Starter Planet Evaluation

I wanted to provide opinions, advice to new players on which planet to start on. I started on Beckon so can only talk about that planet.

EU - Finata is fine as well. Only spitters are attacking, the color is amazing, pink and brown golden trees, azure black rocks. We started one aquatopia hub beginners area, which is growing day by day. Very helpful people, so it is good to start for new players :slight_smile:

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Beckon

The planet has a good supply of foliage for food. It also has a easily mined source of stone and wood. I have successfully mined enough soft coal to smelt metal and make glue (I have not cooked food, but that is a choice, I do have enough coal). When mining I also found enough copper for tools, but not really enough for more than one or two iron tools and that required hours of mining. I also found enough tech remnants to advance. I am finding a few desert swords for fibrous leaves, but getting no drops for fibrous leaves from foliage. Since I am in an area where there are a group of people, the regen is slowed down or stopped, so the lack of desert sword is becoming a problem in creating metal tools.

In general, the planet is nice to look at. However, where a group of us started it seems to be raining almost constantly (one time for ten day and night cycles straight, stopped for less than a day and started again). While we are not harmed by rain, it does make working in the dark more difficult, especially since we do not have good torches to start (it is a starter world after all). This planet will make a great place to create a Venice or other water city with its extensive canal system. However I think it is a bad thing to do on a starter planet. It makes travel more difficult and you need to travel to find some of the rarer resources, like boulders and desert sword. Since we do not have grapples yet (again a starter world for new people), you either have to swim and find a spot where you can get out (there are very few places with gentle slopes to the water) or you have to build temporary bridges out of some resource you are carrying. It certainly does not stop you dead in your tracks, and if you have a grapple the travel would not be bad in my opinion.

If someone asked, me or I had to do it again, I would start on the US West or EU planet. As long as you can get a decent connection, I would avoid the canals. All the other resources and distribution are the same so that is really the only difference.

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I agree. The the amount of canals on Beckon make it a bit cumbersome to travel around for being a starter planet.

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On Beckon:

I immediately found the canals cumbersome. I decided to travel far and wide searching for a wide open space, without canals to settle in. The best i found was around 10 “Squares” connected at the corners to romp around on. Plenty of Desert Sword (That seems to regen very fast). Also, the best hunting grounds on this planet are the “Mudflats”. My favorite feature of this planet! Out on the open water, there is mud, at the same level of the water, as far as the eye can see! Plenty of those ink plants (name?) spawn all over, for earthyams galore! And the creatures spawn all over the flats. I was lucky that i set up near an ocean with a mudflat on it. Also, these “Spiral Trees” that are twisted in a ring like a pretzel, they give plenty of wood. 2-3 of these trees gave around 150 wood. It seems i have all i need to set up a small outpost here. Now, I’m just looking to settle a tier 4 planet, get a portal to it, and open up shop! I have set a path of goals that should provide plenty of challenging content. On with the grind!

Edit: I also, if I had a do-over, would recommend not starting on Beckon. Those canals make it so very very hard to get around the planet… it makes for a clever biome, but until you get a grapple, most of your time will be spent swimming, looking for a way back onto land =(

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Pheminorom is US East T1 hostile. It rains frequently but not as much as Bekon. Lots of visible copper but Iron seemed quite scarce until i was able to mine down to the 20-30 level where it seems more prevalent and easy to find. Coal is similarly challenging but can be found in deeper caves and solid rock. I’ve never seen it visible on the surface. Abundant food sources and desert sword for fibrous leaves but I’ve found sap drops, needed for glue, to be quite rare. Lots of spitters and critters so it’s quite easy to get the first set of objectives after you are able to make your first copper slingbow or a complete non-challenge if you wait until you can make an iron sling. Getting around is easy for the most part; some biomes like the marshy-swampy ones involve a lot of falling into water channels and scrambling to get out. You’ll be unable to make a Refinery as there is no apparent silver or gold on the planet.

i like them it forces people to grab islands instead off getting to close to eachother on big lands it also creates obvious border lines
for when more people start to claim

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ha! @the-moebius. I like the natural borders aspect too. It was hilarious the first time someone settled on “my” island. I was at first like following him around and getting all up in his business. “This sonofa… this island is Mine!” It was all in good fun tho, as it is a pretty nice spot so i dont mind sharing =P

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I definitely agree, about Beckon, until I was able to craft a grapple I was loathe to leave my island. Even now that i have two (1 iron and 1 copper) I’m still hesitant, the islands are almost always plateau like(sheer cliffs and almost flat on top).

I recently traveled to Pheminirom and am seriously considering starting a new beacon there. Although, I’m not much for the hostilities(wonky internet gets me killed) i enjoy being able to move about more freely, and the color schemes are very similar in most cases(though the bright pink Sedimentary stone is not missed).

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BECKON is where I started, too.

PROS:

  1. Tons of COPPER and COAL
  2. FOSSILs and TECH abundant
  3. MINING (finding stuff to mine) is made easier because you can swim along the canals and look at the cliff face to find stuff.

CONS:

  1. The CANALS subdividing the entire planet into little chunks kinda sucks.
  2. The scarcity of IRON is gonna have newbies rage-quit when the game launches. You shouldn’t have to go to a “metal planet” for a crucial starter element like iron. In 2 days I have dug up 500+ copper and could farm it from the cliffs all day if I wanted to but I’ve only found 10-15 iron total and I mine more than anything else.
  3. There is scarcity on some other key things like fibrous leaves for instance. You have to run around quite a bit to find enough (and the canals make that a real job).

Overall, it was okay. I got to level 20 and 10K+ prestige in 2 days, and started a secondary base on a new planet. I could deal with the challenges except the rediculous scarcity of iron is really pissing me off.

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yeah, Finata is also WAY to low on iron … I mean, I got about 250 copper and only 15 (!!!) iron in the same time, and I was going to different biomes and depths to find it. This is very demotivating especially for people who are new to the game.

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I found a bazillion fibrous leaves on day one. they were everywhere! wonder if there just getting all farmed up?

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Okay so a few observations :slight_smile:

The canals are the same way on both Beckon and Lasagna(Lasaina), the EASIEST way to scale them if you don’t have a grapple (although not fast) is to dig 1 square into the wall and sanctum scum to the surface.

PLACID planets have very little iron, this appears to be by design. The “temperate worlds” are not difficult however, are not very far for a warp, and have abundant iron. Keep in mind the TEMPERATE worlds are actually offered as a starting zone as well, so there is no need to technically leave relatively safe planets to search for iron.

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i found only 3 veins of iron in my whole mining time on Finata while copper is everywhere. May be they put in more veins but make them smaller in size, so that you still get not to much but at least have a higher chance to spot them (which leads to a better motivation searching them psychologicaly seen). And when it comes from my opinion, at least +50% iron overall would be great as well, cuz yeah, it should be rare, but not a mysterium you search for houres ^^

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I think the low level of iron on starter worlds could be offset as the game progresses, lots of opportunities for older players who have mined on higher level worlds to sell their wares to newbies? :wink:

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I started on Sochaltin which is a placid starter world. It seems to have a nice variety of landscapes and all the basic resources are pretty easy to find. I’ve set up camp overlooking a small quarry which has a nice supply of copper, tech remnants and coal all on the surface as well as a good supply of sand at the bottom plus there are plenty of trees and bushes nearby for wood etc.
I don’t know if it’s a graphics bug or if it’s supposed to be this way but the contrast is pretty high which makes some of the colours really dark and extremely dark in caves even with torches. It’s so dark that at first I thought the torches weren’t working.
I paid a visit to Finata which from what I understand is supposed to be the next step up in planet tiers. With this in mind I was expecting there to be a few more resources available but all I found where exactly the same ones as on the 0 tier planet I had just left. Apart from the landscape the only significant difference I found was the wildlife which included a lot of stout spitters, needless to say I died quite a few times. I found this pretty disappointing as although I was expecting the wildlife to be aggressive compared to the starter world I wasn’t expecting stout spitters and coupled with the fact that there didn’t seem to be any additional resources that I couldn’t already find on Sochaltin there doesn’t appear to be any real reason to want to go back there.
I like to build and to that end I have concentrated on the crafting aspect to be able to make all the decorative blocks etc but for this I have to make machines which require tech components and alloys which are only available on the higher tier world’s so in retrospect I should of actually of started with a hunter build to be able to survive on the other planets just to get the same things that were once available on Therka, which was also just a starter planet.

It may be “by design” that iron is scarce on the lowest tier worlds but this coupled with needing more metal to make certain things is problematic. Iron should not be scarce! You shouldn’t have to mine for hours simply to get enough iron to make a furnace. Iron being scarce (rediculously so) is frustrating as hell and makes no sense to me. It’s only iron not gold or titanium!

This forces players out of a crafting role into more of a hunter/gatherer for their first character. And it’s not like the next tier up from the lowest tier world has adequate iron. It’s woefully lacking in iron as well coupled with critters attacking you. Granted, fibrous leaves were plentiful at this next tier but other than that it was just more hostile with no clear advantage.

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lowkey my plan all along >.>

Normally, my preferred playstyle is builder/crafter. But the way the game is at the moment, I feel like I’ve been obliged to cleanse my character of building related skills, grab some combat ones and I’ve subsequently spent more of my time enjoying mapping out planets than building or crafting. It’s not because it’s especially enjoyable (although completing and atlas IS pretty satisfying… and it will be even more so when I work out how to get the regions that are in the middle of lava lakes… I’m guessing dirt bridges?), but more because without a gatherer or hunter providing materials and finances, Building and Crafting are especially un-enjoyable.

Even when the economy is up and running (which should improve things dramatically), I’m not sure crafting-only will be financially viable, and I am sure that building won’t be. That being said, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know what the solution is to it though. It is a horribly nuanced issue to resolve in a way that doesn’t damage the game for people who it currently works well for.

Question, is there any starter planet that has large, flat ice plains or anything?