Steep entry hurdle, where is the dirt?

[TripleM999]

I want to add some of my first impressions.

Especially the "scarcity" of plain, natural dirt can be an early showstopper. I had some trouble to even get basic needs, like outhouses and early research, started. It is not immediately obvious, that mud is a resource for dirt and water too. And for its basic importance, the sludge press is imho too far down the tech tree, if you miss it, you are almost certainly lost. I'm not sure, if dupe time and power needs for the sludge press are fitting, my feeling was, that it needs too much dupe time and other prerequisites for too little dirt.

The abundance of pwater in the starting area could lead to some problems too, it was a challenge to consolidate these and the clean water to make some building space without mixing these two.

Sand for water sieves and deodorizers can be a smaller challenge too, but the rock crusher with any stone can help you with this.

The one most annoying bug, i encountered, persistent irritation, was solved in the last patch. It was using up quite some dupe time, where they were rubbing their eyes instead of doing something useful

[blash365]

Not saying that your problem isnt something to address. But where did you require so much dirt early on? I can only think of outhouses at the moment. Or did you use the micromusher as well?

Is it just a feeling or are you really running out of these elements? Did you dig up most of the map already or are you sticking to your core territory? How many dupes are in your colony?

 

I think in general the DLC world that you are starting in is already a slightly more difficult start than the vanilla world (which should also be available upon release). So maybe it is just that you had to skip one step of the experience ladder for this dlc.

Having said this, i am in cycle ~200+ now and didnt even run close to being out of dirt without using the press ever. Same for sand (150+t, if my memory doesnt fail me. without crushers). I am more concerned about polluted dirt. But that is a loooong way ahead (and does not account for all the polluted mud i also didnt touch yet).

[TripleM999]

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

Not saying that your problem isnt something to address. But where did you require so much dirt early on? I can only think of outhouses at the moment. Or did you use the micromusher as well?

Is it just a feeling or are you really running out of these elements? Did you dig up most of the map already or are you sticking to your core territory? How many dupes are in your colony?

As posted, it was an "very" early concern. It was my first try of the DLC, and without even some outhouses built or research started dirt was quite limited, without even considering micromushers. I'm far from leaving starting biome, and natural dirt is done, but of course now i'm sitting on a treasure of tons of mud. Without the knowledge of using this mud, and some early research mistakes one would quickly doom it's colony.

[blash365]

Well, since you have not left your starting biome yet, i think i can relax you a bit. Dont wanna spoiler you too much. But if you dig up, you will find a nice crust of dirt at some point.;)

[alpha_bigdog]

mud is what he needs to look at it turns into dirt and fresh clean water and dupes make 150kg at a time I ran out of dirt to then started to turn mud into dirt now I have loads of dirt + now i have clean water also ran out of that doing research stuff. :P I have yet to refine the pwater and had 2 separate things of pwater at first only got one contaminated but both contaminated now dang dupes. I have loads of food never ran out once with 6 dupes was able to get those bog plants up and running fast enough with farmers touch to get them making food faster + they don't seem to get contaminated by the bad pwater so that's good don't need wash room for farm.

[Steve8]

There is enough free dirt to get outhouses and research going. You just need to dig for it specifically. I immediately noticed the scarcity and rationed my research

In any case this isn't an issue. The biome is more of an intermediate difficulty. New people can still start with Terra. For more experienced players it's fine to struggle a bit with figuring out a new asteroid

[lunazone]

composts and mud presses get you a ton of dirt, composts are also good for dealing with the cold that leaks in from the neighboring ice biomes

[Pulstar]

I just mined polluted dirt and built 8-ish compost piles as a stopgap until I researched the sludge press or how it is called.

[RonEmpire]

Researching does eat up a lot of dirt as well.    I ended up doing tons of composting, and  using the sludge press on mud.    

[DarkMaster13]

18 hours ago, Pulstar said:

I just mined polluted dirt and built 8-ish compost piles as a stopgap until I researched the sludge press or how it is called.

Near the end of the tech tree, I was running 16 composts and a sludge press in my first run.  My researchers were still burning dirt faster than I was producing it.  I even had a dupe make a mess that caught me by surprise earlier on, which inspired me to switch to bathrooms ASAP.  It's very easy for a dirt crunch to sneak up on you in the new start if you aren't paying attention.  If you are, you'll know to either switch from outhouses early, ration your research, or start producing/collecting lots of dirt right away.

[Steve8]

In my current game I have no issues with dirt early on. I will eventually run out, but I've done a lot of the early research and haven't had to build a sludge press yet

[TripleM999]

Ok, i checked the start again, SWMP-C-1514883542-9G, if you want to check too...

Dirt is not that scarce, the waters were clouding my view, cause, as i said, i want them consolidated without mixing.

But nonetheless probably only enough for basic research. My 10 composters and the one sludge press are not producing enough dirt to keep up with advanced research.

[ExEvolution]

My starting biome is very low on raw dirt, but once you get to the surface, there is a lot of it. Sludge press works fine for getting more dirt, and free water too without having to use a sieve. Mud is useless otherwise, so I figure once you have used up all the mud and surface dirt, thats when you need to move on to water sieves and composters. But with how much dirt is on the surface, you probably won't run out just doing research.

[BlackGoat]

2 minutes ago, ExEvolution said:

My starting biome is very low on raw dirt, but once you get to the surface, there is a lot of it.

Glad someone mentioned this, the starting asteroid surface has literally tons of dirt.

I've found I get enough from the sludge press though since it is a great source for early water anyway. 

I pressed all of the mud from my starting biome on my last colony and had enough dirt for all except 3 techs on the research tree IIRC.

[TripleM999]

One can miss the sludge press easily though. And digging to the surface is probably not the first idea to solve a very early game problem. But yeah, of course with some planning dirt will be no problem, that's the reason, i called it "steep entry hurdle". For players with some experience it will be solvable.

[ExEvolution]

I think that's just part of the learning experience of the game. We all made mistakes that cost us entire colonies. The sludge press isn't super high tier, and the starting swamp biome is much different than your classic biomes like terra or arboria. The first thing you should be doing on any map is pausing and analyzing the resources available to you, it is something you pick up with more understanding of how the game works. They just introduced a lot of new mechanics to learn so it is inevitable you will make new mistakes like forgetting to secure your early game resources because you're so used to them just being available from the start.