Nice!

[BLACKBERREST3]

Approaching mid-game. Had to restart a few times to get the best start. The goal was to have the most overpowered early game that I could think of and I might have done it. I have a few mods that let me control rng of dupes and printer pod, but I don't feel like reloading every time i want squash fries so I'm cheesing it a bit. My 6 dupes are all interested in digging, supplying, and researching, have ugly crier and sticker bomb responses, and have kitchen menace, unpracticed artist, and skilled: super duper hard digging. I've got 1 rancher rn, but all her job is just wrangling wild critters to the printer pod park. I have to claim my food during the day or the hatches might eat the pod food at night XD

I've avoided mining slime for now cause I don't want the slimelung debuffs and I don't care to setup deodorizes yet. So far all of my oxygen has come from 4 terrariums. I had to manually relocate a few polluted bottles so they could off-gas a bit quicker. I also dropped a few bottles down the ladders so my dupes could mine deeper. I might have to start storing carbon dioxide and chlorine soon as it's overpressurizing the pw bottles now. I got all my tier 2 research done and will be going into radbolts soon. I'm tempted to go the shinebug route, but I'll need to setup a system that will allow me to transfer their eggs safely if I ever want to move a hoard of them later. I'll probably just seal them in a room with limited door access so they can come back with lead suits later. I wonder when I'll have to start worrying about temperature? All in all, I think this is a pretty good start.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

the reason i make my park on the printer pod (when i get a pip that is) is that in every world generation those are the only guaranteed natural tiles that are always made of sandstone every time. for consistency when resetting a bunch of times you can always plan to leave those natural.

[MinhPham]

I think you spent a little bit too much time building those 12x4 layout which i have no idea how to use them all lately .... i'm thinking about the entire 256x384 map filled with 12x4 rooms 

Most effective of digging is to go up/down first using zigzag pattern and then go horizontally with a row of ladder every 8th tiles ...

[BLACKBERREST3]

I used to do ladders too at one point, the problem was in the early game, all of your materials would be at the lowest level. Unless you have the mod "sticky fingers" or whatever its called (didn't want to install this as I want mostly vanilla+dlc), dupes would run out of breath at the bottom and drop the item they were carrying/delivering and then try again in an infinite loop. If it's one or two items like food you can relocate it manually until it's in the oxygenated area, but if you have all ladders, that's every item. Trying to use powered buildings like pumps and infinite gas storage too early would lead to more complexity and heat, plus you have to constantly build a pump or a sweeper at the level you need it in as that would change every time you dug deeper. The passive strat I used was to just dump pw bottles down the ladder so they can at least run for air close to where they are digging. Sending Items down isn't a problem, it's bringing everything back up when the floor is constantly changing. The reason I do 12x4 is because this gives me a good multiple to make rooms with. The size doesn't matter too much, but the spacing of airflow tiles does. If I need anything larger, I'll just turn one section into a larger module horizontally or vertically as needed.

It would actually be faster to do all ladders in the oxygen zones and floors every level towards the bottom, but I usually end up needing rooms in those oxygenated areas anyways.

I also have another issue rn as there was a super cheese way to deal with slimelung early was just spamming deodorizers everywhere, but now they have power requirements so it's a lot more copper wire running everywhere. power draw isn't too bad so it's still an option for dealing with slime lung. I haven't found any other way yet that is just as lazy. Also, my base is always going to be filled with polluted oxygen so even 1 germ will wreak havok on my base which is why I haven't mined a single slime block yet. I'm thinking of just digging all around those biomes and just leaving them last.

[MinhPham]

47 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I also have another issue rn as there was a super cheese way to deal with slimelung early was just spamming deodorizers everywhere, but now they have power requirements so it's a lot more copper wire running everywhere. power draw isn't too bad so it's still an option for dealing with slime lung. I haven't found any other way yet that is just as lazy. Also, my base is always going to be filled with polluted oxygen so even 1 germ will wreak havok on my base which is why I haven't mined a single slime block yet. I'm thinking of just digging all around those biomes and just leaving them last.

It's ... the only way unless you liquidify the PO2 they will turn back into regular oxygen.

One nice thing about algea terrarium path way is ... it doesn't care about pressure, and the building can draw water directly from the environment.
With high enough gas pressure you can push CO2/chlorine way down to the bottom, but i'm pretty sure you can make normal oxygen out of it  instead of polluted one.

I'm never tried it actually, because, you know .... SPOM exists, and it does provide enough power to run the colony  (and it does cool itself if the input water isn't too hot )

About the PWater bottle, if you submerge it inside a liquid less than 1.8kg it will off gas at full speed.
I tried some sandbox test, a 20t bottle will emit around 800g/s of PO2, enough for 7 dupes. I let it run for a dozen cycles, doesn't seems to have any PO2 escape the room.

[BLACKBERREST3]

thats exactly what i was looking for! thanks! I might’ve known about some of these mechanics a while ago, but there is so much I’ve forgotten. I wonder if other bottled liquids behave/off-gas in a similar way, another test for another day. I don’t usually do early spom unless i have a cool slush geyser because I need all the clean water for research in the early game if I don’t want to run unnecessary machinery and power. algae terraiums require so little water to oxygen ratio compared to spom. I probably should have contained the polluted oxygen before i let it run rampant in my base XD. oh well, my dupes will suck it all up eventually.

wait! does the liquid trick also work on slime and polluted dirt too or just bottled pw?

ah, found the wiki for it.

https://oxygennotincluded.wiki.gg/wiki/Element_Emission

found the next build I’m doing. it’s a variation of this, but i think i’ll replace the airflow tile with a pneumatic door to handle egg delivery via dispenser.

 

the other problem is not shooting my dupes with radbolts, but i think i read somewhere that it doesn’t matter too much if they are hit every now and then.

[BLACKBERREST3]

made the build

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 4/24/2026 at 4:59 PM, MinhPham said:

 

You can also use this sort of setup over a pool of polluted water, even infected, and skip the algae terrariums.  Its easiest if you start with a vacuum and then pump PW in with a pipe and liquid vent, and best if you can keep the top layer in the 900kg range. It also helps if you have more than one layer of PW.  Anyway, if you have clean oxygen in the room, it will "plug" the deoderizers.  CO2 is OK, since it will settle, as long as the pressure isn't too high to allow offgassing.  The past few times I've done it was with a dual-use setup where the pool of PW was also an automated Pacu farm.  If the water is infected, run the pacu fillets through a room of chlorine OTW to the kitchen and you're good to go.   Or run your PW through a room like this before sending it to the off-gas pool:

Spoiler

I apologize for the awkward pipes.. the space to build this room was in an awkward location.  Anyway: infected PW in, 'clean' PW out.

[BLACKBERREST3]

On 4/24/2026 at 6:59 PM, MinhPham said:

It's ... the only way unless you liquidify the PO2 they will turn back into regular oxygen.

One nice thing about algea terrarium path way is ... it doesn't care about pressure, and the building can draw water directly from the environment.
With high enough gas pressure you can push CO2/chlorine way down to the bottom, but i'm pretty sure you can make normal oxygen out of it  instead of polluted one.

I'm never tried it actually, because, you know .... SPOM exists, and it does provide enough power to run the colony  (and it does cool itself if the input water isn't too hot )

About the PWater bottle, if you submerge it inside a liquid less than 1.8kg it will off gas at full speed.
I tried some sandbox test, a 20t bottle will emit around 800g/s of PO2, enough for 7 dupes. I let it run for a dozen cycles, doesn't seems to have any PO2 escape the room.

I made one based off this build that tiles nicely for my base, I'm gonna relocate a few shine bug eggs in there for the small 10% light buff. I  noticed that shine bugs would escape if the water didn't lock correctly. Couldn't lock down those shine bugs to one tile without adding more space complexity or sacrifice dupe accessibility so they are free to roam. only need about 2-4 in there anyways.

 

 

Edited May 12 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

Guys! I have a problem. I have too much oxygen and food.

[MinhPham]

Print more dupes

I started another playthrough too, i built 2 hatch ranches around cycle 20, but their production are too slow and after cycle 30 with 12 dupes food started to run out, and the hatches still didn't reach their full ranch capacity, so i move on.

Then i restart, this time a had a temporary pacu ranch of 10x10 for 10 breeder using an existing polluted water pool. The fish feeder was built at cycle 13 with 4 pacus, by cycle 21 they are now tame and egg production has started. My most annoying experience with current version of the game is how they slowed down too much underwater.

I can't build farms because i have no idea when but at some point in the past i have decided that all my runs much be able achieve all the achievements, mean there must be a locavore and a super sustainable. I hope they change the locavore at some point, because the farm tile also used for other purposes beside food, like the arbor tree, thimble reed ...

Spoiler

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

Nice spom you got there. I don't worry too much about the achievements anymore, I've gotten all the timed achievements before a long time ago. I'll go for achievements when I'm doing a challenge run. This world I'm in is meant to be easy and for making blueprints.

I probably should print more dupes. I've just been cheesing the printer for food because at 6 dupes 1 thing of squash fries is barely enough to feed everyone. The other thing is that I find that I don't need that many skills in order to do everything in the game. If I need a dupe to do something specific that is one time use like demolishing gravitas buildings, I'll just respec. I plan to dig the entire asteroid, but once they are done with that I will only need 1 digger. The biggest challenge rn is temp management, but I've already dug into a cold biome down below where I'm dumping all my steam geyser water into and the second geyser I will overpressure and deal with later. Once I have temps under control with a steam loop, I'll think about it. 6 is the magic number that keeps them alive no matter what happens. The biggest slowdown of all is research. There is so much to research in the new dlc and updates. Hard to get to the new stuff when most of the old stuff still works. I've been restarting for a few reasons and sometimes just for fun. Each time I'm getting faster going past the early game. I even did the 100 dupe challenge. Not as hard as I thought it would be. Just spam deoxidizers, bum rush farming, and dig everything. There's at least 100,000 kcal of food on the map to survive the first day to get mealwood going. The most important thing is to manually give each dupe a pre-learned skill that lets you dig or build stuff right away, very fun.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

Even though the other version of the algae farm was better to limit spread of PO2, I found out that the open design let me pressurize the area a bit better. I need a mod that allows me to disable buildings by highlighting them. That and a mass relocate tool would be nice QoL features.

I think an open box design is more my speed. When pressure gets a little too high, I disable them and pressure goes back to normal slowly. This could probably be automated with mech doors and a pressure sensor [but then mech doors would drop the PW bottles, hmmm]. Dupes are just too good at delivering water at 240kg per pump, that's 12 pumps equivalent delivered all at once. It's hard to justify automating this with a water pump when dupes do too good of a job at delivering, no kdtus or power required. I also restarted on the same seed to try a mealwood-hatch approach. At some point wild hatches will be enough to feed the colony and they won't take critter space cause they can  burrow. It is also way more space efficient than wild pacus so I don't need to build a pacu patty. I'll settle for the existing wild pacu on the map. The seed I got has so much water in it. I plan to use it as thermal mass and destroy warm water with research and melt cold biomes for even more water and then finally dump that into the oil/magma biome. I built more research stations to speed up the process. I forgot I could do that. I haven't looked at the rest of the new critters yet, but hatches are the only ones that can be infinitely cheesed from what i've found.

I think I figured out a good way to disable them. If I build pneumatic doors around them, they won't be able to deliver anymore. a bit more passive approach, but that works to not let the bottles fall. Other option is if I let them fall and build the deoxidizers one more layer down. I think I'll be able to beat early game by 30 or 40 cycles now with 6 dupes.

 

 

found the mods

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1843647561&searchtext=disable+tool

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3301490799&searchtext=relocate

I got tired of manually clicking each time.

It sure does take a lot of effort and planning to beat this game in the laziest and least effort way possible.

[BLACKBERREST3]

I think I've mastered the early game. I barely lifted a finger, it just kind of ran itself. I've completely dugout the starting biome, researched all of tier 2, no disease, no stress, plenty of food and o2, and I've been printing hatches only every 3 cycles to setup for a free infinite food supply later. The rundown is this; digout a good sized area, get your bathrooms/bedrooms first, digout below and  all around to route water and CO2 to the bottom. When running low on O2 and you can't setup the algae farm yet, go for algae deoxidizers temporarily. I like the algae box design and I only had to disable it twice when it was getting close to 4k+ pressure so very little micro management there, but you could always automate it with mech doors below the algae farms (though the mass disable mod works here too). How I dealt with shinebugs and hatches was to relocate them to their own spaces by moving their eggs. The area by the printer pod always has sandstone floor so that is where wild hatches end up for now, shinebugs can go wherever away from bedrooms. Avoid digging into slime and diseased areas, even if it shows germs as long as you don't dig it and it is below a certain number (I think 1million?) it won't spread from a solid tile. The new oxygen you generate should be enough to keep your mealwood cool, just use hamster wheels and not generators so you can keep your base cool for a while. You can make a great hall pretty easily by using a disabled water cooler and some corner trim. Digout the entire uranium node so you can get rid of the radiation it emits.

This strategy has worked consistently for me for the last few restarts and it is probably the most efficient and relaxed playstyle I could come up with. For my worldgen, I've enabled all DLC, remixes, asteroid fragments, and story elements. This is my seed for this world: SNDST-C-289903051-0-4A-295GB4X2

My goal wasn't necessarily to speedrun, but to see how little I could do to beat the early game and I think I've done it......Success!

 

Edited June 17 by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

Go my hatch army!

I'm thinking for the next step, I'll keep the train rolling and dig sideways and down layer by layer, skipping the slime biome. Already dug to the core as much as I could. Then dig up towards the ceiling.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Progress: Dug out the bottom. Dealt with sporechids by crushing them building diagonally. Had to leave one layer of 30C Solid tiles of abyssalite or other material on the bottom because sometimes dripping liquid onto 1300C abyssalite will transfer heat and that could kill the base. I dug into the slime biome too early and I had a minor outbreak of slimelung. I left a physical barrier to prevent it from getting to the dupe quarters. I'm taking a few cycles to chase down all the PO2 with deoderizers. Pressure is sitting pretty at 1800g of O2 atm.

Next step is to dig towards the ceiling and do a better job at containing the slime biomes. I've setup some dispensers and locked doors to put all the polluted dirt, rotten food, and slime in the algae box so I don't have to worry about them anymore. Should have probably included it in the design from the beginning, live and learn.

I'm debating on what's more efficient or lazy, as I'm split between two methods. On one hand it is probably easier to just digout the biome and mass build deoderizers later, since you can create a horizontal barrier and work down layer by layer. On the other hand, if I had micro managed a bit better, an outbreak would have never happened in the first place. I think they both take an equal amount of time, but the first method is more of an assembly line process at the cost of sick dupes, but they were getting food poisoning half the time anyway XD

No real reason to setup anything for the diseases as they are currently, but if I ever turn on a lethal disease mod, I'll have to setup real bathrooms, showers, and a chlorine bath for the food and go with method 2 for dealing with slime biomes.

Had to think about it for a second, but the asteroid needed to pressurize above 1800 for PW and slime not to offgas anymore. Method 1 lets the atmosphere pressurize quicker while method 2 would take a bit longer and you would still end up with PO2 at the bottom from PW offgassing, but at least it wouldn't be diseased. I think they are both relatively equal in time and effort.

Edited Friday at 02:31 PM by BLACKBERREST3

[MinhPham]

Just realized you don't have enough dupes to bring all the slime into one place. My way of handling them is pretty easy, store them all in one place, the chlorine gas will kill all slimelung germ, the other door way is to allow access to slime/bleach stone when i want to use them.

[BLACKBERREST3]

True, probably should have added a chlorine pocket to put it all. I’ll edit the algae box to include that in the next build. it all dies in oxygen anyway so there will be a small ring of slime lung around it for now. It also doesn’t offgas that often cause it’s pressurized over 1800g rn.  I would also have to be creative with the gas lock so I can allow it to offgas and be in chlorine at the same time. don’t know if thats possible.

 

7 hours ago, MinhPham said:

 

Just realized you don't have enough dupes to bring all the slime into one place.

 

Actually, they are all interested in digging, researching, and supplying. They all have the pre-learned skill super-duper digging for max morale discount. They all have ugly crier, kitchen menace, uncultured artist, and sticker bomber. theoretically these stats should be possible (i think) if you reroll enough times. In my case I used a mod to preselect stats. The supplying makes an astronomical difference. I’m able to move tons of material because they path from spot to spot picking up the max carry limit until they get to their destination. having supply early is very useful. I chose digging because they need to dig, and researching because I didn’t know what else to dump points into and research helps gain attributes and skills faster in the long run. Just with a bathroom, beds, and a great hall, their morale is enough to max out digging, supplying, and maybe all but one of the research tree. if I switch to real bathrooms/showers, add a rec room, or cook barbeque, I could push morale up higher, but I haven’t needed to do that yet. just set it to dig and build ladders for a while, then watch tv in the background 😁

Edited Friday at 10:39 PM by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

I've employed a single puft to hunt down PO2, I checked his pathing out of curiosity.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Figured this was a good stopping point for an update. It was touch and go with the cool steam vent on the left which led me to a few oddities. I know that I can block it's output port with liquid but it doesn't say it's over pressured, it still says it emits material. even when it's port is fully submerged. idk, doesn't seem like it's actually producing water atm. Had to send a few dupes to the infirmary for a cycle while they were containing it, but otherwise not that much of an issue. temps have stabilized in that area. I also uncovered a hydrogen vent so it could start melting the surrounding area. I'm gonna need a lot of heat and I can't just break into the magma without some kind of protection so I'll leave the magma alone for now. Watched a vid on a few techniques involving pitcher pumps and pipe drainer, that will be fun later on. These are map specific scenarios, but if you have unique advantages for your map, make sure to use it.

I've run into the ice wall at the ceiling. I figured i'd just leave most of the ice/snow in that area to melt on it's own (no half mass lost) so I'll build some hot stuff and rebuild later when needed. Now that I'm pretty close to the exosphere, the only method I can think of which I've also done in the past is to make a single point of entry with a liquid lock at the top that will get me into space without losing atmosphere. Then I can dig the rest from there, add drywall as back walling and cap the top in bunker doors. I think the updates will stop when I've dug out the world because that's a good starting point that can branch in any direction, ie. ranching, rocketeering, farming, tamers, boilers, condensers, etc.

 

 

Temporary Critter Storage

Bottom one is for puft eggs

Hatches, Sweetles, Spigot Seals, and Lumbs. I've moved all their eggs over here, not a single rancher in my colony yet.

 

Only a matter of time before the Jawbos feast

Edited Monday at 11:42 AM by BLACKBERREST3

[BLACKBERREST3]

Jawbos ate the pacu

[BLACKBERREST3]

Mini update: used a single crude oil tile as the lock, pretty sure I got it from deconstructing gravitas buildings somehow, idk where it came from. Since I'm bleeding into the end of early game, I setup a refinery block to melt some more ice. I'm refining all the wolframite, nickel, and iron and I am leaving the copper and gold for as needed. Had to setup a mechanical filter for liquid mercury. If this were a hotter asteroid, I would instead work towards plastic to get a steam turbine, but this world is providing free cooling, so it's even easier this time around. Made sure to cap the exposed places around the top so I don't bleed atmosphere. If this were vanilla with falling regolith, I would have to research bunker tiles which is tier 3 research (unless vanilla is different in research, I forget). I'm guessing spaced out doesn't have falling regolith enabled by default. Honestly, hardly needed any wild critters at all, there is enough dirt to last another 100 cycles alone, but might as well go full cheese on this one. This might be my pb for digging out an asteroid, though the game is drastically different from 7 years ago.

[MinhPham]

Capitalism at peak .... or it is what they called "efficiency".

[BLACKBERREST3]

2 hours ago, MinhPham said:

 

Capitalism at peak .... or it is what they called "efficiency".