Perma Death Mode is kind of ridiculous

[LeakyAssassin]

So this is the 3rd time I started this crap and died within 5 mins. It always puts me on a planet where there is no oxygen at all through scans and no plants or animals that give it. This last go around I lasted a little longer because I found mutated fauna to give some. But I'm supposed to make a refinery to build the parts, yet can't find any oxygen at all to make anything. Then die slowly.

Anyone else have this issues?

Not to mention the aspect of starting in MID storm on rediated, toxic, or extreme heat planets. With no way to force start the mission to find cover. lol

[eram]

Well the 1st few minutes is the hardest part and if you dont know the game its probably best to take a few moments to check what you can craft to help.

For example.
Di-hydrogen x40 → Di-hydrogen Jelly
Di-hydrogen Jelly x1 + Carbon x20 → Life Support Gel

No oxygen required in this case.

[Tom]

Start a normal-mode game and play it for a while to get a clue about how to manage your resources and keep your hazard protection and life support charged up. You need to learn the basic mechanics of the game.

There's sodium (for hazard protection) and oxygen (for life support) all around you, in various forms. Caves to hide in and let your hazard protection recharge, sometimes loaded with resources. Everything you need is all around you. Just take some time to learn how to play the game. Then start your hero permadeath game.

[Bob Loblaw]

Originally posted by LeakyAssassin:

Anyone else have this issues?

Almost. No oxygen or sodium showing up on first several scans, finally found a sodium with health at about 1%.

Any game with random number generators is going to shaft some of the people some of the time. They had to put limits on the RNG in Civilization 4 because cavemen would occasionally beat a tank, or because some units were losing 3 fights in a row, despite advantage. Was giving players fits. Result: they hard coded a unit can't lose three times in a row no matter what, and people used THAT as an exploit after 2 losses.

[grogez]

As soon as the game starts, try entering screenshot mode. This freezes time. Look around for a cave. There are hazardous plants that grow in caves - particularly on the roofs of caves. When mined some of these give sodium, some give oxygen. In a large cave system - where the cave itself provides hazard protection - you can find enough of these hazardous plants to set you up with enough sodium and oxygen for a long time. A really good cave also has plants to provide carbon to recharge your multitool and ferrite dust to repair your equipment.

And when you get used to the game, go back to trying it without the cave.

[Zeno]

If you want to stock up on sodium after making it through the first few minutes, be sure to craft the small refiner as soon as you can. Then, find a cave, gather a bunch of cave marrow, and pop that in the refiner to yield sodium. To increase efficiency, refine the sodium into sodium nitrate, which is three times as potent in charging hazard protection.

[Damtired]

Get that scanner up and running as fast as you can

[knighttemplar1960]

Walk, don't run. Running burns up your oxygen really quickly. You have a full charge on your mining laser at the beginning. Use it. Keep it going while you walk and don't stop walking to shoot stuff. Shoot the rocks to get ferrite dust to repair your scanner quickly so that you can scan for that first oxygen or sodium plant. Shoot the plants to get carbon to recharge your mining laser. Shoot the hazardous fauna, they give oxygen. If you walk you will have enough oxygen to get to your ship. You might be down to your last tick on hazard protection but once you find your ship that's no longer a problem.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

All good tips above. Permadeath really needs a lot of thought to find and craft only the absolute essentials to survive the scariest of starts. Try not to get distracted. Imagine you are really there. You'd take shelter at every opportunity and look for places of safety to mine and craft resources.

Patience is needed to re-charge and refill before continuing. It gets easier, a lot easier (though you are still more vulnerable than with other modes) once you are accustomed to how to survive and remember things you need, without wasting valuable time looking things up, to stay alive.

Pay attention to audio and visual clues about being low on exosuit protection and runaway a lot until you have the spare resources and upgrades to survive. Carry only what you need for your suit and to launch the space ship. Look for shelters, use the landing beacons, pads and use them for safety and spare resources found in discarded crates.

Build upgrades for mining and scanners only for much of the start for faster mining and units gathering.

[wim1234]

amasing how gamers seem to create their onw problems.
if you want easy, dotn play pemadeath, thats not for noobs.

[LeakyAssassin]

Originally posted by Bob Loblaw:

Originally posted by LeakyAssassin:

Anyone else have this issues?

Almost. No oxygen or sodium showing up on first several scans, finally found a sodium with health at about 1%.

Any game with random number generators is going to shaft some of the people some of the time. They had to put limits on the RNG in Civilization 4 because cavemen would occasionally beat a tank, or because some units were losing 3 fights in a row, despite advantage. Was giving players fits. Result: they hard coded a unit can't lose three times in a row no matter what, and people used THAT as an exploit after 2 losses.

Yeah, apparently these guys haven't had a COMPLETE ♥♥♥♥ spawn yet. 4 in a row with mine. Spawned into toxic at 80%. With storm coming in, only chance was to get to a cave and wait it out. Got out, found nothing but minerals for a while. (no sodium or oxygen). Ran until I died from no oxygen. The 4th one was great. I spawned in near a Sent base with lvl 3 active. Walked up, insta nerfed by the hateful 3 and killed within 50 seconds of spawn. It was a loading screen aggro type deal and I couldn't move while the game went through it's BS looking around phase. Tab didn't close it.

[grogez]

Originally posted by LeakyAssassin:

Yeah, apparently these guys haven't had a COMPLETE ♥♥♥♥ spawn yet. 4 in a row with mine. Spawned into toxic at 80%. With storm coming in, only chance was to get to a cave and wait it out. Got out, found nothing but minerals for a while. (no sodium or oxygen). Ran until I died from no oxygen. The 4th one was great. I spawned in near a Sent base with lvl 3 active. Walked up, insta nerfed by the hateful 3 and killed within 50 seconds of spawn. It was a loading screen aggro type deal and I couldn't move while the game went through it's BS looking around phase. Tab didn't close it.

No bad spawns, eh? If you ever make it to a harsh galaxy, you can have the pleasure of starting a new game on a planet with extreme weather, extreme storms and hostile sentinels. If you think what you're dealing with now is tough....

Or, for some perspective, try playing a survival game - like 'The Long Dark' in Interloper mode - that actually is difficult and not super easy like this one.

[japp_02]

Really, if you know what to do then Permadeath is a walk in the park. What will kill you are game bugs or if you are distracted by jetpacking downhill, if you oversee a predator when your shields are not maxed-out, or such things.
The game still lacks content to make it for an interesting difference in Survival or PD.

For the challenged ones, here a quick guide for PD:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
More chances for success in PERMADEATH game mode
------------------------------------------------

Success in permadeath can be:

At start:
- look for cave, go in or run if nothing, if possible go lower downhill.
- Run for oxygen (very important, lack can kill you in seconds)
- Run for sodium (important, but lack will deplete shields more slowly first)
- look for cave
- > step 2 and repeat until you find a cave or building.
- Only time you look around is when you are on a little 'summit' where you can see far away, try to spot caves, buildings, but only for a few seconds.
- Never bother to shoot things at this stage, keep moving.
- Don't go for crates unless your health is down and you see white chests. Every second counts.
Run from oxygen-sodium to the next if you don't find caves, you need to get lucky, often you will die...

In the cave (or building):
- Highly welcome aggressive flora, very useful for you :)
- Never go out too far from cave, you can lose the entry :)
- go out, shoot carbon, go in until you have 300 or such, return
- go out, shoot grey stuff, return
- shoot cobalt inside cave
- build recharging cells (blue, grey), build hazard protection batteries (red).
- repair scanner, install visor, if you lack stuff repeat through step 1 here.
- Have at least 100 oxygen and sodium before leaving cave permanently towards ship.

Running to your ship and later:
Always pick up sodium or oxygen until you have 500 of them, but don't go too much off-course from your ship direction to find them. Still don't go for crates.
Always watch health bar, always scan if recharged.

At your ship:
At this point you should be able to survive if careful, don't jump too high, don't jump downhill. If secure shelter is near do not run, just walk. Always care to have red, yellow and grey stuff in decent quantity. Do NOT skip Awakening missions until you have the Antimatter Housing blueprint and then the Antimatter Blueprint.
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[Looniper]

Originally posted by LeakyAssassin:

So this is the 3rd time I started this crap and died within 5 mins. It always puts me on a planet where there is no oxygen at all through scans and no plants or animals that give it. This last go around I lasted a little longer because I found mutated fauna to give some. But I'm supposed to make a refinery to build the parts, yet can't find any oxygen at all to make anything. Then die slowly.

Anyone else have this issues?

Not to mention the aspect of starting in MID storm on rediated, toxic, or extreme heat planets. With no way to force start the mission to find cover. lol

I have to assume you mean Sodium not being around - because the game always places your crashed ship next to a patch of oxygen plants specifically to make the refinery to get the 50 pure ferrite.

Starting a PD game and having no sodium or shelter in reach before death ... definitely happens.
But you lose about 1.5 minutes finding that out and starting a new game.
Will you get this 2 or 3 times in a row sometimes, yes. But consider what the alternatives would be, and ask why you're playing on permadeath mode at all.

[Drudge Jedd]

get gud

[Jayd]

My worst PD spawn was a storm planet with no cave. I was dead inside 10 seconds.
My best PD spawn was a desert planet with nothing evil except a cold night.
My silliest PD death was pressing the wrong mouse button and firing a geo-grenade at my feet.

My last PD game ended at 75 hours in when I decided to look for living pearls, saw something that said "Investigate" and was eaten by a huge fish. I was in VR, so it sacred the living crap out of me.

Time to restart XD