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 Tuesday at 11:39 PM by BLACKBERREST3