While Starbound was not yet officially released I feel obliged to share some of the knowledge gained to help others in furthering their own stations/camps/exploration with the use of these few tips. Starbound is not an easy game, but there are ways of making your life much easier.
A more in-depth guide might be written in the future, but this shorter guide will aim at providing as much useful information as possible, especially if you did not play similar games to Starbound, like Terraria.
My small ship. It has all the crafting tables I need, for my current tier, and plenty of storage space for odds and ends.
1. Stick to your ship – As much fun as it may be to build bases and camps on different planets in the long-term you should always consider your ship as the main base. The reason for this is simple, as you travel from planet to planet, in search of treasure and resources it would be a better idea to keep all of your production tools and main storage on you. If you established a “Main Base” on a planet this would call for a lot of travel between planets, systems and even sectors. All of this is both time consuming, and expensive in terms of fuel usage.
Eventually building a base might be a good option, especially if you lack the space for more storage or production (such as when you could have numerous refineries), or when you want to start something with your friends, but during the initial stages of the game, when you have little to no loot, you can keep all, or at least most of it, on your ship
Multiplayer games are an important example of when building a “base” on your ship is useful. When you join a server for the first time none of your already discovered planets will be present, the world will be randomized and everything will be brand new… except for your ship. Anything stored or built on your ship, including higher tier crafting stations, will remain on it when you jump between servers. This means that when you want to help out a friend, by crafting them some armor, or when you want to speed up your friend’s progression by making tier-advancing items for them, you will have such options. Without your ship acting as a base you would have to start each game from the beginning (not counting the items you might have already on you).
2. Take everything and anything that might be useful – Now, this is bordering on some form of hoarding syndrome, but if there is an opportunity to take something you should take it. If you found a treasure chest you should take it with you, to use it for storage at your base or ship. If there is an area filled with torches or oil lamps pick them up, because you might need more light during your next expedition. Even something as simple as a tent should be picked up, in order to have a portable healing spot for you and your friends.
Loot. ’nuff said.
Of course, you won’t need everything you pick. Eventually you will have enough chests, beds and lights, as well as decorations. It is still better to have a little bit too much than not enough. Holding that in mind, do not pick things you will clearly never need. The primary example here are weapons. Until there will be a way to sell them, or you found a superior weapon to your current one, just leave them in their chests and move on. At the end of the day you will have more than enough worthless weapons lying about, and you will never have to use all of them. The same may go for books (they are everywhere) and certain types of civilian clothing (such as Scientist clothes).
Ores, of different sorts, plants, strange crystals and other components that might seem unimportant just now could be important later. Pick up anything that looks remotely useful, and usually you can tell which resources are very common, or could be easily obtained (such as ice, bones or wood).
3. Save those pixels! – Earning Pixels might seem easy during the later stages of the game, but initially it will be slow and painful. You might die a lot, thus losing a lot of pixels, and pixels are needed for all manner of jobs and tasks. On the most basic level, you need pixels to make yourself better armor and weapons. No pixels means no progress. Currently there is no easy way to store pixels. UPDATE: There is now a machine that can be built to compress/store pixels at Tier 3.
A way to approach production that needs pixels is to focus on specific tasks, at a given time. For example, if you want to make steel armor focus in first order on getting all the materials to make it. After that is done focus on collecting pixels. If you carry your workshop on your ship that means you could jump between planets to quickly gather pixels from dungeons, to then teleport to your ship and finish your project quickly. The order is crucial here, since you could have an accident while mining, thus losing pixels you previously gathered. The easiest way to earn pixels is to fight tougher enemies, but there is no rule as to what enemies give the most pixels. A tougher creature might offer only 10 pixels, while a much weaker one (theoretically) will give you 50. Some creatures, especially in dungeons, can give you a lot of pixels, so the most efficient way to become rich is to hunt in dungeons.
4. On Weapons and Armor – When you start the game most weapons found in chests or on mini-boss monsters will be weak. That will not be the case on later tiers, but let us quickly sum the situation up for you.Typically weapons found on planets of a specific Tier (starting from 2) will be only a bit weaker than what you can craft on your own. However, your crafted weapons will have no special powers or abilities but they will cause more damage on hit (this could change in the future). Shields work usually on the principle that a shield found on a Tier X planet will stop most Tier X system creature attacks. As soon as you arrive at a new sector your number one priority should be to either craft a “basic” weapon and shield, as quickly as possible, or find them in chests or on spawns. Armor will pose a major issue, since obtaining armor up to Tier is both expensive and time consuming, since you will usually need a lot of resources to make it, and usually some type of new resource. If you want to advance to the next tier you will need the best possible armor, so eventually you will have to craft all the bits and pieces you need.
Comparing a suit of armor I could make to my currently worn.
All armor has three values. Defense, Energy, Warmth and Health. Defense determines how much protection you have, depending on what other armor you have. UPDATE: Defense values and calculations have changed in recent beta updates, and they might change in the coming weeks (again). Energy increases your energy reserve (energy is used with Techs and guns, for example). Warmth is just that. If you have sufficiently warm clothing you will never feel cold, but the less warm your clothing the quicker you will freeze. Higher level worlds will have much harsher environments (this also means certain biomes are colder than others). Hold that in mind before you advance into a new and unknown world. Health increases your overall health.
5. Freezing – Staying warm is VERY important. There will usually be two ways of staying warm. Having sufficiently warm clothing and having a heat source. Heat sources include torches and fires. Electrical lights do not produce any heat (so standing next to a neon light will not warm you up). During the night and on some biomes it will be much easier to freeze. Make sure to carry a fire around with you, in case things do get very cold. Placing more than one fire will increase local heat, which means you could warm yourself up quicker, or freeze slower.
I entered an empty cavern, but I still made sure that it was sealed off, so that only myself could use it. This makes exploration, and further digging, much safer. Also, in case you did not know, you can place blocks, like the ones I am standing on, in the “air” as long as there is a “solid” background behind them.
6. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE – I think everybody has gone through this, on Starbound. Certain enemies and mobs are extremely tough, especially if you lack proper armor and weapons. What do you do when you end up on a planet with potential loot, but seemingly no safe way to reach it? Tunneling. Now, tunneling calls for decent mining equipment, made out of gold or better. A gold pickaxe digs through dirt very quickly, you could still use weaker pickaxes but the dig time will be much longer. Torches will be necessary, to light your way. Digging a tunnel system beneath the planet’s surface gives you a few advantages. Firstly, security, at least to a degree. Secondly, fighting advantage. If the tunnels are more or less flat enemies will have to charge you head on, and if you have a sufficiently powerful weapon you will be able to knock them back constantly.
This is a very cowardly thing to do, yes, but there is very little choice. Boss monsters are even more dangerous than ordinary spawns and here too you will often hide behind protective walls, since you lack any sufficiently powerful armor or weapon to take on the enemy in a fair fight. Since you can strike at enemies from behind walls, with melee weapons, or fire at them through small 1 cube holes that is most often what you will do to achieve victory over superior enemies.
You will have to hold in mind that you need some knowledge of the enemy you will be facing. Can the boss destroy your walls? What manner of attacks does it have? Some weapons will be better suited for certain boss fights or encounters than others. For example, a bow or gun is better for the Tier 1 boss fight, while a melee weapon is my weapon of choice for the Tier 2 boss fight.
7. Mining, for Fun and Profit – Mining is crucial for progressing in the game. You need different Ores and Metals for weapons, armor, and other items. Certain decorations will also call for a degree of mining, even though most can be found in randomly generated areas and dungeons. Point being, you never know when you might need an ore or metal.
Even when only exploring a planet make it a rule to mine out any smaller ores of metals close to the surface. While a single such small “batch” might not be much (let’s say even five pieces of ore) after collecting each such small batch from the planet’s surface you should obtain a decent number of bars, after refining.
Depending on the level of the planet and the sector you might find different ores close to the surface, in abundance. While on lower level planets you might, at first, find only coal and copper in the 3rd Sector (3rd Tier) you could find Titanium every few steps away.
When you start upgrading your armor, weapon, or when building your base, there is no such thing as enough metal. Having a huge oversupply of every metal is better than having a shortage you could not foresee. Keep it all, because even if you fail to use it eventually your friends might have need for it!
8. On Combat – While in point six I spoke of using different methods to evade combat, or to make it simpler, let us talk of actual combat.
Firstly, guns are not always the best answer. A melee weapon could do more damage, and it will not use up energy. Melee weapons seem to have a better knockback, and they still have a small range of their own. This means that you can effectively keep an enemy at bay with a good high tier weapon. Furthermore, you can combine one handed melee weapons with a shield. You could end up with a very powerful sword, combined with an impenetrable shield, which in the long-run makes enemy guns completely useless. I have personally found that a one-handed weapon and shield, or a two-handed weapon with a special ability can be better than a rapid-firing assault rifle, simply because the melee weapon has the potential to insta-kill, while a rifle needs a few hits.
Poor giant land tadpole.
However, melee weapons are not always the best answer either. A gun, or any other ranged weapon, is best against targets you cannot reach, or monsters that cannot reach you. Jumping down to try and take out a horde of monsters is usually a bad idea, but a bow or gun lets you kill them from a safe distance. Finding guns is hard, and bows substitute pixels for either leather or meat. Furthermore, if you find a good pistol, or purchase one, you can still use a shield, because it counts as a one-handed weapon. Just moments ago, while correcting this guide, I stumbled on a pistol with some type of special penetrating ability, that would allow bullets to pass through multiple enemies at the same time, and then still deflect from any surface behind them to move up or down (depending on the direction of the shot). Since the gun was found on a Tier 3 planet it was incredibly deadly to pretty much anything I faced at the time, even if it was a horde of enemies trying to charge me down (the knockback and penetration made short work out of everything)
There are also thrown weapons and explosives, but they are highly situational one-use items. In other words, not too practical, because eventually you will run out of them. You could keep a few bombs or grenades for special encounters, but do not rely on them.
When fighting a monster you need to first realize what manner of attacks the monster uses. If you have a shield of the same tier as the monster you should be capable of blocking all damage, as long as the shield is facing the monster at the moment it strikes (so, when a monster jumps down at you make sure to face it’s direction). Weapons have a certain range and delay when attacking, and found weapons can have special abilities. This means that you can harm enemies from a certain distance. However, when a weapon has a special ability the ability (especially if it’s ranged) will do less damage than if you hit the monster with your weapon directly. Learn as much as you can about the weapons you enjoy using. The more you know about your chosen weapon the better your advantage over enemies.
9. Space Travel – Coal is what you will at first use to power your ship (I imagine in higher tiers there will be more useful substitutes). However, you do not need a lot of coal to travel. You can jump between a planet and its moons for just one point of fuel. Traveling between planets in a solar system will cost you more, but not a significant amount. If you followed rule 7 then you should have plenty of coal to freely travel between planets and even solar systems.
In other words, until Coal is needed for crafting its primary use will be fueling your ship, and it does that very well, even if you do need a lot of it. Travel is important for exploration, and exploration is important for treasure hunting. While it might be beneficial to stick to one world and extract anything useful out of it you might end up finding far more items that you need on another nearby planet.
You will tend to find a slightly different dungeon or town on each planet. Friendly Towns will have plenty of chests and crates with loot. You could even find plenty of traders, in case you need food, weapons or some cool looking clothing. Just do not hit anybody and do NOT destroy any housing, furniture or statues… you know, just in case.
10. Levels are Not Everything - MASSIVE UPDATE: The situation regarding levels and threat changed a bit, and I presume it will change again. Below you can read my “old tip” but I will wait with modifying it until the Level system is stable.
While you might had just started your Starbound career it is important to remember that while exploring a Level 10 planet is dangerous at first it could also be more beneficial than exploring only level 1 planets. The same applies to later tiers, where sticking to only entry level planets (Level 1, 11, 21, etc.) will open up some new possibilities (new ores, for example) but they will not be present in sufficient amounts. If you find yourself a high level planet you will find more higher tier goodies, which means a better early start.
The clear threat of going to such planets are all the monsters that can, most likely, insta-kill you. That is why you follow rule 6, you evade any and all combat. For example, as soon as you spawn on a level 10 planet you construct a wall around the area you teleport into, and then simply start digging down.You evade all caverns and caves, unless you can safely wall off the entrance, and there are no monsters, so that you can explore them. If you are looking for resources, such as ores, then you can dig down and eventually you will find veins of ores waiting to be mined out. While it might be easier to find ores on the surface, by digging down you could create a whole system of tunnels that will let you travel and mine throughout the planet without any risk.
For surface resources, such as wood or plant fiber, or perhaps eyes, ice or bones, you can travel to appropriate level 1 planets where the risk of meeting dangerous creatures is much smaller. High level planets tend to have slightly better loot in chests but more importantly they will have more useful ores. For example, go to a Level 1 planet for (let us say) wood, but a level 10 planet for larger quantities of iron, coal and copper.
After you obtain all the equipment you need you then can attempt to explore these higher level planets, with a much smaller risk of getting mauled within the first few seconds of arrival.
While there are still different areas left unmentioned, such as using Techs, fighting specific bosses or construction these above ten points should make your life much easier, especially if you just started playing. Starbound is a demanding game, and while it is still being balanced do not expect it to be easy, and in any case you can always challenge yourself by exploring far more dangerous areas, having the above tips close to your heart.
Want to find out more about Starbound? Check out their main site!
