I'm new halp!

[Ethogenesis]

Hey, so I finally got ONI today, and I'm trying to learn everything as fast as possible. I don't want to spend a bunch of time playing the game only to realize that I've made some small and fatal error. So i was wondering if there is like a link or something to a document with all of the games features (Up to the Oil Upgrade would be preferred). Can you guys help me out?

[The Plum Gate]

Yikes, try searching the forum - I've been here a while and still learning new things.

[SusanMcO]

I used this site: https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Oxygen_Not_Included_Wiki when I first started playing.

Some of the fun of it is discovering things yourself, but try to narrow down what you are struggling with.  With a game like this, there's no one "right" way to play

[manu_x32]

The best advice is possibly to not expect to learn everything in one go, it's a deep game, there's lots of bugs and quirks and systems that are unfinished and that will change in future updates, since that's the goal of early access.

Watching walkthroughs on youtube is one way to learn a lot, but many of them have multiple long episodes, so you have to browse to find what you want to learn. Forums for sure.  And using debug mode to test things out without having to play a real game. 

[WanderingKid]

If you're interested in a quick and dirty checklist of things for a new player to watch out for, being a relatively new player myself who's only finally getting a handle on things I'd be happy to provide one, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for.   A comprehensive "Here's the entire game" in a single document would be about the size of the old expansion books for tabletop RPGs.

[Oozinator]

12 hours ago, Ethogenesis said:

 Can you guys help me out?

1. Dig
2. Build

 

[Byste]

8 hours ago, SusanMcO said:

I used this site: https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Oxygen_Not_Included_Wiki when I first started playing.

Some of the fun of it is discovering things yourself, but try to narrow down what you are struggling with.  With a game like this, there's no one "right" way to play

That site has fallen horribly out of date, most of it hasn't been updated since AU which is 2 major patches ago. It might be helpful here and there but it's dangerous to rely on something with so much false info now.

[SusanMcO]

Dangerous is a strong word - it gives you an idea of the thermal properties etc.  And you can look up what the outputs are going to be for the different machines, so you can route them correctly.

 

[Lifegrow]

10 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

Dangerous is a strong word - it gives you an idea of the thermal properties etc.  And you can look up what the outputs are going to be for the different machines, so you can route them correctly.

 

@Bysteis right, ignore the wikis - they're frequently wrong. In-game has all the info you could need, just click an elements details and it's all there.

[SusanMcO]

51 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

@Bysteis right, ignore the wikis - they're frequently wrong. In-game has all the info you could need, just click an elements details and it's all there.

But that can be very annoying and while it tells you that the co2 skimmer needs certain input/output, it does not tell you what those will be.  I can't remember if it tells you NG gen leaks polluted water, etc.  It's sometimes nice to have a quick reference to have a general idea.  As long as you know to double check specific values, the vast majority of things have not changed and when you are just starting the game, the number of elements and working parts is daunting. 

[Lifegrow]

8 minutes ago, SusanMcO said:

But that can be very annoying and while it tells you that the co2 skimmer needs certain input/output, it does not tell you what those will be.  I can't remember if it tells you NG gen leaks polluted water, etc.  It's sometimes nice to have a quick reference to have a general idea.  As long as you know to double check specific values, the vast majority of things have not changed and when you are just starting the game, the number of elements and working parts is daunting. 

It's all shown when you build the machinery?

Requirements - i.e. what it needs.

Effects - what it does.

 

[Byste]

I'm not saying the wiki is completely useless but there's definitely some things that it has just completely wrong and it IS dangerous to recommend to a new player who can't recognize what's bogus and what isn't. Just one example, here's the food page.

https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/Guide/Food

It still talks about standard vs excellent growth conditions, maturation periods, etc. I'm all for knowing historical context, but this is history being presented as current fact.

And as Lifegrow says, the in-game tooltips have gotten much much better. Most (if not all) of the info I used to have to look at the wiki for is all found fairly easily right in the game client as you're playing.

[Cilya]

I believe the wiki is missing some contributors. I've had added some information there myself and I correct wrong informations when I see them. If you find some errors or missing informations on the wiki, it would be nice to contribute and fix these issues.

[Byste]

Yeah if more people were contributing to the wiki it'd stay much more up to date, that's perfectly reasonable. I do feel like the wiki is much less important than it used to be with the way Klei has been improving their tooltips. However, it's nice to have an out of game resource to refer to so I can plan and obsess about the game out-of-game... It also has a marginal use case of referring to technology before it's available in the playthrough. But by and large, it's just not very useful to the game anymore. If you want to make the wiki more relevant, I'd suggest more advanced guides and topics. Kudos to the person who made an article on electrolyzer designs.

[SusanMcO]

I relied heavily on the wiki when I was first starting.  I didn't die as a person.  I dislike the term "dangerous".  Dangerous implies harm - the worst harm that could come is dupes that die or a mistake that causes you to roll back.  There were some machines that were different, most were the same, all the elements are the same, it has melting points, it's a quick reference for while I was starting.  The issues you guys reference are easily intuited as different (and it's warned that it is not up to date) but as a new player, you're playing very superficially to start with, just trying to get the hang of it all.  I could browse through the machines and figure out what I needed to do into order to get more polluted water etc.  I found my way here after a week, because the information in the wiki is not enough for long term usage, but as a starting point for a beginner, as long as you can read the words that say "this is for an older version, there may be changes in the version you are playing" it can be useful, instead of having to click through menus to see the info in-game. 

It may not be helpful for *you*, especially at the stage you are playing, but that does not mean it is not helpful for anyone at any time.  It's not dangerous.  It is not going to destroy the game. It's not going to make your computer explode. It is not going to physically harm you. It is a tool you can use with a caveat.

[The Plum Gate]

Suppose we use the word haphazard for the wikis instead. There's some useful information there, but not a great deal. Steam may have more updated guides - I haven't checked. The forum here seems like the best place. It would probably behoove us gamers to add to the steam guides at some point. Forums threads can fall behind when the discussions settle down about the topic. SImple references can fall several pages back and still be relevant.

[Ethogenesis]

Oh jeez, I started a much deeper conversation than I intended.