It's a secret to everyone.

HUZZAH! That was the easiest win condition of the three.

Let's see what our new friend can do:

That's it? Not even one skill point? I think I prefer Jorge, who I can't recruit because my Natural Gas pipeline is taking forever to build and the Sushi Bar isn't meeting the needs of his refined palate.

On the other hand, she doesn't have any catastrophically debilitating traits like Narcolepsy or Flatulent. And most importantly, she can sing, which automatically makes her top tier lol

Maybe I'm underestimating her whopping 600 Breath. I haven't done the math, but as long as she returns to the base every night I think she can survive in the Abyss without needing to breathe. That's pretty OP, I think.

The fact that she's over 2k cycles old is very intriguing but this looks like a "please buy the base game for the entire lore packet" situation. And to be honest this is one of those games where I'd just wiki the entries I'm missing.

Uh oh, that's next week.

I seriously need to haul ass before the beta branch closes

So I missed my chance to milk my seahorse because it gave birth less than a cycle before I got the milking station up and running, but no worries. I'll just wait until it reaches the threshold again and--

OH COME ON

Gonna farm some good 'ol reliable Dreckos and some of these cute new snails in the meantime.

I found this pic of my very first colony at 100 cycles and all the nostalgia came flooding back.

The slimelung crisis. The oxygen pressure crisis. The (two) critter extinction crises. The misplaced joint plate heat wave. The failed refinery cooling experiments. Multiple CO2 crises.

So. Many. Trapped dupe ordeals.

THE STEAM EXPLOSIONS.

THE SPACE ARC.

(Seriously, space is somehow the lamest and most frustrating part of the game)

I referred to several guides along the way and I still messed up so many times, yet theses little shits were able to launch a rocket into the Tear just shy of 800 cycles.

Everyone in my current beta colony was once a survivor of this OG run and it tickles my heart. Albeit all their roles have been swapped except Ashkan, who is once again the best rancher.

Happy 100th Cycle!

I had to disable all my mods when entering the beta but it turns out I could've turned Zoom Out back on this whole time...

My last colony was my Tryhard Big Three Achievements run, so I was running with 10 dupes, several ranches, a gas range, electrolyzers, and hydrogen generators by this point in time.

This one's really low tech and short staffed in comparison, and the electrical grid is starting to become an issue, but I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

So THAT's where all the mythical wild Nosh Sprouts and Dasha Saltvines from my previous playthroughs were hiding.

I really need to try more maps that aren't Terra sometime.

The goal of this entire expedition was to find a whole bunch of Lead lying around, but it looks like I gotta work for it this time. There's a new lead infused material that requires refinement at a building I don't recognize and I don't know if I'm ready for that noise yet

At least this new biome looks sick.

Good news is she's not too far from my dig site

Bad news is that the Printing Pod gave me Caviar dozens of cycles ago and my dupes ate it all lol. So now I need to *checks notes* milk a seahorse for a new liquid and refine it at a station I haven't researched yet?

I don't have Conductive Wire yet because I don't want piping hot chunks of gold messing up my temps (learned that the hard way in Colony #2 lmao), but I heard that Wire Bridges will always be the first to take damage when a circuit overheats so I built a bunch of sacrificial ones along my workspace

This is the first time I've actually tried this and it worked like a charm!

Instead of swimming across, he jumped down, walked across the bottom, and swam up. Very slowly. (No exosuit training oops)

I don't remember all the pip planting rules but I was not expecting these to work

This is so getting nerfed. Even if it's only 37 g/s it's free O2 with zero upkeep.

I can get x4 the output from planting it in the hydroponics basin but I don't know if I have enough lime to support more than one.

Trying to sustain my colony without building an electrolyzer, so in addition to this setup I put a small pneumatic door cage around every wild coral under my base and stuck a Beacon in each one lol

New biome: GET

So that's where all the mealwood is!

Two gold volcanos right next to each other. This is amazing.

But why is the Gravitas surface building right above it? I don't remember the surface ever being that close to the starting position

The algae > oxygen situation is getting a little hairy so I'm starting off with a simple pip planted Blowter farm. I did zero math on how many plants I need to sustain 12 Blowters but I think I can supplement them with the lettuce my dupes refuse to eat.

Wait this is exactly what my problem was, nice! Just gotta avoid digging those for now

At last, my dreams of raw Japanese cuisine are no longer dead!

But seriously, how would I get Mealwood if the printing pod or printreceptor wasn't an option? Go to space?

Yay indoor plumbing is live

Aw, I thought this was a Mealwood Seed for my sushi roll endeavors.

I got excited when I unearthed another nearby cool slush geyser only for my game to crash at Cycle 30. It's the third time this game has crashed since entering the beta test so no big deal -- or so I thought. Several reboots and a game file validation later my game refuses to stop crashing near the start of the day...

Do Mealwood and Nosh Sprouts exist on this asteroid? I've never even seen a Nosh tree in the wild, only from the Printreceptor

Guess I'm going to have to wait for the Printing Pod to throw me a bone. It gave me two Pip eggs so now I'm wondering if I can pip plant Blue Coral in a tank before filling it with water and critters.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And so I spent several cycles rounding up these little shits.

When the downtime alert rang, Ashkan decided to drop the Pokeshell he was carrying into the watery abyss next to my base. I'll be damned if I let that thing kill all the wild, pristine undersea life down there so I had it fished out, but took two cycles to retrieve it because he can't swim and had a really hard time breathing...

On the bright side, I wasn't aware that Pokeshells don't react to being wrangled lol

Water weed > Starter fish = food and a tiny bit of O2

Coquina > Starfish (phosphorus) > Lamp Fish (lime) > Blue Coral = solid amount of O2 and food

Sand > Giant Clam (pearls) > Seahorse = food, the DLC questline, and a late game looking liquid

The salt water seems abundant now but is it going to run out unless I find a geyser?

Is this a new reaction?

Man I hate pokeshells. First time I tried farming one it killed a rare shinebug. Second attempt, most of them died from starvation after all I effort I put into building the pen. I think half the snails in the biome are dead.

Joshua just wanted some research dirt but still got the business end of that big, meaty claw. Came limping back with 1/4 of his health left and I had to lock him inside the base because proper healthcare isn't a thing in this colony yet.

I swear I'm going to round up all those little shits and stick them into a box like the vermin they are

Geothermal power? Free cooling and water? Nice!!

But how am I going to dig those out and use them with all this water around?

My play style involves disturbing as little of the natural tiles, flora, and fauna as possible for aesthetic reasons, but that's going to be mission impossible on this asteroid because there's so many reefs everywhere. I'm going to have to drain or demolish some of these pretty setpieces for future building projects or resources. It's killing me

But it also leads to really crappy airflow, as per the oxygen situation that is going to kill my dupes lol

Just noticed that the starting area is 10 degrees warmer than the default one, but that's probably a good thing when my dupes are constantly freezing from how wet the starting biome is

These new dirt producing snails also excrete a mucus liquid. Am I going to have to manage this eventually or can I ignore it? It turns into Slime and Polluted Water at near boiling temps. Gross.

The new dupe I recruited doesn't come with the Swimming skill, so looks like that's a perk exclusive to the three starters. Fortunately it's available in the skill list and not gated behind any other skills

I don't need Bleach Stone to farm Waterweed anymore, just clean or salty water! There were zero renewable sources of Chlorine or Bleach Stone on my last star maps so I never bothered.

And by "new" I mean "public testing phase". It's not officially out yet and I'm usually not keen on early access stuff, but I thought it would be cool to try it out for a game I know I'll enjoy. But most importantly, it's free (for now).

Wanted to try that new Divemaster dupe but I hit the Re-roll button because I am NOT dealing with Flatulence today. Sorry, not sorry.

Uh, woah, where is everything I am familiar with. I recognize none of these plants. Or animals. Or half of these materials. THERE IS SO MUCH WATER EVERYWHERE

But hey, my dupes came with the swimming skill, so that's neat!

The lore in this game is pretty cool, but it kind of sucks that I need the DLCs to find each dupe's backstory tidbit. I only found around half of them in the base game over the span of two colonies.

I guess I'll make the DLC Imperative my endgame goal since rocketry and meteor management is the most tedious part of the game. Let's see if I can get to it before the testing phase ends

They all unanimously voted for this sopping wet room to be the dining area lol

I like how everyone either got fined or rewarded based on their efforts on the boat. But did they really have to charge the passengers for abandoning ship?

Anyways, obligatory get rekt, Edward Nichols

So the big secret behind the Bargain chapter is that Henry Evans shot the monkey so the compass would work.

That was not a secret worth all the trouble of hiding, unless that monkey paw is cursed.

Anyways, the book is compete and nothing cursed popped out of the book or the window and jump scared me! Nice.