Tips for beginners?

[Brendan]

Hey, I just bought this game and I'm having trouble lasting longer than 15 cycles at most. Any suggestions or tips for me to use, anything you wish you knew when you first started playing?

[Eloi Monk]

I learned by watching some Let's Plays. Some of the good ones are CrypticFox, Grind This Game, and Lifegrow. Some of the older videos might be using obsolete builds, but beginning principles are still relevant.

[kingjames488]

sure:
- dig out as little as possible and save all the wild plants you can, the starting tiles are cold and hold it well and the wild plants are basically free food.
- first priority is to get a [s]science machine[/s] reseach station, you need farming and advanced research fairly soon.
- after that you want to get a few mealwood growing so you'll have some food when your nutrient bars run out and work on getting a job board so you can get miners to break out of the starting biome
- make sure you watch your oxygen supply (open the oxygen overlay, if it's light blue it's fine) and build some beds and an outhouse at some point(beds are probably more important, sore back slows your dupes while pee is free dirty water you have to manage).
- at that point you should be in a decent position and thinking about moving out into other biomes at a good spot (maybe heading for a cold biome or looking for a mushroom spore) and thinking about setting up coal power

other helpful hints:
- the light from the printing pod is enough to grow 3 bristle blossoms on the right side of it
- pee is free water, puke is free water, farts are free power, these are good things if you manage them.
- food poisioning is almost a non-issue... build like one sink near the food and you're fine.
- don't be afraid to break out into other biomes, just go slowly. (and have deoderizers before going into more than a few tiles of slime)
- don't ignore room bonuses. something as simple as building a door where your beds are or a massage table in the kitchen can have a benifitial effect
- learn pipe bridge mechanics, you need to know this to make anything but the most basic plumbing/ventilation system work
- don't waste too much water or dirt on things like mush bars or algae terrariums (not to say those things aren'y useful is used spairingly in the right situation)

[Ray Garraty]

Don't take in every dupe Printing pod offers you. Read about negative dupe's traits and avoid printing such dupes.
Research basic farming and set up a mealwood farm as fast as possible. Don't even think about cooking mush bars.
Train Miner, send him to mine some abyssalite and surround starting biome with abyssalite tiles, it'll save your base from heating from neighbouring hot areas which can be fatal for your crops.

[mikek]

I watched this video of Crypticfox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjfVlyXzPxI

did help alot! :)

like others said:
toilets/wash station > so they dont pee on the ground and are clean so they wont stress
farm> research > dig up plant and look for cracks in tiles for seeds and plant them
oxygen> oxylite, leave those tiles. its free oxygen until they run out

but just watch the video :P

[Lifegrow]

I do have a playlist that has all sorts of random bits and bobs in it - hopefully it might help a little.

Because it's an early access game, i've stayed away from doing general "how to play the game" guides, as the early game especially changes a LOT on every update.

Anyway, here's the playlist - any questions, give me a shout.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVLEZuI-7xWwi0zlPgzztWfI35Ue6xAVY

[Katarn]

Make double manuel saves each half hour. So you can reload a game many cycles back. Auto save will only back up 10 cycles or so and then starts deleting the 11th.

Also you cheat by using the editor, but only do it if you want to. It helpfull if you want save you hours of base building, because it get frustating when something went horrible wrong

[SKull]

Yeah, outhouse first, then everything you need to do research. Wires, station, wheels, O2 machine, batteries and a hand pump for the super computer. But cycle 15 is when you start starving to death if you have neglected farming, so that's a solid #2.

[UCanResetIfUWannoo]

Get used to using your overlays. Especially, F1 (oxygen overlay), F3 (temperature overlay), and F9 (germ overlay). In the beginning use F9 (the germ overlay) and make note of where the green slime lung is located. You do not want to make contact with slime lung until you know more about the game.

Remember that CO2 will sink to the bottom of your base. It is key to control this occurrence by digging a chamber below the living spaces of your base. For example, dig down and dig out a chamber for the CO2 to collect at the bottom. Do not dig down past the starter biome. Outside the starter biome is heat. The heat will cause havoc in your living spaces. Do not make the CO2 chambers too big. If you do you will start to lose pressure in your base and your farms will not grow. It will take you time to observe and learn how to control pressure. Just remember to use your overlays. They will reveal to you the problems within your base.

I kept failing around day 200+ because of heat in my base killing my farms. I learned to build my power plants far away from my living spaces. At first, you can build a Manual generator and a couple of batteries within the living spaces, but when you go to upgrade to Coal generators, etc. do not build them around your living spaces. The heat will overwhelm you. Remember that heat is also transfered by water pipes and gas pipes. So, before you go to pumping water or gas into your base make sure you know what temperature it is.

There is much to say, but I thought those 3 were what I would have wanted to know from the start.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Originally posted by king(strange)james488:

sure:
- dig out as little as possible and save all the wild plants you can, the starting tiles are cold and hold it well and the wild plants are basically free food.
- first priority is to get a [s]science machine[/s] reseach station, you need farming and advanced research fairly soon.
- after that you want to get a few mealwood growing so you'll have some food when your nutrient bars run out and work on getting a job board so you can get miners to break out of the starting biome
- make sure you watch your oxygen supply (open the oxygen overlay, if it's light blue it's fine) and build some beds and an outhouse at some point(beds are probably more important, sore back slows your dupes while pee is free dirty water you have to manage).
- at that point you should be in a decent position and thinking about moving out into other biomes at a good spot (maybe heading for a cold biome or looking for a mushroom spore) and thinking about setting up coal power

other helpful hints:
- the light from the printing pod is enough to grow 3 bristle blossoms on the right side of it
- pee is free water, puke is free water, farts are free power, these are good things if you manage them.
- food poisioning is almost a non-issue... build like one sink near the food and you're fine.
- don't be afraid to break out into other biomes, just go slowly. (and have deoderizers before going into more than a few tiles of slime)
- don't ignore room bonuses. something as simple as building a door where your beds are or a massage table in the kitchen can have a benifitial effect
- learn pipe bridge mechanics, you need to know this to make anything but the most basic plumbing/ventilation system work
- don't waste too much water or dirt on things like mush bars or algae terrariums (not to say those things aren'y useful is used spairingly in the right situation)

Most of these tips are quite wrong so ill stop you right here

First 5 cycles tips:
-First thing to build within first cycle 2-3 outhouses , the sooner the better
-First thing to build within 1-2 cycles: place to sleep for dupes(not essencial but i do that)
-Never use algee farms , they will burn your algee and a lot water and dont provide many benefits
-Get reserch going after you build outhouses , first thing to reserch is farming
-Now make 3-4 itle high room and make it very long to prepare for farming , meanwhile accept any dupe who has least negative traits or has high farming , you may want to have as many mealworms as much as you have , its easier if you set dedicated farmer for farmer job
-After farming reserch dig out as many hiden ittems as possible and reserch refrigerator(find as many seeds as you want and plant as many you want)
-While pee puke and other things are free water thats easy way to get stress high=fail , dont listen to him
-Food poisoning sometimes may be isue , try to alweys use noncontaminated water if its used in production of food
-You wont need showers or fancy bathrooms , while its nice to have they will only contaminate/weaste water
-Build unpower fridges somewhere in bottom where co2 gathers , you wont need to power them as chlorine/co2 will make food never spoil

10+ cycles and endgame tips
-Dont make co2 scrubers , just keep digging down , eventualy a bit later you reach oil and
slicksters will eat it to make oil(infinite oil)
-Room bonuses while fancy if you wont keep your dupes stresses are not needed i never build dedicated rooms with few exeptions , bathroom and dining room are few exeptions , sleeping/restroom are bolocks

[Bergil]

Don't be too scared of Slimelung. I bit the bullet and cleared out a whole area of SlimeLung and got the dupes to store it outside the base.

One dupe was bed ridden but was nurtured back to health.

Just make sure not to overexpose them to it too much at any one time.