Quickest and easiest ways to get food and water?

[Ed]

My character will very soon run out of these.
Thanks for your help!

[kwong20287]

Use bleach to make disinfected water, using salt and coral tube samples. Find a small fish and cook it for food.

[Ed]

Many thanks. I'll come back if I have any more questions :)

[miklkit]

Right at the start you will be wanting to catch and cook the baloonfish. Bladderfish? It's a fish with blue bladders on it and is easy to catch. It delivers both food and water after cooking.

[theresejesu]

You can over fish these realy easily, so best to convert to making water with salt and coral as soon as possible. By the way, all you need to do is make the bleach, then that converts directly to water.

[clawsight]

Early on food and water will be time consuming but not difficult to obtain from around you between bladderfish and other edible fauna. Make sure to convert the bladderfish directly to water. Bleach is doable - but generally preserving your fish is goin to be a better use of your salt early on. I've never had issues with overfishing as bladderfish are abundant in the safe shallows and kelp forest.

Experiment with fish and see which ones provide the most calories. Preserve a number of those with salt - simply cooked will decay quickly. Peepers and Reginalds have very good caloric count - I think Reginald might be the highest in the game and you encounter them in the areas with the red grass.

Spend a day or two stocking up on water and food - store some in your base or in your lifepod. Then follow the story (repair the radio ASAP to start it). The story will provide alternative ways of obtaining food and water each with various pros and cons. As you move further into the game the ways food an water are available will differ depending on where you are.

The survival mechanics in this game are actually pretty mild re: food and hunger as long as you discover certain items in a timely manner - the questline actually helps with this... as does building a base, which is all I shall say about that.

[Ed]

Many thanks for the new posts and info, I think know all I need to know to just survive now :)

[kampfer91]

Use a gravity trap to catch small fishes .

Also visit floating island asap to get sample of edible plants and grow bed .

[theresejesu]

Originally posted by kampfer91:

Use a gravity trap to catch small fishes .

Also visit floating island asap to get sample of edible plants and grow bed .

Once you do that, you hardly need the salt anymore. Then when you get a water filtration system, it makes salt.

[Cougarific]

Originally posted by kampfer91:

visit floating island asap to get sample of edible plants and grow bed .

C'mon guys this is clearly a brand-new player - easy on the spoilers.

[Ed]

Thanks to you guys' advice I'm currently thriving - surviving on catching fish for food and water and I've just made the radiation suit and done some prelim inspection of the Aurora. Not quite sure what I'm supposed to be finding over there though. I've also found some Seaglide fragments, but can't seem to pick them up. I've managed to make a high-capacity oxygen tank, too, which helps immensely for diving down further.

[Pembroke]

The Grand Rule: Scan Everything!

You find stuff, advice, blueprints, and clues by scanning plants, creatures, and mineral deposits, too, not just the salvage fragments.

Quickest way in the very early game? Bladderfish, obviously, and is what you discover about immediately.
A bit better way in the very early game? Salt + Coral Tubes --> Bleach --> 2x the larger water bottle.

But the easiest way? Now going to spoiler territory so if you follow the story plot probably the first you get is to find, grow, and then munch on Bulbo trees forever.

And then there are tech discoveries that might make the water problem go away entirely so just go out and explore...

[theresejesu]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

The Grand Rule: Scan Everything!

You find stuff, advice, blueprints, and clues by scanning plants, creatures, and mineral deposits, too, not just the salvage fragments.

Quickest way in the very early game? Bladderfish, obviously, and is what you discover about immediately.
A bit better way in the very early game? Salt + Coral Tubes --> Bleach --> 2x the larger water bottle.

But the easiest way? Now going to spoiler territory so if you follow the story plot probably the first you get is to find, grow, and then munch on Bulbo trees forever.

And then there are tech discoveries that might make the water problem go away entirely so just go out and explore...

There is a better source than what you indicated in your spoiler

The Marble Melon. They grow faster, can get more at once in a smaller space,
and they yield more water.

[Ed]

Thanks guys.

A quick question or four and then a few observations:

Where's the best place(s) to find gold?

What to make of the massive alien structure protected by a force field?

Roughly how many hours do you need to sink in to complete this game on survival mode if you are an average gamer?

If you and your people knew nothing about this planet before coming there, how do you know what's safe to eat or not? And why is there already a kind of database of flora and fauna?

I find it strange that a giant, mountain-like rocky structure sticking out of the water cannot be seen from further than approx 500 metres away on a flat horizon!

How to explain why the *very close* moon/planet in the sky does not produce MASSIVE tides/tidal waves in the ocean?

One of the many things I like about this game is that you can die and carry back on roughly where you left off!

[toinkertoy]

well one of the moons does not move, so that would not produce any tidal effects from a fixed location. The second moon “orbits” the planet in a manner not actually possable (it’s always vidable in the sky) this is probably done for visual reasons though. So with this oddity in place I’m not sure the lack of having a tide is more then just a dynamic not implimented.

Gold: lots of gold in the LR in the form of large resource deposits! Smaller outcrops are found in sandstone that’s mostly found in deeper biomes like kelp forests and deeper. Caves especially have lots of these outcrops!

My assumption about the database and the flora/fauna on planet is that the scanner is anylizing the items on scene and then giving you the information? You’re right though that it seems to know a lot of info on the items in a very quick time frame (maybe even some information that you wonder “hmm how would it know that tid bit lol”)

[toinkertoy]

I’m not sure what alien sctructure you’re referring to that’s protected by a force field ......

The reason I assume you can’t see any of the islands from beyond 500m or so is the developers wanted them to not be aperent to the player from the start. Just a design choice as I can’t think of any real good reason they’d be always hidden!