Northern Forrest - not so great

[joe_schmoe_gamer]

I find the Northern Forest to not be a good spot for first-time or even intermediate players like myself. Sure, there are lots of resources but the terrain is horrible. Almost straight up and down for the most part and full of cliffs. And access to water is difficult to say the least. No room at all for base building. This is a good area to mine and bring back to friendlier areas. I will move on to another biome to start my next game or play the grass fields better.

[mackster]

I would say, from a now intermediate player, dunes is good for a base. Up to oil anyway, but there are a couple of oil fields close by. Then its the west coast for, well, everything. Huge area to build, tons of resources and lots of water. This is where I have set up a new save after enjoying the dunes

[Daven ColdSpire]

northern forest is my go to base spot, but then i put everything on platforms, so have no issues with the terrain

[MJS WARLORD]

i started near the northern forest without realising how difficult it would be to get resources in the distance but i made a lot of steel platform walkways in the sky , apart from the radio active curse ... the uranium mine was the most difficult to get to , my longest conveyor to a coal mine took me 9 minutes and 50 seconds to ride back to base on a mk4 belt but it was work it cos i got a big mine and 2 smaller ones hidden in bushes that i found when escaping from fire spitting dudes

[kLuns]

It's my favourite location and I hate big hovering platforms.It looks awfull and liquids will always require pumps.

You need to build upwards a lot and look out you don't build your towers through the blue moth flight path.

For coal power I advice to draw a power line to the crater lake and use the 3 pure nodes there so you can make steel at your home base.

The forest has lots of biomass to get you going and I always wait before switching from biomass to coal till I have the mk 2 miner and mk 3 belt to make a 54 generator plant.

I only make sky platforms to find out how much space I need to build on the ground. Then I build one layer that's stackable on the ground.

You can always get 3 wall high floors with the belting on top of the machine. No space issues what so ever. The only thing that won't fit is an awesome sink

[HuMaNgUtAn]

I agree the Northern forest is a far from an ideal starting area - and I started my first couple of worlds there thinking it was the best. Both of the 2 desert starts are better to get going quickly (and biomass isn't a problem in either).

Of the non-standard areas to set up base - the western coast is great, but I like to save that for a big endgame factory (like I do with the Northern Forest)

The Blue crater (in the south east) is easily my favourite start with all basic resources close by and loads of coal and oil in close proximity.

[kLuns]

I realy don't understand what problem you have with Northern Forest. You can make factories with plenty walking and extending space without any worry about the landscape. I often make the bottom floor of my factory a "staircase" with foundations on different heights. Containers, constructors and other buildings will be buildable on a 1m height difference and you don't need to climb to a skyplatform for that. You still have a neat factory with a good overview and more than enough space to expand or walk around your machines.

How much space do you need for a few basic item factories?

[joe_schmoe_gamer]

It's the late game requirements that make it much more difficult to use that area.

[Xype]

The terrain there is easy, you just build high, once you get to the top of those curves you make a giant platform. This only takes about 3 5 wall high floors.

Northern forest is great because you have a ton of pure iron nodes, pure limestone and pure copper right there, everything you need. Coal isn't far away and a decent oil pit is just south, and southwest, and north. You can make a pure fuel power plant, a plastic plant and a rubber plant, and it isn't far to ship it in, heck I just build conveyors to them. Bauxite is just over the hill. 1 road to the west got me nitrogen, craterium, and crystals, which was easy to build because of the massive amount of concrete I had when I got to the point of needing it.

[Xype]

Originally posted by kLuns:

It's my favourite location and I hate big hovering platforms.It looks awfull and liquids will always require pumps.

You need to build upwards a lot and look out you don't build your towers through the blue moth flight path.

For coal power I advice to draw a power line to the crater lake and use the 3 pure nodes there so you can make steel at your home base.

The forest has lots of biomass to get you going and I always wait before switching from biomass to coal till I have the mk 2 miner and mk 3 belt to make a 54 generator plant.

I only make sky platforms to find out how much space I need to build on the ground. Then I build one layer that's stackable on the ground.

You can always get 3 wall high floors with the belting on top of the machine. No space issues what so ever. The only thing that won't fit is an awesome sink

I actually have a road that is in perfect line with the moth flight path, we stand in that spot and the moth picks us up for a ride around the world.

[DrNewcenstein]

Originally posted by Xype:

Northern forest is great because you have a ton of pure

Aside from pure oil for fuel generators, how does the quality of nodes matter?

[God of Snacks]

Terrain barely makes a difference because the meta is to build giant floating factories. Now if you're trying to build *with* the environment then yeah, northern forest is probably the hardest location.

[Xype]

Originally posted by DrNewcenstein:

Originally posted by Xype:

Northern forest is great because you have a ton of pure

Aside from pure oil for fuel generators, how does the quality of nodes matter?

pure node takes 1 power shard to max a mk5 conveyor, at lower tiers it is just plain lots of resources, which you need to get things rolling compared to not. Also other than the copper I am not talking about 1 node, there is 5 pure iron nodes there, and 2 limestone all within 10 tiles of standing in the middle of the forest spot.

The discussion is why it is good or not for starting, it is absolutely an ideal starting spot, then in higher tiers move east and ship what you make in the forest out to your new main base, (or west, some prefer east like me some prefer west, but point is building over the desert/water or swamp is ideal as its huge open flat area) and.. uranium.

Starting out you have slow conveyors, you don't have railways, you don't have trucks etc, having high out put resource nodes right beside you that make the starter items is absolutely perfect. I consider northern forest much better for low to mid tier than end game, def want to move for end game but at that point you have hit up all those oil nodes that literally surround the northern forest and you have plenty of power to make new massive bases with.

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by God of Snacks:

Terrain barely makes a difference because the meta is to build giant floating factories. Now if you're trying to build *with* the environment then yeah, northern forest is probably the hardest location.

Remember that "the meta" is generally just the tendencies of the most social gamers, those who flit from game to game and rarely come back. There's a whole huge portion of the population who usually isn't even aware of the meta.

[HuMaNgUtAn]

Originally posted by God of Snacks:

Terrain barely makes a difference because the meta is to build giant floating factories.

There is no meta in a game such as this unless maybe you are speed-running it and giant floating platforms are not at all satisfactory.

[Shane]

North forest remains todate the best place to start in terms of distance to pure nodes however things have changed from the first version to now

nodes have changed now....



in other words a mk1 miner on a pure node at the beginning counts more than a impure node, but the trade of flat land vs purity is the difference

it comes down to creativity