Beginner's Guide (how to duplicant)

This might look very important at first and without realizing it, you spend a lot of time in choosing your first 3 dupes (like when you create a character in The Sims or RPG game). But the truth is, you can pick any random dupes and still survive just fine. Picking the right stat might help you for a bit (in early cycles), but it's not that major or big of a deal. What decide whether your colony will survive or not is your planning and decision making through out the game (after the first cycle start).

• Decor Expectation
  The low the better, try to pick dupes with negative decor expectation (as low as possible).
  What this do is, you will have more time before you have to deal with stress.
  Dupes with high decor expectation will get stress more easily and stress is one of the biggest challenge in the game right now. It can be hard to deal with.
• Stress Response
  Currently there are 4 types of Stress Response and IMO the worst one is "Binge Eater".
  For new player or someone who are still having trouble with stress, I suggest you to avoid taking dupe with this stress response. It can bring your colony to its doom quite easy if you are not prepared. The 3 other responses quite equal, depends on the situation, they are most likely just become a nuisance.

  For more info about stress, their responses, and how to deal with it. Read this Guide

• Attributes
  
  With the latest update (Outbreak), we have new attribute: immunity. IMO currently this is the most important stat right now. Starting with high immunity dupes really help in early game.

  And another thing to note is you perhaps want to at least have 1 dupe with high learning skill (min 5), this will help you complete researchs faster. At early game, you are racing against time and you need several techs in order to survive. So having a researcher will definitely help.
  And since they fixed the bug in this update, now dupes with high learning skill really do learn skill faster. so that's also a plus.

  Digging & construction also a good attribute to start with. Dig & construct faster means you can build your colony faster. Athletics might seems good because it makes your dupes run faster, but this can be train quite easy and at first your colony will be quite cramped anyway, so it's kind more important in mid-late game. (extra note: Athletics don't makes dupe generate more power in the hamster wheel).

  Another attributes to consider are Creativity & Strength.
  Creativity plays an important role for handling stress via decor rating (art building). But this attribute won't be straight needed at first 10-20cycles, so you don't have to take high Creativity dupe from the start. It's your choice. Creativity can be train but hard even for high learning dupes.
  Strength is unique because you can't train this now. Like in other games, this determine how much a dupe can carry. This is important for your courrier or cart-dupe, since they can carry more, they are quite efficient for sweep & delivery jobs.

  Cooking can be useful if you depends a lot in the Micromusher (for foods), but seriously you shouldn't be depend on it all that much.

• Trait
  Not much to discuss about this, just avoid taking "Loud Sleeper". Dupe with this trait will snore when they sleep and will wake everyone else within 4 tiles radius from him/her. And perhaps you also want to avoid mouth breather which make dupe consume more oxygen per second, or bottomless stomach which make them eat more.

  The other trait's effects are pretty minor and usually related to attribute/job. You just need to be careful with certain trait that increase decor expectation or make your dupes can't do certain job. Like for example, dupe with high Learning attribute with Yokel (can't research).

• If you haven't read it yet. Read all the TIPS given by the game.

• Start digging right away (hotkey for dig is G).
  Dupes range for action are 2 tiles away. That's why a lot of people are using the 4 tiles height as their base setup. Be careful when digging, you don't want to break water reservoir, vacum or CO2 at early cycles.
  

• Know your ore. Each ore also have different art.
  

  Extra note: Oxylite are unique ore that produce oxygen. Get those copper & algae, you will need both of them (I'll explain again latter).

• Different types of Minerals & Metals.
  Minerals: Sandstone, Granite, Sedimentary Rock, etc. They are usually use for buildings like Cot, Outhouse, and several utilities like pipes.
  Metals: Copper, Gold, Iron, etc. They are usually use for machines & cables.

  Each minerals and metals have its own stat, like granite currently is the strongest minerals. They can hold pressure better than sandstone. For example, if you are building a water tank from sandstone tiles, they are more easily breaks than granite tiles. Another stat is like how fast they can transfer heat. Currently granite also transfer heat faster than any other minerals. Abbasalyte have the lowest heat transfer. Each mineral also have max temperature they can handle. Metals also the same, they have several diferent stat.

• Use your overlay. They are useful, they can give you a lot of information. Like for example, they can show you different type of biomes (use F3 for temperature filter).
  

  This large light green area is your first spawn point and they are consider as "safe" biome.

• The first thing you need to build is restroom (Outhouse in plumbing category), your dupes need a place to pee and poop. or they will make a mess.

• Cot is optional for the first night, but i usually build it right a way after outhouse, then dig areas for more building and try to get a lot of copper for science station & power machine. If you want to skip cot, you can rush immediately to science station. This is also a good choice, but eitherway you are going to have to build the cot soon. Extra note: build the cot near the printing pod also a good idea, Printing Pod have high decor around them. This will reduce dupe stress while they are sleeping.

• Dig those burried object (crack in the tiles). They contain object (food, seed, creature, etc)
  

• Plan ahead. This is a bit advance since you have to know what you are doing. But always remmember to plan ahead. As you progress, you will gradually need to start doing this correctly.
  

• Use the Prioritize Tools. This is super important. It's located at the bottom right panel. Prioritize Tools allow you to control your dupes more effectively. They can be use for different things and each player might have their own way to use it.

  But these are some basic ground rules:
  - 1 lowest, 9 highest. Dupes will do the highest prioritize first. Default priority are 5.
  - Avoid using 9 for all your job orders, setting all to 9 means no 9 :)
  - Some building & plants have priority on them, this allow you to set which building are need to be attend to.

  This is an example of how to use the tools:

  

  I want them to create outhouse first then 3 Cots. So I set the ladder & outhouse area to 8, and then Bedroom to 7. This way, dupe will first build the outhouse and then proceed with 3 Cots.

  After they done, they'll dig more room in the upper level, I decide that will be the research lab room.

• Build Research Station ASAP, you need to start research immidietly.
  Actually you can rush this in the first cycle, but yeah whatever. I usually build it in my 2nd.

  This is some basic setup for your research lab. The position of the building is up to you. But you gonna need these 3 buildings: Research Station, Manual Generator, and Battery(s). Building extra batteries so that it will store more power, so your dupes won't have to get on in the hamster wheel so often.

  

  I recommend you to research Farming first. You need this tech to provide food in your colony. And a way to deal with CO2.

  

  The next researchs priority are really depends of the player.
  I tend to go with either Fine Dining, Decor, or straight rush to Percolation (Electrolizer, turn clean water into oxygen).

• Assign spesific jobs for the dupes.
  This is not mandotary, especially if you are the type of player who doesn't take a lot of dupes in your colony. But this can help you to manage some of specialist dupe to do only the job they are good at. Or to make sure no one else is doing the job or certain action.
  

  For example you would want to avoid combat. Don't kill any creature in the game. Currently no real hostile or threat from creatures. They all have a purpose that can benefit your colony.
  Then you might want to assign certain dupe to Art & Research. The more you take dupes the more complicated it can be.

• Careful with CO2. Dupes breath oxygen and emit Carbon Dioxide. O2 are color in light blue & a bit transparant, CO2 are black. CO2 can stack up pretty fast, be careful with it. They are heavier than O2, so they will fall at the bottom of your colony/base. (they also tend to go right). For early cycles, you can dig a pit to trap those CO2 below your base.
  

• Keep watch on your oxygen pressure, use oxygen overlay (F1) to see it more clearly. Light blue are showing high pressure oxygen (currently polluted oxygen is also shown in light blue).
  

  Build Oxygen Deoxydizer for your early oxygen solution. They consume a lot of algae, but produce quite a lot of O2 in a short time. After researching farming, you can create several Algae Terrarium to produce O2 and reduce CO2. Careful with it, since they consume a lot of water and need to be taken care of. Making too many of them can occupied your dupes all day.

  Extra note: Low pressure of oxygen can cause stress

• Sweep & Mop your base, especially in the area where dupe do their activities or walking around. Items on the ground create bad decor and water on the ground create a debuff which produce stress for the whole cycle.

• Start Farming ASAP after you done researching the tech. Just plan mealwood, don't use/plan the Bloosom (Bristle) yet. Save it for later (after you research more farm tile and understand more about farming and their condition).

• Build Micro Musher and cook your meal.
  Cooking your meal can increase the food quality and sometime increase/reduce the kcal.

• At early in the game, you might think you have enough algae. But NO, you don't.

• Build at least 2 Massage Tables, especially if your stress level are reaching 40-50%. You should try to avoid using them as much as possible, but it's better to let them rest in the table instead of stressing out (>80%)

• Watch for warning notification, dupes are not the smartest creature in the asteroid, sometime they can kill themselves in the most unpredictable (stupid) scenario.

• Exploring is good, but be careful not to expand too much or open a big vacuum area when your oxygen production is still low.

• Taking new dupe is okay, but be very careful with your oxygen & food supply.

• Certain dupes can fart, and it release as natural gas

• Some resource are more scarce than the other, be very careful. Some example: At early game: Algae, clean water, and metal (copper, gold). At mid-late game: Sands and coal.

• Hatch & puff are useful. Rule of thumbs, don't kill any creature before you actually know what they do (good or bad).

• Hatch will eat any ore and then poop out coal (fuel for Coal Generator, produce electricity).
  With a bit of work, you can catch creature and build a cage for them.
  
  You can't see it, but actually there are 5 hatchs there, standing on a same tile.

• Puff will breath polluted oxygen and then poop out slime (can be convert into algae).

• Morbs are producing polluted oxygen.

• You might think mealwood will be your stable food supply. But NO, it is not.
  First of all, if you don't reach excellent yield, they won't give any seed back, so you can run out of them.
  Second, they are low quality of food. You shouldn't depends on them at mid-late game, they are causing stress to your high level dupes.

• Farming has 3 yields: Standard, Good, and Excellent. Different plant have different conditions to meet. But to reach Excellent yield, you need to fulfill all of their conditions (fertilize, irrigate, ideal temperature & gas pressure).

• Don't freak out with unfriendly/toxic gases, but you should start worrying when they are getting out of control. Polluted oxygen and sickness are not major issue for now. But don't get used to it, because the developer will change this in the future.

• Build Airlocks in your base, especially to certain area that are polluted or toxic.
  For polluted oxygen, you can set it up pretty easy. Just build a room with closed door on both side and put Air Deodorizer inside that room:
  
  Blue is the airlock room, purple is the Air Deodorizer.

  For a more complex airlock (usually for toxic area), you can build something like this:

  

  Having 2 or longer corridor to make sure the toxic gas won't come out easily.
  Green is the vacum airlock room. It has 2 gas pump connected to atmo switch.
  Gas pump is for pumping gas and atmo switch is a programmable switch that can be set when to active/off depends on the air pressure. So I set it up to where there is gas pressure in the room, they will pump the gas back in.
  Blue is the first room that has contact with the toxic area. That machine that is hanging inside the room is a gas filter, I set it to filter out all the toxic gas.

• Algae is not your best oxygen solution. You need to move on to Electrolizer.
  It use clean water to produce oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen (pink) are lighter than O2, so they'll go upward. There are several way to set it up:
  - Build a pyramid or house roof shape base and build gas pump at the top, then build electrolizer at the bottom of your base. Oxygen will distribute by itself and hydrogen will gather at the top of your base. Connect your gas pump to a gas filter and then deliver it to hydrogen generator to produce power.
  - Build a special room for it. Build electrolizer & gas pump in the same room and then connect the pipe to the gas filter to seperate oxygen & hydrogen.
  

• #DupesLivesMatter, remember to take care of your dupe. When stress start to get out of control, it will be quite hard to handle. It is like a snowball effect and your colony is doom before you realize it

• Watch your decor, some building have bad decor and it is bad for your dupes. (use decor overlay). Build decor building around your base to increase overall decor rating. This help a lot to manage your colony stress.

• Watch your base temperature, some building emits heat and can be overheated (they'll break). Temperature usually a late game problem though.

• Explore and find the geyser, currently there are 2 geyser in the game:
  - Steam Geyser: it emits steam & produce hot clean water.
  
• Natural Gas Geyser: it emits natural gas (can be use to fuel Generator for electricity).
  

• Please don't do this (it's sad), but sometime sacrifice are needed. When your colony is about to die and some dupes are causing it to fall. You can kill them off to save the colony. The easiest way are to lock them up and let them die (slowly :<)

• Holding shift allow you to build tile, ladder & utilities (cable, pipe) in a straight line.

• ALT+S to use the camera view freely, it also hide the GUI. Can be use to take cool screenshot :)

Failing & restarting is a common thing in this game. Just keep trying until you get better.
Each time you start a new game, it's like a "new game +" where you as the player bring all of the information from previous game.

Like in don't starve: You die, you learn.

• Stress Guide. Deeper explanation about stress and how to handle it.
  
• Oxygen Guide. Focusing on how to setup oxygen generation.
  
• Power Transformer Guide. Focusing on how to manage your power grid using Power Transformer & proper wired setup.

Thank you for reading :)

• Outbreak Update: add immunity attribute & bug fixed on the learning attribute