observe Succulent plant for veggie pizza. This is probably the best tasty food to make. Alternate with grain porridge to avoid -9 lack of food variety happiness.

5. Plant 2 grain grass field, 1 succulent plant field (eventually inside wall), 2 cloth field, 2 red point plant field (eventually outside wall).

6. Research balloon travel (unlock after fuel tech). Need 40 alloy & 50 clothes to build balloon + 30 fuel.

Day 5 - Day 10 Non-urgent Priorities (Increase Happiness)
7. Plant 3-4 blade grass field. You need around 3000+ hay for your entire base building construction. Hay is your main building construction material!! Not stone! Save stone for concrete walls.

7.1 Plant some palm trees or dry trees for essential wood (need for wooden doors and musical instrument etc.)

8. Research basic building structures. Build two 16 x 16 Hay Roof structures. lay in stone floor for +5 happiness when walking on the floor. You can use stone instead of hay for building construction, but for the entire game you need at least 5000+ stone. So walking far to get the stone is not worth it. Just plant hay field and you can get lots building material nearby after 10-15 days of growth.

8.1 Partition eight 4x5 bedrooms using sticks walls. Put in scrapped metal doors & stone beds. (+18 happiness once sleep in large bedroom)

8.2 Put in Kitchen & work area with metal shelves. You can also put ground storage (construction materials only) under the same hay roof as long as there is no walls covering the ground storage.

8.3 Build two arms chairs using cloth & alloy. This is the main relaxation +18 happiness tool. After eating, send the survivor to sit in arms chairs till they are above 80% relaxation.

Day 10 & Beyond Priority (Play the way you want from this point)
I personally like to go electrify ASAP.

9. Research spaceship deconstruction for more nearby scrap metal.
9.1 Research Antibotic & First Aid Kit (Probably need 20 bandage, 20 antibotic, and 10 first-aid kits for medical supplies when you have time)

10. Research power grid --> electronic crafting --> craft electronic --> research solar panel --> improved solar panel or graphene solar cell (if possible) --> battery --> battery optimization (if possible).

11. End game power = 8 battery + 12 graphene solar cell or equivalent + 10 gas generator back-up. That is equivalent to 500 power consistently throughout the day even during special events. Need 300 power for space radio (otherwise u only need 200 power for lifestyle & auto-turrets). (Dont bother with wind power, as even carbon wind turbine sucks. Power generation is too random on daily basis to use)

12. Research Freezer in desertum ASAP. The raw food & cook food will rot quickly. Probably need 4 freezer in end game (1 cook food for 90 grain porridge & 90 veggie pizza, 2 for 4000 raw grain, 1 for 2000 succulent plant). The alternative is building a cold storage room with carbon nanotubes from nest formation. But I find out you need 3 A/C to keep the room at -10C in hot days, and the A/C fails in Solar Flare!!. So Freezer is the better option.

13. Research electric furnace for ore refinement. This will help with alloy needs. Save scrap metal for shelves storage & gas generators. (Dont play a game without improved solar panel or graphene solar cell. The need for scrap metal would be insane).

14. Research Auto-Turrets & Sensor. Need 5 CPU for 4 auto-turret & 1 sensor. Auto Turrets in Desertum is for Juno & Scissorhands due to their large size that ignore traps. There is no flying butterfly bugs so its not urgent till Year 2.

15. Research Sniper Rifle (Optional). If you are lucky you can get carbon nanotubes from a nearby nest, otherwise you have to research 3D printer. Sniper rifle is optional for end-game. It is nice to have to pick off bugs that attacking your walls from safe distance that is all.

Recommend Base Setup
As mentioned, a 50 x 50 small walled base is sufficient for end game.

At the top right or top left corner, setup the 14 x 14 flamethrower opening (put in 12 flame thrower, traps, at the rear side put in 4 auto-turrets, sensor, lighting rod, power pole). I recommend setup auto-turrets on the ground & survivors standing on the ground. This will prevent accidentally shooting and aggro mob to attack you through the high fortified walls. Having Better Line-Of-Sight (LOS) outside of flamethrower opening is extremely bad idea.

Build two 16 x 16 hay roof only building side-by-side then cover it with stone floor (+5 happiness when walking on stone floor). Partition the rooms with stick walls the way you like. The entire hay roof area is power-connected with a single power pole.

Put grain grass field & Succulent plant field near kitchen door.

Slowly upgrade the stone walls to concrete fortified walls starting from the 14 x 14 flamethrower area.

Dealing with Extreme Heatwave & Freezing Temperature
The best way to deal with freezing temp is make sweater, jacket, and baseball cap.
The best way to deal with extreme heat is T-shirt & baseball cap, and strip off jacket. Take off pants if life-threaten heat-stroke. (keep sneaker on and dont make boots). Straw hat is good but baseball cap is better as it help with the cold temp too.

At the end game, you want to move on to carbon armor + T-shirt if you have the technology. Otherwise Synthetic Armor + T-shirt (which take a long time).

Good Luck on playing on Insane Difficulty on Desertum. Its pretty fun.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Very nice

[Seelander]

Good guide, do disagree with some stuff but basics is covered really well for a succesfull insane/chaos run.

Where i disagree is this.

1. Flamethrowers should be ready to be constructed on day 3 and you can get there fairly easy with a little traning (your planning is for easier moons).

2. the below is a result of a defence gone wrong. The reason it fails is the more flamethrowers you add the lower your survivor drops to stay clear of flamethrowers disrupting your survivors placement., combined with flamethrowers distance to outer walls/fences.

You should as you recommend start with a 14 by 14 squared defence zone, add a fencegate that when open creates your inverted path (2 tiles) and add your first 2 flamethrowers there on the first day 3 attack.
Note this is actually to close to outer walls once the bugs is not pure skarabies anymore, which usually is on your second attack on day 5. you want a gate so you can close of the area for random wildlife. Where your defence fails is the follow up making it super risky. simply increase your path with 2 tiles moving away from your flamethrowers and fence up your future building area, 50 by 50 is fine, i prefer some 40 by 40 to fit in my Y1 living space, expanding later once i have the ressources for my full 72 by 72 build, concept being your 14 by 14 area becomes a box in the box sort of speak. This will result in your flamethrowers is 4 tiles away from any outer wall and will stop the bugs from doing funny stuff. Once that is setup place 6 flamethrowers pointed at eachother, as close as you can and add 2 more pointing toward the hot zone, this will stop anything, i would only add some 12-16 incendiaries infront of my 2 last flamethrowers as they will stop junos etc, and they dont need refueling btw. Step 3 is starting to maze up in front of your flamethrowers having 2 entrances. entrances should be east and west of your defensive structure.


1.1 "The aggro mob will charge directly toward the attacking survivor(s) through walls & ignore the frontal wall opening."

"1.2 Get at least one range weapon to clear the last few bugs that attacks walls instead of walk-through the flamethrower."

3. I wouldnt go house y1, better off just building bedrooms barrack style and live in shelters and focus on that armor. Desertum full blue textile armor or carbon and t-shirt. on green planet full blue textile armor or carbon and sweater, is all you need. Saves you electronics as you dont need to heat or ventilate your house and keeps your survivors mobile regardless of weather conditions in terms of heat and cold.