Frackin’ Universe: How much can you do without leaving your starting system?

Overview

A guide dedicated to finding out how much progress, how OP can you get and how many different unique quests you can do without leaving the system you start in in Frackin’ Universe (HALTED DUE TO LOST SAVE)

Part 0: Explanation, mods used, etc.

Important: After moving most of my stuff to an SSD and losing my entire old Steam folder (moved it early then lost it when accidentally formatting it) I lost all of my saves as well as every screenshot which wasn’t backed up, and those end when the guide ends regardless. I might try this again at some point, specially now that I have experience, but I’m also trying to get back into this “life” thing I’ve apparently been missing for like 22 years. Still, I remember some important notes, maybe I’ll need them, but mainly I want to share them (see the last chapter)

The goal of this challenge run is to figure out how far can you progress in Frackin’ Universe without leaving your starting system. Now, you might be asking any of the following questions:

-What counts as progress?

Mainly obtaining new resources, equipment of a superior tier and, specially, completing main quests, side quests or any quest that isn’t procedural. Procedural content such as assaulting random spaceships or doing random NPC quests don’t add to progression unless I get something like a new mineral from it. Note that I may refer to this as Max% for simplicity, despite the game not being clearly divided in %s of progression

-What counts as leaving your starter system?

Simple, leaving the initial system via a jump with the ship counts as leaving. While I won’t be playing in multiplayer, teleporting to a player or ship that isn’t in their/ your starter system or any other allowed areas counts as a loss. Exception areas are those you teleport to during/ after unique quests, (such as the Erchius Mining Facility, FU’s Dark Cavern or even The Ruin, should this challenge go that far) You are always allowed to visit and even farm these, despite them technically not being in your initial system (or in any system for that matter)

-Why are you doing this?

Recently I tried playing modded Starbound with two friends but one of them became busy before leaving the first world and I wanted to keep playing without leaving her behind, so I started progressing in the starter world and finding out how much progress I could make without leaving it. Turns out you can get mountains of tungsten and even a bunch of titanium, which I didn’t use because it would defeat the point of waiting for her to keep playing. Of course that doesn’t apply here, so we’ll be able to see how far that can be taken

-Are you using any other mods?

Yes, mainly “Shellguard”, the “Kitsune Race Mod” and the “Avali Races Mod” because I need them for my MP playthrough, but in order to keep this as vanilla + FU as possible I’ll be ignoring any items or encounters from those as much as possible. I’ll also be using inventory extenders recommended in FU’s wiki, both because of the earlier reason and to let me hoard as much as I need to

-Why does this guide look like trash?

It’s my first guide, I just wanted to share this challenge without bothering with recording software or whatever, I’ll (probably) try to make it look nicer as I progress

-Do you have any idea of what you are doing?

Not really, I haven’t played Starbound properly in a long time other than for a couple of vanilla playthroughs to introduce some friends to the game. Let me know in case I miss a way to get infine densinium in the starting planet or whatever (edit: you probably can, more on that later)

-Why is the guide so incomplete?

I’ll make the guide as I do the challenge in order to add stuff while it’s fresh in my mind. Admitteldy I could also be taking notes, I’m sure I could

Part 1: The Basics And The Outposts

So, after that short novel of an introudiction we can finally start. Please note that I decided to make this guide after starting my second session, so it already has done a couple of basic missions and is technically ready to enter FU’s tutorial dungeon
Let me introduce you to “Max Pcnt 1 Systm”, A.K.A.: Max. He hates the character limit for names. I chose Novakid because of the resistances to basic fire, frost and radiation probably giving me an easier time depending on the sort of planets in my starter system, and the bonuses to ranged combat will come in handy when my selection of equipment may be limited, the weaknesses, specially to physical, may be a problem, but honestly I just like the race.

Despite being technically able to start the dungeon already, I need some things first. A grappling hook helps a lot when farming the dungeon for stuff like manipulator modules, while 2 mining lasers make mining less of a chore at the very least. Some armor would be good to have, but it isn’t a priority and your choices are limited when you only have 1 leather During the basic steps of the main quest you will also unlock access to the Science Outpost, which I’ll cover at a later point

Place a flag nearby and get ready to grind. Each run should get you a good bunch of manipulator modules, some stuff to sell, a few research USBs and more than enough food to make this sustainable. Just remember to bring an explosive weapon for certain doors, the tier 1 Blast Buddy should work if you don’t mind some trial and error.

And within my first run I got a bow with Volatile Arrow as the skill, this will allow for infinite bio-ooze, which at the very least means infinite proto-soil to sift for protocite.
Just keep going through the dungeon, remember the hidden pressure plate in the bend before the boss door and before you know it you’ll be in The Outpost.

Scan some stuff for the old woman, return to monke with a bunch of ingots, get a driver’s license and grab a handful of other quests. At this point it’s your choice whether to keep grinding the cavern or head out into the rest of your starting system, A.K.A.: The only places you’ll be travelling to by normal means. I’ll be discussing that in the next chapter
Note that only at this point can you know if your starter system is trash, like it seemed to be in my case, or if it has a bunch of relatively high level worlds and useable gas giants. You may choose to restart and hope for a better system if it is worth the time.

Part 2: Early Space Exploration and Main Quest

If you prefer to do some side quests before going to other planets, I recommend starting with the Erchius Mining Facility. In FU it has been heavily reworked and made noticeably harder, but it shouldn’t be that terrible if doing a ranged build. Just try to keep your distance and use the iron sniper rifle, as it’s piercing shots mean you can do some rather good bursts of damage, specially if you make sure to line up a bunch of enemies. Be careful with the new electric enemies, don’t try to rush the boss if you can’t tank the damage, and you’ll beat the mission sooner rather than later, which means something good:

Easiest tungsten we’ll have access to before we start refining lava. Buy a good bunch of those and get some new equipment. In my case I researched Skath Weapons and got a minigun, that required some light mining to get tungsten ore for reinforced glass, but you can probably get something similarly decent or better with the regular tungsten equipment tech if you just want to jump from mission to mission. You should also do the Ancient Temple from the map the old woman gave you. I found the rewards lacking, but completion is completion.

At this point you’ll want to make and buy enough resources to make yourself a mech, even if just to explore the random events and your system’s space station. While I was hoping to get zerchesium ore to get the microsphere tech ASAP and find more secrets, I can’t complain about infinite xitricite and triangulium, but I’ll need to farm money and invest heavily in the station before it becomes worth it. Turns out you can trade for certain minerals (zerchesium included) or get a crew member that sells them at the Science Outpost, so no loss there.

Early on I found a Glitch tower with a reuseable teleporter to heaven, with this I can grind the special location for easy vendor trash and upgrade items, letting me leave with a mostly upgraded Matter Manipulator, tier 4 and 5 mining lasers and 120k+ pixels to my name, time to put them to good use.

At this point you can finish the main quest if you want, just keep farming the special space encounters for the necesary scans. While you are at it remember to grab additional side quests from the maps in the encounters, even if you can’t do their missions yet you can enter them briefly to do some scanning if you need to. Also remember to keep upgrading your quipment, either by making new stuff, upgrading existing items in your tricorder or both.
The main story has been changed little at this point, other than for the additional enemies at the Great Pagoda and the Baron’s Keep. That last place has an important secret, so watch out for destroyable blocks and make sure you have the Micro Spider Sphere tech.
If you need corpses to dissect (you’ll want to find some avian corpses as they produce plasmic crystals, which extract into quietus ore) the Great Sovereign Temple has a bunch of sarcophagi you can interact with, this should help you get some resources and specially some easy madness, just remember to add 1 methanol and 5 healing water to any brain you dissect in order to get a perfect brain and 45 easy madness.

After some upgrading, farming space encounters and questing you should be able to access The Ruin. There’s surprisingly little to say about it, just gather some of the few resources it has if you want to, brains are recommended since 50 of them extract into 2 cell material, which you’ll want once you start doing biology, use standar strats against the boss, and before you know it you’ll have saved the universe.
As dismissive as I seem about the final boss, this proves something important for this challenge: You can defeat The Ruin without leaving your starting system in Frackin’ Universe. Next chapter i’ll finally bite the bullet and start building a proper base so I can demand rent and use it to buy more and more minerals.

Intermission: Where the Real Game Begins

So, after rushing the main quest the idea was to combine base building, gene-modded plants and extra equipment upgrades in a simple segment. Sure, cramming 100 people in minimun-sized rooms to get rent and other resources from them is easy, getting genes, mutated cells and all of that is relatively easy, even if you need some creativity or extra steps to get the resources.
Now, getting minerals and rarer items for upgrades, that’s where you have to go through many hoops. Relatively early minerals and alloys such as dense alloys can be made relatively easy: some of the components can be farmed from atmospheric condensers, most if not all can be bought from a Geologist crewmember.

Many advanced minerals like Isogen, Pyreite and Noxium can be obtained at extremely rare rates by putting geodes in a rock crusher (or for the former 2, by getting like 12 ore from this process and making a terraformer for their type of planet then using an atmospheric condenser). Problem with geodes is that, unless you find geode trees to farm you’ll need to farm an abundant but limited type of block from green crystalline biomes, or buy them at the science outpost for 600 pixels a piece, and you’ll want like 100 at a time just to see some results.

For Efiggium and Aether you need a lightless planet. The 50 putrid slime the terraformer requires takes either constant slime farming and water refining (for dark water) or atmospheric condensation from a penumbra planet, whose terraformer isn’t that hard to make, but still makes it almost required to do 2 terraforming steps for a half-reliable source of an ore and a liquid.

But the winner is probably lasombrium, needed for specific late game equipment. The best way to get it is to either be lucky with bees in a caliche field and farm them hard or do the earlier steps to get infinite Aether, combine it with crystal blocks from a crystal tree farm to make matter blocks and smelt 2 of them at a time in a blast furnace for a whole 4% chance to get 1 lasombrium ore.

Lasombrium and Aether could be farmed with condensers in strange sea and aether sea planets respectively, but since you can’t make terraformers for sea-type planets that’s out of the question.

Lastly, all this terraforming requires a ton of ancient essence, which is best farmed either from ancient vaults or from certain FU missions such as the Hydro center, which has 2 vault guardians. I wanted to do all the FU missions in their own section but the ancient essence requirements means I have to do this now.

Lastly lastly, if you don’t get a vault door in your starting system you are out of luck, since AFAIK they are the only way to reach the terraformer crafting machines. Sure, you can craft them with the right tech, for 20 Densinium bars each. You can farm then extract the ancient tech in the tutorial Dark Cavern if you have a spider microsphere, but each one takes like 40 minutes using a MK1 extractor, so not the most fun way to get that mineral, but the only real one.

TLDR: The gimmick challenge becomes a mind challenge if you want to get proper late game stuff

Part 3: Actually Building Stuff

Now that you may or may not have saved the universe, you might be wanting an actual roof for your bed and your crafting stations instead of stacking them next to Tutorial Furry’s House.

First off you’ll need a place to gather resources, mark it and start mining resources and turning them into proper building blocks at a workbench

Epilogue (Until I have the time and energy to start over, see section 0)

As mentioned before, here’s some tips and stuff worh mentioning, maybe in case I forget before doing this again

-The Ancient Avian Temple (vanilla mission) is one of the most valuable missions. The abundance of sarcophagi means lots of corpses for your experiments every time, including a few valuable royal corpses, whose plasmic gems extract into quietus ore, which there’s almost no other way to get in this run. Maybe more importantly, there’s a random bookcase in the fire route that spawns precursor loot. Not sure why that’s the case, but seems to be the only way to get it since you can’t unlock the precursor mission. I managed to get a precursor computer which turns items into science and ancient essence, so who knows what it can give

-Another highly valuable mission is the Baron’s Keep (or whatever the vanilla Glitch quest is called), since FU adds some Eldritch chests to it. You can farm it and get stuff including, isogen, pyreite and noxcium bars. You want the ores for the former 2 in order to make terraformers and farm them, but you can’t complain about getting the bars either

-You don’t need a lightless planet to get liquid aether (and thus lasombrium and other stuff). The other option is to make, farm and extract Zathi seeds. They require strange nodules and those are obtained by farming either Aquapod (You need Kelp for those, so without an ocean you’ll need to farm the dolphin in the Grand Pagoda) or Lasher (one of its components requires wild vines, which aren’t overly common)

-On the topic of botany, you may want to pay attention to it, both for the buffs and for the stuff some stuff extracts into. One good example is Blade Trees, you need some titanium to craft them, but the moment you start farming seeds at a decent pace you’ll be able to get so much titanium you won’t know what to do with it

-On a related note, you should try to get a town as populated as your PC allows before slowing down, with enough people nearby, stuff like the communal farm can become remarkably fast, just be sure to make a beer farm, best cheap fertilizer in my experience

-A good goal early on is making and powering an industrial centrifuge in order to refine infinite lava, given it produces stuff like silicon, tungsten and carbon. The high speed, low efficeny of that centrifuge is ideal for something like lava, which you can easily pump infinitely from most planet cores

-I don’t know what’s the fastest money farm you can make with these rules, but you’ll want something like it if you don’t get geode trees naturalily. As mentioned before, geodes are the only way to get certain late game ores, and even then it’s extremely rare. The other option is farming ancient guardians for a miniscule chance of getting a cristalline microformer. Why aren’t those craftable when many others are? I don’t know

-There’s no shame in running out of research by sciencing contaminated water into pus, given you’ll need a big bunch of it for duping liquids like protocite and irradium. In general, it’s a good idea to pay good attention to liquids, what they extract into, which ones can be duplicated either easily or with some steps… Potentially difficult and expensive, but can put you ahead a fair bit