Starting water?

[nivodeus]

there are many irregularities regarding Arboria and map gen really plays a role here. The starting water pool is always just enough, I tried many arboria map. And if you are lucky you have enough Oxylite around starting biome to help you digging around without worrying about O2.

I found the easy way is to dig and dig, just found a way to direct the CO2, preferably near any Oxyfern. I have been very unsuccessful with wild planting Oxyfern, not sure if it's a bug, but they sometimes just disappear. 

While digging, look for another pocket of O2 or probaby another stray Oxylite to help the digger until you found rust and salt. Use less dupe until you can secure more water either by finding geyser or loop pWater using sieve, but you need to find sand first or at least have the granulator to make sand from ore. 

From all the biomes, I would say Arboria is the hardest, could be because it makes us play differently , while other biomes give the same normal resources we used to, with the challenge of temperature, which I think for any veteran should not be too hard to tackle, hard enough, sure, but in term of resource, I think Arboria is very demanding. 

Or an early Ethanol distiller works well to as source of energy and pWater. 

[Trego]

Everyone that thinks Arboria is actually the hardest asteroid now: Arboria can't be anywhere near the hardest of the asteroids now, because it's for sure at the least the easiest of the 4 asteroids that replace the old starter biome with the new forest biome.   E.g. Aridia  is basically just a much hotter Arboria.

[EnderCN]

The water can be really spaced out in the forest biome and as far as I can tell you usually only get 2 pools rather than 3.  This is offset by the fact you can get a lot of food from natural plants since mealwood seeds are really common as buried objects and the pips will plant them for you.

[avilmask]

3 hours ago, EnderCN said:

The water can be really spaced out in the forest biome and as far as I can tell you usually only get 2 pools rather than 3.  This is offset by the fact you can get a lot of food from natural plants since mealwood seeds are really common as buried objects and the pips will plant them for you.

Wild wormwood takes 15 days to grow. You'll start starving earlier, since there is no other instantly accessible sources of food. So you have to rely on farming pretty soon, sacrificing some of early exploration time, that you need to find salt and water.

[axxionx12]

4 hours ago, Trego said:

Everyone that thinks Arboria is actually the hardest asteroid now: Arboria can't be anywhere near the hardest of the asteroids now, because it's for sure at the least the easiest of the 4 asteroids that replace the old starter biome with the new forest biome.   E.g. Aridia  is basically just a much hotter Arboria.

Can confirm, Aridio was a nonstop panic for 100 cycles. You start with a pool of water that's about 6,000kg total of water and plants won't grow in the heat. In hindsight I would rush the petroleum generator with ethanol to make it easier.

[SakuraKoi]

There should be three lakes for sandstone, two small and one flat lake.

However forest has only two small lakes.

Worse yet, in comparison, the blob size of forest lakes is between

  min: 4.1
  max: 7.5

While Sandstone has (for both kinds)

  min: 5.1
  max: 10.5

Interestingly enough though, for forests there is a feature which is supposed to be a tall thin room filled with salt water and/or brine but it is quite unfinished considering that the blob size is only set at 1 and there are no other materials named. Lakes on the contrary can have more or less water.

That's how sandstone is more advantages as well, since there the weight of Oxygen and Water as RoomCenterElements is 0.5 and 1 respectively i.e water is picked in 4 of 6 cases*. Forest has 1 and 0.2 respectively. 1 in 6 cases*

*I think that's how it works but bigger weight does indeed mean more likely to appear.

 

Now what I think they are going for to balance this, is that in return forest biomes elsewhere have small lakes as well while for sandstone biomes they are empty. In return that means if you are in a forest starter biome, ya got to get going. Be glad that you don't have to water bristle berries with the limited water (60kg/dupe/cycle)! Only you should water your oxyfern then... (57kg/dupe/cycle)

[Denisetwin]

1 hour ago, SakuraKoi said:

However forest has only two small lakes.

It might be supposed to have two small lakes, but the first two I tried had one small lake and one big boulder of obsidian.......  I don't mind a challenge but didn't want to deal with just six tiles of water to start and no other water showing within two screens of start.  I hope they fix it so that the boulders do not overwrite the beginning water.  At least I know now to check that.

[SakuraKoi]

14 minutes ago, Denisetwin said:

It might be supposed to have two small lakes, but the first two I tried had one small lake and one big boulder of obsidian.......  I don't mind a challenge but didn't want to deal with just six tiles of water to start and no other water showing within two screens of start.  I hope they fix it so that the boulders do not overwrite the beginning water.  At least I know now to check that.

Traits should not be spawning in the starting area anymore. If you have got a seed where this is still the case, then I'm confident that the devs would like to have it.

[KittenIsAGeek]

9 hours ago, nivodeus said:

From all the biomes, I would say Arboria is the hardest,

Its definitely the most difficult to get a starting foothold in.  Food and air shortages plague your first 10 to 30 cycles.  Water generally isn't a real problem on Arboria until you start researching with the super computer -- then it starts disappearing quickly.  I had the thought of setting up a closed-loop plumbing system with an overflow pipe for the extra that builds up, and discovered very quickly that there isn't any sand.  So your starting dupes on Arboria are having to split their work between:

1. Digging out new air pockets and looking for rust.
2. Researching so you can eventually get an ethanol still running.
3. Crushing rock for sand.
4. Running on hamster wheels.
5. Farming because wild mealwood just isn't going to cut it, even for only three dupes.

On the other hand, Volcanea is a very easy start.  Water, algae, etc are plentiful.  But somewhere around cycle 100 on three different maps I've had one of the MANY lava biomes breech into another biome and wreak havoc on my base.  So I think difficulty is somewhat variable on these new worlds.

It would be nice, however, to see something that clarifies where the survival problem is.  For example, Arboria DEFINITELY needs to show that the start is really hard, even if the long-term game becomes much easier.  Just seeing "Survival: Likely" isn't cutting it for Arboria.

[EnderCN]

5 hours ago, avilmask said:

Wild wormwood takes 15 days to grow. You'll start starving earlier, since there is no other instantly accessible sources of food. So you have to rely on farming pretty soon, sacrificing some of early exploration time, that you need to find salt and water.

Sure but you can get off farming faster due to the wild mealwood.  In my current playthrough I'm relying on nothing but wild mealwood and a small 6 plot mushroom farm plus random eggs to support 7 dupes around cycle 45.  I had to keep my colony smaller than I like because I refused to go crazy with farmed mealwood, but it didn't take too long for the pips to provide me with food.

[Yunru]

10 hours ago, nivodeus said:

I have been very unsuccessful with wild planting Oxyfern, not sure if it's a bug, but they sometimes just disappear. 

I've also found this, both with oxyferns and trees. 

[nivodeus]

18 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Its definitely the most difficult to get a starting foothold in.  Food and air shortages plague your first 10 to 30 cycles.  Water generally isn't a real problem on Arboria until you start researching with the super computer -- then it starts disappearing quickly.  I had the thought of setting up a closed-loop plumbing system with an overflow pipe for the extra that builds up, and discovered very quickly that there isn't any sand.  So your starting dupes on Arboria are having to split their work between:

1. Digging out new air pockets and looking for rust.
2. Researching so you can eventually get an ethanol still running.
3. Crushing rock for sand.
4. Running on hamster wheels.
5. Farming because wild mealwood just isn't going to cut it, even for only three dupes.

On the other hand, Volcanea is a very easy start.  Water, algae, etc are plentiful.  But somewhere around cycle 100 on three different maps I've had one of the MANY lava biomes breech into another biome and wreak havoc on my base.  So I think difficulty is somewhat variable on these new worlds.

It would be nice, however, to see something that clarifies where the survival problem is.  For example, Arboria DEFINITELY needs to show that the start is really hard, even if the long-term game becomes much easier.  Just seeing "Survival: Likely" isn't cutting it for Arboria.

I think this is a nice observation. Arboria is definitely hard for early survival, which could mean early restart, but once you get all under control (I still struggle with water but found an ice biome and been using the ice as new water source), Arboria is pretty decent, since heat wont be a problem till much much later game and once you found rust biome, Oxygen will be managable with combo of Rust Deoxy and Wild Oxyfern. Domesticated one took too much water. 

While other Asteroid might be easier to set up early to mid game, once players starts to explore some high tem or low temp pockets biome, then the problem start. 

Seeing it this way, Arboria becomes more challenging because early game is always harder, while managing heat mid game, while not the easiest task, still easier once you have a proper system maintained in the base, which you have the chance in the early stages of colony building. 

I havent tried other extreme temp biome aside from Rime and Volcano, it might differ from what Ive been experiencing. 

[FiannaTiger]

I think with the change that is supposed to keep boulders and stuff out of the starting biome, Arboria is not as bad as I thought it would be.  I have kept with the three dupes until I build up a food supply and have gotten some O2 production.  I believe i'm on cycle 18 or so with food getting up there and the 8 farmed oxyferns keeping the CO2 levels down.  They are still building but I will be collecting salt and rust and setting up some O2 production unless I find a good source of water. 

I will say that my map has a funny humor too it.  A rust biome just south of my starting area had my first geyser hidden, a CO2 vent...sigh...

[nivodeus]

1 hour ago, FiannaTiger said:

I think with the change that is supposed to keep boulders and stuff out of the starting biome, Arboria is not as bad as I thought it would be.  I have kept with the three dupes until I build up a food supply and have gotten some O2 production.  I believe i'm on cycle 18 or so with food getting up there and the 8 farmed oxyferns keeping the CO2 levels down.  They are still building but I will be collecting salt and rust and setting up some O2 production unless I find a good source of water. 

I will say that my map has a funny humor too it.  A rust biome just south of my starting area had my first geyser hidden, a CO2 vent...sigh...

If you have domesticated Oxyfern, that plus just one Rust Deoxy, would last you a long time, even when adding more dupes and even with Wood burner. I did that once, unfortunately I hit a brick wall with water. Maybe I should have build a bathroom loop sooner to get pWater, but I was out of sand as well, till i realise I could make sand by punching ore to refined metal -.-