Oxygen Not Included: Beginners Tutorial, Tips, and Tricks!

what's going on everybody this is max the catfish and today i've got my top 20 beginner's tips for oxygen not included whether you're just starting off in on i for the first time or maybe you're picking the game up after a long hiatus here are 20 spoiler spoiler-free beginner tips to set you off on the right path for your first 100 cycles as always if you find this video helpful don't forget to like and subscribe and let me know down in the comments if there are other types of videos like this that you would like to see made for oxygen included tip number one it's okay to start on no sweat difficulty when you first start up the game you're going to be given the option to choose a difficulty and you should really play the difficulty that helps you enjoy the game the most in no sweat you still have to face all the challenges in the game but it makes your duplicants a little bit hardier they're more resistant to disease they're easier to please and they require a little bit less food to keep sated but you'll still have to consider hygiene and decor and cuisine throughout the game so all the challenges are still there choose the difficulty mode that helps you enjoy the game the way that you like to enjoy it and don't be afraid to go back and turn the difficulty down or up if you want to tip number two probably most often question asked is what biome do i choose and straight out if you're just starting the game or maybe you're getting into it again i recommend you choose the terra biome it's the most beginner friendly biome to start in and i've got a seed for the tara start that i'll link down in the description that you can use and it is the most beginner-friendly seed i have found in my searching there's plenty of water there's a lot of food for you to start with in the game so you don't have to worry about scrambling to come up with some of the solutions to these things you can settle in and focus on actually learning the game's mechanics it's a really great option to start but you don't have to go ahead and choose the biome that you're most interested in just know that each of the other biomes out there have a little bit of a difficult spin to them and you're gonna have to use different strategies to approach each one the terror biome really is the best start for beginners tip number three you're starting duplicants now there's a lot of talk about which duplicates are best to pick at the beginning of the game but i'm going to give you some general guidelines for this i like to start the game off with a dedicated digging duplicant a builder and mechanist and a researcher maybe a researcher with agility i love having a duplicate that's really good at digging it makes digging through a lot of those harder materials in the game much faster and because you're going to be doing so much digging early in the game having a dedicated digging duplicate is awesome some people prefer to have a digging and building duplicant combined into one and that's also fine all of your duplicates end up taking on responsibilities that extend past their skills just because a duplicate is really good in digging doesn't mean they will never build they just build a little bit slower so keep that in mind it's okay to mix and match here and play with what starting dupes you like but i think this is a really good set when you're choosing duplicates try to avoid a couple of the really negative traits in the game mouth breather and bottomless stomach will find you using up more oxygen and food in the early game which can be really really frustrating to new players the narcoleptic anemic noodle arms and slow learner traits tend to slow your dupes down a lot the anemic trait especially makes duplicates run incredibly slowly and it's a really rough trait to have in the early game and i would recommend you avoid the allergies negative trait a duplicate with allergies will end up having a stress debuff on them which causes them to get closer and closer to that negative reaction whereas the duplicates that don't have allergies actually get a decor bonus and thus a morale bonus from being next to those kind of plants lastly you should be aware of the negative traits that forbid a duplicant from working on a roll a duplicate with plus seven digging and tryptophobia may as well have no skill points at all in fact i would recommend that you avoid tryptophobia and unconstructive altogether if you can especially in your first three dupes now that you've started your game it's time to focus on the essentials remember this very easy to remember acronym bathrooms bedrooms power oxygen research food bubba porf focus on bubble poor from the beginning of the game and you can survive for over a hundred cycles with just this technology so let's break down each one of these essentials tip number five is looking at bathrooms you need at least two to three out houses and you should probably put in two to three wash basins as well when you create a bathroom you should put the toilets behind the sinks and make sure that the sinks are only set to be used in one direction this makes it so that duplicates wash their hands after using the toilet but they don't waste water washing their hands when they enter the bathroom because it really doesn't have an effect on the game wash basins when used this way help prevent the spread of germs and food poisoning and don't forget that they require a source of water which you can provide using a hand water pump next up is bedrooms duplicants can't sleep if it's too bright too loud or not oxygenated if you place bedrooms towards the top of your base oxygen tends to settle above carbon dioxide because it's a lighter gas and it makes it so that your bedrooms always have enough oxygen for your duplicants to breathe throughout the night if they don't they'll wake up midnight cycle in the starting terra biome you might see shine bugs flying around and if they get a little too close to your beds they'll actually wake your duplicants up because of the light that they create keep the door to your bedroom closed and maybe give yourself a little bit of space between the door and your first bed if you've got shine bugs flying around the area lastly loud sleeper duplicants are going to wake everybody up around them so they kind of need their own bedroom or at least some separation from your other duplicates beds or they're going to wake everybody up in the middle of the night some would recommend avoiding a loud sleeper but honestly you can work around it and in the beginning of the game you have enough space to work with so i don't mind this negative trait so much next tip is about power i make this mistake all the time but always always remember to add a battery in your first power setup with a manual generator otherwise your duplicates will run on the treadmill forever and it's going to waste power and time personally i delay creating coal generation until maybe cycle 10 or so even with a small number of duplicates you're not really using that much power and a cold generator without the automation to prevent the wastage of coal will produce co2 that just floods your base tip number eight is about oxygen make sure you distribute your oxygenators around your base to prevent them from reaching max pressure if you put two oxygenators together they might over pressurize that area and they'll stop producing oxygen even if other areas of your base don't have enough that said one of my general tips for anybody starting off the game is don't overdo it on oxygenators algae terrariums or coal generators only build what you need when you notice that you need it it turns out that you're under producing oxygen go ahead and create another oxygenator to be able to create more for your colony you're soon going to learn how to plan ahead for expansions for your colony and this will come naturally to you but if you create too many of these in the early game you'll end up running out of stuff like algae which is really essential for creating oxygen at this stage of the game a little sub tip you can hear about gases gases each have their own density and this determines where gases end up in your colony heavy gases like co2 and natural gas are going to naturally sink to the bottom of your base and light gases like hydrogen flow to the top of your base oxygen kind of settles itself firmly in the middle between the two and your goal is to have more oxygen than any other gas in your livable area try to keep that as a focus this next tip is about food one thing that's important to know is duplicates need to eat but they don't need to drink the uses for clean water are primarily for washing themselves and in the production of higher quality food duplicants will eat raw anything meal lice straight from the mealwood plant raw meat from critters etc but you can turn these raw resources into tastier meals using kitchen equipment that you can get in the research tree the microbe musher is your start and the grill also are the easiest ways to convert base food products into more advanced meals these will give your duplicants more calories for their buck but my tip here is to make sure that you place a wash basin inside of your kitchen and set it so that duplicants have to use the wash basin before entering the kitchen itself just like with bathrooms and in real life you want to make sure that your cook has clean hands before preparing that lice loaf otherwise your duplicants might find themselves with a nasty case of food poisoning tip number 10 when you're first starting off don't worry so much about critter ranching it's really enticing and it's incredibly fun and rewarding and a great feature of the game but it can wait until you've learned the game's basics let me know if you'd like a beginner's ranching guide tutorial down in the comments next is a really simple tip that everybody can factor into their base and that is about the ration box at the beginning of the game you're given a ration box with a bunch of nutrient bars and these don't spoil so you've got a couple of cycles to get your food up and running once you get meal lice and other perishable food you need to worry about spoilage but if you take a ration box and put it in a carbon dioxide environment it delays the spoilage of food considerably because carbon dioxide naturally sinks to the bottom of the base you can create a co2 trap and place the ration box down there and that will prevent the spoilage of food from happening too quickly you can also put the co2 trap and ration box in your kitchen or next to your dining room if you'd like for easier access tip number 12 don't print too many duplicates at the start of the game remember each duplicate needs an amount of oxygen and food every cycle and if you print too many duplicates too early you might not be able to produce the resources required to keep them all alive it's okay and sometimes preferable to take the non-duplicate rewards especially those in the form of food ice for melting down into water and construction materials also if you're running really low on food and you're in a bit of a bind a quick source of meat is to kill a batch of critters it's never fun but it might just keep you going for a few more cycles until you get a more permanent solution in place an important note about the printing pod you can always delay your choice of what to print until later but keep this in mind your options in the printing pod will reset whenever you load a save so if you're going to choose one of the options from the printing pod you should do so before the next time you load the game the next tips are about expanding your base tip 13 be careful where you dig digging out from under sand or mud is going to cause these materials to fall and they could trap your duplicates also it's important to be careful around digging around water all three of these can disable buildings and put your duplicates at risk of an early death and one important trick to avoid losing water is to build a basin around your clean water that's about four tiles high this prevents the water from accidentally spilling out as you dig around it or worse from mixing with other non-potable liquids and it's four high because the hand pump can go exactly four tiles deep into the water supply before it gets cut off that leads into this next tip if you hear the dreaded alert sound pause the game and address this issue immediately this is often duplicates that have gotten themselves trapped somewhere and don't have oxygen or can't breathe and if you don't address it quickly that duplicate might die in fact i would say as a greater tip don't be afraid to pause and plan it's okay to pause the game for a little bit and think about what your next moves will be you don't have to keep the game running constantly tip number 15 the starting biome contains pockets of oxygen and carbon dioxide that you should be aware of if you're running low on oxygen a short-term solution might be to dig out a big pocket of o2 and it could buy you enough time to build up some oxygen diffusers or algae terrariums that you need to supply oxygen for the rest of your colony but your most valuable resource here is the oxalite it's that blue-green material that outputs temperate clean oxygen until it's completely used up this tip is very important don't dig up oxalite if you do you'll only get half of the amount of oxygen that the oxalite would have provided otherwise you should let clusters of oxalate naturally decay and then feel free to build over them whenever they disappear as for those pockets of carbon dioxide you're going to need to dig into these eventually just make sure you have room to hold that co2 somewhere when it goes into your base otherwise it might make areas of your colony unlivable tip number 16 the game will let you know in the upper left-hand corner if there's something you could be doing a little bit better especially if your duplicants get a skill point skill points increase the ability of your duplicants to do stuff like digging and cooking and constructing but make sure you don't skill up duplicates past their morale if you do so your duplicates will become stressed under the weight of the responsibilities that they have but there are a number of ways you can increase morale in the early game you can create rooms like the barracks and the latrine and just by entering and using these rooms your duplicates get a morale boost that allows you to give them more skill points throughout the game tip number 17 if a duplicant is overstressed give them a vacation and something fun to do it's better than triggering their stress response and it gives you some time to figure out what went wrong to do this go into the schedule pane create a new schedule that is all time off and probably some sleeping time as well and assign the duplicant to that schedule when a duplicate is under a lot of stress or their stress is increasing they will have a lot of negative stress reactions in their duplicate pain check the info pain of each of your duplicates to figure out what's going wrong maybe they're not sleeping well enough or maybe they don't have access to enough oxygen or food maybe they're overstressed because of the number of responsibilities that they have or you put in too many skill points into a duplicate without giving them the morale required to support those if you get yourself into a tricky spot where a duplicant doesn't have the morale to support the number of skill points that they have you can build a building called the skill scrubber and remove all of their skill points resetting this source of stress in the upper left hand corner of the screen is the stress meter that shows you the highest stress percentage of the duplicates that you have and as that number goes down you can assign that duplicant back to their normal schedule tip number 18 expand slowly and methodically think first about what new rooms and functions you need before you build them if you dig out too much space too quickly you might find that your oxygen is spread too thin throughout your base or that dangerous gases like co2 occupy more space than your oxygen does if you make the mistake of expanding a bit too quickly you can always close off unused areas of your base with tiles and then open them up as you grow into them naturally tip number 19 when you first start the game you start in what is called a biome it's an environment with certain materials a temperature different gases that are made available to you take a look at the size of your starting biome and especially at the temperature of that biome as you build and expand always be aware of gases liquids and temperatures in the surrounding biomes it's probably not a good idea to expose your colony to a big hot pocket of hydrogen did i just say hot pocket the filter options in the upper right hand corner of your screen are your best friend in figuring all this out if your colony gets too hot plants can't grow duplicates get uncomfortable and the eventual breakdown of your colony happens try to prevent this by preemptively using temperature padding if you place this padding around the edge of your base it can really help prevent massive temperature fluctuations that are often the early downfall of beginner bases but ultimately in this game eventually your colony is going to fall apart my last tip for you is recognize when it's time to start over but also don't give up too soon oxygen not included is not a simple game and there are a lot of lessons that you're going to learn at the beginning of playing but when things start to spiral out of control maybe your colony is too hot or it's too cold maybe you can't produce enough food or you don't have any more sources of food or you've run out of an essential product for survival like water or dirt algae or coal it might be time to start over and that's okay remember that each play through is a learning lesson stick with it keep trying and learn from your past mistakes you're gonna make it further and further in the game each time you try those were my top 20 beginners tips for oxygen not included but there are a lot more tips to go let me know down in the comments what types of videos you'd like to see from me to be created here i already have some thoughts in my mind about what i'd like to put on but i would love to hear from you what you would like to see otherwise don't forget to like and subscribe and go check out my twitch channel where i'm streaming three days a week playing games like oxygen not included rim world satisfactory and others and i'll see you either here on our next video or live on twitch see you soon i don't know what's going on we're gonna kill it so it doesn't keep bugging us

Channel: MaxTheCatfish

Views: 241,503

Keywords: oxygen not included starter guide, how to, how to play oxygen not included, oxygen not included tips, oxygen not included tutorial, oxygen not included beginners guide, oxygen not included gameplay, oxygen not included guide, oxygen not included quick start guide, oxygen not included getting started, oxygen not included mid game guide, oxygen not included spaced out, oxygen not included dlc, oxygen not included 2021, tips and tricks, klei, max, the, catfish, maxthecatfish, oni

Id: svFB4VEduJk

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/jmucchiello]

Placed I disagree. YMMV.

Power: Coal at cycle 10? That's really early and probably wasteful without smart batteries.

Never recommend the microbe musher.

Ranch early and often.

Don't delay what you are taking from the pod as this just delays the next reward. (There are exceptions to this, like make sure you have a path for pacu before taking them. But in general, don't wait on the pod.)

[u/[deleted]]

Nice guide, good tips for newer players.

[u/maxthecatfish]

One correction that was brought up: Oxylite actually produces the same amount of O2 mined and unmined. But when mined it produces O2 FAR slower than unmined. So try to leave it unless you have a specific purpose for the mined oxylite!