Alpha 8.2 - Arid Starter Planet

DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
ROBINSON PROTOCOL: NO

Hello, I'm rather new to Empyrion and this forum. I started the game about two months ago and have played circa 450h according to Steam.

I gave the new arid starter planet a try when 8.2.0 was released and ran into an issue, but not so much with the arid planet itself, but rather how the game currently handles multiple starter planets:

Yesterday I built my first warp capable ship. But when I set off to the first planet, I found myself stranded in the solar system with no way back to my starter planet. The route away from the starter is a one-way route, with only one 23.5 AU route leading back to it from a remote space station. See the attached screenshot. To reproduce, use map seed 1969.

From my experience, I think the game always makes sure that you can return to your temperate starter planet, even if you sometimes have to circle around a large portion of the solar system to get back. However, I don't think this is currently done for the arid starter planet. When creating the solar system, the arid starter planet is treated just like any other planet.

As a result, my only chance to return there would be by setting down somewhere, building a new base and gathering enough materials and leveling enough to build a CV. By the time I would return, I would probably be level 25 and the power in the base on the starter planet would probably have run out. But that wasn't the way I intended to play. I wanted to have my main base on the arid world and finish the game from there.

There are two other small issues I encountered:
- Small O2 bottles give only 35 oxygen (not 75) when put into O2 tanks
- There is no GRAIN anywhere on the arid starter planet, making the production of plastic raw material impossible

 

Such things shouldn't be possible but they happen from time to time, different from seed to seed.

For the grain...if you find a Village of the Talon Guardians on your World, "Aquire" their Crops or farm them as long as possible they drop seeds

Btw., didnt you use the RP? you would have received 4 Plants including one Corn

If it helps we all, starting on the Arid World, struggle with the "missing" items

 

Welcome!!!!

One-ways may come back, but they may require a CV to come the rest of the way. Yup, I learned this lesson the EXACT SAME WAY you did!

I just posted something similar under the experimental forum feedback for the Arid planets start (I just found this thread... the other wasn't locked yet... hint to Hummel if he wants all feedback moved here! )

Basically, the arid starters don't have the guaranteed "one-SV-warp away" next planet that the TS do... and I also questioned if this is an issue with mutliple starter planets in general...

Sounds like you got a really miserable seed, though, as I at least had 2 (LAVA! OUCH!) planets adjacent to my starter. I've finally found Neo/Sath, but it was a bunch of jumps away.

To the left, my first hop had a penta asteroid (PENTAPACH!), so I am free to hop around, as long as I don't go down any 1-ways or hit a CV-only path...

But relying on the RNG for these things is.... problematic at best.

 

Wait, we can't edit weapons anymore?

 

Enjoying the different start. For some reason, apart from the need for O2, it seems fairly tame to me. Can't find mushroom on starter planet, traders or other planets so far. Need to farm it to make scrapings for med kits. Still searching other planets. Couldn't find corn either. Had to farm natives for grain (wink, wink). I would have expected to find these items in the oasis biome, but zilch. Deliberate or just overlooked? Make it available to purchase?

 

Not deliberate AFAIK. I do know that the arid starter planet is still being refined. The missing plants have been absent since the planet was released. Eleon may be adding some plants to replace them or there may be difficulties getting them to populate. There's a Corn if you find the RP wreck. Farming the natives works.

 

I eventually found some shrooms on the other starter planet (temperate) in the forest biome, also a couple of the flat topped ones in the swamp, but they were few and far between. It's enough to get started. There were a few corn in the swamp there as well, tho I guess by that stage most have got round the problem courtesy of the sudden breakout of lead disease among the natives. Didn't realise the other starter planet was close by.

 

The village crops are't growing on my seed (need to have O2 I guess). But, yeh plenty of natives to harvest for sprouts, both corn and wheat can be used btw.

 

The power should be fine as the base shouldn't use any when you are away from the playfield.

 

The other starter nearby isn't guaranteed. You got lucky with your seed that way.

Shrooms and grain need to be upped on the starter world (along with surface copper).

I've been out in my space, and I have lava/barren/desert worlds all around mine.

It's making getting neo/sath an issue.

 

Plants rarely grow well in the open air on any planet now. TBH I preferred the old setup where they'd grow anywhere as long as you put up a grow light. It was unrealistic as hell but, it made for some great fantasy farms.

 

On one of my recent played seeds a Village was standing in the northern region of the Arid Planet. when the sun went down I noticed that in some places where the growing plots where placed between buildings pockets of 22° C warm air existed while the rest of the village was well below Zero° C.
I admit that the plant die very fast when you enter the town. So my first thing is always pick as many plants as possible. Eventually have the Plants SP Mission active while doing it. Last time a got 20 Akua Berries

 

My arid planet starts have been a bit seed-dependent. My expectation was that the arid planet would be more of a current version of the
Omicron start with slightly less death. I believe that the arid starter will get sorted in about the same amount of time that it took to get things right on the new temperate starter.

 

I finally got a chance to try out the arid planet yesterday. I played multiple seeds for about 20-40 minutes each just to get a feel for the "average" starting experience.

I was just checking out resources, fauna, topography, biomes, etc. to get an idea of how "survivable" it was. All skipped Robinson Protocol, on medium difficulty, default settings. (If I was going to play a "real" game I would have cranked it higher.)

Here's what I saw:

• The difficulty seemed to vary wildly, perhaps a bit too much. One start was absolutely not even close to water or any resources, another was between two lakes with both silicon and copper deposits right on the shore.
• Food was plentiful. Perhaps too plentiful for a "more challenging" start.
• Fauna were not challenging, I encountered no hostile creatures, only docile ones, near the starting area. On the temperate world you rarely need to wander far to find a forest with spiders in it, so it seemed on the easier side in that regard. That said the environment itself is more challenging so maybe that's OK.
• Temperatures could be very hot. Arid doesn't necessarily mean "really hot", it just means really dry. I saw temperatures of 55C and higher in the starting biome. I might expect that in a drier biome (e.g. dunes) or closer to the equator but it seemed a bit high for the savannah-type starter biome.
• I would expect more weather conditions like dust storms or sand storms. Didn't really see that. Do they exist? If not, shouldn't they?
  
• Starting music was, on one of the seeds, the same as the starting temperate world ("Akua music") whereas on another start it was what I was accustomed to for a desert planet. I'm kind of tired of the "Akua music" so I hope that the music does indeed vary by starting planet type. (It should eventually be more random and also perhaps vary by biome.)

Because of the "emergency generator", proximity to water matters less than it used to. Because of the portable air conditioner, temperature extremes also matter less than they used to. Therefore, every start was completely survivable, and in fact not much more challenging than a temperate start. That's OK for me since I want alternate starts for variety, not just for difficulty. But if the goal was to make it harder, I don't think it succeeded, it is just a bit more complex due to worrying about oxygen, but not really harder.

Some other comments I have, not really specific to the arid planet, but that became issues during the arid starts:

• It is oddly inconsistent that I can make berry and vegetable juice with the survival constructor, but not fruit juice. This became noticeable when I had piles of space oranges that I could not make into juice.
• The rate of oxygen usage seemed high to me. I always play on the default setting and have never increased or decreased it. I frequently play on snow worlds or other worlds with unbreathable atmospheres so I'm used to dealing with oxygen levels. But for some reason in these starts it just felt like it wasn't taking much game time for me to breathe all the oxygen in my suit and I wasn't sure it felt realistic. I would expect someone equipped for exploring new worlds would have an oxygen supply in their suit that lasted hours rather than minutes.
• The "emergency generator" is oddly named. In Empyrion the term "generator" has been used without qualification to indicate something that generates power. A generator can generate something other than power, but it should be qualified to indicate what it generates, such as "oxygen generator". When I see "emergency generator" I either think of something that generates power in emergencies, or a more obtuse meaning would be "something that generates emergencies". Instead I get something that extracts oxygen and water vapor from the atmosphere. I think it does not in fact "generate" them since they're already there, it "extracts" or "condenses" them. The fact it both extracts oxygen and condenses water vapor makes it hard to name, but if one presumes it is actually condensing water vapor and then also extracting oxygen from that vapor, then perhaps "Emergency Condenser" might work.

 

I just started trying out Arid, seed 1791 (as the latest build), Easy-Hard mix (anything that just adds time doing stuff and no real difficulty I set to Easy). No issues finding starting resources as iron, cobber, silicon, food, plant fibers.

Pretty easy to rush Robinson Protocol to check out MS Titan. Go straight for the Wreckage, get bike, then Alien Tower, back, to the MS Titan. Just bike close enough to the front part, then to mid part getting a rifle (and some loot, take out the core, maybe slap down survival constructor and make a drill), to the back part and up (is a hole on the side of the elevator, if able to jump high enough, else just shoot out the door). The suit given as reward should be medium, since Arid start with a light one.
The survival tool defense mode is enough to take out any "dogs" at the Alien tower.
Do this within early morning day 2 and no troops/patrols to worry about either, with good time to take them out when spawns and any drones.
With a start without suit (not Arid), you should be able to reach level 5 and construct an Armor locker (and light armor), can slap it down on the mid part after core is gone, no need for power.

The front part have grow plots, so if have no multitool yet then often a good place to start a base. Can be a bit work to make it airtight though. Fastest is just to fill the roof with cheap blocks (concrete), "damaged" floor blocks with thin blocks of wood or whatever.

On this seed the MS Titan (Talon), were to the North with too cold nights for a light suit, so also have enough ore for a heater or whatever.

 

@StyxAnnihilator
Most of my Medium starts on the arid planet don't seem as challenging as a Medium start on Omicron. That's not a criticism. Omicron and Ningues starts were often a matter of seeing how long you could just stay alive. So far this is a nice change from the Temperate planet with just enough added difficulty to make you pay more attention to survival.

 

@binhthuy71 (and others)
Maybe the toughest "SP" were Sienna on hard. Not only the climate, but had to choose it as MP and then most POIs were on Regenerate with no take over.
Omicron hard SP took only some more time and cation than Akua, if try play with few deaths. IronMan 7 I managed to do - privately.

Sometimes it can depend on the seed too, if it becomes extra hard or easy. As long as you have good routines and blueprints (or builds), it mostly adds just time before have a HV up running and then the exploring and resource collecting can begin.

Just started day 3 on the Arid, spawning in a level 7 HV (395 iron, 304 copper, 245 silicon) with safe compartment for F5 drone use. Not many trees for biofuel, but can easily start plant fiber production. Also found promethium close by "MS Titan". Radio Tower next RP step, my HV manages a drive by so get the minigun.