New player needs help

Hey all, I hope this is the right forum. Having enjoyed Terraria so much, I just bought Starbound a couple of days ago and have about 10 hours clocked on Steam. Right now I'm in Deputy's Slacks and Vest with a Sniper Rifle as my main weapon. I'm trying to get the next set of armor made from Tungsten but I need cotton. I don't know where to get any cotton. I went to a forest planet in another solar system but I didn't find any. I only have Desert planets in my starting system, excluding the first one. I also went around the entire starter planet on a search for cotton but I didn't find any. I really want to get cotton so I can start mining in harder planets to upgrade my crafting stations. Where do I find cotton?

 

Cotton should be found on Garden worlds (The Kind You Started On) along with Wheat, Potatoes, and Pearl-peas. They are tall stalky plants with white fluffy bubbles on them. Explore enough and you should find them.

 

Just a friendly reminder that if you're to expect Starbound to be a Terraria in Space, it won't turn out that well since Starbound is more about exploration and building instead of gear progression based on getting materials from killing the bosses, at least for now and probably in the future as well to make a distinction between the two.
The availability and variety of weapons won't match that Terraria's list as well, so it'll be sooner to reach the "endgame" status. But there's always mods if you fancy them enough to add one, which is the strong point of Starbound where it had been focused in the beginning.
Just hoping that you won't come back and complain about unnecessary stuffs when they're intended to be different.

OT: Explore any lush planets and you ought to find one soon enough. Remember to grab their seeds after harvesting the cotton fibre so you can have a farm of them later on for easier acquirement since it's quite essential for armor crafting though!
If your current star system does not has enough lush planets, craft a breathing EPP and proceed to the moon to mine some fuel and FTL jump to other star system that has lush planets, which are gentle star systems.

 

Is the exploration and building in Starbound much better than Terraria? So far it seems pretty similar but maybe that'll change once I get into the game some more. Also, I finally found some cotton.

 

Yes, much better if you're to include the possible combinations of biomes, micro biomes, dungeons in each planets.
The type of blocks and the variety of furniture you can obtain is way more than what Terraria can offer as well.
Not to mention that the availability of colouring blocks, wiring and the ease of placement background blocks just make it easier for one to build and customize.
If they're not enough or you just get a bit tired of the vanilla assets, mods like Frackin Universe and Pixel Good Store and the likes will be able to add that very cherry on top of your cupcake.
Congratulations on finding the cotton!

 

http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/show-off-your-house-d.37292/page-115

 

Personally, I prefer Starbound for a few reasons:

A ) Though I do enjoy fantasy, it seems that every game of similar type is more or less fantasy-themed, except Starbound. That, by itself, makes it something different. I appreciate that difference.

B ) There are vastly more biomes and mini-biomes to visit in unmodded Starbound than you'll find in Terraria. Even without mining (which is my least favorite aspect of the game), every planet has a different mix of biome types just on the surface, meaning every planet with have fairly different features. Every world has its own combination of mini-biomes, plus whatever the world's main biome is. That is, of course, not taking into account the obvious fact that topography is different from world to world.

C ) Mining is not the only way to get the ore you need for crafting. As you progress through the story (more on that later), you unlock the ability to purchase higher and higher tiers of minerals from Ursa Miner, on the Outpost. That reduces the tedium of digging around HOPING to find the ore you need massively. Any mining I do, as a consequence, is done simply because I want to know what's down there. For me, personally, that's a pretty big plus.

D ) Probably the biggest reason that I prefer Starbound is that Starbound isn't a complete sandbox. You CAN go anywhere at any time, if you so choose. However, if you're in the mood for slightly more structured fun then you can run story missions or do quests for random NPCs. The story missions all take you through rather well designed levels that have plenty of secrets to suss out. And random quests, though generally exceptionally easy, still give you little goals to work toward. None of these are REQUIRED, however. You can ignore the story all together, and the only actual benefit you'll miss out on are the additional mineral tiers that become available in Ursa Miner. It doesn't gate your ability to travel to higher-difficulty worlds at all.

Garden (Lush) worlds are the best for cotton, but you can actually find it in forest mini-biomes on non-garden worlds as well. For best results, don't just loot the cotton wool. Use your manipulator to pull the whole plant, and you've got a chance at getting cotton seed as well, which you can then plant at your home base for an endless supply of cotton.

 

You can find cotton on the garden worlds as they said but if you want to speed up the process you can go to the outpost general store and buy the materials you need.

 

That costs pixels that you may not have early-game.

 

No by that time you would have accumulated more than enough to buy the knitted material you need. They aren't very exspensive either I don't think.

It is possible not to have enough pixels but you would of have to have either died a lot or spend pixels like crazy for that to even be a possibility.