Building your first base

Welcome to Stationeers! After completing the tutorial, a lot of you will be asking: "What now?".
This guide is for you.

Note: Some parts might be outdated. Leave a comment if there's any problem!

Baby steps

The first step is generally to build a small platform to place your machines. You have some materials that you could use to build a pressurized station with airlocks etc. but my tip is to wait with that for now.

In order to stay alive, your first priority is power. Your suit has a life support battery, and once it runs out, your suit will be unable to control your temperature, and you will eventually die.

To build your first platform, you need to place some frames. The starting crates should contain Iron Frames[stationeers-wiki.com] and Iron Sheets, get those ready.
First, you need to place down a base frame, you do that by right-clicking with the frame in your hand to enter build mode, then you simply left-click to place it in an appropriate position. Place a few down to give you some space to build on, around 6-10 frames should be enough to get started.

The next step is to build your frames into the next build-state. You do that by taking out your torch in one hand and those handy Iron Sheets in the other hand.
Turn on the torch (R to open and toggle menus for the held item, use F to activate a selection) and use it on the unbuilt frames.
At first, you will complete the segments of the frame, this second build state is enough to start working on and around your frame. If you want to make the frame airtight/isolated, you should upgrade it to the third build state by using the torch again.

Setting up Machinery

Now when you have a small platform, you can place your machines. You will need the arc furnace to smelt ores, the autolathe to make the first new items from your newly smelted ores, and you probably want the solar panel, as well as the solid fuel generator in order to get power.
(The solar panel requires a glass sheet to finish off before it works)

In order to stabilize your power supply, you can use a Power Controller. Hook up your power generation with the input port of the Power Controller and the rest of your base to the output.
You can open the Power Controllers' panel with a crowbar; turn it on with the yellow flip switch and add a battery.
When you add a battery to the Power Controller, it will act as a buffer, effectively saving some of the energy that otherwise would be wasted when generating large amounts of energy, and then your base can use that power later when your power generation goes down (coal runs out, sun goes down, etc).

The next step is to go mine some ores.
You have a mining belt in your pack, take it out into your hand and swap it out with your tool belt. Now when you use the drill or pick (just use the drill, really, the pick is for when you run out of power, but it doesn't really happen), the ores you mine will be put directly into your mining belt.

I will leave the rest for you to find out, but when you get stuck, leave a comment, and if it's something that really needs to be explained (rather than just explored by yourself), I will add it to the guide.

Just tell me what to do!

If you aren't that interested in exploring the game by dying a few times, here's a step by step tutorial that should keep you alive for the first few hours.

In order to stay alive, your first priority is power. Your suit has a life support battery, and once it runs out, your suit will be unable to control your temperature, and you will eventually die.

Setup

(Power Controller == APC)

• Construct a platform for placement of machines (at least 4 frames in size)
  
• Place the solid fuel generator and the solar panel in one end of the platform, connect their power ports with cables, leaving one open end pointing towards the other side of the platform.
  
• Make sure you add a glass sheet to the solar panel in order to finish it.
  
• Place the Power Controller onto the end of your cable (yellow arrow pointing into the port)
  
• Place one piece of cable going out from the output port, you can use this later to power your machines (Power Controller requires an output cable connected to function)
  
• Open the Power Controller panel with a crowbar
  
• Turn the Power Controller on with the yellow flip switch
  
• Put in the extra large battery from your crate into the slot of the Power Controller

Now whenever you produce power, the APC will charge the battery by drawing up to 1kW.
The solid fuel generator will generate much more than that, so adding another APC to charge an extra battery (you can take out the one from your suit while you're running the generator) can be helpful.

Keeping your battery charged

Here are some tips for keeping enough power to make sure your life support doesn't run out.

• As soon as the APC battery is full (blue), swap it out with the one in your suit.
  
• Only run your solid fuel generator when there is a battery in the APC that you want to charge, and you don't expect solar to be enough.
  
• Keep an extra APC or battery charger connected directly to the power generation in order to charge a battery directly instead of serially draining your APC battery.
  
• If you find yourself struggling with power, you may have to micromanage your solar panel for the entire day in order to charge enough battery for the night.
  
• Make sure to turn off all machines you're not actively using.
  
• Make sure that you have enough power in your suit before running your machines, possibly depleting your APC battery.
  
• Gather coal during the day when it's easy to see, so you can burn it if your power runs low in the night.
  
• Avoid using all of your coal to power production, save at least a half stack or so to burn, in case of emergency.

Links and resources

There are currently two wikis for the game (that has content) with differing content and structure.

• Unofficial Stationeers Wiki[stationeers-wiki.com] hosted, ran and maintained by independent fans (no ads, paid for by a fan)

Also don't forget the other guides here on Steam.

[Salt]

I've gone farther than this guide took me but it definitely helped a lot when I was starting. Thanks for making this guide.

[gman4229]

welder

[Sunspots]

I'll have to look into this, thanks for the heads up.

[Weathers]

This guide helped me to get started and to get familiar to the UI. Appreciate you taking
the time to do this.

[TomasVaner]

Why do I have to APC in my starting kit? To make a reserve power supply?

[Sunspots]

I'm sorry to hear that the guide wasn't enough.
Following the guide shouldn't have taken you much more than 25 minutes, your life support should be enough for much longer than.
The game is hardcore by nature, so dying on your first few tries is natural.

I've added more information on power, and two point-by-point based lists of steps for getting started with and maintaining power.

[Kit]

After following this guide, my base wasn't functioning, I ran out of life support power and died, still hadn't even finished getting the power to work, this guide is useless

[johnmoon49]

on the power controler do i swich the three swithes ie lighting auto and general or just the outer swith on the side

[Starshard0]

Everyting you need to make an airlock is located in Construction Crate 2. You can set up a tracking beacon and use your pad to find your way back after mining. If your character falls asleep, you either ate a stun pill or ran out of oxygen, either way, if you die you have to reload a save or start a new game. Hunger is not currently implemented. The tutorial is very basic right now, and you'd be better served reading the wiki or forums or asking in the Discord server.

[pazartesi_gorusuruz]

How do you make a airlock? How do you find everything needed to make an airlock? How do you find your way back after mining ore, since it is so far away? How to build a bed (?) since my character fell asleep? Or did I die? If I'm to build a bed, where is the recipe? Why is there food in the crates, since my character doesn't seem to get hungry or eat anything? Or does he? If so how am I to know this? Why isn't any of this mentioned anywhere? Why is the tutorial only about menu and character controls and mentions nothing of the build or survival basics?