Do I go up or down?

[mwoody450]

For some reason, when I started, I just assumed the goal was to go up. But in some games, I'll do that for minutes at a time, and find no more mining spots after the first one or two. Then, I tried going down last game, and found there were spots lower on the wall than the starting place.

So my question: which way am I supposed to go? Is there some way to suss out direction that I'm missing?

[Raptor]

This game doesn't focus on go up or down. Going up has different biomes then going down. each side has a different focus on upgrading your gear, Also SPOILER ALERT TO WALL EDGES: just telling you without spoiling to much, there are different ends to the edges of the walls, and the edge on the upper side is more interesting

[Fortytudo]

If you want to min-max your drill, youl have to go down first for the black orbs and then go back up. If you will go just one way, some of the upgrades will be softlocked since you wont encounter the resources you need for them.

For example: If you will go only down, you wont be able to upgrade your exoskeleton/drill, and if you go only up, then you also will be locked out of some tools like bombs.

[Hojosky]

Like FortyTudo said, if you want to min/max, you want to go down and then back up. I believe one of the keys tend to be the last room before the bottom if you don't have it yet.

[mwoody450]

Alright, thanks all!

[Mishi Sho]

Originally posted by Fortytudo:

If you want to min-max your drill, youl have to go down first for the black orbs and then go back up. If you will go just one way, some of the upgrades will be softlocked since you wont encounter the resources you need for them.

For example: If you will go only down, you wont be able to upgrade your exoskeleton/drill, and if you go only up, then you also will be locked out of some tools like bombs.

go down first until you manage to unlock the 2nd to last spider speed upgrade, then going up first is more optimal as split beam is a better upgrade than the black pearl mining efficiency one. its not as important as before (pre recent patch the 3rd flying speed upgrade was also locked behind the same resource as split beam.) I still say go up one just to grab the resource to unlock split beam and then go down, grab black pearl and go down again to grab the lightblue circle with red in the middle resource. then backtrack again upwards to get the purple resource. (do note this is simply for farming diamond dust so you can buy meta progress upgrades) in order to actually win the game you'd also need to go all the way down for a key.

[NekoiNemo]

I'm fairly certain the alt weapons are also tied to specific biomes, as i always get crap like shotgun and spear in the centre and first bottom, but the first up contains the GOTY weapon, the bomb launcher. Kind of a reason to go topside first to grab it and make most non-boss fights trivial.

Well, nevermind, literally the next run after i posted it, bomb spawned in down1 after it has spawned in the up1 in *every* run in my 30+ runs...

[Fortytudo]

Originally posted by Mishi Sho:

go down first until you manage to unlock the 2nd to last spider speed upgrade, then going up first is more optimal as split beam is a better upgrade than the black pearl mining efficiency one. its not as important as before (pre recent patch the 3rd flying speed upgrade was also locked behind the same resource as split beam.)

I dont like going back and forth constantly, so I usually went down just to get the black orbs and then all the way up to fully upgrade exoskeleton and farm blueprints. Then I still had plenty of time to go all the way down from all the way up and grab the last key. I assume now Itl be even easier to go all the way up and then down.

[Frozenpeas]

Going up seemed pointless to me as the tiles became too hard to drill, so I always go down now. Am i missing something important?

[Synnym]

Short answer: yes xD

[Fortytudo]

Originally posted by frozenpeas:

Going up seemed pointless to me as the tiles became too hard to drill, so I always go down now. Am i missing something important?

Thats why I always went down first for the black orbs to boost the drill, then up for the further boosts. If you only go one way, you wont be able to upgrade your drill and hence the blocks will be harder to break. Dunno how is it now after the patch.

[Dragonin]

I have noted that the 'hard' wave that spawns in clouds is same difficulty based on distance from middle, plus it resets the timer/eats the next wave that would have shown up

[Gundies]

I've been going up 2 for the split beams, then charging south to get the mining efficiencies. Main reason I go up first is so the bomb launcher goes from okay to phenomenal.