"I wish I had known..."

One of the difficult aspects of being an early-access player is the learning curve. Though some of us may have joined Starbound with a certain amount of experience playing games like Minecraft, Terraria, and... um... I don't know, that horrible ET game Atari released in the late 80s, you can still go for weeks or months without realizing some really simple trick that could have made your life much easier.

I thought it could be fun and useful to build a centralized thread for players (and staff?) to post any tips or tricks they've picked up over their time in Starbound. For example, here's one I figured out recently. It may not be news to some of you, but for me, it completely changed how I approached the building aspect of the game:

• Holding "SHIFT" while placing blocks, painting blocks, or drilling/mining/matter manipulating makes your tool only affect a one block area. That's right! Believe it or not, you don't HAVE to work with 2x2 squares!

So how about you guys? Teach me something new!

 

I wish I had known that you can pass on the Aegisalt, Ferozium, Cerulium, Violium, and Rubium Tech Upgrades on to your other charaters, effectively eliminating the entirety of the X-Sector grind besides grinding for Impervium.

 

you can dual-wealed single handed weapons with no negative effects.

Par up a fast slash with a hard hitting ranged weapon, and all mobs become roaches.

 

Agreed; that's definitely something that became apparent when I moved on to my second character. I had to look up exactly how to dual-wield (it's not intuitive, IMO) but once I had it figured out, I ended up using the "shoot and slash" method you advise right up until Sector X.

 

I wish I'd known how insanely OP bombs are against everything up to Tier 3.

 

I wish I had known diamonds were worth less smelted than in ore form. I also wish I had known that spawners weren't scannable, and would instead just be deleted in the scanner, and that turrets would kill any sort of NPC, peaceful or otherwise...

 

A good idea. I came out of Minecraft to Terraria, then Terraria to Starbound here and thought I'd be able to pick it up with no problem. I was certainly wrong.

Funny part was I figured that out by mistake when replying to a friend using the Steam overlay. It's saved me a lot of hassle since then!

 

Hey Animator, don't smelt the high level fuels too... they are worth less as well. its chuckefish math.

 

Wow, lots of good advice here!
I wish I had known that butterfly boost requires the jump button AND a directional button. I was thinking along the lines of the double jump and some of the gravity techs that simply require the jump button.

 

Yeah, that one takes a little getting used to, since it's the first omnidirectional tech.

Speaking of boosts, it's worth mentioning that the bubble boost tech is measurably faster than the butterfly boost (33% is what I read). I'm not sure how they scale up when it comes to energy usage, though with tier 10 armour it doesn't really matter, since you can pretty much fly indefinitely by using it in short bursts.

 

I actually never did, and I elaborated on another thread on the nature of why.

 

That's a good point. I read through it when I started my first character, but I guess I missed the part about the shift key. I often find that the problem with being introduced to keybindings at the beginning of a game is that all the information is a little overwhelming, which can make retaining it all difficult sometimes. Sure, you can go back and re-read it in this case, but the codex is kind of disorganized and honestly, I forgot it was in there.

For the record, the codex you're referring to is actually called "Control Yourself".

 

You can literally skip aegisalt, ceruliun and rubium armor tiers. At aegisalt, durasteel armor is enough to get by. Use the aegisalt on an aegisalt upgrade. Then use the remainder for ferozium. Do the same for the rest. Use it on tech, and then make alloys only. It works surprisingly well, and you usually don't get killed as the previous armor is just enough to get by.

 

Guess no ones ever played Castle miner Z, its 3d like minecraft, but graphically blows minecraft away while also having better fps. It just gets boring really fast as no water, redstone, villagers, limited mob types, no armor/enchantments. Its like starbound in one way, you have guns and it does have aliens in a meteor biome.

 

Graphicly blows minecraft away? Not a chance, sure minecraft's graphics are pixelated but at least they aint a blurry mess. Plus minecraft is more polished feeling.

There is also shaders and texturepacks

 

This has literally nothing to do with the topic. Scram.

 

I wish I had known about where to find guns back in the early betas. Being stuck with just a steel hunting bow felt terrible when I knew there were plenty of cool guns out there, if only I knew where to find them. It was great to finally find an Avian airship.

I also wish I had known about how powerful the UFO boss was back during the first couple of beta releases since it cost a lot more resources to summon and it could easily kill you in one hit. Well at least nowadays you don't have to worry about getting rolfstomped by it.

 

Yeah, the game warns you to arm up in case someone hostile answers your call, but I didn't realize at the time that that was the only possible scenario. Poor early me in copper armour with a 10 DPS sword.

 

I really enjoyed learning about the wielding mechanics. Sure, it isn't intuitive, but the customizability of it means it really isn't possible for it to be:

By default, any one-handed item you are wielding from your hotbar (defaulted to the Left Hand) will be paired with your R Slot item.

Pressing X will switch you to your "Quickslot/L&R" equipment setup (also is the 11th item on your hotbar, when using the scroll wheel it's after 0 and before 1)
This will use your L slot item by default, and both if both items are one-handed.

Right-Clicking on a hotbar item, Shift + Number Key, or Shift + Scrolling when you have a Left-Handed item held will place that item in your right hand. This will become your set "Right Hand" item. Changing your left hand item via any method but scrolling will wipe your currently selected Right Hand item, as does choosing the same Right Hand item that you currently have selected. You can change your Right Hand item in the same way you select it.

While you have a Right Hand item set, your 11th slot becomes your Right Hand item paired with your L Slot. X key functions as normal.

Do note that changing your right-hand or left-hand setup will automatically cut any Grappling Hooks you currently have extended, regardless of which hand you were changing or which hand the Grappling Hook was in.

20%
From 115 to 140 energy per second.

I've attempted to scan Spawners and they haven't disappeared on me.