Thread by @GeePawHill

Oxygen Not Included Noob Notes.

1) Remember the prime directive. It's a sandbox game, there are no victory conditions you don't set yourself. If your'e not having fun, skim a save, restart, or get a new seed.

2) Everything here is about my play-style. There are other play-styles. There are lots of experts, with different approaches. I've recently *changed* my play-style cuz I wasn't having fun.

3) Before the game proper, you get the mini-game of picking which 3 dupes to start. You can do this for an hour. My formula, and everyone has a different one:
1 pure researcher. 2 builder/diggers. I name dupes by jobs, so that's Brains, Digby & Dagby.

Sometimes I subsitute and Opus (operator & supplier) for Dagby. Sometimes not. I am wobbly.

I don't take narcoleptics, anemics, flatulents, or the new "glow stick". Other than that, we all have weaknesses. :)

Gastrophobe and unempathetic and uncultured are *nothing*. I take'em.

4) The first thing I do, before even giving an order, is pause -- USE THE PAUSE KEY A LOT -- and set up schedule and priorities. The default schedule is weird and too easy on'em. The default priorities are okay for a little bit, but need adjusting.

In the beginning, I do a 2-down 2-bed schedule. Later, when the dupes are far from home, 3-down 2-bed seems better. I put 4 dupes on one schedule, then add another and offset. Most folks say bathtime is a waste.

For priorities, I set everybody's attack and life support to high, toggle to very high. I block all decoration until I have a master, cuz of an unfortunate incident I had once. :) Brains is pure research at first. Digby & Dagby do building, digging, and operating to start.

Why add operating? We'll have a hamster wheel by c2, and I don't want Brains needing to do it, cuz in the beginning I want to rush out some research. I may have to also give Digby farming and Dagby cooking, depends on how the PRNG feels about me early on.

Once I do this, I *save* over the start. Cuz I restart when I get annoyed, and resetting all this just makes me annoyeder. Best not to wake the dragon, or, in my case, the crab.

This is Spaced Out DLC, big asteroid, survival, V-SNDST-C-1839413089-0. I'm playing the DLC these days. They're different, but not in the early cycles, you vanilla folks won't notice anything different for a while.

Alt-S, or some Mac-ish similar thing, is what lets you zoom way out, taking away the heads-up display, btw. I look around, then no matter what tell my dupes to dig a little on each side. What I'm looking for is the edge of the starting -- sometimes called temperate -- biome.

I don't do this for long: by the end of the day we have the first mandatory goal: some outhouses. I will make a snap decision about where to put them even before noon on the first day.

That's all it took. I can see the boundaries because there's *always* granite at the boundaries of the starting biome. Now I usually decide two things, where to put the shitters, and where my main spine is gonna be.

For the johns, right underneath the arch. I slam in what is, for me, the minimum: 4 outhouses and 2 wash basins. This will keep dupes from waiting. THIS IS PLAY-STYLE, one outhouse can support several dupes, they just wait.

For the spine, that's gonan over on the west side. Rationale: it's very near the boundary, and, heading down, to its east is a bunch of plants all in a row. I can use this as a cheap nature reserve a little later. (There's another bunch up to the north and a little east.)

Now, priorities. I blueprinted in a little spine, but I really don't want them doing that yet, I want to poop by god. The P key changes the display to show numbers over every errand, like a dig or a build. P then 6 makes my mouse paint priority 6, for the bathrooms.

The wash basins need water, so I also put in a pump on that reservoir. Note that I left a good space on each side of the arch. Not an accident. I'll use the three tiles on either side to stick my research stations, cuz the arch is lit up, and machines work better in light.

The wash basins have directionality, that's the direction we stop and force dupes to wash their hands. We want them to do it on the way out.

There are no serious diseases in ONI except zomie spores, which are a bazillion miles from here, but food poisoning slows dupes down.

As the last two outhouses are being built, I put in the next mandatory thing: a hamster wheel, small battery, algae oxidizer, and the first research station. None of this is optional.

We've been living on the o2 coming from those green blobbies, which are oxylite, a magical substance that sublimiates into o2 when it's exposed. But there's not much of it. In fact, now's a good time to look at the breathability view, F1.

The bright blue is a high concentration of o2, with softening down to purple where it's low. The *red*, that's any unbreathable gas. What's all that red!?!? It's carbon dioxide, CO2. Not only is it present naturally, but dupes inhale o2 and exhale co2, so the amount will grow.

CO2 is more dense than O2, and it will always gradually fall downward. (It's the most dense gas.) Notice that's gonna be a problem. In that bathroom, there's no where for it to go, it'll just keep pooling and pooling. The fix, keep digging down. There's other fixes later.

End of c1, poop, eat, if there's time we socialize at the nearest spot that qualifies, right now it's the arch. Then we sleep. Once a dupe goes to sleep, she'll sleep until her stamina is back to 100, regardless of schedule. That's why we get away with just two squares of sleep.

It's c2. At this point, the system will tell you you need a food solution. Wellllllllll. Kinda. There is a *ton* of food all through the temperate biome, 10-15 cycles worth, at least. Still, we usually research Basic Farming first. I throw a few planters down for mealwood.

But for a few turns, we're free to be you and me. Dupes don't like sleeping on the ground, sore back slows them down. And that co2. We'll do the research and start on those two problems.

Poking a hole will let out co2. That easterly row lets me slap in some cots. Notice I added doors, one for the johns, one for the beds, and I set the beds back two spaces for now. Doors make rooms. That cot room will become a barracks (+1) and the johns will be a latrine (+1).

Two spaces back from the door: Shinebugs keep dupes awake, this keeps them mostly out of range. Sometimes, tho, I just kill the little bastards. :)

As soon as Basic Farming is done, I throw a bunch of planters in, ultimately for mealwood. You want this in base, cuz it'll stay cool in base for a while. I use planters rather than farm tiles cuz I often change my mind about where they should go.

I immediately research "Power Regulation", so I can throw a bigger battery on that little power grid. It keeps the dupes from having to run back and forth to the hamster wheel so often.

The power research is done. My next two, Meal Preparation and Interior Decor. Why? To get a mess hall and then turn it into a great hall. While that happens, I'd like to connect the right ladder down to the area with all the plants and over to the main spine. End of c2.

Sometime during c3 you get your first printing from the arch. Options start to unfold like crazy. I'm totally hoping for a Cookie (cook), a Fran (farmer/rancher), or an Opus. Best for me is a cook, and lookey there, the PRNG likes me.

Why did I want a cook? Lets me skip over the microbe musher entirely, and lets me free whichever digger I had assigned to cooking, not that any has happened yet. This Cookie doesn't have any other interests, but I'll live with it. She's got a natural skill in medice, tho.

Throw another cot in the barracks, keep working on the mess hall and digging down and over.

Research finished. Time for the first two colony development, which will give me the water cooler, which is the cheapest recreation machine, and the supercomputer, which we need to get past the first two steps in research.

End of c3. The room with the mess tables is already a mess hall, +3 morale. As soon as I get the watercooler, it'll turn to a great hall, +6 morale. This is the basic "keep your dupes happy" move for a good 50 cycles.

That big area in the center is full of co2, which is annoying but also a little misleading: the air pressure there is about 500 grams, where normal healthy pressure is about 1800 grams. It means I need an oxidizer a little further down to compress some of it. Again, temporary.

Oops, forgot pic.

Okay, near the end of c4. Some stuff has happened, branching optional geepaw-style stuff. Because we got a Cookie, I can skip right to the grill. The kitchen is WIP down below the great hall, which is now a great hall. And I've chosen next to research power stuff.

The great hall is a room that gives quite a morale buff, +6. It needs some mess tables, a decor item (the flower pot with the briar seed planted in it) and a recreation machine, the water-cooler. What's morale about? More skills requires more morale, and this'll keep us going.

What about the grill? If we hadn't have gotten a Cookie, one usually doesn't, we'd have built a microbe musher and made liceloaf, which consumes water. The grill needs a level of cook skill. We got one, so instead we'll make pickled meal.

The pit next to the grill? It's a place to store food that has a sterile gas in it, namely all that co2 that's all over. We're digging it down to keep the co2 in there. We'll kill the one up by the arch, and use that space for the bigger computer, cuz it's lit by the arch.

As promised, I'm putting another oxidizer down there by the kitchen, too. This'll help but not fix the co2 that's down there. As long as keep digging *down*, we keep delaying the problem, which is fine. We got better stuff to do.

For power, I'll research everything I need to make a coal generator, a smart battery, and some automation wire. This'll take a bit. No worries, still got that main spine to work on, both up and down, while it all unfolds.

BTW, for some dupes the effect of the great hall is enough to push them into their very-happy place. My Digby, for instance, has 9 morale and a 0 morale requirement. He is "sparkle streaking", which means he has temporary +8 athletics, which makes him very fast.

First I research "Brute Force Refinement", which will let me build a rock crusher and make some refined copper. Then I research "Smart Home" for the automation wire. Then will come Internal Combustion and Sound ampifiers, for the coal generator and a smart battery.

This, for me, is a standard non-branching sequence. I want a coal generator cuz I don't want to keep using the hamster wheel. Coal generators make more power, but are wasteful w/.o a smart battery. Definitely a GeePaw-playstyle thing, others feel differently.

Some time during c5, your three starting dupes will get their first skill point. This is a no-brainer in my case: Brains gets advanced research, so she can use the super computer. Digby & Dagby both get hard digging, so they can dig granite.

End of c5. I got the rock crusher going in next to the kitchen. No particular reason, it was just convenient. Got all my dupes promoted. Now we're just gonna dig for a bit, while the rest of the power research comes in.

And end of c6. The rock crusher is up. I use it to make 5 units of copper out of copper ore. That's just enough for one smart battery and the automation wire. Meanwhile, that spine over on the west side is coming along. Gonna keep extending it up & down.

Oh, took another dupe, which is lucky. This is an Opus, a specialist in operating and supply. It's unusual for me to get good dupes on the first two printings. I never take a dupe I don't actively want, which can mean long stretches of feeling underpowered and aggravated.

Okay, c8. There's a coal generator and smart battery, so the hamster wheel is just up there in case something goes wrong. You can see I extended that spine on the west side, both up and down.

Now, this is the end of the super-detailed play. From here on out, almost everything is highly context-dependent and playstyle-dependent. I'll continue from here, but with much less detail, tomorrow, prolly in a new thread that cites this one.

*But*. We did a lot.

I hope you got something out of it. Please feel free to ask questions or make comments. I've been playing this game for over two years now, and I greatly enjoy chatting about it.

Bedtime for me. Sleep tight!