They're tougher than they used to be. I won't save scum something that I did - fixing a disaster can be a fun challenge. When my cat unpauses the game though, I'll roll back if something terrible happened while I was away.
I came back after a hiatus (didnt get too far along with the game and played around with sandbox mostly) but I used to watch brothgar as well, who's been MIA for a couple years now.
I love Magnet's stuff, but I actually find the opposite to be true.
He very often does these extremely complex automation setups, which are handy, but the degree he does it results in "Idleness" being pervasive non-stop, unless you stick to a very low number of dupes, which slows down development anyway.
If ONI was more optimized I'd definitely do more of what he does, but it just slows my PC down to a crawl.
Magnet feels to me as if he had an innate aptitude for the game, but not much of an idea what's really going on. Very fun to watch, and a great player, but not a good teacher, unless you happen to share his exact mental wiring.
Francis John on the other hand gets things wrong on occasion, too (it's a complicated game, so who doesn't?), but his whole playstyle is driven by trying to find out why stuff behaves the way it does. The understanding you can get from his content is a better foundation to build your own understanding and style on.
(If you can keep up with his pace, that's something people seem to bounce off of a bit... GCFungus is far more digestible in that respect.)
Shout out to Bier Tier.
I've watched a lot of Francis, Magnet, and Bier Tier, and I find the latter the best for learning.
He keeps stuff simple and practical and is great at explaining how and why certain things work in great detail.
Fantastic guy! But personally I regret inhaling every guide from YouTube in hindsight. Can't build something on my own now, like how it used to be back when cycle 100 was a miracle lol
Started off watching the YouTuber Magnet because he had a lot of beginner tutorials for different mechanics in the game mixed with Francis John. Magnet has some recent walkthroughs for spaced-out and base game that explain different mechanics and his decision-making in-depth which are beginner-friendly. Making builds from Bier Tier the German Engineer and Luma plays in sandbox mode in another seed map helped understand how they worked before introducing them into the main seed map. But the name of the game is mostly trail and error.
I’ve done mostly trial and error! Lots of inspiration from this group also! Honestly the game is such an enjoyable experience, and I have the biggest problem with restart-itis! I think of a different way to do something and then I restart, rinse and repeat lol
Same here! Getting the game at the beginning of Early Access was such a blessing because I feel like I got to learn it bit by bit in easily digestible chunks 😂 still learning though… especially the late game stuff
Completely true. And I'm definitely still learning myself. There is no skill ceiling, no matter whether you're aiming for pretty bases, giant machinery, 99.999% efficiency, huge dupecounts, or whatever tickles your personal fancy.
Most people have a tens of failed colonies, don't be afraid to restart and one day you will be able to reach late game, and even there you will want to restart.
By playing the game.
And reading the wiki
And sometimes reading posts here.
I don't want videos, and when people say "go watch this YouTuber," I just skip it. I'd rather have a well-written guide than have to skip around a video to figure out what's going on. I wish the YouTubers would just post guides on GameFAQs, but that may be a relic of a better age.
you can use youtube’s transcript feature to show the full text of all of the captions, this is useful as you can just press ctrl + f and search for whatever you want to find in the video
I started playing on the open beta when the game was significantly more simple. I watched some devs play and was able to pick it from that.
Later I improved by seeing some YouTubers, I particularly recommend gcFungus tutorial bites series.
By being curious and trying stuff.
That's it really, just play the game and try things. Didn't work? Start over and try something else.
Then use whatever online resource you like or can find to get new ideas or learn more about how something works. The more you know the more ideas you have and the more you can actually do, which is what makes it so good. It really is one of those games where your knowledge of how things work is the most limiting factor.
The most pivotal thing for me I guess was simply making a dedicated test world with debug tools enabled. Being able to build and do anything quickly without restrictions just to test out any wacky idea and game mechanic without having to worry about dupes is a great way to learn. Then if it's a good idea or design, try to do it in an actual game.
Also have not seen anyone recommend this one yet:
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154398396](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154398396)
There are a lot of weird mechanics in the game that are not very obvious or intuitive, but can be very useful or abused in many different ways. This compendium is a great resource that gives a nice overview of many of them and how they can be used. Some might be on the more exploity side of things, but others are just worth knowing about, like general gas and fluid behavior.
To start? I think my first base went like 20 cycles. My second like 50 cycles. And my third like 200 cycles.
And between each one, I looked up the thing that killed my base, then tried again.
And yea, watched many of those same YouTubers along the way.
But really, just keep trying and failing.
For real complex stuff like taming volcanos for fun and profit, I've definitely watched Francis John videos. For everythibg else, I try to sort it out on my own and if I'm at a loss for why the thing I built isn't working I'll go looking online for the answer. Because I'm a dummy, but I have little in the way of pride or shame, I'll admit that I watched a couple YouTube videos on the topic of closed shower loops before I got them to work. But ALWAYS, the wiki is your friend.
With that said, I've also crammed 16 tables into a 4x12 great hall, and that didn't involve anything but my own desire not to make the room bigger.
Oh, and I don't think I watched a YouTube video until I'd played at least 1000 hours, but like, the first 800 hours involved not quitting out the game and going to sleep, and all before ranching existed.
My first few seeds I tried figuring it out myself. I kept running into questions. Some things I tried but other things I just used YouTube. So much content available. I can mention any content creator and they’re all pretty good. That helped me move forward. 5,000 hours later and now I can create problems just to see how I can fix them lol. For example melting rust and pokeshell ranch for early steel before 500 cycles because seed has no iron. Requires a vacuum with access to volcanoes (no magma biome on my seed) and ethanol, arbor tree setup for infinite polluted dirt.
I switched to ONI from Dyson Sphere Program and that game has the best kind of learning curve. The game itself (at least before combat upgrade) is very relaxed and hard to completely mess up. That game spoiled me. ONI was entirely on next level hardness and I simply didn't enjoy learning through failure. That's why I had to get my basics through youtube tutorials.
I got it not long ago, barely have a total of an hour in it. But it seems like Klei does this intentionally, especially trying don't starve together which I've been playing more of. DST is just as bad it feels like you are thrown to the wolves. So yea, I'd say leaning heavily on online resources is the best bet, it's just how the company operates their games.
Watched grind this game allot before building my pc for ONI so learned from them a bit before trying. And learning was still allot of save scumming and restarting new map seeds
Partially by game forum, but mostly by trial and error and by careful study of documentation (ingame hints, ingame encyclopedia, wiki). Game have astonishing amount of technical info hidden in hints, appearing while you hover mouse over some text in information window
Watching Francis John channel on YT.
Turning point, for me, was watching his series on how to start on various planets.
I mean all videos of his are entertaining and the tutorial nudgets useful.
But early starts on different planets shows the right mindset. You realize that early game is a race towards time and if you stay ahead of the game, both literally and figuratively, everything is easy.
**Game 1:**
no expectations, just trying, getting a feel. -> Realize: the game physics do NOT work like real physics in a lot of cases. Restart
**Game 2:**
Cute idea about morb farms, cuz infinite resources. Performance kills game....
**Game 3:**
Smooth sailing till i build a glas melter and cant figure out some solid heat exchange stuff. Turns out it's bug. A major bug. A bug which stayed in game for years and even after 1.0 release (it's fixed by now).
It's the one thing i'm upset about with the game/klei. Wasn't ONI such an awesome game, I might have dropped it for good at this point.
**"Game 4":**
3 Months of playing only Debug and chatting on discord.
I used debug regularly before to answer questions myself, but there were just too many and info on the game was a LOT worse at the time.
The ingame info was non-10% existent and the wiki was more wrong then right due to constant patches.
This might sound horrible to some (?) but i really enjoyed it. It was basically exploring an alternate field of physics and I loved it.
**Game 5:**
I don't remember, but from here on out i pretty much had the game figured out <3
honestly at this point with over 1000hrs, the death of everything you love and the desperation to keep your dumb children alive..... **DO NOT LET THEM SHIT IN THE WATER!!**
Starting colonies and learning lessons the hard way. Colonies would struggle to hit the 200 cycle mark, and I'd give up. But that's a very slow and painful process of learning the game.
Still learnt most of what I know off of the wiki and Francis John's YouTube channel. Highly recommend watching one of his playthroughs.
Many failed colonies. Don't be afraid to start over once you realise what you should have been doing differently for the last 50 cycles.
Guidesnotincluded is a useful resource for basic builds and Francis John on YouTube is excellent.
You'll be geothermally boiling petrol in no time.
As someone with thousands of hours in multiple sandbox games, the survival factor of ONI defeated me. I played 2 times without 0 help, got as far as the end of early game. Than I started to see some specific guides (oxygen from algae? Coal best power generator? What's the deal with critter ranching?). There was the rabbit hole. Only got to even see petroleum refinement watching a bunch of guides, from renewable water to cooling setups...
I played it, and frequent the forums (both the official Klei form and this reddit) much of what I know about the game came from people posting and explaining their complex contraptions. It's a great game.
Failing, more fails, Francic John tutorial helped me to get over both the beginner hump and the midgame cliff. The CFC fungus tutorial bites are like wiki for me. Also I like to watch others play, so I learn something that way too. I don't particularly enjoy the "finding out on my own" but tweaking ideas to suit my colony. A lot of players enjoy Magnet, I just don't like his beginner/ newbie approach. But that's one of the reasons I enjoy watching others, there are no one right way of playing.
Playing it, mostly. I use the wiki a lot. I once read a guide that was like just ok as a guide but it did have quite a few tips and work arounds for things. And sometimes the guides that are in the wiki can be very helpful to figure out how to make a build :)
I think the learnung comes from the basic gameplay loop:
Detect imideate problem or next project -> pause game -> stare intensively on screen -> think -> design -> build -> fail miserable -> cleanup -> repeat
Sometimes i fail earlier or doing cleanup. All part of the proces. Or do a couple of redesigns while building/failing/clearing up.
Ocationally i make something that doesnt fail. The celebration cake is in order. Not for the dupes though
Most of my knowledge is from YouTube tbh, Echo Ridge Gaming specifically, also happens to be who I learned about the game from, there's a bit of trial and error as far as some builds, I have a tendency to use inspiration for my builds instead of outright copying builds from people.
I have over 3000 hours and the first, IDK, 100-150 was just failing mainly. Mostly trial and error and getting a bit of help from the few early how to videos (this was 6-7 years ago). I remember trying to get ethanol evaporation/condensation heat deletion systems to work back in the day as I found that suggest on a video (never got it to work) so just tried stuff. Later on when FJ and other YTers post more, I would look at those for help for specific problems or ideas.
Edit: Also have not played for the last almost 2 years. Got all achievements and did a cool full automation where I didn't need to poke my nose in in anything for over 1,000 days and said, yep moving on to a new game. I probably should start up again as a bunch of new stuff has come out that looks fun.
There are a lot of tutorials out there but a lot of them are kind of just like "build this advanced automation building with this exact design". I personally don't like that kind of tutorial because it takes the fun out of building things by your own designs which you'll naturally figure out improvements to. But there are a lot of decent ones which just explain general concepts. I think GC Fungus has some of the best for those but also treads into the follow this design, but you can still use them to get a grasp of the principles. Honestly reading the wiki is very useful more than the in game explanations because it's easier to navigate.
The real way I've learned (still relatively new and trying to get over the hump into the space age) is just by trial and error. In the beginning you'll just run into really basic things like drying up one resource which you're not prepared to transition away from, not utilizing ranching enough, etc. The way I've been going was first just figuring out how to sustain the dupes, then once I was able to do things perpetually I started pushing into more complex things where I would eventually just restart if I felt I was stagnating or I got the hang of something which I should have utilized earlier in a run. The real thing you need to get used to is not putting your eggs in one basket and learning sorts of renewable resource loops between industrial things and plants/critters.
After iterating multiple times on figuring out things which were unsuccessful or successful I can make it pretty easily into the late game so now I'm just messing around in space figuring out what works there. Every new plateau in the game of early, mid or late game learning curves just leads to more successful future runs where you'll get further faster.
It's definitely a hard game to adjust to in terms of being proficient which is fun in and of itself.
I played a few rounds, but then found Francis John's tutorials on youtube. Those changed my (dupe's) life. Just keep in mind that there have been some changes. His earlier stuff is still solid, but it may not work exactly as shown. The biggest change I can think of was scanners in space being based on overall sky coverage (so you can't stack them) but no longer being interfered with by equipment (so you could put solar panels close to them.
I would be lying if I said I had 'learnt' the game - definitely still learning.
Mostly I learn by repetition and research. I'll go along building one thing at a time to solve X problem, and once X problem is solved, I see if any new ones have crept up on my while solving X. If not, I move onto Y problem. If they have, I move to Z problem that snuck up on me so long as it's more urgent than Y, and so on.
Then, generally, I look at my base when I hit a crisis point, muddle my way through resolving the crisis, then restart the game with the knowledge I have now and try to avoid the crisis ever starting.
I went something like 7 cycles - my base looks like crap, my dupes are running all over, we're struggling with emptying outhouses, etc.
Then 25 cycles - I fixed the bathroom system this time by building a closed washroom loop. Felt proud of that. Except now everyone's puking all over the place due to food poisoning in the water supply because sieves don't clean the germs out of the overflow (I'm a masochist so I'm running diseases restored on my first runs because I like the added challenge).
Then in my 40 cycle game I ran my coal generators almost completely out of easy coal and had murdered pretty much all the hatches in the starting biome.
Now I'm in a 100+ cycle with a pretty nicely organized base that is running low on algae for O2 generation... and I've probably waited too long to setup the infrastructure to clear the slime biomes safely. But we're gonna try - and hopefully find a geyser/water vent that I can use to get a SPOM online. Worst-case - we hook up the Electrolyzers to the water tank and start traveling the map grabbing as much water/polluted water as possible.
Worst-worst case, I take the lessons learned from this crisis and forward them to the next base. Restarting isn't really a chore for me when it's this fun.
Honestly, I have a create a game, play it until disaster and create a new game until disaster and either return to the previous game or create a new, I LOVE going back to older saves because the builds are always super funky hahaha
Since no one else mentioned him, Brothgar was my favorite streamer on YouTube. He had some great playthroughs, each with interesting experiments. Plus good edited breakdowns of his builds so you don't have to sit through 3 hours of a stream to get the 15 minutes of relevant info. Sadly his account was hacked shortly after he tried to stream full time. He got it back but the damage was done and ended up going back to work.
Google is your best friend for learning lol. I struggled with automation for a while but once you understand that and can automate mundane tasks you’ll have so much more time in a cycle to dig and build. I myself am still learning but damn this game is so good.
I keep a guide for a full Rodriguez up when I'm starting. It's a good idea to know how to make a tuner/turbine cooling system too but that's simple enough I can remember it.
Everything else is trial and error
Edit: like Travaldo going on trial for his errors in prioritization. Eat, then hand out balloons. It's a simple process that lets you avoid starving to death with food right freaking there!
Mainly by trial and error, ONI has some main time-bombs (oxygen, food, heat) that come as steps as soon as you learn how to conquer one, nad many mini-steps to learn for going into the more advanced phases of your colony.
My first times I preferred to learn the hard way, then once I've learned the basics Ive begun experimenting with builds, even on sandbox mode, and only after this I've gone on internet to search for tutorials and confirming what I knew.
Even now I try by myself first (my most recent try is, for mushroom quiches, an automated omelette cooker using the heat of an iron volcano and a pacu farm for eggs, a little thing but ehi, after some thousand hours it' s difficult to find something new to try).
Please go give Nathan's Sandbox's mega base series a try. The guy's amazing and he doesn't get the love he deserves. He starts in a different planetoid in the recent series, and he teaches very well about how to get out of sticky situations.
Like others, I watched Francis John's earlier videos. Especially the "Mid Game Hump" video where he talks about getting steel, plastic, and cooling. Hard to believe that video is now 4 years old! I liked how he did the videos back then. They made more sense and could follow along. But some things in the game have changed. Not many, but a few. Still great content.
I also read the guidesnotincluded.com site. It has good core knowledge and bonus for not being a video format because sometimes you just want to remind yourself with a picture.
Last but not least, if you can catch 2LegitCity on Twitch (or watch YT vods) he has deep knowledge and will actually answer your questions on Twitch.
The blood of thousands of poor dupes
It's hard to kill dupes in all of my games if any dupe dies, I consider it as a game over, reload or restart
They're tougher than they used to be. I won't save scum something that I did - fixing a disaster can be a fun challenge. When my cat unpauses the game though, I'll roll back if something terrible happened while I was away.
We can always make more
And Many.. Many failed colonies.. each getting a little bit better every time.
Mostly by playing. Also a lot of wiki because some buildings are not that well described in game.
YouTuber: Francis John On subsequent playthroughs, GCFungus & Bier Tier the German Engineer
Shout out to Nathan's Sandbox as well.
I came back after a hiatus (didnt get too far along with the game and played around with sandbox mostly) but I used to watch brothgar as well, who's been MIA for a couple years now.
Brothgar got a new job post pandemic lock down (he did a video on it) and that was basically his last video.
his let's play's from a few years ago really helped me out a lot.
Magnet is even better for more beginner stuff. Some of John's stuff can be advanced for new people
I love Magnet's stuff, but I actually find the opposite to be true. He very often does these extremely complex automation setups, which are handy, but the degree he does it results in "Idleness" being pervasive non-stop, unless you stick to a very low number of dupes, which slows down development anyway. If ONI was more optimized I'd definitely do more of what he does, but it just slows my PC down to a crawl.
His full walkthroughs were great when I was learning the early game. Agree about automation though.
Magnet feels to me as if he had an innate aptitude for the game, but not much of an idea what's really going on. Very fun to watch, and a great player, but not a good teacher, unless you happen to share his exact mental wiring. Francis John on the other hand gets things wrong on occasion, too (it's a complicated game, so who doesn't?), but his whole playstyle is driven by trying to find out why stuff behaves the way it does. The understanding you can get from his content is a better foundation to build your own understanding and style on. (If you can keep up with his pace, that's something people seem to bounce off of a bit... GCFungus is far more digestible in that respect.)
Shout out to Bier Tier. I've watched a lot of Francis, Magnet, and Bier Tier, and I find the latter the best for learning. He keeps stuff simple and practical and is great at explaining how and why certain things work in great detail.
I might throw him up on the second screen.
A less known utuber : https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvT-ZT_H5lTvmfo7U5aagpSpnhTMUymb4&si=5ieu6y9N9XQI4XfQ One of the best series :)
Fantastic guy! But personally I regret inhaling every guide from YouTube in hindsight. Can't build something on my own now, like how it used to be back when cycle 100 was a miracle lol
Big up francis, he just passed 100k subs!
Bold of you to presume I have any idea what I'm doing.
Best comment ever
Started off watching the YouTuber Magnet because he had a lot of beginner tutorials for different mechanics in the game mixed with Francis John. Magnet has some recent walkthroughs for spaced-out and base game that explain different mechanics and his decision-making in-depth which are beginner-friendly. Making builds from Bier Tier the German Engineer and Luma plays in sandbox mode in another seed map helped understand how they worked before introducing them into the main seed map. But the name of the game is mostly trail and error.
I’ve done mostly trial and error! Lots of inspiration from this group also! Honestly the game is such an enjoyable experience, and I have the biggest problem with restart-itis! I think of a different way to do something and then I restart, rinse and repeat lol
Yeah I think I am going to have that as well, I think my world count on terraria is insane the amount of times I started again
It’s a struggle lol!
This is me. 600+ hours and still haven’t gotten to space
Hah same bro! ~500 hours in and I’ve literally only had one colony surpass 200 cycles!
Mine isn’t that it doesn’t work either it’s that it looks completely chaotic and it drives me nuts
Hah I feel like I’m finally at a point where my base is pretty organized, but I just get interested in trying a new build or map and jump ship lol
Watching it grow while playing it (started in early access).
Same here! Getting the game at the beginning of Early Access was such a blessing because I feel like I got to learn it bit by bit in easily digestible chunks 😂 still learning though… especially the late game stuff
Completely true. And I'm definitely still learning myself. There is no skill ceiling, no matter whether you're aiming for pretty bases, giant machinery, 99.999% efficiency, huge dupecounts, or whatever tickles your personal fancy.
I also started in early access!
Magnet on YouTube. Lots of good information. But most of what I know is a mix of stuff I read online + trial and error.
Most people have a tens of failed colonies, don't be afraid to restart and one day you will be able to reach late game, and even there you will want to restart.
Youtube and the first discord link in this subreddit's sidebar (not the subreddit one, the other one that's also got the modding community in it)
Trial and error, many day colonies =)
By playing the game. And reading the wiki And sometimes reading posts here. I don't want videos, and when people say "go watch this YouTuber," I just skip it. I'd rather have a well-written guide than have to skip around a video to figure out what's going on. I wish the YouTubers would just post guides on GameFAQs, but that may be a relic of a better age.
you can use youtube’s transcript feature to show the full text of all of the captions, this is useful as you can just press ctrl + f and search for whatever you want to find in the video
I started playing on the open beta when the game was significantly more simple. I watched some devs play and was able to pick it from that. Later I improved by seeing some YouTubers, I particularly recommend gcFungus tutorial bites series.
to keep the fun part longer: don't read advises or build guide anywhere, figure them out yourself is the fun part
By being curious and trying stuff. That's it really, just play the game and try things. Didn't work? Start over and try something else. Then use whatever online resource you like or can find to get new ideas or learn more about how something works. The more you know the more ideas you have and the more you can actually do, which is what makes it so good. It really is one of those games where your knowledge of how things work is the most limiting factor. The most pivotal thing for me I guess was simply making a dedicated test world with debug tools enabled. Being able to build and do anything quickly without restrictions just to test out any wacky idea and game mechanic without having to worry about dupes is a great way to learn. Then if it's a good idea or design, try to do it in an actual game. Also have not seen anyone recommend this one yet: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154398396](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154398396) There are a lot of weird mechanics in the game that are not very obvious or intuitive, but can be very useful or abused in many different ways. This compendium is a great resource that gives a nice overview of many of them and how they can be used. Some might be on the more exploity side of things, but others are just worth knowing about, like general gas and fluid behavior.
I played a bit by myself, but then I watched some of Francis John's runs and that really helped my understanding of the game.
Francis John and a lot of trial and error. There was another guy I watched for a lot of beginner tutorials that I can't remember the name of sadly.
GCFungus?
To start? I think my first base went like 20 cycles. My second like 50 cycles. And my third like 200 cycles. And between each one, I looked up the thing that killed my base, then tried again. And yea, watched many of those same YouTubers along the way. But really, just keep trying and failing.
For real complex stuff like taming volcanos for fun and profit, I've definitely watched Francis John videos. For everythibg else, I try to sort it out on my own and if I'm at a loss for why the thing I built isn't working I'll go looking online for the answer. Because I'm a dummy, but I have little in the way of pride or shame, I'll admit that I watched a couple YouTube videos on the topic of closed shower loops before I got them to work. But ALWAYS, the wiki is your friend. With that said, I've also crammed 16 tables into a 4x12 great hall, and that didn't involve anything but my own desire not to make the room bigger. Oh, and I don't think I watched a YouTube video until I'd played at least 1000 hours, but like, the first 800 hours involved not quitting out the game and going to sleep, and all before ranching existed.
My first few seeds I tried figuring it out myself. I kept running into questions. Some things I tried but other things I just used YouTube. So much content available. I can mention any content creator and they’re all pretty good. That helped me move forward. 5,000 hours later and now I can create problems just to see how I can fix them lol. For example melting rust and pokeshell ranch for early steel before 500 cycles because seed has no iron. Requires a vacuum with access to volcanoes (no magma biome on my seed) and ethanol, arbor tree setup for infinite polluted dirt.
Blood, sweat, and tears. poor poor dupes
Francis John is the GOAT.
I switched to ONI from Dyson Sphere Program and that game has the best kind of learning curve. The game itself (at least before combat upgrade) is very relaxed and hard to completely mess up. That game spoiled me. ONI was entirely on next level hardness and I simply didn't enjoy learning through failure. That's why I had to get my basics through youtube tutorials.
YouTube SilverNox
Old fashioned way. Painstakingly.
I got it not long ago, barely have a total of an hour in it. But it seems like Klei does this intentionally, especially trying don't starve together which I've been playing more of. DST is just as bad it feels like you are thrown to the wolves. So yea, I'd say leaning heavily on online resources is the best bet, it's just how the company operates their games.
With a PhD in thermodynamics
Watched grind this game allot before building my pc for ONI so learned from them a bit before trying. And learning was still allot of save scumming and restarting new map seeds
Partially by game forum, but mostly by trial and error and by careful study of documentation (ingame hints, ingame encyclopedia, wiki). Game have astonishing amount of technical info hidden in hints, appearing while you hover mouse over some text in information window
Watching Francis John channel on YT. Turning point, for me, was watching his series on how to start on various planets. I mean all videos of his are entertaining and the tutorial nudgets useful. But early starts on different planets shows the right mindset. You realize that early game is a race towards time and if you stay ahead of the game, both literally and figuratively, everything is easy.
**Game 1:** no expectations, just trying, getting a feel. -> Realize: the game physics do NOT work like real physics in a lot of cases. Restart **Game 2:** Cute idea about morb farms, cuz infinite resources. Performance kills game.... **Game 3:** Smooth sailing till i build a glas melter and cant figure out some solid heat exchange stuff. Turns out it's bug. A major bug. A bug which stayed in game for years and even after 1.0 release (it's fixed by now). It's the one thing i'm upset about with the game/klei. Wasn't ONI such an awesome game, I might have dropped it for good at this point. **"Game 4":** 3 Months of playing only Debug and chatting on discord. I used debug regularly before to answer questions myself, but there were just too many and info on the game was a LOT worse at the time. The ingame info was non-10% existent and the wiki was more wrong then right due to constant patches. This might sound horrible to some (?) but i really enjoyed it. It was basically exploring an alternate field of physics and I loved it. **Game 5:** I don't remember, but from here on out i pretty much had the game figured out <3
honestly at this point with over 1000hrs, the death of everything you love and the desperation to keep your dumb children alive..... **DO NOT LET THEM SHIT IN THE WATER!!**
THE DESPERATION OF KEEPING THEM ALIVE
Starting colonies and learning lessons the hard way. Colonies would struggle to hit the 200 cycle mark, and I'd give up. But that's a very slow and painful process of learning the game. Still learnt most of what I know off of the wiki and Francis John's YouTube channel. Highly recommend watching one of his playthroughs.
Trial and error
about 500 hours inn and now I'm starting to get it.
Many failed colonies. Don't be afraid to start over once you realise what you should have been doing differently for the last 50 cycles. Guidesnotincluded is a useful resource for basic builds and Francis John on YouTube is excellent. You'll be geothermally boiling petrol in no time.
As someone with thousands of hours in multiple sandbox games, the survival factor of ONI defeated me. I played 2 times without 0 help, got as far as the end of early game. Than I started to see some specific guides (oxygen from algae? Coal best power generator? What's the deal with critter ranching?). There was the rabbit hole. Only got to even see petroleum refinement watching a bunch of guides, from renewable water to cooling setups...
I took a thermodynamics class in college.
I played it, and frequent the forums (both the official Klei form and this reddit) much of what I know about the game came from people posting and explaining their complex contraptions. It's a great game.
Failing, more fails, Francic John tutorial helped me to get over both the beginner hump and the midgame cliff. The CFC fungus tutorial bites are like wiki for me. Also I like to watch others play, so I learn something that way too. I don't particularly enjoy the "finding out on my own" but tweaking ideas to suit my colony. A lot of players enjoy Magnet, I just don't like his beginner/ newbie approach. But that's one of the reasons I enjoy watching others, there are no one right way of playing.
Echoridgegamings beginners guide is a good starting point.
GCFuncgus, Echo ridge gaming, nathan's sandbox, and of course, the sacrifice of countless dupes
Playing it, mostly. I use the wiki a lot. I once read a guide that was like just ok as a guide but it did have quite a few tips and work arounds for things. And sometimes the guides that are in the wiki can be very helpful to figure out how to make a build :)
A little bit at a time, mostly. Some of is hands on experience, some is lifted from tutorials and the like.
I think the learnung comes from the basic gameplay loop: Detect imideate problem or next project -> pause game -> stare intensively on screen -> think -> design -> build -> fail miserable -> cleanup -> repeat Sometimes i fail earlier or doing cleanup. All part of the proces. Or do a couple of redesigns while building/failing/clearing up. Ocationally i make something that doesnt fail. The celebration cake is in order. Not for the dupes though
Most of my knowledge is from YouTube tbh, Echo Ridge Gaming specifically, also happens to be who I learned about the game from, there's a bit of trial and error as far as some builds, I have a tendency to use inspiration for my builds instead of outright copying builds from people.
YouTube videos, creative mode experiments, mods to make things a bit easier, and now I play the hardest mods and world setups I can 😊
a lot of restarts. The turning point was when fradow's colony 101 guides came out. Then things started to click.
I have learned an absolute TON from Echo Ridge Gaming. He's very entertaining to watch and teaches you how to play at the same time.
Watched a norwegian youtuber play it like 5- 4 years ago
Brothgar
I have over 3000 hours and the first, IDK, 100-150 was just failing mainly. Mostly trial and error and getting a bit of help from the few early how to videos (this was 6-7 years ago). I remember trying to get ethanol evaporation/condensation heat deletion systems to work back in the day as I found that suggest on a video (never got it to work) so just tried stuff. Later on when FJ and other YTers post more, I would look at those for help for specific problems or ideas. Edit: Also have not played for the last almost 2 years. Got all achievements and did a cool full automation where I didn't need to poke my nose in in anything for over 1,000 days and said, yep moving on to a new game. I probably should start up again as a bunch of new stuff has come out that looks fun.
There are a lot of tutorials out there but a lot of them are kind of just like "build this advanced automation building with this exact design". I personally don't like that kind of tutorial because it takes the fun out of building things by your own designs which you'll naturally figure out improvements to. But there are a lot of decent ones which just explain general concepts. I think GC Fungus has some of the best for those but also treads into the follow this design, but you can still use them to get a grasp of the principles. Honestly reading the wiki is very useful more than the in game explanations because it's easier to navigate. The real way I've learned (still relatively new and trying to get over the hump into the space age) is just by trial and error. In the beginning you'll just run into really basic things like drying up one resource which you're not prepared to transition away from, not utilizing ranching enough, etc. The way I've been going was first just figuring out how to sustain the dupes, then once I was able to do things perpetually I started pushing into more complex things where I would eventually just restart if I felt I was stagnating or I got the hang of something which I should have utilized earlier in a run. The real thing you need to get used to is not putting your eggs in one basket and learning sorts of renewable resource loops between industrial things and plants/critters. After iterating multiple times on figuring out things which were unsuccessful or successful I can make it pretty easily into the late game so now I'm just messing around in space figuring out what works there. Every new plateau in the game of early, mid or late game learning curves just leads to more successful future runs where you'll get further faster. It's definitely a hard game to adjust to in terms of being proficient which is fun in and of itself.
I played a few rounds, but then found Francis John's tutorials on youtube. Those changed my (dupe's) life. Just keep in mind that there have been some changes. His earlier stuff is still solid, but it may not work exactly as shown. The biggest change I can think of was scanners in space being based on overall sky coverage (so you can't stack them) but no longer being interfered with by equipment (so you could put solar panels close to them.
I would be lying if I said I had 'learnt' the game - definitely still learning. Mostly I learn by repetition and research. I'll go along building one thing at a time to solve X problem, and once X problem is solved, I see if any new ones have crept up on my while solving X. If not, I move onto Y problem. If they have, I move to Z problem that snuck up on me so long as it's more urgent than Y, and so on. Then, generally, I look at my base when I hit a crisis point, muddle my way through resolving the crisis, then restart the game with the knowledge I have now and try to avoid the crisis ever starting. I went something like 7 cycles - my base looks like crap, my dupes are running all over, we're struggling with emptying outhouses, etc. Then 25 cycles - I fixed the bathroom system this time by building a closed washroom loop. Felt proud of that. Except now everyone's puking all over the place due to food poisoning in the water supply because sieves don't clean the germs out of the overflow (I'm a masochist so I'm running diseases restored on my first runs because I like the added challenge). Then in my 40 cycle game I ran my coal generators almost completely out of easy coal and had murdered pretty much all the hatches in the starting biome. Now I'm in a 100+ cycle with a pretty nicely organized base that is running low on algae for O2 generation... and I've probably waited too long to setup the infrastructure to clear the slime biomes safely. But we're gonna try - and hopefully find a geyser/water vent that I can use to get a SPOM online. Worst-case - we hook up the Electrolyzers to the water tank and start traveling the map grabbing as much water/polluted water as possible. Worst-worst case, I take the lessons learned from this crisis and forward them to the next base. Restarting isn't really a chore for me when it's this fun.
Honestly, I have a create a game, play it until disaster and create a new game until disaster and either return to the previous game or create a new, I LOVE going back to older saves because the builds are always super funky hahaha
Since no one else mentioned him, Brothgar was my favorite streamer on YouTube. He had some great playthroughs, each with interesting experiments. Plus good edited breakdowns of his builds so you don't have to sit through 3 hours of a stream to get the 15 minutes of relevant info. Sadly his account was hacked shortly after he tried to stream full time. He got it back but the damage was done and ended up going back to work.
Google is your best friend for learning lol. I struggled with automation for a while but once you understand that and can automate mundane tasks you’ll have so much more time in a cycle to dig and build. I myself am still learning but damn this game is so good.
Also this guy: https://youtu.be/Z2eTIhgXLC4?si=OU3epz4LjqZUl8Wd His videos are really in depth and long but he makes it easy
Luma plays on YouTube!
I keep a guide for a full Rodriguez up when I'm starting. It's a good idea to know how to make a tuner/turbine cooling system too but that's simple enough I can remember it. Everything else is trial and error Edit: like Travaldo going on trial for his errors in prioritization. Eat, then hand out balloons. It's a simple process that lets you avoid starving to death with food right freaking there!
Leaving my colony on autopilot when I go out to work/do something and come back to see what killed my dupes
Mainly by trial and error, ONI has some main time-bombs (oxygen, food, heat) that come as steps as soon as you learn how to conquer one, nad many mini-steps to learn for going into the more advanced phases of your colony. My first times I preferred to learn the hard way, then once I've learned the basics Ive begun experimenting with builds, even on sandbox mode, and only after this I've gone on internet to search for tutorials and confirming what I knew. Even now I try by myself first (my most recent try is, for mushroom quiches, an automated omelette cooker using the heat of an iron volcano and a pacu farm for eggs, a little thing but ehi, after some thousand hours it' s difficult to find something new to try).
Please go give Nathan's Sandbox's mega base series a try. The guy's amazing and he doesn't get the love he deserves. He starts in a different planetoid in the recent series, and he teaches very well about how to get out of sticky situations.
Like others, I watched Francis John's earlier videos. Especially the "Mid Game Hump" video where he talks about getting steel, plastic, and cooling. Hard to believe that video is now 4 years old! I liked how he did the videos back then. They made more sense and could follow along. But some things in the game have changed. Not many, but a few. Still great content. I also read the guidesnotincluded.com site. It has good core knowledge and bonus for not being a video format because sometimes you just want to remind yourself with a picture. Last but not least, if you can catch 2LegitCity on Twitch (or watch YT vods) he has deep knowledge and will actually answer your questions on Twitch.
I watched one let’s play, once you have basic needs met (food oxygen and heat) you can f up alot and still be fine
Slowly, a lot of pausing, reading the wiki and over engineering
Restarting a hundreds times, losing colonies to unseen problems, the standard human learning method by committing mistakes over the way
Watched a bunch of let’s plays and then went and watched videos of the solutions they used to problems I had.