Starbound Compendium (Game Mechanics, Tips, Tricks and New Player Guide)

Hello Everyone

This post aims to achieve a couple things but mainly:
-Explain the games mechanics and how to play with them
-Help new or struggling players get their foot into the starbound world's doors

I will not however be covering the absolute bare basics of the game or things explained by the tutorial

If you have questions about anything covered in here or have questions not covered, please feel free to ask and I or the community will surely attempt to help you out! (Or wish to suggest something be added that wasn't covered!)

I hope for this to be a comprehensive and succesful guide in helping many players get going in their new life in starbound, and without further hesitation.... here we go!!!!

TABLE OF CONTENTS
To use the table of contents to skip to where you want use CTRL+F (Find words) and type the corresponding number to the section you wish to skip too

0001 - How to handle your first couple trips to the surface
0002 - Controlling your character
0003 - Combat and survival in the early game
0004 - Combat game mechanics
0005 - Utilizing your star ship
0006 - Additional Controls
0007 - Biomes



HOW TO HANDLE YOUR FIRST COUPLE TRIPS DOWN TO THE SURFACE(0001)
-This will be a simple "quick start" guide to the game and how to bypass wasting time and potentially dying many times in the very beginning of the game.

Your First Trip To The Planets Surface
The first trip will be a very short one as you only have 2 priorities on your first trip down
-Wood (Harvest 2 trees to get 80-100 unrefined wood)
-Stone (Harvest exactly 20 stone...this is 5 2x2 squares)
Now go on back home, because harvesting with the matter manipulator isn't exactly the most enjoyable thing around.
-----Back on board your ship, craft a work bench (as the quest requests) and build yourself a Stone Pickaxe and a Stone Axe-----

Your Second Trip To The Planets Surface
This trip isn't as restrictive as your first one, but you do have 2 priorities again this time.
Harvest both of these with your axe and enjoy the new speed of working
-Plant Fibres (Found by killing vines in caves, some flowers growing on the ground or large flowers that are similar to trees in size)
-Wood (Chop down a few more trees as you will need wood)
Once you have about 60-100 plant fibres and another 40-60 wood it's time to head back to the ship
-----Back on board you want to craft a Yarn Spinner, turn all but ONE plant fibre into FABRIC via the yarn spinner and then go the workbench and craft yourself as many BANDAGES as you can.... 6 plant fibres = 1 bandage as well as your Hunting Bow-----


These are the only 2 extremely vital trips down to the surface as now you have your tools and weapons to work with and you have bandages with which to heal yourself. From here on out, the rest of the game is for you to explore at your own pace/desire, ENJOY!~
---Remember your hunger you will want to get some meat, refer to the COMBAT AND SURVIVAL section for tips on how to survive fighting early on---



CONTROLLING YOUR CHARACTER(0002)
-Below will explain how to deal with the mechanics and otherwise functions of the game that directly affect your character

Dealing With Hunger
Hunger is a simple mechanic, if you don't eat eventually you starve to death. The tutorial explains how to cook food, but here are some additional tips regarding dealing with hunger.
-NPC merchants are often found in large villages and will sell you food. This is a GREAT way to stock up on large amounts of food due to the price being relatively small! (4pixels per piece)
-Campfires can cook meats into eatable products but there is also a cooking table you can craft at your workbench to cook much more elaborate meals (often requiring multiple ingredients)

Dealing With Temperature
Our characters do get cold/hot based on our surroundings. You can freeze to death and at very low temperatures your screen will be incredibly foggy/hazy and make it difficult to see your surroundings. Many things contribute to increased coldness...here's a few of the more basic ones: It's cold at night, It's cold when it rains, It's cold as hell on a snow planet or a moon.
-In order to warm yourself up, stand near a source of fire...this can be a recently placed torch but what I've found works great is to carry a campfire with you and throw it down whenever you need to warm up.
-Your equipped armor has a warmth rating (represented by a sun) the more warmth you have on pieces of armor the slower your temperature will drop when cold sources come into play. (Most of the time armors with higher warmth sacrifice armor value so be careful about this!)

Managing Your Bank Account (Earning & Spending Pixels)
Pixels are starbounds main form of currency.
-To earn pixels: slay monsters with melee weapons, destroy capsules or kill NPC guards (NPCs with weapons)
-To spend pixels: craft armor & weapons, use the 3d printer or buy items from NPCs
***Note: There is currently no way to sell items to NPCs***
***Note: There is currently no way to store or trade pixels to other players***

Maintaining Your Tools
Through constant use your pick axe will eventually lose durability and may need repairs, this is possible!
-To repair your pick axe left click on a corresponding piece of ore (gold ore for gold pick axe) and then right click it on top of your pick axe and it should gain durability.
***Note: Currently you can use copper to repair any tier, I believe this is a bug due to the fact that iron does not do this as well***

Interacting With The World
In order to interact with the objects of the world, by default you use the E key. (This allows you to open/close doors, harvest your plants when they are ready, access crafting tables, campifres, beds, etc etc)

Interacting With The Background Tiles
In order to interact with the background tiles you simply right click instead of left click
-With a pickaxe you will destroy the background tiles
With a building block you will place background tiles
***Fun Fact: You can drain water by breaking the background walls behind it***
***Fun Fact: You can teleport back to your ship from underground if you knock out enough background tiles around your characters body***
---The Fun Facts only work to a certain depth and then they don't work anymore below a certain depth

Using your Hotkeys
For the most part the hotkeys are self explanatory except for the L and R hotkeys, I will explain that here
-The L/R represent your left and right hand when nothing else is actively using that hand. (IE using a 2hand weapon will make the L/R slot inactive)
-You can "unequip" and item bound to the 1 through 0 hotkeys simply by clicking the key again. (IE: My 2hand sword is bound to the 1 key... It's currently out and being wielded...I hit "1" again to put my sword away, which in turn activates the items I am holding in my L/R slot)
-You can use a 1 handed item on a hotkey and your R key will still be active. This allows you to do such thing as: Hold a sword, and put a shield in R slot. You can also do things like hold a flashlight in R, so you are armed while holding a flashlight, or using a SECOND one handed weapon in the R slot for dual wielded weapons.



COMBAT AND SURVIVAL EARLY IN THE GAME(0003)
-Below will explain how to handle combat and surviving broken up into two sections including surviving at the very start of the game and in your first sector

SURVIVING YOUR FIRST FEW HOURS
At this point I'm assuming you have bandages (if not, read the first section on how to acquire them) and are moving your way out into the world where the monsters and baddies roam. There are both hostile and non hostile monsters...hostile monsters will attack when you get without approximately 7-10 character distances of them, non hostiles will only retaliate if you attack first.

Upgrading Your Equipment!
You want to prioritize getting an iron ***2 handed Sword*** sword as it is capable of 1-2 shotting monsters on your home planet (and any threat level 1 planets). After the big slicer you will want an IRON HUNTING BOW...this has the same kind of killing power as the 2 handed sword which will make acquiring food much easier as well as being able to effectively combating enemies from a range. Once you have your 2 iron weapons, the next big priority is COPPER ARMOR, if it wasn't obtained during the quest for iron weapons. Once you have copper armor you will want to upgrade it into SILVER ARMOR.

Hunting For Food With the Hunting Bow*
Note: Food does drop from normal weapon kills but has a 70% chance to drop when a kill is scored with a bow!*
I am fully aware the hunting bow is extremely underwhelming but here are a couple tips to help make things slightly easier...and the hunting bow experience becomes much better once you acquire an Iron Hunting Bow
-You can HOLD left click to charge your shot, if you release the bow at the correct time (when it's fully drawn and flashes) you get a special shot that deals approximately 30% bonus damage
-You only need the KILLING BLOW with the bow, due to this you can hit the mob with a melee weapon to weaken it then finish it with a single shot for a large chance at acquiring food (70% chance)

Fighting With Your Melee Weapons
Not a lot to say here, you click and swing...the only real tip i have here is that your weapon does not swing instantly, there is a short time frame before your weapon comes out, so you want to start your swing as the monster is approaching you...not when he is right on top of you.

Recovering Lost Health
There are two main ways to recover lost health...the first *and best* way has been mentioned multiple times...Bandages! Using bandages will recover 3-4 bars of health in a short amount of time and has no cooldown so don't be stingy with them once you have bandages to spare! The other way to do so is by sleeping in a bed (or any variant of bed that exists in the game, and there are MANY)

FIGHTING THE FIRST BOSS
Before you even think of fighting the first boss you will want AT MINIMUM an iron hunting bow (preferably you'd have a level 8-10 gun but you may not always find these) and silver armor. You will want to build a wood platform running line 2-3 screens wide with a dirt line about half a screen below the wooden platform line. You may need to replace the wooden platforms mid fight as the boss will have a block destroying special attack. He will take a long time with an iron bow, hundreds of hits will be required.



COMBAT GAME MECHANICS(0004)
-Below will detail the different combat options and mechanics that exist within the game

Know What Your Race Tends To Prefer
Every race has it's own culture style and...from what I've observed their on "preferred" weapons
-Your character race effects the power on your *CRAFTED* weapons. Different races "specialize" in crafting certain weapons. (They will just have a higher over all DPS via higher swing speeds than other options) So when crafting a weapon you may want to check the stats and see what your options are...or throw that all out the window and pick which style you want (The racial differences only make a difference of on average about 8-15% dps output from what I've seen through 3 different races)
----To Add Later: I will go through the 6 races and see which ones specialize in which weapons based on the IRON tier only----

Choosing The Weapon That's Right For You
Your weapon is one of greatest tools for survival and you want to have the right one for the job!
-Ranged Combat: Starts with bows, transitions to guns. Guns come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, varieties and functionality. A sniper rifle may have slower attack speed but more damage per shot but dual pistols will be the opposite, less damage but more shots. If you favor ranged combat you will need to figure out what weapon works best for your play style!
-Melee combat: This is a slightly controversial issue and different people have different opinions on what's good or not so I will list your options and what my mostly unbiased opinion is towards them and the different "styles" in which melee combat can be performed.
***2handed sweeping weapons (Sword, Axe, Hammer) --- These 3 weapons tend to have the same armor penetration and same damage values as each other. The sword has a bigger sweeping strike area than the axe/hammer and *usually* higher attack speed, making it the superior weapon in almost every respect when it comes to 2handers. (Even in the cases where the sword is lower attack speed, the extra sweep range often makes up for the usually miniscule difference. IE: Glitch 2h axe 1.33speed 2h sword 1.30 speed)
***2handed Spear --- Currently the black sheep of the weapon family. Spears have no sweeping strike and can only be stabbed straight forwards (Similar to a 1 hand weapon) while dealing around the same damage as other 2 handed weapons. Most people avoid spears due to the fact that they are slow and unsafe weapons (doesn't allow for the same flexibility of a 2handed sweep weapon or for the same sort of mobility that 1 handed weapons offer)
***1 handed weapon + A shield offhand --- Often people dislike 1 handed weapons because they have no sweep in their attack and monsters tend to jump from on top of you a lot. The shield can absorb full hits of damage and works great against ranged attackers while using a 1 handed weapon allows you to still deal decent damage to enemies as well. This style relies slightly more dodging+evading+using the shield to block than a 2handed "swing til it drops" method that most people are used too
***TWO 1 handed weapons (Dual Wielding) --- Wielding two 1 handed weapons is interesting in this game. They are capable of swinging independently from each other (meaning you can control when EACH hand attacks) or you can attack with both hands at the same time. Two methods I use in combat while dual wielding are what i call "Power Strike" Attack with both weapons at the same time dealing great damage in a single strike (all-in offense) or a more defensive style I call "Wall of blades" swinging your weapons on a rotation where 1 weapon is almost always swinging. Makes it very hard for melee mobs to approach you when there's always a sword in front of you. To make dual wield work you must be very evasive in your movements and learn to time your swings better due to less room for error because of the size of the blade vs 2 handed weapons or lack of defensive option as 1hand + shield has.
***IN SUMMARY --- All of the combat styles in this game are viable methods of dispatching enemies from what I have experienced so far (although at current time I would avoid using the spear if you can) despite what people say about "omg 2hand>all". Below I will detail simply the effectiveness of each fighting style with an S/A/B/C grade (S=best)
Ranged Combat: S for Striking Distance, Speed/Damage Vary based on weapon choice, A for defense (due to range)
2hand sweep weapon: A for Striking Distance, B for Speed, B for Damage, B for Defense
2hand spear weaon: B for Striking Distance, C for Speed, B for Damage, C+ for Defense
1 handed+shield: C for Striking Distance, B+ for Speed, C+ for Damage, S for Defense
2x 1handed *SWORD*: C+ for Striking Distance, A for Speed, S for Damage, C+ for Defense
2x 1handed *DAGGER*: C- for Striking Distance, S for Speed, A for Damage, C for Defense

The Importance of Armor Penetration
Armor penetration is a stat found on every weapon, and is arguably the most important stat. Armor penetration is compared to the monsters level to deal how much bonus damage or reduced damage you deal based on the difference. Having a HIGHER armor penetration than monster level grants you a large damage bonus, having a LOWER armor penetration than monster level starts greatly reducing the damage you would deal compared to your weapons "damage per hit" having EQUAL armor penetration will cause you to deal the base amount of damage your weapon deals.
***IN SUMMARY --- Armor penetration is a HUGELY important offensive stat, and determines the "threat level" of monsters you can handle without difficulty or reduced killspeeds. Having even 2-3 points above or below a monsters level has HUGE differences in results.

The Importance of Armor Value
Similar to armor penetration, it performs the same sort of function in reverse. (Acts as if the monsters armor penetration... AKA it's level...is being compared against your armor... AKA your level) If your armor value is LOWER than the monster level you will start taking increased damage per hit, If your armor is HIGHER than the monster level you will take reduced damage per hit (compared to the monsters base damage) If you have EQUAL armor, you will take base damage (usually 15-20 damage per hit on average but varies per monster type/skill used)
***IN SUMMARY --- Pretty much the same as armor penetration summary but for your life compared to the enemies life. Enemies 2-3 levels above will CRUSH you hard (50-60 damage a hit!) Enemies 2-3 levels below will barely hit you (5-10 damage)

How Your Armor Value Is Calculated
Armor value isn't calculated as you would normally expect in starbound, your armor is AN AVERAGE of your pieces of armor not an ADDED total (like terraria, minecraft or typical RPGs) and on top of this, different pieces have heavier "weights" towards your armor total.
*This is using my Glitch's steel armor racial armor*
Chest piece: 15 armor, alone it grants 11 armor
Helm piece: 15 armor, alone it grants 9 armor
Boots piece: 15 armor, alone it grants 7 armor
However, together they cannot exceed 15 armor despite individually being able to grant 27 armor.

UTILIZING YOUR STAR SHIP(0005)
-Your mobile home of the cosmos, the ship has many functions which i will detail below

Storage
By default your ship has a 64 slot storage, more can be added via chests or storage containers if you so desire

Replicating With The 3D Printer
The 3D printer is capable of replicating an object for the cost of pixels only. (No materials are used in creating a replica other than pixels) So far the only objects that can be replicated are seeds and objects that have a value in pixels (no equipment, tools or building blocks)
-An item must first be sacrificed to the 3D printer in order to learn the blueprint (will always learn the blueprint)
-To SCAN using the 3d printer, open the 3d printer menu then open your inventory... drag and drop the item you want to scan (there will be a pixel fee for scanning) into the top middle of the 3d print screen on top of the red crosshairs (it will then show you the fee required) and hit SCAN button just below

The Tech Center
As you explore planets you may eventually come across a technology blueprint/schematic, These are accessories equipped to your character that give you special abilities ranging from stat boosts to special types or movements (jet packs or fast dashes) or vehicles and more
-Once you have found and used a technology blueprint go to your tech center to equip it to your character

The Fuel Depot
Without fuel your luxury star ship is just a floating hunk of metal. This is what really gets your engines going...fuel is required for travel between other planets.
Currently Known Fuels:
Unrefined Wood - Grants 1 fuel per wood
Coal Ore - Grants 2 fuel per coal ore
Uranium Ore - Grants 4 fuel per uranium ore *Not worth it!*

The Navigation Computer
This almost deserves a section of it's own but I will go over the functionality here.
-Set Home: Sets the current planet you are on as your home planet (Effectively saves the location of the planet)
-Go Home: Will direct your star map to the planet you set as your home planet.
-Find Random: Will find a random area of the star map for the current sector you are in
-X/Y Co-Ordinates: Allows you to view a specific part of the map (Extremely useful in multiplayer when you want to travel to the same planet as your partner/s)
-Go: Travels to the currently selected planet... consumes fuel to travel
***Note: Right Click/Left Click allows you to zoom in and out of the different "tiers" of the star map***

******IMPORTANT NOTE: NEVER TRAVEL TO A PLANET WITHOUT ENOUGH FUEL TO LEAVE IT AS WELL!!! SOME PLAYERS HAVE BECOME TRAPPED ON HARSH PLANETS WITH EXTREME DIFFICULTY TO GET BACK OFF THE PLANET******




ADDITIONAL CONTROLS(0006)
-There are a handful of controls that aren't normally listed in the game

Shift: With a pickaxe equipped it will mine a single square instead of 3 by 3..with anything else, will cause you to walk
Hold Ctrl: Allows you to look further than the screen shows (pans it away from your character)
Shift+Left Click: Move an item from your inventory to a storage container (will move a full stack) and vice versa
Right Click: Right clicking a stack of items will split the stack in half (creating a 2nd stack)
Q: Drops currently held item (be careful not to throw vital items away on accident )
Alt: Highlights objects that you can interact with (as well as player names)



BIOMES(0007)
-Every world falls under one of the biomes you can see a biome on a planets information screen in your navigation computer
-ARID- Arid planets have much less trees/foliage than forests, normal temperature and a good amount of ores
-MOON- Moon planets tend to drop temperature very quickly, but contain a lot of ores, with no trees
-FOREST- Forest planets are just "ordinary" planets
-DESERT- Deserts are rich in ore, low amount of trees...Can contain an Oasis with different plants/trees
-SNOW- Drops temperature quickly, Most trees give ice blocks rather than wood
-JUNGLE- Mostly overgrown plants instead of trees, similar to forest otherwise (Great for stocking bandages!)
-GRASSLAND- Almost entirely flowers as foliage


CREDITS:
Startopia
BeReasonable
Siveria
Cypress_Z
Kaine
SpeedXaaa


Zero(pS)'s Guide For Beginners~!
http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/starbound-101-a-beginners-guide.37746/

 

Also to note for players like me, press e to harvest crops and such and don't keep destroying them with other various tools LOL. Took me awhile for that to dawn upon me.

 

Will add on, didn't even think of it because i have never harvested or planted a plant.. My flora named Zyra lives entirely on bacon strips that i bought from a flora merchant haha!~

 

very good guide, i couldnt said it better myself, also if you lack pixels, just explore your surface world with the oneshot weapon mentioned earlier, you should get tons of pixels

 

You can also use wood for fuel, 1 wood=1 fuel, and its pretty plentiful if you strip forest a new planet.

 

Added the wood use as fuel (Didn't actually know this myself but i spawned on a half tree/half plant fibre plants planet so i dont have wood to spare >.<)
*Also added how to make money*

 

if you find a village loot a kitchen counter then you can make bread and burgers, these heal too!!!

 

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for making this thread!

I was so tired of seeing people complaining that this game is too hard. it is NOT! you just have to know how to play! this isnt cod.
i was worried the devs might make everything "easier" where everything is instant gratification. lets hope this doesnt happen. there are quadrillions of planets to do your thing and level and explore...... i dont expect this game to hand me everything max level on the first planet let alone 10-20.

I will be using this to redirect people who say such QQ plz nerf this plz make ezr etc things

 

Make sure you equip your armor in the armor slot and not in the cosmetic slot. I spent a bunch of time dying over and over thinking the armor was as worthless as paper. It goes in the same slot your clothes start in, the clothes do NOT go in a separate clothing slot under the armor.

 

Quick question How do you use the L and R hotkeys?

 

They are just your default keys, as far as i can tell you don't want to equip anything to them, as every tool/block has its own purpose of L/R.
They signify left click/right click.

Hope that helps

@ForceInfinity, that's pretty much why i made this thread, wanted to help calm the masses and share my own insights and discoveries and pool other peoples as well (i learn while helping people learn, everybody wins )

 

We need answers to: How do you repair and how do you dye things? Inter item mixes don't seem to work. Hold and rightclick? What?

 

When you you craft select the multiplier box and then press '9', repeating, and the game will craft up to whatever maximum you have. This is helpful if you want to stock up on a large amounts of bandages.

 

repair items by clicking raw ore that is the same material as the thing you want to repair, and then right clicking the item.
dunno about dye, maybe it's the same?

Also a random thing I just found: you lose heat much slower underground

 

For the pickaxe repair tip: Currently Copper Ore can repair all grades of pickaxes.

 

The repair tip was already in the "things you might not know section"

I bumped it up to a main bulletin point

 

L/R represent your Left and Right hands when you have no items equipped (For example, I have a two-handed sword, I hit the shortcut again.) The item that you have in your left hand will then be equipped when you have 'nothing' equipped - for me, I put torches here, as you can quickly swap between sword and torches as needed.

Furthermore, when holding a one-handed weapon you will also hold, if possible, the item in the Right hand slot - this means you can hold a one-handed weapon at the same time as a flashlight.

Hope this helps people!

 

Aaah, very cool and great to know, will add to post with credits to you good sir

 

Gonna be editing this big time and formatting it much better, didn't think there'd be this much of a positive reception to it

 

With a new game like this, it's great when the community can all pitch in to help each other get over some of the less-than obvious hurdles.