No item recovery?

[BlackDragon]

Just suffered my first death - courtesy of a massive predator somehow clipping through the ceiling of a cavern in order to blindside me. I'm still just going through the tutorial, so my inventory was absolutely jam-packed with valuable stuff I had literally nowhere else to PUT, since I was - at the time - desperately searching for a Copper Deposit so that I could finally produce a Base Computer and do something about that. When I respawned back at my ship... everything was just GONE. Not even just, like, a PERCENTAGE of it or anything.

I automatically headed back to where I'd fallen - which was no small journey, by itself, but I managed to get there. Found the exact spot where I'd been killed. Aaaaaand nothing. No corpse, no pile of valuable resources, no nothing. Am I supposed to assume that the predator in question ate all the metals, batteries, fuel-supplies and valuable elements I was carrying? Or am I missing something altogether?

[Dirak2012]

Are you playing survival mode? If that's the case, your inventory is gone. In normal mode your stuff will be in your grave and you can claim it back, as long as you don't die a second time.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

If you are playing Survival mode, this is expected. You lose everything in your main suit area. It is the major consequence of survival mode.

I would recommend playing normal mode if you are new to the game. You do get a grave and are able to recover items if you die.

[chipmonk]

If you are in normal mode then you should see a diamond shaped grave marker that you need to open to get your inventory back. Look around, it should be in the vicinity hanging in the air.

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

If you are playing Survival mode, this is expected. You lose everything in your main suit area. It is the major consequence of survival mode.

I would recommend playing normal mode if you are new to the game. You do get a grave and are able to recover items if you die.

What, seriously? If that is the 'major consequence' of survival-mode, why is it not mentioned in the mode-select AT ALL? The description just mentions more severe threats from environment and predators, and a more limited inventory. Not a word - NOT ONE! - about losing all your stuff permanently on death.

And bloody hell can you lose your life - and thus your stuff - for some really, really stupid reasons. I've yet to actually die 'fairly'. First a predator clips through the geometry to kill me, and just now I die because *I* suddenly clipped through the floor and fell to my death.

Honestly, I only picked Survival because the mode descriptions made Normal sound like an Easy Mode just shy of Creative, and I wanted to play an actual GAME-game... but now, if I wanna switch, I'd presumably have to start all over from the top and thus lose ALL my hours of progress so far...

[jonnin]

you cant downgrade from survival to normal. Its a do-over but you can literally have everything in the game in under a week with your experience: you should by now know what to do to get going quickly and, well, its a lot easier on normal.

If you got this far, just tough it out.
- if you are going do die due to foolishness, stop and reload last save. This includes falling thru the world, which is *extremely* rare but it does happen. You can MAKE It happen by doing janky things in your freighter base, that does not count. Most of the glitch deaths give you PLENTY of time to reload before you actually die.
- save often.
- beef up your durability. Most predators should not be able to kill you you with S class shield mods and health mods installed, assuming you shoot them as they gnaw on your leg. Even if they hit you through a wall, you should survive many hits and be able to get away via jetpack jump or reload.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Once you get your protections built up and a sizeable extra storage area in your suit, survival gets a lot easier. You don't lose anything from your extra storage area in the suit so put all the "good" stuff in there. That way, if you die, you lose stuff you can get easily because it is all around you all the time.

Survival and Permadeath are more "fragile eggshell interloper" mode for the first couple of hours. You have to be super cautious and not take any risks. Even a small fall can kill you. And yes, part of the journey is avoiding glitchy situations where something might kill you from above in a cave or you get stuck in a wall...the potential list is frightening.

That said, many of us stuck it out long enough to get the achievements. At least for me, went back to my normal save just as soon as I put the flag on the mountain top. Those modes are not really that fun...just being insanely careful.

[Daeomyn]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

That said, many of us stuck it out long enough to get the achievements. At least for me, went back to my normal save just as soon as I put the flag on the mountain top. Those modes are not really that fun...just being insanely careful.

It's the opposite for me. I died more in normal than I have in permadeath because I knew it was ok to die. This is my first time, in any game, playing permadeath, I've got 112 hours on my save and I'm not really interested in going back to normal. Get some s-class shield and health upgrades and it's not that scary.
I've not encountered any insta-kill glitches so as long as you're not doing multiplayer, I'd suggest disabling it until you have the suit upgrades to easily survive, you can pause the game with the escape key at anytime you find yourself in danger and reload.

[Dirak2012]

Ever since the stacks were made bigger in Normal, I would never play survival.

[BlackDragon]

I can certainly see the merits of Survival Mode, I just wish the game had INFORMED me of what I was letting myself in for... it's kind of a ♥♥♥♥ move to leave the most severe restriction of Survival completely off the list of effects, ya know?

[redbeard]

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

I can certainly see the merits of Survival Mode, I just wish the game had INFORMED me of what I was letting myself in for... it's kind of a ♥♥♥♥ move to leave the most severe restriction of Survival completely off the list of effects, ya know?

Just a warning then, Permadeath will delete your save upon death!!

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by redbeard:

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

I can certainly see the merits of Survival Mode, I just wish the game had INFORMED me of what I was letting myself in for... it's kind of a ♥♥♥♥ move to leave the most severe restriction of Survival completely off the list of effects, ya know?

Just a warning then, Permadeath will delete your save upon death!!

Yeah, thanks, I know that - seeing as they actually bothered to WRITE that in the mode description. :P

[Sario]

Until you fly away from the planet, Permadeath is a very challenging and most fun game.

[Eye Aye]

Its traumatic for a new player to lose "stuff' due to an untimely death in Survival (usually because they hasten back to the gravesite and get killed again thus losing thier goods)but, the fact is that anything that you have gathered in early game, is very easily replaced so it's not really that big of a deal.

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by grantbear6:

Its traumatic for a new player to lose "stuff' due to an untimely death in Survival (usually because they hasten back to the gravesite and get killed again thus losing thier goods)but, the fact is that anything that you have gathered in early game, is very easily replaced so it's not really that big of a deal.

'Traumatic' is the right word. :P Maybe none of it was THAT valuable, but losing the batteries for you environmental shielding and all your spare oxygen can be kind of panic-inducing when you're stuck in a place where both Sodium and Oxygen are extremely scarce. ESPECIALLY since you always respawn with only 50% oxygen remaining. Scrambling to get together enough H2 for a pack of Emergency Life Support Fuel before you die all over again is RATHER STRESSFUL. >.< And then you probably need to very quickly go find some Cobalt so you can make some batteries, because your Environmental Shielding's about to fail too...

Well, at least now I KNOW, hence making sure that I always keep some batteries and ELSF in my ship. There's just not a whole lot of storage-space there to work with... a classic example of 'early-game hell', I suppose. Once I get off the ground properly, it'll be a lot less scary.

[Eye Aye]

With the reduced slot limit in survival your better off with Life Support Gel . Di-Hydrogen and carbon are easy to come by on any planet and you have the added bonus of a small chance of finding a storm crystal. If your on a frozen planet i there's probably Dioxide in the rocks all around you.
But hey it all comes with experience just don't rage quit its a good game.