Need Your Hand Mastah! Urgent Guide for playing ONI in Fatalistic, Miserable, Very High, and Ravaging Hunger mode.

[chasinji]

I knew some nerd people play ONI exclusively on hardest mode and pushed theirself to game difficulity limit. yet still oni hardest mode still easy for them( how HELL!). Sure, i am not one of them, that is why i am here. Recently i make transition from survival which is filled with mostly idle game to everything must neat you cant loose your eye from it. which in this i tried fatalistic miserable, very high stress, response and ravaging hunger. In the last two weeks,I tried several games (7-9 base) and my colony always went down to spiral death. one of them begin with stress mass problem. the other is terrible food poisoning  even at cycle 3!. and the last starvation always hit me hard at cycle 6-9. thus, my best colony base can keep up till 43 cycle before heat from caustic biome stiffle my blossom( hell yah).i need some of knowledge sharing and tips how to build base early cycle and base planning in mid game. here i need ANYTHING that enlight me to run the colony base at every tick of cycle properly until game become stable.

i came mostly with no duplicant death rules at all my game. i am not going into no reroll dupe and accept every dupe rules yet since one simple rule is still pain on me. none of my base cant pass 100 cycle.

here some questions beside needing tips.

0 map seed: do i need to examine my map seed first? is it possible to go blindly play hard mode? ( i feel i cant have a single chance to play blindly in hard mode)

1 duplicant trait: what is the best duplicant trait do you choose and what trait are best to avoid?

2 time is matter here. what should i done in cycle 1? what should 1 done in cycle 2? 3.... till may be first 10/20 cycle

3 food management: worth to build microbe musher or electric grill or even not at all at first 10 cycle? what plant are effectively feeding my colony?

4 research tree: because early timing in matter in early.what research sequene that will support the colony soon  as possible?

5 dupe printing pod: when you decide to add first dupe form printing pod? after what stuff is done in base? second dupe? third?

6 exploration: in the first exploration. what biome will you explore first outside beside starter biome. what do you search for? water? wild pincha? ice? geyser?wheeze? or even slime?. swamp biome seems most avoid to explore since slimelung will close your base quickly( if no exo suit is available. yet hard to obtain in early game)

7 morale management. How? my stress sum up pretty quickly. rush clinic room?

8 base design: how to make a good base design in early game that will prevent colony from mass stress or food posoning? or even heat?. beside, should i do exploration or heat/ gas/ slime base proof first?

9 deoxydizer or algae terrarium: dupe work is limited and so algae. what is best choose for hard mode?

this hard game mode forced me to reload save game files countlessly and made me stressed up like my dupes did. help and sharing will do any enlightment for me. may be even share your base at hardest mode or milestone you reached in hardest mode colony.

note: i am not english speaker in native, so any grammar mistake or misspelling perhaps being forgiven.

[ChickenMadness]

I'm not an expert but I play alot on the harder difficulties because I find it more enjoyable if theres a 'survival risk'. The normal game modes are too easy (from a survival aspect), and I feel like you can run your dupes through slime biomes and there are no consequences. So I usually put immunity to the lowest difficulty on every gameplay. Even if I have food set to 'normal' for example. (food can get ridiculous on the hardest difficulties).

If you don't play with immunity on a high difficulty you're effectively cutting out a large portion of the game because you have no reason to ever build medical bays or medicine.

Food is the only difficulty setting I find quite tedious though. I find it the most fun having everything on maximum difficulty apart from food because your farms ending taking up too much space and you barely have room to build anything else. Survival food difficulty is a bit on the 'too easy side' though. 

But ye here is my gameplay advice...

I tend to dig towards mushrooms as fast as possible as they're very cost efficient and an easier step up from mealwood than bristle blossoms. I generally don't farm bristle blossoms if I can help it. It's a waste of water. If I see mushrooms on the edge of the starting biome I'll have planted it as soon as I have farm tiles researched.

mushrooms don't use water, only slime, grow in CO2, so you can just build long rows of them below your base where the CO2 pools and generally forget about food problems for a long time at that point. Just need some underwater slime storage close by. They don't need much slime so you can just dig some out quickly then wall off the slime biome after you've filled the storage up a bit. And let any slimelung that came into your base die out.

Also dig towards all sources of food in the starting biome as your number 1 priority and research farm tiles asap.

Also as soon as food and oxygen is stable, thats a good time to let your dupes put all the resources into storage. So it doesn't affect decor.

soo. Food > oxygen > decor in that order. 

edit:
more random tips

Don't dig out tiles unless you have a good reason to.
1) digging a tile creates a 'vacuum' and draws any oxygen you started with away from your base. The more tiles you mine the more oxygen you need to produce to fill up the area.
2)creates 'debris' around your base that give negative decor values. You want to minimize the amount of crap lying around where your dupes spend most of their time or the stress will increase very quickly. The more you mine the more 'sweeping' you will have to do. And it usually takes 2-3 full cycles just to put everything into storage.
3) waste of time if they don't get any food or oxygen from it obviously.

Usually I would dig to food, copper (only the amount I need), and oxylite. Don't mine the oxylite tile though. I think mining a tile reduces the amount you get. so if you leave the tile there it lasts longer).

Picking starting dupes....
If I want to make the game easier these are the traits I usually go for... (I won't talk about obvious stuff like diver's lung, high learning, strength, etc.)
Usually I pick all 3 starting dupes with 'ugly crier' as this is the least problematic stress response. It is actually beneficial to you if all of your dupes start crying as it gives you clean water. 
Vomit is 'not bad' but not good. I find it takes them a long time before they stop vomitting and it affects the stress levels of your other dupes more than ugly crier. And also getting polluted water accidentally dripping onto your clean water tank is very annoying.

The worst traits are binge eater and destructive. Binge eater is obvious why...
Destructive is my least favourite though because the dupes always target your oxygen generators and hamster wheels and you lose valuable resources (as well as time) when you repair them. And sometimes they will destroy a tile from your water tank and the water will flood your whole base. And all you can do is reload an earlier save at that point.


CO2......

Don't build any algae distillers or worry about CO2 at all. Don't waste any resources on it. 
If your living area is filling up with CO2 just mine downwards and create more space for the CO2 to fall down. You can go 100 cycles never touching the carbon skimmer by just digging downwards strategically and letting the CO2 fall away. CO2 is quite valuable for mushroom farming as well as giving yourself warm polluted water later on. I'll sometimes build gas storage tanks and keep the CO2 there, if the map doesn't allow me good places to dig downwards. Just one gas pump and a hamster wheel is all you need. You can worry about seperating the gases later.

one of the good things about gas storage is that they don't require electricity when you want to use them again later. I usually try to play in a way where I use as little electricity as possible and get things done without spending any resources. And using resources is for 'emergencies'

Morale and Decor...
This is quite simple. And you would tackle this after food and oxygen are stable as I mentione already. 
Make sure every room you build has space for wall paintings. You should have a main 'corridor' that your dupes walk through often. All available space in that area should be wall paintings. (build the paintings in the top half above the sleeping cots for example). 

One of your starting dupes needs +4 creativity atleast for you to be able to have 'masterpiece' paintings.

Prioritise building a great hall (not a mess hall) first as this is the biggest morale boost you can get early game. All you need is one masterpiece painting and a water cooler. This gives you +6 morale and you can make it as soon as you have researched farm tiles. Once this room is built stress isn't a problem generally.

storage...
Find a good space where you can build a long row of storage compactors, in a central location. I'll give an example from my current game. The water was step up perfectly that I could build all the storage compactors directly under the starting pod and inbetween the water. It's a central location so dupes don't have to walk far to store resources, but it is out of the way. it is not a main corridor that dupes ever walk down. 

example:



You want the dupes to be walking along areas you have paintings as much as possible as this will boost their morale. as well as preventing the 'low decor morale debuff'. 

I build the storage compactors after food and oxygen are done... And it takes 2 or 3 full cycles for the dupes to sweep the base. This is usually a time when there is nothing to build because your dupes haven't researched it yet.

Adding new dupes - job training

You don't really need to add any new dupes at all tbh. You could go the whole game with only 3 dupes and keep your base really small. Usually on high difficulties I reject all dupes every time until I find one that has really perfect stats. Then I wait until I'm overproducing food and oxygen.
Every time I get a new dupe I put them through the scientist job to increase their learning stat. Every dupe I have prioritises the scientist job tree, then supply, then plumbing. +learning +athletics +strength in that order. Learning increases the rate they gain every other stat so it's the most valuable to have as early as possible. But you can't put your dupes into tenured scientists unless you have the morale for it. Completing all of the morale boosting rooms will give you enough morale to have level 2 scientists. (great hall, wash room, recration room, etc.)

This is usually a 'slow' part of the game for me. I let the dupes slowing train in the 3 job fields and expand very slowly until a good 4th dupe is available. It's not a strategy you have to do, I'm just really addicted to min/maxing and grinding in video games. I've played alot of MMORPGs lol

Research speed / spread research across all dupes (increase learning on all dupes)

I'll link a couple threads where I did a bunch of testing on scientist training as well as research speed. I tested on easy settings, but the core principles to maximise the learning stat on each of your dupes by spreading research across all of your dupes is easily applied to every difficulty. Once one of my dupes reaches +10 learning, I stop them from researching and let another dupe with low learning research things so they can catch up. Once you have researched everything there is no way to train new dupes up to have a good learning stat.

This is also the main reason why the pace of the game slows down for me after the initial stages. It takes a long time to research everything by doing this. BUT, you don't need that many researches early in the game.

In this thread I'm on easy difficulty swapping dupes around on 4 research stations to see how fast you can research everything. At the end every dupe has 12-15 learning at cycle 30. All research is completed (not rocketry) And I have 8 dupes.
On hardest difficulty I apply the same strategy but it will take 100 cycles as I am focused purely on giving all my dupes the highest learning stat possible and I do not care how long it takes.

I also never take duplicants with 'yokel' as they can't be trained as scientists.
If they have 'research' as one of their interests this a good bonus for me, to get them through that job training quickly.
 

Scheduling

almost forgot. Take off 'bathtime' on your duplicants schedules and replace it with 'work' as they get no morale benefit from it. And they have more than enough time to take toilet breaks. with the 2 squares of 'free time'.

I also make a night shift and day shift immediately so there is never any downtime where all dupes are alseep. Firstly, because it's boring when everyone is asleep and you have to wait 10 seconds each cycle.

Secondly, you only need to build one toilet, because if you keep each dupe on their own schedule and don't overlap their free time, they will use the toilets at separate times, avoiding accidents. Reducing the number of toilets they have to clean, saving time, etc. Sometimes a strategic accident can give you extra polluted water if you need it for something though. 

Sometimes I experiment with giving certain dupes less and less free time and sleep to see how far I can push things. If you plan things out you can do it for a few cycles, and then have your great hall built, and put their work times back to normal again and let them recover with the morale bonus. 



ye my post is quite messy. I kept thinking of new things and editting over the course of an hour

[ChickenMadness]

One more tip. 

If you open a new seed and see alot of CO2 pockets surrounding the printer... copper is far away... oxylite tiles are far away.

I would find another seed lmao. Thats the biggest killer for me because having to worry about oxygen too early kinda ruins my rythm and it descends into chaos. Some seeds the CO2 and oxygen pockets are in terrible places and it creates a lot of extra work and loss of resources.

I am about to start a new game on max difficulty so I'll see how it goes and post again if I notice anything useful. You could use the same seed as me if you want, it's a very good 'learning' seed there is a slush geyser right next to the start biome that can be used to kill off the entire swamp biome of slimelung.

3 slushes on the map, iron volcano.    minor volcano with a slush right above it.     Nat gas, oil resovoir, slush almost touching each other in the bottom left of the map. The 3 biomes overlap each other in a triangle and look like a mess, thats how close together they are.

my base layout screenshot is from the same seed so you could copy it if you want to test things out. I really love how easy the starting biome is on this seed lol.

1288490173

Edit: So here is what my base looks like at cycle 23 on this seed on maximum difficulty (all settings). Been playing for an hour.

It's not perfect as I didn't plan the food area out that well and ended up getting food poisoning on the plants when I flooded the area with polluted water. But it's not a big deal. You just treat stress and immunity as a resource, you can let it go down to 50% in exchange for bringing slime and mushrooms into your base (long term investment).


There is no slimelung in the base though I didn't mine any tiles that had slimelung apart from underwater tiles. I haven't researched deodorisers yet so I was very cautious They don't emit PO2 underwater. And i made the dupes piss themselves a bit so I could put the slime storage container underwater at the bottom of the biome where the CO2 and mushrooms are. I mopped up the free water and used the bottle emptier there. It's close to the area where I'm mining infected slime tiles so they can transport the slime fast enough before it emits any infectious PO2.

At this point I'm over producing food and the next step is to slowly replace the mealwood with mushrooms and research insulated tiles and start walling off the entire starting biome so it doesn't absorb any heat from the surroundings. But ye food is a bit ridiculous on this difficulty level. You need to get a large amount of mushrooms to replace all the mealwood asap or you'll run out of resources. Slime is an unlimited resource at this stage in the game. You'll also want to kill any hatches that are around your plants because they will eat your food. 

planting bristle berries around shine bugs is fine. Just don't mass farm bristle berries or you'll run out of water. They aren't reliable either because they need light and electricity if you're using light bulbs. If a dupe can't provide power then you starve.

Morale is stable. food is stable. oxygen isn't a problem.

I took a screenshot of every cycle so I can post more of them if you want.

Also use gold amalgum on everything if you mine the slime biome. Don't waste the copper, you need it for atmo suits.
 

[chasinji]

holy moly! much enlighment today. i appreciated your long shiny thought . sorry i have works to do this week, hitting deadline. i will try implement your points in my new colony later weekend. i can figured a big picture for my base based on your blessed experience. thank you @chickenmadness. 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

0 map seed: I never care seed.

1 duplicant trait: About Negative traits: only accept Gastrophobia, Pacifist, Squeamish, Yokel, Irritable Bowel, Small Bladder,Loud Sleeper.

                            About Positive traits, Stress Responses: I never care about them.

                            Interests: I like 3 interests. But it's not dominant.

                            States: Before RU, One dup with creation >=2.

                                        But now I usually spend 10 minutes on select dups. High state with corresponding interest is good.

2 time: Toilet and bedroom at 1st cycles.

            Then try to build work board ASAP.

            Build a deoxydizer, then transfer all dups' job to digger, and digger the whole start biome. (Just say some of my personal play styles. I know you might feel it's crazy.) If I recall right, this step usually lasting 10 cycles

            Then research farming and build enough plant box for mealwood.

            After first time of harvest, you have survived from the hardest time. Everything will be better and easier.

3 food management: Don't waste time on Microbe Musher

                                   Eat whatever you dug. then plant meal lice. dont waste time on cook meal lice.

4 research tree: job board-->plant box-->meal table-->sculpts and canvas. I dont think others are important.

5 dupe printing pod: Add another dup after you feel you have enough food and other life-supporting resources/buildings. This principle not only suitable for hardest mode. I mean, a newbie ONI player should learn it at first time.

6 exploration: It depends on your map. For me, I always surrounding by swamp swamp swamp and swamp. Pay attention on immunity value and good luck

7 morale management: Control your job level. give them enough time to relax. I also never build massage table.

8 base design: Actually I haven't had problem on stress and food poison for a long time. I don't know how to summary my skills, sorry. Maybe try and error will help you.

9 deoxydizer or algae terrarium: Hardest mode doesn't influence oxygen consumption. Take it easy and do what you do at normal level. (As a player from old version, I have to admit I have prejudice on terrarium. But my friends told me I can use terrarium, and just leave polluted water on ground and see it emit PO2. Well, I feel it's cool and attractive. Maybe I will try it next time.)

[dallion]

I have some advise,

1. Do NOT make dirt bread, it`s wasting your time

2. you may set the red alert in cycle 1 make sure finish your toilet

3. Lice bread is most earlier food you may consider or just raw lice

4. mushroom is the best

5. if someone is sick or may spread to other or hard to cure, just kill him with a door

6. the less the better, not only dupes but also tiles

7.try to dig more "burned obj" as possible, more seed and food, more chance you survived

8. Ladder is NOT necessary 

[WanderingKid]

On ‎11‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 10:06 PM, chasinji said:

[Stuff and things]

0:  Don't sweat the seed.  Almost all maps will have two cool steam geysers.  Those are your primary O2 generation once you've used up Algae.

1: Some traits are avoided, some are so annoying they are also simply avoided.  Mouth Breather, Bottomless Stomach, Anemic, Biohazardous (only on Miserable).  Avoided because of sheer annoyance: Narcoleptic, Flatulent, Unconstructive.  I'm sure I missed one or two, but those are the big ones for me. 

2 : Early cycle to do list:

1. Outhouses, bedrooms
2. Power, Research
3. Rec Room and Mess Hall
4. Start digging out the base shell.

3: Musher is never worth it.  Ever.  Raw Meal Lice from mealwood (5 plants / dupe) -> Raw to cooked shrooms -> Wild Wheat pepper Bread -> BBQ

4: Don't think in terms of 'support the colony'.  Long term support means you know where your biomes and geysers are. Don't worry about them for a while.  There is plenty of algae to support a reasonable sized colony for a good length of time.  I happen to have a ton of dupes early so I tend to switch over to electrolizers and sieved Swampwater around C50 or so.

5: As fast as I can get them in for the first 12.  Even if I have to save scum a time or two to get a dupe that isn't in the 'NoFly' zone of traits.  I'm more interested in their interests than I care about their stats.  Faster leveling is usually more useful for me.  That said, early game I cycle a number of dupes through the research tree (1 or 2 at a time) and my main job is 'Mason', who goes up Miner -> Architect -> Gofer -> Next Tier repeat.

6 I invade the swamp biome at whim.  Whenever I need the space.  Use deodorizers and work in ways that let the slimelung clear out before you do too much.  Stick slime underwater to prevent offgassing.  The Jungle Biome is 'whenever I want more iron'. There's quite literally nothing dangerous in there besides Morbs. 

7: Grand Hall, Plumbed outhouses, rec room with a cooler, and gravity drop for early game.  I dig top down so all the debris goes into the bottom of the base and I don't care what's down there.  Eventually, décor spam.  A LOT of décor.

8: We all have different designs we prefer for early and mid game, mostly cause we've all had to play it often enough that we just bomb through it.  There's plenty of ideas around the forums.  There's some videos too on YouTube.

9: There is quite literally tons of algae in the Jungle Biome.  Go get it.

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, R9MX4 said:

3 food management: Don't waste time on Microbe Musher

                                   Eat whatever you dug. then plant meal lice. dont waste time on cook meal lice.

I say don't make liceloaf because it uses so much water, not because it's not worth the time. 

For exploring swamp biomes, I find that falling slime does not release any polluted oxygen after being mined.  So if you start at the bottom and have a pool to catch the slime in, then you can safely excavate as long as you avoid areas that already have slimelung in the air.  If you are still using deoxidizers, you will want the exits to the slime biome to have a couple ore scrubbers if possible.  Otherwise, you can just shove everything in either a cold biome or a chlorine atmosphere to kill the slimelung.

15 minutes ago, dallion said:

8. Ladder is NOT necessary 

This is ONI, ladders are essential.

16 minutes ago, dallion said:

2. you may set the red alert in cycle 1 make sure finish your toilet

You don't need to red alert on the first cycle, just shift everyone to a different schedule.  One where they sleep during the day.

[thejams]

Just a few notes:

Don't sweat the dupe positive/negative traits too much, pretty much the only one I refuse to accept is flatulent - and that it solely because we are pretty much forced into building waterlocks, and flatulent dupes can break them.  In hard difficulty, the only negative trait that is high risk is biohazardous cause it puts you on a clock to save that dupe, but even so it is just an additional challenge.

Don't sweat the timing of your first turns too much, you are playing a hundreds of cycles game, saving few seconds on the first couple of turns will not change much.  Just try to prioritize errands appropriately and have no idle dupes.

Don't sweat decor too much early on.  While the positive decor buff can be a huge boon later, the negative one is all that much of a hindrance.  I see suggestions to not dig to prevent bad decor - I never do that and have 0 problems.  You do however need to start working on decor much earlier than in a normal game, just don't prevent yourself from doing something just to prevent a bit more debris.

 

[hpongledd]

for food poisining i tend to decontamined food by flooding the kitchen with chlorine and for (polluted ) water:

only the filter gate is relevant, also surrounded by chlorine

slime biomes "are live": spam medicine and deoxydizer (remember po2 tends to create "thin lines"), use atmo suits whenever possible

[Zarquan]

8 hours ago, thejams said:

Don't sweat the dupe positive/negative traits too much, pretty much the only one I refuse to accept is flatulent - and that it solely because we are pretty much forced into building waterlocks, and flatulent dupes can break them.  In hard difficulty, the only negative trait that is high risk is biohazardous cause it puts you on a clock to save that dupe, but even so it is just an additional challenge.

I personally don't like having a built in time limit, so I don't like taking biohazardous dupes.  I would also strongly avoid gourmet, as such dupes will be impossible to please at high level jobs because you can not get the 5 quality food benefit.  I would also generally avoid slow learner and noodle arms, as well as mouth breather and bottomless stomach.

8 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

3: Musher is never worth it.  Ever.  Raw Meal Lice from mealwood (5 plants / dupe) -> Raw to cooked shrooms -> Wild Wheat pepper Bread -> BBQ

I don't quite agree.  Before you can have a good mushroom farm that is safe from a slimelung perspective, it could be reasonable to have a small bristle blossom farm to supplement the food supply and increase morale of mid tier job dupes.  If you are making bristle berries in the mid game, berry sludge with wild sleetwheat can be useful.  This would be before you have enough cold biomes or pinchapepper to create decent pepper bread.  But berry sludge should only be supplementary.   I actually try to keep some wild bristle blossom around and growing (with a lamp), so I keep a single microbe musher around so that when I get berries, the mid tier dupes can eat tier 3 food.

Also, some other things I try to do:

I don't like to enter the game without at least one germ resistant dupe so that I can send someone in to germy areas without damaging the perfect 100% immunity I like to see.  I rename germ resistant dupes from "Meep" to "GR Meep" to easily identify them.

Also, on the first cycle, if you want to maintain 100% immunity, be sure to not have any muckroot in the bathroom, as they will eat it without washing their hands and lose about 20% of their immunity.

[WanderingKid]

7 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I don't quite agree.  Before you can have a good mushroom farm that is safe from a slimelung perspective, it could be reasonable to have a small bristle blossom farm to supplement the food supply and increase morale of mid tier job dupes.  If you are making bristle berries in the mid game, berry sludge with wild sleetwheat can be useful.  This would be before you have enough cold biomes or pinchapepper to create decent pepper bread.  But berry sludge should only be supplementary.   I actually try to keep some wild bristle blossom around and growing (with a lamp), so I keep a single microbe musher around so that when I get berries, the mid tier dupes can eat tier 3 food.

I'm afraid I thoroughly disagree with this.  I also believe Bristles are a newb trap.  This dig got started late cause I was testing a new pattern elsewhere in the base.

This is what each tier ends up looking like:

The automation is there for later.  I get started with some CO2 and some water.  Sink your slime underwater and bring a smattering of deodorizers (20 - 25 cells across, 5 cells high each) and you can kill off most of the problem before it starts.  Use the valves in case you start getting more (or less) O2 and need to get the 1 high CO2 refilled.

[Zarquan]

Do autosweepers not leak polluted oxygen from the slime they hold?  If they don't, then I could easily build a safe farm.  If they do, I would not want to use this system.  But I would like to point out that your dupes are getting sick, so you didn't really succeed in building a farm safely, which is one of my requirements for a mushroom farm.  My goal would be to build a farm without risking any dupe's immunity.  I dig up slime biomes regularly without suits without exposing my dupes to slimelung.

I usually only have a temporary bristle blossom farm to support mid tier jobs early in the game.  I don't spam them, they are purely supplementary so that it takes less time to get to high tier jobs sooner.  I usually have around 8 plants.  I don't base my colony on it or make it a staple.  Just enough for about 5 dupes to have tier 3 food while only having access to one cold biome.  I have never run out of water because of bristle blossoms.  And when I crack in to a few more biomes and can a pressurized mushroom farm (to make the slime completely harmless), I dig them up to save water. 

[chasinji]

sorry i just came here after i did some work from office. Thank you all. you really give me a whole new perspective direction to play hard mode oni. yet id like to use for my new colony this weekend. despite some opposing way to grind hard mode oni, i believe they have unique playstyle that makes proof for their strategy. i really consider every option you gave then see whether strategy play that fits with my playstyle.

On 3/11/2018 at 9:05 PM, ChickenMadness said:

almost forgot. Take off 'bathtime' on your duplicants schedules and replace it with 'work' as they get no morale benefit from it. And they have more than enough time to take toilet breaks. with the 2 squares of 'free time'.

oh my! i didnt know that. but i put two block for bath time. if you say so then i wasted 120 sec every cycle in my two weeks game. a noob traps got me. no more bath time block and straight to 4 block downtime later.

 

21 hours ago, R9MX4 said:

9 deoxydizer or algae terrarium: Hardest mode doesn't influence oxygen consumption. Take it easy and do what you do at normal level. (As a player from old version, I have to admit I have prejudice on terrarium. But my friends told me I can use terrarium, and just leave polluted water on ground and see it emit PO2. Well, I feel it's cool and attractive. Maybe I will try it next time.)

may be i can try combination of both to see  what advantages each give. i feel algae terrarium is purposed for remote oxygen supply while digging new area that far from base.cause wiring copper thorough ladder labirynth is bit pain and takes time

 

21 hours ago, R9MX4 said:

1 duplicant trait: About Negative traits: only accept Gastrophobia, Pacifist, Squeamish, Yokel, Irritable Bowel, Small Bladder,Loud Sleeper.

                            About Positive traits, Stress Responses: I never care about them.

                            Interests: I like 3 interests. But it's not dominant.

                            States: Before RU, One dup with creation >=2.

                                        But now I usually spend 10 minutes on select dups. High state with corresponding interest is good.

19 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

1: Some traits are avoided, some are so annoying they are also simply avoided.  Mouth Breather, Bottomless Stomach, Anemic, Biohazardous (only on Miserable).  Avoided because of sheer annoyance: Narcoleptic, Flatulent, Unconstructive.  I'm sure I missed one or two, but those are the big ones for me. 

18 hours ago, thejams said:

Don't sweat the dupe positive/negative traits too much, pretty much the only one I refuse to accept is flatulent - and that it solely because we are pretty much forced into building waterlocks, and flatulent dupes can break them.  In hard difficulty, the only negative trait that is high risk is biohazardous cause it puts you on a clock to save that dupe, but even so it is just an additional challenge.

10 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I personally don't like having a built in time limit, so I don't like taking biohazardous dupes.  I would also strongly avoid gourmet, as such dupes will be impossible to please at high level jobs because you can not get the 5 quality food benefit.  I would also generally avoid slow learner and noodle arms, as well as mouth breather and bottomless stomach.

 

 

BIohazardous is timebomb in fatalistic. all your perfect germs management only slow dupe to get chance for having lazy time in medbay. i simply hate lazy dupe. BTW, what disease that biohazardous give at zero immunity when we have food poisoning or slimelung free?

i did not expect you to avoid flatulent after biohazardous. may be i never tried flatulent in my hard games. i will give a try with save back up to seee how it can affect gameplay. i guess another stiffle plant before heat because flammable fart?

so gourmet is actually a negative trait despite green font that game give good impression? id like to try it.

bottomless stomach is hell. it is like initiable hunger nerfed version. no more!

19 hours ago, dallion said:

8. Ladder is NOT necessary

19 hours ago, Zarquan said:

This is ONI, ladders are essential.

i agree ladder is core for this game. i guess he make maxima two tile height diagonal dig to avoid spam ladder every where.

 

19 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

3: Musher is never worth it.  Ever.  Raw Meal Lice from mealwood (5 plants / dupe) -> Raw to cooked shrooms -> Wild Wheat pepper Bread -> BBQ

10 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I don't quite agree.  Before you can have a good mushroom farm that is safe from a slimelung perspective, it could be reasonable to have a small bristle blossom farm to supplement the food supply and increase morale of mid tier job dupes.  If you are making bristle berries in the mid game, berry sludge with wild sleetwheat can be useful.  This would be before you have enough cold biomes or pinchapepper to create decent pepper bread.  But berry sludge should only be supplementary.   I actually try to keep some wild bristle blossom around and growing (with a lamp), so I keep a single microbe musher around so that when I get berries, the mid tier dupes can eat tier 3 food.

2 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

I'm afraid I thoroughly disagree with this.  I also believe Bristles are a newb trap.  This dig got started late cause I was testing a new pattern elsewhere in the base.

honestly i am afraid to dig swamp biome before having exo suit cause massive green dot in germs overlay giving me nut, lol.  i will give mushroom a try cause bristle actually eat my early water supply, with drugs backup of course.

do berry sludge still carry germs from ingridients?

what does make bristle newb traps? water consume?

[WanderingKid]

1 hour ago, chasinji said:

honestly i am afraid to dig swamp biome before having exo suit cause massive green dot in germs overlay giving me nut, lol.  i will give mushroom a try cause bristle actually eat my early water supply, with drugs backup of course.

do berry sludge still carry germs from ingridients?

what does make bristle newb traps? water consume?

Well as @Zarquan mentions above, I don't mind if a dupe or two comes down with slimelung.  The farm above isn't the problem for the slimelung, it was that I blitzed the swamp biomed down and didn't give the deodorizers a chance to catch up because I wanted to move the game along faster.

EDIT: I also tend to just not worry if one or dupes go down with slimelung.  They get a few beds over near the main hall and they're back in a few cycles.

A lack of water conservation before getting a handle on your geysers is typically the death of most newer players, then it's typically the heat right after that.

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, chasinji said:

honestly i am afraid to dig swamp biome before having exo suit cause massive green dot in germs overlay giving me nut, lol.  i will give mushroom a try cause bristle actually eat my early water supply, with drugs backup of course.

There is a safe way to dig a slime biome in the early game without any protections.  What you do is start at bottom, make a flat area where stuff will land, get some water there, over 10 kg/tile, and then dig up so that the slime falls straight in to the water.  I find that slime doesn't release polluted oxygen while falling and it can't release it in enough water either.  The only remaining major concern is algae with slime lung on it, for which you need an ore scrubber or something in the early game or a chlorine storage room in the late game.

I do this all the time because one of my first goals to build a central shaft through the center of my base up to space and down to the oil.  It is part of my goal to have the tallest possible firepoll in each of my bases.

Also, don't grow too many bristle blossoms.  They consume too much water.  A few is fine if you need the morale as long as it is temporary.  Honestly, as long as there are plants or other food sources that don't consume water, the ones that do will always be weak, as water is air and air is life.

You can use bristle blossoms if you intend to run a small colony and have the water to support it, but if your colony is going to expand, you can't keep them forever.

[thejams]

2 hours ago, chasinji said:

BIohazardous is timebomb in fatalistic. all your perfect germs management only slow dupe to get chance for having lazy time in medbay. i simply hate lazy dupe. BTW, what disease that biohazardous give at zero immunity when we have food poisoning or slimelung free?

i did not expect you to avoid flatulent after biohazardous. may be i never tried flatulent in my hard games. i will give a try with save back up to seee how it can affect gameplay. i guess another stiffle plant before heat because flammable fart?

Biohazardous can be managed quite well with vitamin chews, as I said - just another challenge.

As for flatulent, beside a (small) chance to break the water seal (which on a highly pressurized area will be a disaster), a also hate that they screw up carefully isolated areas.

[JukedByLife]

0: I wouldn't worry about the seed.

1: Avoid biohazardous trait anything else is fine IMO, bottomless stomach does add more kcal requirement but I don't find it to be a problem. I tend to look for dupes with high learning. Also, it's not vital but avoiding negative strength or athletics is nice.

2: Dig straight to copper and build hampster wheel, battery, research, deoxidizer. Then start research for basic farming ASAP. 

3: While research is happening dig to close cracks in the tiles as these will contain seeds and muckroot . You can also take this time to build a toilet and dig out an area for meal lice which you should plant as soon as you can, you will need 10 mealwood plants per dupe to sustain. I skip over mushrooms and go for bristle blossoms ASAP (around cycle 100) because I don't like dealing with slime, however, both mushrooms and blossoms are viable. If you need to you can kill a few hatches for meat.

4: After basic farming you can go for whatever you want, I tend to go into decor and automation so I can run a coal generator on a smart battery.

5: I add a new dupe when I have the food production to support them. Early on I stick to very few dupes and only add them when I feel like there is not enough labor to make progress.

6: I would try to find an ice biome for wheezeworts or water geyser. These aren't super important but it's nice to get a geyser producing early so when you finally need it there is already a lot of water built up.

7: Massage clinic, high decor, swept bedrooms, schedule with downtime, latrine, and a great hall.

8: I'm not sure this matters much as long as some thought goes into it. E.g kitchen, great hall, and farm should be near each other.

9: You can use either, I choose deoxidizer because it's easier to set up and algae is rather plentiful in the beginning.

I make videos on my playthrough for max difficulty, I am currently around cycle 800 and going strong. There is a lot of great advice posted here already but if you'd like to see some videos perhaps they can help. You can find them here.