This guide is intended to answer any questions you have about skills and any related mechanics. There will be a emphasis on secret or not obvious features and mechanics. I'm not going to mention cheese tactics, but you can probably deduce them if you read carefully.

There will be some minor spoilers regarding technologies you can research.

This isn't recommended to read if you've never played the game. It's written for people that have at least a tiny bit of experience.

This is a work in progress simply because there are a lot of characters, many facets to skills, and the game will be constantly changing as it is early access. I can't test it all.

As a result, SOME OF THIS IS WRONG. I've done my best to mark what is an educated guess but I probably missed something on my first pass. Anyways ...

It will be released as incomplete but I will update it as more mechanics and "secrets" are discovered. Anyone who has something to add should write a comment below, and I'll add as necessary.

This guide was originally created for version 0.11.221102 released on 03/11/22 .

It was updated on 11/11//2023 for version 1.20.231026 (Robots and Guardians) released on 07/11/2023 .

Every character has three stats that describe their physical condition: movement, manipulation, and consciousness. These stats can directly and indirectly affect skills and tasks that use skills. The higher the stat, the better they will do that skill that's connected to it -- the lower, the worse.

Movement -- This is how fast your character moves. It affects walk and run speed. There are no skills that are directly tied to this skill, but many of them are indirectly affected by it. The main way to decrease this stat is to be injured. Darkness also decreases this stat by 20%! If a character's movement stat falls to zero, they must be carried to their bed and treated. Heals that partially fail will give a movement debuff and a psychological debuff for a short time.

As I will mention throughout this guide, movement speed increases the effectiveness of any skill where the character will have to move a lot. The less time spent moving, the faster you will level up and the more efficient you will be. This makes characters that move faster (Simon and Laara, for example) very good. Characters that move slow are not so great but aren't a big deal if they're an 'indoor' character where they won't be moving much anyways.

Pushing this stat above 100% is useful -- you'll run/walk around faster.

Manipulation -- This is the big one when it comes to skills. It affects how well your character can use their hands. Think of it like dexterity in classic RPGs. All skills except research are affected by this. Keeping this stat up will make all tasks go faster. Darkness gives -40% debuff to this stat. Getting a permanent penalty to this stat is very bad. I don't believe it's possible to decrease this stat to zero, so I don't know what would happen if that happened.

Pushing this stat above 100% does nothing. Therefore any buff to manipulation can only counteract a debuff. A good example would be working in darkness (-40%) and euphoria (+25%). Instead of working 40% slower, you'd work 15% slower. It obviously means getting injured isn't as big of a deal for characters with permanently increased manipulation.

Consciousness -- This is how well your brain works. This does two main things (I think). The first is it affects research and observation speed. I'm not 100% sure on this because it's fairly difficult/atypical to have this stat lowered. The other thing it does, and I'm 100% sure on this, is if your character passes out. Simply put, if it reaches zero, you are knocked out and you have to be carried to bed and healed. Fighting while very tired is a bad idea as a result because just a couple of head blows will result in getting KOed. You don't really have to worry about this stat very much.

I'm unsure if pushing this stat above 100% makes you research/obsreve faster. If someone wants to test it, let me know or post in the commments.

Editor's notes: Nothing really to add except that the euphoria buff increases consciousness and manipulation by 15 or 25 (can't remember). This is extremely good. Your characters will do everything better. It's basically the opposite of a breakdown. Caffeine also gives +3 to all stats and makes the tiredness meter go up by 10% in addition to giving a happiness buff. Stacking euphoria and caffeine means maximum efficiency.

Alternatively, tea and smokeleaf relieve pain which will lessen or get rid of the psychological 'pain' debuff while also doing the same for any pain-related movement, manipulation, and consciousness debuffs. Therefore, if a character has lots of injuries, have them drink tea and/or smoke after they are treated so they can work more effectively.

Lastly, checking these three stats is important to understand how the game works. If someone is doing something exceptionally slow, it's probably because one of these stats is low. Find the cause and eliminate it or mitigate it. It's almost always due to a lack of good lighting or injuries.

Some notes on these three factors:

Incapable is self-explanatory. You can't do whatever is related to this skill. I don't know what would happen if you went on an expedition and have an option to level up this skill. Regardless, leveling up a skill that you can't do is a complete waste.

Pacifists (incapable of combat) will not butcher animals. They will haul but not equip weapons. They will haul meat.

Incapable in healing also means not healing themselves. Bad choice to be among the last to leave the planet because the tiniest wound will inevitably lead to them bleeding out/getting sick/being permanently crippled.

Incapable in crafting and intellect explain themselves -- no crafting, tailoring, or researching, observing respectively.

Interested: This does two things. First, when a character is doing anything that uses this skill, they get +20 happiness. Second, they gain double normal experience.

Indifferent: This does two things. First, when a character is doing anything that uses this skill, they get -20 happiness. Second, they get half normal experience.

Characters that are indifferent to combat will butcher animals with no debuff.

No modifier: Character gains normal experience. Their mood doesn't change.

Editor's notes: Incapable skills aren't as bad as they seem because there will be some things a character will never do anyways. For example, it's a good idea to have your builder never farm. Your builder should spend the daylight time building, and your farmer should spend their daylight time farming. If there's nothing to build or farm, there's always something else they can do like craft or cook or cut or scavenge. However, having two characters that are both incapable of the same skill could possibly be a bad match depending on your mix of skills on your team. Being incapable is usually accompanied by being REALLY good at something as a result.

A good example of this is Krysta. She's the best researcher in the game but can't craft. That really doesn't matter a single bit because you're going to have her at the research desk nearly the entire time anyways. She'll research so fast that she can help out with other stuff if there's nothing to research, or you can use the time she saves with her genius trait to also have her cook.

On the other hand, you have poor ole Naras who is a pacifist but excels at nothing. At least he never meltdowns and is an obvious candidate for hauling/handling stuff.

Interested is good, but I don't think it's as good as people think. The happiness buff's two main advantages are that you can get euphoria easier and you can power-through risking a meltdown to get something critically important finished. For example, if someone is severely bleeding and your main healer is risking a meltdown -- having them heal the person will probably avoid that meltdown until they finish healing instead of during healing, which could be very bad.

Double experience is nice, but if this person is dedicated to this skill, they're going to level it very fast anyways. I think the sole exception to this is an interest in crafting. You need winter clothes sooner rather than later and a fur coat requires level 2 but gets no-fail at level 5. Failing a fur coat can mean the difference between a character freezing or being just fine.

Indifferent is obviously not good and you should have this character avoid doing this unless they absolutely must. If they aren't risking a meltdown and it's a one-time thing, it won't matter. You should deprioritize it or even not prioritize it at all and only have them do this if you specifically order it. It's probably better to have someone else get full exp for it.

- Certain character traits are essentially "interested" in hyper mode. Grayson, for example, crafts and constructs anything with wood x4 faster. This means he gets experience x4 times faster when constructing wooden buildings! If you thought that was good, he is also interested in crafting, meaning he can make spears four times as fast and gets x2 the experience. So, he can make 4 spears in the time it takes someone to make 1 AND he gets double exp. A spear gives 600 exp. This means a normal person would make one spear and get 600 exp. Grayson will make 4 spears in that same time and get an insane 4800 experience. That's basically going from level 4 to 5 in just six hours of game time.

Vivien is the same, but with fabrics instead of wood. Her crafting skills starts low but she can craft cloth/fabrics so quickly that she'll be level 6 in no time.

- Movement can drastically affect acquiring some skills. Again, using Grayson as an example, he is a slowpoke meaning he moves 25% slower. So, while he can build fortifications x4 faster, it takes him 25% longer to walk to them. Basically, he's not getting x4 experience; he's getting less than that. Laara, on the other hand, farms twice as fast AND moves 25% faster. Since she has to walk from one plant to the next, she actually gains farming experience more than twice as fast as a normal person. This actually affects all skills because ...

- More time walking = less experience. Sometimes this is unavoidable like building fortifications or running to go cut down some trees*. However, how you design your base is in your control and a good base layout cuts down on walking time. How you should do this is pretty logical. The stove should be near your stored food. Your crafting materials should be near your crafting benches. Your iron ore should be near your smelters. Your silicon should be near your soldering bench/printer etc. You'll get more experience and more items!

*Plant trees near your stockpiles :)

- This is basically the same thing as above but should be stated directly -- faster movement means more resources and experience.

- Crafting, construction, and cooking are useless if you don't have materials to work with. The "gathering" skills are combat (hides, meat), farming (clothblossom, skinbark, and siliconplant for crafting; the rest for cooking), and physical (wood, hay, sticks, stone, ore, silicon outcrops, and scrap metal).

Therefore, think about how to get these "gathering" skills up ASAP so your "building stuff" skills can actually be utilized. Furthermore, having a character with high physical and high crafting isn't the best way to go. Characters should specialize in getting "gathering" skills up or "building stuff" skills up because it's a two step process. 1) get materials 2) use materials to make stuff. A character can't do both so one character needs to get the materials and another needs to use those materials.

- As you probably gathered -- characters that move faster can gain experience faster, sometimes MUCH faster depending on what they are doing. Essentially, the more moving it takes to do something, the faster they will level. So, sowing will go up much faster for the farming skill and cutting trees will make physical good up much faster. Likewise, walking to the research desk is just one trip and they don't move once there so walking slowly doesn't matter.

- Manipulation affects many skills -- namely cooking, crafting, healing, combat, and physical. Therefore, having adequate lighting when doing these things will increase the speed you do them and the exp gained. Injured or ill characters will do these things slower as well.

Combat determines four basic things:

Attack rate: How fast you attack with the equipped weapon. The low number is your speed at level 10. The high number is your speed at level 0.

Hit chance: It's your chance to hit with the equipped weapon. The low number is your chance to hit at level 0. The high number is your chance to hit at level 10.

Crit chance: It's your chance to score a critical hit with the equipped weapon. The low number is your chance to crit at level 0. The high number is your chance to crit at level 10.

Using mechs: At level 3, you can use mechs. Now you can finally play out your Heero Yuy fantasies.

Leveling up combat: The main way to level up combat is fighting raids and hunting game. While shooting/meleeing, you'll slowly gain exp. When a character lands a killing blow/shot, they'll get a one-time exp bonus. There are three other ways to level combat. First, you can punch the pole and shoot the target when relaxing. This gives very little experience, but it will eventually push you from level 0 to 2 in the course of a game. It can also be used if you're REALLY close to leveling up. The other way is the character Jack will sometimes teach other characters if they are near him. Lastly, the berserk meltdown will give combat exp while you break things :p

Additional notes about combat:

Combat is connected to butchering, but butchering does not give combat exp nor does combat skill increase its speed. This is important because not only will a pacifist not hunt, they will also not butcher. They will haul meat, though.

Characters that have hunting as a priority will automatically butcher dead animals if you select those dead animals to be butchered. They will also automatically butcher animals that they kill as a result of hunting but only if there are no other alive animals to kill. If you select multiple animals to be hunted, only the last animal hunted will be automatically butchered. The previous animals will have to be manually selected for butchering.

Slaughtering no longer gives experience. (desert update)

Pacifists can be drafted but they obviously won't fight or equip weapons. Drafting is solely to move them around.

A character's combat skill seems to affect their "unarmed" (knife) ability. They will attack faster, hit more often, and crit more often although I'm unsure what the knife's stats are. In additional, characters with a higher combat skill seem to be more likely to execute a double attack with unarmed and melee (spear and laser pike weapons). This is two attacks in very quick succession.

Crit chance does double damage and sometimes more than double depending on the weapon. It greatly increases the chance of inflicting bleeding.

Hit chance is affected by some other factors beyond the basics. First, shooting while it's dark increases the chance to miss for survivors. This is a very severe debuff because darkness gives a -40% to manipulation.

Second, mobs have an increased chance to miss if you are elevated (EX: in a defense tower). I'm unsure what the % is on this, but it is quite high -- maybe 20%? Mobs also gain this ability if they're in cover, although that almost never happens in the course of normal play but it's something to consider if you're firing up a hill or into a forest.

The manipulation body function affects chance to hit/miss. This means characters with manipulation bonuses are good fighters at night and vice versa. This also means anything that increases/decreases manipulation affects combat at night. This is where a manipulation bonus comes in handy.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure that reported values for hitting/missing assume you have no debuffs (ie -- you're in daylight, with no obstructions and you have no character debuffs). If you have character buffs (injuries) and environmental debuffs (night) the effects are AT LEAST additive. They might even compound on each other but I haven't tested it. You shouldn't be sending characters with lots of injuries to go fight anyways -- just avoid it.

Bleeding is determined by two factors -- combat skill (crit chance) and weapon used. The laser pistol has a low chance for bleeding; the railgun has a high chance for bleeding. The chance to bleed is a hidden value on weapons, but crit chance gives you a general idea of how likely it is to inflict bleeding. Bleeding is important for hunting. You can inflict bleeding, and go do something else because game will almost always die from bleeding. Bleeding is almost useless during raids because mobs die extremely quickly OR you get overwhelmed.

Bleeding wounds can now heal on mobs meaning inflicting bleeding and running away is no longer a 100% way to hunt an animal. The wound might become infected which is a different process that can also lead to death. I'm unsure if bleeding goes away on PCs because I like to keep them alive.

Characters with higher combat are better hunters. They are more likely to kill game without them retaliating because they kill them faster.

Editor's notes about combat:

Combat is a skill that starts out being quite important and decreases in value as time goes on. This is because raids in the beginning of the game are fought only using your characters. When you get to the mid-game, you will have traps, turrets, and flame throwers and these will kill the majority of the mobs during raids. Eventually, raids will get so large that your characters will have very little outcome on the battle*. Still, high combat can tip the scales. Also, hunting is important in the early game as it's a quick way to get food and leather.

* A character with high combat and a pulse rifle can essentially stun lock entire groups of mobs because their chance to hit (stun) and attack rate is increased. This can buy a lot more time for turrets and other survivors to pick them off especially if you combine it with traps.

Combat's main advantage in the mid and late game is expeditions. There are several expeditions where you encounter hostile fauna and a high combat skill can give you a better outcome.

Combat is arguably the least important skill in the game. You can argue that more combat skills = fewer injuries so healing is less important, but good defense planning in combination with crafting/finding weapons is primarily what is going to prevent injuries, not combat skills. There are also many others ways to get injuries/illnesses completely unrelated to fighting (expeditions, random chance, weather conditions, getting sick). That being said, a high level combat character is a good choice to be the last survivor to leave the planet because they can deal with raids not coming through your kill zones, which normally passive fauna seem to do quite often once you switch the radio on.

Things to add/clarify/test:

Figure out the knife's stats.

Construction does four basic known things:

First, it affects what you can build. There is a minimum level to even attempt to construct some more complicated constructions like carbon walls and wood fortifications. The level is on the tooltip for the construction. Devices like traps, turrets, and sensors do not have a minimum.

Second, and probably most importantly, it affects how quickly you build constructions. It's difficult to tell, but it seems like a level 10 character can build things 2.5 to 3 times faster than a level 0 character.

Third, if you are able to repair something. See the first point.

Fourth, how quickly you repair.

How to level up construction: There are only two main ways -- build stuff that you place on the map and repair stuff. While constructing something, exp will slowly be gained. Deconstructing does not give EXP. There are expeditions that can level up construction.

Additional notes about construction:

It's impossible to fail a construction. If you have the minimum level, you will always succeed although it might take a long time for some constructions if you are the minimum level.

Anybody can deconstruct anything. You do not get EXP.

Repairing is prioritized over constructing.

Deconstructing is prioritized over repairing.

So it's deconstruct>repair>construct.

All 3 are governed by the "construct" priority.

Moving a construction is consider "construction" for the purposes of priority and NOT delivery. You get no exp from moving constructions.

Constructing stuff quickly depends on four things -- collection of resources which is usually related to the physical skill, the delivery of those resources which is also connected to the physical skill, sometimes a transformation is need (hay->bricks; rocks ->concrete; ore->metal alloys etc.) and finally the construction skill. See the physical skill for more info.

Editor's notes: Construction is extremely important in the very early to late game. Building stuff quickly means getting your base up quicker (duh) but also has the opportunity benefit of saving time so that the character can focus on doing other stuff. It's usefulness is a bit lower in the very late game (once you start escaping) because you won't be building more stuff. Still, you will be repairing A LOT and the construction skill will save time so you can go do other stuff,

It's highly recommended to start with a character that has a decent construction skill. Getting a basic shelter up is always the first priority in almost any survival situation.

Things to add/clarify: Does construction skill affect construction breakdowns? In-game skill description implies that it does but it doesn't seem to matter or matters very little.

Cooking does three basic things:

First, if you can attempt to cook higher level items.

Second, if you fail or not when cooking an item.

Third, how quickly you cook an item.

Additional notes on cooking:

Anybody can make tea, coffee, and boiled rations with no chance of failure.

Tea and coffee don't give exp and take no crafting time. They do take time to sit on the stove. They give +15 happiness.

Coffee gives the caffinated buff which is +3 manipulation, +3 movement, and +3 consciousness. It's not a lot, but hey you were gonna drink it for the relaxation perks anyways :)

Tea gives the minor pain relief buff which is -10 pain. This can help with moving faster and staying happier after injuries/some illnesses.

Boiled rations can never fail and give 50 exp. It gives +6 happiness.

All the 'soups' never fail at level 2. They give +6 happiness.

All tasty recipes can be attempted at level 3 and never fail at level 5. They give +12 happiness.

All chef's recipes can be attempted at level 5 and never fail at level 7. They give +18 happiness.

A level 10 cook prepares food twice as fast as a level 0 cook.

Some food plus tea+coffee spend time in the oven/on the stove. For complex recipes, less time will be spent preparing it and more time will be spent in the oven depending on the cook's skills. This lets the cook do other things.

The wood stove cooks at the same speed as the electric stove.

The happiness buff from a meal only occurs when you finish the meal.

The happiness from a meal combines with the normal hunger buff/debuff. This means fully eating a meal gives two buffs -- one from the meal and another from being full.

You can interrupt a character eating a meal. They will not gain the happiness buff from the meal but will gain the buff from being full (if they are). They will finish their meal later but it will take the same amount of time to do it. So, if you eat half a meal, interrupt their meal, and finish it later they will take x1.5 times longer to eat the meal in total and get the happiness only after finish it without interruption.

This interrupted meal goes into hammer-space (secret inventory space that you can't access).

Characters that sit down and eat at a table will get a happiness boost. If they don't, they'll get a happiness debuff.

Characters will try to sit and eat at a table if it's reasonably close and there's a chair available.

Characters take a meal with them when they go on an expedition. They'll eat it "on foot" if they get hungry. Occasionally, they won't take a meal and I'm not sure why. If they don't need to eat while on the expedition, it will be dropped on the ground when they return.

Some characters are vegetarians and have a more limited diet. If a dish is vegetarian, it will say in the tooltip.

Food spoilage is an important mechanic to manage. How fast a foodstuff spoils is listed on its tooltip. Setting up proper storage and restrictions is important.

Eating the same dish over and over again causes unhappiness. Eating different dishes causes happiness.

Only characters with cooking priority will deliver ingredients to the stove. Also, only one character per stove will do this. The exception to this is tea/coffee. This is governed by the 'handle' priority.

Editor's notes: You are going to need one person with cooking set as a high priority. They'll naturally make a good secondary crafter or can switch between cooking and researching, especially if their cooking skill is high. Alternatively, they can be a "handler" meaning they flip all the switches and deal with the furnaces.

A proper kitchen will have four things: a stove, a place to put completed meals nearby, raw food storage and a table with chairs nearby. You want to reduce the travel time for your chef but also for people eating so your production chain will be raw food storage->stove->meal storage->kitchen table. It might not seem like a lot, but this person is constantly going to be walking around getting ingredients and putting completed meals in storage.

It's up to you to decide if the extra ingredients and time is worth it regarding the level 2 (tasty) and level 3 (chef's) meals. I think they are, especially when you level up cooking to a high level. Others think it's better to just make two types of soup and have your chef spend more time on something else like crafting than they would otherwise.

Vegetarian might seem like a bad character trait at first, but it's really not that big of a deal. Berries are usually super-easy to obtain in the very early game on the temperate planet and they have no chance of sickness unless they start rotting. You do get a raw food penalty, though. On the desert planet, juice leaf should be pretty much everywhere but it has to be cut down instead of harvested so getting a farm going is important. Juice leaf also has to be cooked into soup to avoid the chance of illness.

Rations are vegetarian and saving a large amount of them is probably just going to burn a hole in your storage so you might as well use them. Still, it's not a bad idea to have 10-20 rations in storage because stuff can also go very wrong and uncooked rations never spoil. Rations can also be eaten raw for no psychological debuff.

Crafting affects three things:

First, if you can attempt to craft an item.

Second, if you fail or not (or partially fail).

Third, how quickly you craft.

Additional notes about crafting:

There are three results from crafting items: success, partial fail, and fail. If you succeed, the item has 100% durability. If you partially fail, the item has 50% durability. If you fail, you don't get the item. In all cases, the ingredients are expended.

If you succeed or partial fail, you get the experience. If you completely fail, you DO NOT get experience so both time and ingredients are completely wasted.

Experience is only gained when a project is finished.

Stations that are affected by crafting are: oil press, crafting bench, tailoring bench, and soldering bench.

All other production buildings are governed by the "handling" priority except the drying racks. These stations do not give any experience.

The drying racks are governed by the "delivery" or "hunting" priority.

If a station has an ongoing project and something else is built in the queue, the character will take the unfinished item and place it in available storage (if any).

The "time to make" in an item's tooltip assumes a level 0 crafter.

A level 10 crafter seems to work x3 faster than a level 0 crafter. (needs to be confirmed).

Editor's notes: You're going to need a full-time crafter pretty much ASAP. First it'll be bandages from scrap cloth, then basic weapons, then winter coats/hats. A secondary crafter on a second workbench is often a good idea.

Having a high level crafter from day 0 is basically essentially. Getting basic weapons and having no chance of failing when making them is important to avoid cascading failure from lost time from injuries in the very early game. When winter comes, you should have winter coats for everybody unless they have synthetic armor which is just as good regarding the cold.

Vivian is highly recommended if you want to survive on very hard and above difficulty on the temperate planet as you won't need just coats, you'll need hats too.

Spears are probably underrated. They significantly increase the melee range and damage compared to the knife. Having one or two characters with spears and 1-3 with ranged weapons is ideal for early game raids. Of course, getting lucky and getting high tech weapons from scavenging not only is great for fighting and hunting in the early game, it saves you time at the crafting bench.

In the mid-game, you're going to need a lot of fuel. Fuel has no fail at level 6 which is quite high for such a necessary item. You might need to babysit your secondary crafter if they have level 3-4 crafting and only allow your main crafter to attempt fuel.

As of the desert patch -- tailoring clothes at the tailoring bench has its own priority. You don't need a separate crafter and tailor (although that can sometimes be a good idea), but you can simply adjust the tailoring and crafting priorities as needed depending on what is more important at the time.

Things to add/clarify:

How much faster is a level 10 crafter compared to a level 0?

Farming does three things:

1. How quickly you sow a plant

2. How quickly you harvest a plant

3. If you fail or not while harvesting

4. If you succeed or fail on a taming attempt.

Notes about farming:

There's no chance to fail when sowing.

Sowing gives little exp, but as mentioned, you can't fail.

Failing DOES give experience. If you don't care about yields, you can get some experience this way.

The increase in harvest speed seems to be x2 faster. (needs to be confirmed)

The fail rate is as it seems. For level 3 no-fail plants, the fail rate is: 0=30%; 1=20%; 2=10%; 3=0%

For level 5 no-fail plants, the fail rate is: 0=40%; 1=32%; 2=24%; 3=16%; 4=8%; 5=0%

How fast a crop grows depends on three things: soil quality, temperature, and rainfall.

What kind of soil you need depends on the crop. You can see ideal places for crops by selecting them in the build menu and seeing the color of the grid.

There are 5 types of soil: loam (100%), silt (75%) clay (50%), sand (25%), gravel (0%) and infertile soil (impossible for all crops). Note that these levels are for most crops, not all.

Generally speaking, better soil conditions depend on three factors: being at the bottom of a hill/mountain, being near water, being flatland. The ideal geography for most plants would be a lake on one side, a mountain on the other, and mostly flat land between.

Chew roots are hardy plants and grow well one tier below other plants. So, they can grow at 100% in silt.

Heptogonia basically grows in the opposite soil conditions as normal plants. It's 100% in gravel but 25% in loam.

Grain grass grows +15% better in all soil types. So, it grows at 90% in silt, not 75%.

You can't exceed 100% soil growth.

Plants have three characteristics -- Hit points, grow time, and harvest time.

Hitpoints of plants with be reduced when they are above or below their ultimate temperature range (listed on the tooltip). Hitpoints will also be reduced when they are snacked on by fauna. When HPs reach zero, the plant dies and needs to be replanted. If this is out in the wild, it will be permanently removed from the map. If temperature goes inside it's tolerable range, it will start regenerating.

Grow time refers to fruit plants only meaning plants that are not destroyed when harvested. A fruit plant will need to grow first, and then it will start producing fruit after that. This means it can take a significant amount of time to get your first harvest, but you'll never need to replant unless its HP is reduced to zero. Grow time works exactly the same as harvest time (see next point below).

Harvest time is affected by soil quality, temperature, rain fall and heat waves/toxic ash. Soil quality is explained above.

Ideal growth temperature is NOT what's in the tooltip. That's if the plant literally starts taking damage or not. Growth seems to start when the temperature is several degrees above the minimum and stops several degrees below its maximum temperature. If it's between those ranges but not over the ultimate minimum/maximum, growth will stop but damage won't happen. Think of it like this:

Dying->no growth->growth->no growth->dying
Cold-->Cool-------->Ideal----->Hot-------->Too hot

Rainfall increases growth temperature by +20% on the temperate map, 100% on the desert map, and 5% on the tropical map. This CAN be boosted to over 100% for growth and harvest times.

Heat waves and toxic ash slow growth in the opposite way as rainfall does. Heat waves do this because it pushes the temperature above its normal tolerance. Therefore, it can be a good idea to trigger heatwaves during winter -- especially towards the end of winter -- because it can heal plants or get them producing faster.

Berry-type plants (fruitbrushes, beefberries, teaball trees, barrel cactus, and tall cactuses) only need to be planted once because they are fruits. All other crops need to be replanted.

Wild plants obey the same rules -- wild berries can be harvested forever. That's something to consider when building an early-game shelter. You can even have wild plants within your compound if they are ideally placed. This can be a good idea if available because wild berry plants can grow on top of each other and take up a lot less room.

Farming is governed by the manipulation function. The higher the manipulation function, the faster they will harvest/sow.

The mulchtube plant will slowly improve soil quality in addition to giving small amount of syrup. It can't improve gravel. If your purpose is just to improve soil quality, don't harvest the plants and just let them sit there until it turns to loam.

Giant's grass will also improve soil quality. As a bonus, herbivores will snack on giant's grass meaning you can plant some giant's grass, let your herbivores snack, and all-the-while it improves soil quality. The herbivores might destroy some of the plant, but it's still a far less time intensive than feeding them slop.

Energy crystals work the opposite way of mulchtube, they decrease soil quality. Because of that, it's important to harvest them as soon as they are ready and then probably switch the field to mulchtube/giant's grass to improve the quality of the soil.

I'm not sure about the specifics of taming beyond the minimum required farming level to attempt the tame. A failed tame results in the creature attacking the tamer if it's a carnivore or being untamable for 3? days if it's an herbivore. Aggressive creatures that are intelligent need to be pacified with a pacifier crossbow before you can attempt to tame them. The pacifier deals consciousness damage which KOs a creature when its consciousness hits 0 so it has uses beyond taming because you can KO and then slaughter the creature. This works well on creatures with a lot of HPs like Ulfen. Alternatively, you can use a pulse rifle and give animals a ton of concussions which usually knock it out before you kill it. Then, you can tame it or slaughter it. Because you're a nice master, you should probably heal it now as well.

You don't really need to tame more than two animals of any type if you plan to have a lot of them. Just tame a male and a female, keep them happy, have them sleep next to each other, and you'll have babies in no time. However, if you want to get a large herd in a short amount of time -- tame several animals all at once and have just one or two males and the rest females. Don't worry about Hapsburg syndrome.

Editor's notes:

Surveying the soil is a very important consideration when choosing a spot to settle down. Therefore, becoming familiar with the crops and what soils they can grow well in is important because you won't have discovered all the crop species before making this decision.

Putting your fields near each other is an obvious way to increase efficiency. Considering the above, remember you can put chew roots in silt for 100%, grain grass in silt for 90%, and heptagonia in gavel for 100%.

Farming involves a lot of walking, so a character's movement stat greatly affects their experience gain and yield.

Peaceful fauna like ulfen and drakka will snack on your crops. Enclose your crops to deter this.

Sometimes, fences aren't enough and these peaceful animals will break through your fences to get to your crops. Shooting them once usually stops this.

Alternatively, you can build traps at the entrance to your death corridor and they'll basically always get bleed and eventually die -- free meat/hides!

In addition to that, you can have someone with a high combat skill and a railgun become your pest controller. Setup a defense tower in the middle of your fields so they can cover the whole area.

An animal that is selected to be hunted will activate any motion sensor and their corresponding turrets. Any character that has "hunting" as a priority will automatically slaughter these dead animals, even if they don't have a weapon equipped.

Sowing a field can a be a no-risk way to level up someone with no farming or very low farming skills.

Healing does 2 things:

1. Chance to fail or partial fail a heal

2. Speed of applying a heal

Additional notes on healing:

Healing is governed by the manipulation body function. Characters with a high manipulation heal faster and vice versa. This makes lighting important.

A failed heal causes infection. It sometimes needs to be attempted again (utter failure).

A partial fail isn't obvious at first. But when the initial wound heals, they might get a "painful scar" modifier which is a slight penalty to movement/manipulation. This modifier can't be treated and just goes away after a couple of days.

When a character heals themselves, they have a much higher chance for a partial fail. It seems their infection chance is not affected.

The "impeccable healer" trait means a healer will never fail a heal, even on themselves. They can still partial fail.

A level 10 healer is twice as fast as a level 0 healer. (needs confirmation, might be x3)

Bleeding will never heal on its own.

The wounds are prioritized by what consumable is required to treat the wound. First aid kits are the highest priority followed by bandages, then antibiotics, then nothing. This means a wound that needs a bandage has the same priority as a acid burn which also requires a bandage but doesn't cause bleeding.

Untreated wounds will sometimes also become infected if left untreated.

If a character is all patched up, there's no need for them to continue laying in bed. They might move slowly, but their HP regeneration seems to be exactly the same.

There are 4 main types of ailments: superficial wounds, deep wounds, life-threatening wounds, and infections/illnesses

Superficial wounds are just a debuff. The character won't bleed and a healer doesn't need a consumable to treat it. It can become infected from time/mistreatment (failed heal). It will never heal on its own. They can partial fail. They are quick to treat.

Deep wounds are serious. They do everything a superficial wound does. On top of that, they cause bleeding and a doctor will need a bandage/healing balm, or a first aid kit. Because of this, it's always a good idea to have a supply of bandages for deep wounds. They have a higher chance to fail/partial failure and give more severe debuffs before/after treatment. They take longer to treat than a superficial wound.

Life-threatening wounds are the most serious ailment in the game. They are a more extreme version of a deep wound and can ONLY be treated with a first aid kit -- not a bandage/healing balm. That's why you want bandages for deep wounds and first aid kits for these. It seems like they can sometimes cause incurable debuffs to a character such as brain damage. They take longer to treat than a deep wound.

Illnesses/infections are straightforward. You get them and then treat them with an antibiotic. I'm unsure if they can fail because I've never had one fail. They can be treated with a first aid kit if necessary. I'm unsure what happens if you don't treat infections/illnesses but I assume you eventually start losing HPs and then die.

A character faints -- gets knocked out in the case of combat -- when their consciousness stat reaches 0%. As a result, intense fighting while very tired is likely to result in passing out.

Passed out characters are not usually targeted by mobs if they have any other valid target in range -- buildings, other characters, devices etc. If there's nothing in range and they are an aggressive creature, they will attack your character that's on the ground. I'm unsure if (normally) passive creatures do this.

A passed out character must be rescued by another character before treatment can begin. This means picking them up and carrying them to their bed.

A character that passes out from exhaustion will wake up. A character that passes out from combat will not until they're brought back to their bed. If they have serious head wounds, they might never wake up until they are treated.

Editor's notes:

Make sure to have some kind of lighting in a survivor's room so the healer can work at full speed. Darkness gives a -40% debuff to manipulation. If a character has many bleeding wounds, this could easily be the difference between life and death.

You can see how long until a character bleeds out at the top of their card. "Not life threatening" is not a good title. It just means "More than 36 hours."

A character with "healer" set to high priority is probably a good idea, but also probably unnecessary as wounds should always be top priority for you, the player. If you set a priority for this, choosing someone who is normally in your house such as your crafter or researcher makes sense because they're usually near the beds.

Characters with the pacifist trait make a logical choice as well because they can't pick up guns and therefore are very unlikely to ever get injured. They can be a dedicated "ambulance driver" and then heal them immediately.

Having your main healer get injured can cause big problems because either they'll have to spend time healing themselves before others so they don't bleed out. That being said, it might be a good idea to have two characters that are decent at healing instead of one character that's really good.

In extreme trauma situations where you have multiple survivors that are bleeding out -- prioritize the one that will bleed out the fastest. You don't have to completely stabilize that character, but you do need to buy time enough time for them so they don't bleed out quickly. When you have them to -1 or -2 HPs and it says they'll bleed out in 20 hours (for example). You can switch to the next fastest bleeder. Keep rotating until everybody isn't in imminent threat of bleeding out.

If things are really dire, say you have two characters that are going to bleed out in four hours, you have to either have someone with low skill attempt surgery and hope for the best, or you have to have someone that is bleeding but still conscious do the surgery. Both options are slow, but your main healer can only treat one person and if 2 characters are going to die in 4 hours, that's your only hope of saving both of them.

This one is the simplest of all the skills. It does two things:

1. Affects the speed of research

2. Affects the speed of observing unknown flora/fauna

Additional notes:

It seems like research speed is double for a level 10 intellect versus a level 0 intellect.

Editor's notes:

Intellect makes a huge difference in research/observation speed. Although it's pretty easy to get intellect up to level 5-6ish, it really starts to slow down after that. That's because the speed of experience gain is constant -- there's nothing you can do to get experience faster unlike most of the other skills.

Intellect is good throughout the game, but it's obviously useless after you've researched/observed everything. That being said, when you get to that point -- think of the huge opportunity savings from all the time you've saved. A survivor of lesser intellect would have spent another 20-30 days to get the same techs researched!

In the very early game, a character with a high intellect can potentially snowball your development regarding your two of your three immediate priorities -- building a proper house and getting farms going.

Getting basic construction by day 2-3 versus 4-5 means better happiness buffs sooner, which means fewer breakdowns once "suvivor determination" starts wearing off.

Observing plants, particularly clothblossom, a grain plant, and a vege plant, are keys to ensuring a food supply early in addition to getting winter clothes crafting going ASAP. After those three, whether you observe with your researcher or not, they are going to be on that desk more-or-less permanently.

Once you get the research desk up, there should pretty much always be someone on it. However, be smart. If your only decent research option is veggie armor -- maybe go do something else until more techs get unlocked.

Since your researcher will usually be at home, they can make a logical choice for other indoor yet secondary jobs like healing, crafting, or cooking. That is, if you need something real quick. Daniel is a good example of a great researcher with the potential to be a good healer -- especially because he is a pacifist and pacifists can make logical choices for healers (see healing section).

As of the desert patch -- there are now separate priorities for observing and researching. This is nice because observing took priority over research and some people are clearly better observers (Simon who is fast and has decent intellect) than researchers (Kysta who is slow, has high intellect, and has genius which only works on a research bench).

The advanced research desk is definitely faster than the other research desk, but it's not very much. Maybe 10%? If you can spare the power, there's no reason not to use it, though.

It can make sense to have it auto-shut off at night time so your researcher can relax, sleep, do something pre-dawn like craft/cook/relax more, and then get back to researching when the sun rises. It doesn't draw that much power, but it's clearly not getting used at night.

To add -- find out how much faster the advanced research desk is compared to the slow desk

Physical does five basic things:

1. Increases the speed that you chop trees.

2. Increases the speed that you mine ore/rocks.

3. Increases the speed that you scavenge.

4. Increases the amount of scrap metal recovered from expeditions.

5. Increases the maximum amount a survivor can carry.

How to level it up: cutting, mining, and scavenging level up physical. Mining small rocks is the fastest way to level physical. After that, it's cutting hay/bushes; then cutting trees; then mining ore; then scavenging. There are expeditions that level up physical.

Additional notes:

Physical is governed by the manipulation body function. If manipulation is low - chopping, mining, and scavenging all take longer. If it's high, it's faster.

It doesn't affect yields of wood, rocks, ore, or scrap metal (except expeditions), just how quickly you can do those tasks.

It doesn't affect your chances of getting weapons/armor/components from scavenging.

Regarding expeditions and scrap metal recovered -- 1-3 is considered low; 4-6 is considered medium; 7+ is considered high. So, if you want max scrap metal from an expedition -- send a character with 7 or more physical.

There are other expeditions where physical = more resources gained. This is usually clearly stated at the explore screen (so you can purposefully choose someone with a high physical) or during the expedition in the decisions screen (can't change character, but you can sometimes choose to revisit).

Carrying things around doesn't level up physical, but physical does affect how much a character can carry.

Editor's notes:

Physical is super, super important throughout the game. It's very important because it essentially affects how fast you can get building materials in two ways: harvesting nodes faster -- more production basically, and carrying more back to base -- more throughput and fewer trips back and forth basically. Having a great builder/crafter means nothing if they have no materials to work with.

Setting someone with high physical to prioritize cut and two characters to prioritize deliver is the fastest way to clear a forest. Same goes for mining many rocks and working with stone/concrete.

In the mid to late game, mining and scavenging nodes will be quite far away. A high physical character will be able to harvest the nodes quickly AND carry it all back -- hopefully in just a single trip. This is very useful for harvesting nest formations for carbon tubes.

Characters with a high movement speed can make cutting and mining more efficient for the same reasons as construction and farming -- they have to move to the resources/build sites/crops. Characters that are slow are bad choices. How much this matters depends on how far away the resources are.

There are three characters that specialize in expeditions. All three of them have low physical AND low combat. I would recommend sending these characters on the 'Explore' mission. However, if they find a scavenge site, DO NOT have them scavenge the site if you want to get the maximum amount from it. This is because it deducts one of the trips from how many times you can harvest the site. Instead, send a character with high physical/combat.

Lastly, it can make sense to level up these three characters physical skill as fast as possible and they can be your permanent expedition character (getting combat up a tiny bit can also help with a limited number of expeditions).

Skills will decay every morning by 2% of your progress to your next level. As an example, if you have 10,000 exp to level ten and 8am comes around, you will lose 200 experience points and you'll now have 9,800 experience to level ten.

You can not lose a level this way, it's only your progress to the next level. Because of the way this works, this doesn't really affect progress at low levels as losing 2% of 1000 exp is just 20 points.

If you're working multiple skills up, it's best to focus on a single skill until you level up and then switch to the other. It doesn't make much sense to get 19k experience to level ten and then switch to some other skill for a week and lose thousands of experience points.

You're probably going to focus to your characters strengths anyways; however, if you're doing a true solo run (just one survivor) this can become very noticeable because it's fairly difficult to have a single character doing just one thing all day.

The interested modifier can really, really help in this regard as getting 20k experience points is pretty hard. With interested you need just 10k experience points plus you can make up for the lost points each day much faster.

/// I played through Guardians once and I'm going to do a Hope section because the basic goal of the scenario is to get Hope to level 10 intelligence. In my second play-through, I'm going to update this section with discoveries I made since I'll be playing it with the idea of testing it specifically, not just having fun/learning the new game mode.

/// As such, this is just a scaffold of what I intend to add/write about.

-- Hope's general description --
Hope starts the game with only observe, research, handle, and deliver priorities enabled. She will also have a random skill unlocked from the beginning (I think it's never Combat, could be wrong). She also can't interact socially with anyone; however, all starting characters have +20 opinion of Hope -- probably 'cause they volunteered to smuggle her out of the consortium.

She can cut and mine from the beginning of the game.

Hope DOES NOT NEED SLEEP in the first half of the scenario; however, she is still afraid of the dark and moves slower at night. This is a huge benefit for pretty obvious reasons that I'll elaborate on later.

Hope needs food and entertainment like a normal colony member. Although she has special food that only she can eat. That would be the 'raw' food of liquid fuel, silicon, and energy crystals. She also has prepared food: SilicaEnergel (ten liquid fuel and ten silicon) and SilicaEnergel Plus (2 SilicaEnergel and 4 energy crystals) which is unlocked in the breakthrough science tab. SilicaEnergel gives her +5 manipulation and +5 movement which is quite helpful because it helps fight against the darkness debuff.

SilicaEnergel Plus gives +10 manipulation, +10 movement, and +50 skill learning (which seems to be +50% to learning skills)

Her favorite food is energy crystals (+6 happiness, no additional benefit). Her favorite activity is petting animals -- awwwww :)

-- How Hope progresses (skills) --

As far as I can tell, you unlocked skills for Hope in three ways -- time, sapience, and intellect level.

She starts with one random skill unlocked. I think it's never combat.

The first skill unlock seems to unlocked by time. For me it was on day 4 although I did have her at intellect level 1 and 2% sapience.

Second skill unlock was on day 12 although she was at level 3 intellect and had 6% sapience.

Around day 19 she was given the option to specialize into a skill. This unlocks it (if not unlocked already), makes her do it MUCH faster (x5 in the case of cooking), and doing these types of tasks will increase her sentience.

Around day 27 she will get another skill unlocked (5 intellect -- just obtained; 16% sentience)



-- How Hope progresses (abilities/character traits) --

Hope will interact socially starting around day 12 (or ~5% sentience). She can fall in love and presumably get married.

Hope can get one character that becomes her guardian. I'm pretty sure this later enables a special event where her guardian can transfer one value skill to Hope. It also let's her guardian transfer one character trait (for example, walking faster) .

Around day 41 (5 intellect, 19% sentience) -- there's a big choice for adding a unique character trait to Hope. They are:

+200 health, heals twice as hast
Bleeding is reduced by 10 permanently
Shoot twice as fast
Use melee weapons twice as fast

* Using melee weapons twice as fast is terrible in this scenario because bots have tons of ranged options. So just get one of the other three. Personally, I'd get the health bonuses if I were going pacifist or the shoot twice as fast if not because shooting twice as fast is very, very, very good.

-- Events specific to Hope (and how they relate to winning) --

Soon after discovering long distance travel, there will be a guaranteed expedition to a Consortium dogfighting sight.

Around day 19 she was given the option to specialize into a skill. This unlocks it (if not unlocked already), makes her do it MUCH faster (x5 in the case of cooking), and doing these types of tasks will increase her sentience.

Around day 23, a downed mech-hauling ship will appear as a situation. If Hope diverts computing power to finding it, she will slow her learning of skills by 50% for several days but she will find it. If you send someone to the expedition site, it will unlock all mech core and grant 50% research towards light and combat mechs.

Before the second year? Hope will get her biggest bonus:

-- +50% learning all tasks
-- Never experience euphoria or depression
-- +100 manipulation
-- Gain the "genius" trait
-- Move 50% faster.

At around day 56, Hope will get bored by doing just one thing. You'll have to mix it up a bit for here on out.

At around 50% sentience, Hope will require sleep.

-- Advice for getting Hope to 100% sapience efficiently and/or the more interesting/fun ways to play her --

Hope starting at 0 intellect might make you think she's a poor researcher and she is if you're only talking about research per hour. That being said, because she does not need to sleep, she can research almost 24 hours a day with only breaks for relaxing and eating. This fact alone means she's a better research per day than almost anyone else at the beginning of the game.

-- Extra thoughts that don't fit above --