Starbound : A beginners Guide

Starting Starbound can be a daunting experience for those unfamiliar with crafting and exploration games. But this guide aims to give you a head start on your long journey to becoming an expert space explorer.

Character Creator 



Start out by creating the character you want. There are several races to choose from and it's worth bearing in mind that each race has different attributes.

What food a character can eat will depend on their race as well as the style of spaceship and your characters background lore. Each race has their own armours and recipes. Choose from the following starter races and customise the look of your character as you see fit: Human , Avian , Apex  , Floran , Hylotl , Glitch

Beginners Guide



At the beginning of the game you will find yourself on your spacecraft orbiting a planet. Before you do anything else explore your ship and get a feel for the different devices you will be able to use here. Here you will find a teleporter, Ship locker, and a navigation deck. You will become very familiar with each of these as you play.

Now interact with the Ship locker by walking over to it and pressing “E”. Inside you will find a number of resources to get you started. Move all of these to your inventory making sure you equip the sword and Matter Manipulator to your hotbar at the top of the screen. Doing this should mark the current quest as complete. Now it is time to visit your starter planet.

Survival and Crafting on Planets



Now travel to your starter planet. Do this by walking over to the teleporter on your ship or simply selecting the teleport icon to the right of the screen, it is depicted by a downward arrow. You will be instantly transported to the planets surface.

When you appear on a planets surface you should begin to gather resources using the Matter Manipulator to do this simply place your mouse pointer over the material you wish to harvest and hod the left mouse button until the items you want are dropped. Start using the device on trees to gather as much wood as possible and also collect any ore or coal that you might run across as well, as this will be useful later.

When exploring the planet be aware of any dangers associated with it. Many of the animals that appear may be hostile so keep your sword equipped in case you need to fight your way out of a bad situation. When night time comes the numbers of hostiles may increase and temperatures can drop on the planet which can kill you. This is why that when you have enough resources you should begin crafting the materials you will need to build a shelter. Press “C'' to bring up the crafting menu. Here you will be craft the wood you gathered earlier into wood planks. Use the wood planks to start building your shelter by simply moving the planks to where you want them to go an left clicking to place them. Right clicking will place the item in the background which will enable you to build a back wall.

Now that your shelter is complete you will need to start crafting more complex items. To do this you will need a crafting table. Once again open up the crafting window and make the table using wood planks, you'll need 35 of these to do it. When the crafting table is complete place it inside your shelter. Explore the crafting table and discover what kinds of items you can make with it. At some point you will notice a temperature gauge appear at the bottom of the screen. As night draws closer the temperature will drop so low your character may die. Open up the crafting menu and using 1 torch (If you collected any from your Locker) and 5 unrefined wood to create a camp fire. You should now be able to survive your first night on an alien world.

When you get the chance the next thing you should do is find food as you will notice that your hunger meter will begin to drop. Do this by crafting a hunting bow using 10 unrefined wood and 1 plant fibre. If you don't have these materials already don't worry, explore the area with your matter manipulator there should be some nearby. With the hunting bow equipped go and hunt some of the local Fauna. When killing an animal with a bow there is a chance that it will drop some meat, which when picked up can be eaten straight away or cooked on the camp fire.

Now you should be able to cope with basic survival on a planet you can continue to explore and collect resources and experiment crafting different items and complete the quests you are given as they will give you a basic introduction into how to pay Starbound. But don't forget there's a whole galaxy out there to explore so lets get back to your ship and take a look.

Travelling between planets



Once you feel comfortable with how to survive on an alien world you should now teleport back up to your ship. Once on-board head over to the pilot control chair in the bridge and press “E”. This will bring up the navigation menu. Here you can set the planet your currently orbiting as your home world. This is a good way of making sure you will always make it back to where you started from.

In the main window of the menu you will see the planet you are currently orbiting and it's moons. This will allow “satellite travel” between the planet and it's moons. Right click this window and you will be presented with the “planetary system” you are currently in, this allows travel between the different worlds in that solar system. Right clicking once more and you will see a map of the Galaxy, from here you can initiate “interstellar travel” between planetary systems.

Before you travel to another world you will need to make sure that you have enough fuel for your ship. Activate the computer to the left of the pilot control chair. This will open up your inventory and a small bar with slots in. Now move some coal from your inventory (you did mine some coal didn't you?) into one of the fuel slots and click “Fuel”. This will have been added to your ships fuel tanks.

Now that you have some fuel we'll travel to another world. Go back over to and activate the pilot control chair. The further you travel the more fuel is needed so to start out we'll just travel to the current planets moon as this will only cost 1 fuel and will leave you with enough to not be stranded. Hover the pointer over the moon and you will be shown some information about it such as it's threat level and what type of biome it is. Left click the new world and then click “GO”. After a short while you will arrive at your destination. Congratulations you are now an interstellar explorer. Explore the new environment and remember keep collecting resources.

You should now know all the basics for surviving in Starbound. Good luck traveller and have fun!

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