One Lonely Outpost Beginner’s Guide
One Lonely Outpost has released into Early Access and we’re bringing you our top 13 tips to surviving on Calypso. Our One Lonely Outpost Beginner’s Guide guide will evolve alongside the title with updates for major development milestones, and provide a comprehensive beginners’ guide for full release. Our tips don’t cover every aspect of the title, but these 13 hints will help you to get started with this sci-fi farming RPG.
If you haven’t checked our One Lonely Outpost yet, we recently took a look within our Early Access review. There are roughly twelve months to go on Freedom Games’ development roadmap, but fans of the genre should be happy to jump in now.
In addition to our own tips below, let us know if you have any hints which might help other players. You can get in touch on most social media platforms and we’ll be sure to credit you for your help. With that in mind, let’s get into our top 13 tips for how to get started in One Lonely Outpost.
Start slow!
One Lonely Outpost is a slow game. It’ll be a long time before your colony really starts to fill on Calypso, and even things like selling produce will have to wait. In other titles, we’re fairly used to getting stuck in, but it’ll take a whole to unlock various aspects of the game.
Don’t be afraid to head back to the Astrobago and go to bed early. Sometimes, you just need the day to continue and even if you’ve not unlocked Omnistars, it’s worth it. Definitely make sure your daily tasks are complete (especially watering plants!) but don’t worry too much about “wasting your day” if you don’t fill it with action.
Explore, and blow away dust piles
You’ll soon be tasked with surveilling the local area. While you’re having a look around, we recommend using the Gust tool on any dust piles you see as well. You won’t find things every time, but this is a great way to discover alien seeds, resources and even mysterious ships logs.
This is a great way to expand your horizons, giving you new produce as well as some great background story about [REDACTED] and how they managed to [REDACTED]
Explore!
I know. We just told you to explore, right? Well, as well as it being “so important we listed it twice” we also wanted to point out that you should KEEP exploring throughout your time on Calypso. Even when there’s seemingly nothing to do, new areas unlock at various stages. In addition, you can also keep finding new seeds and technology, and you shouldn’t assume that you’ve managed to find all of them. So we’ve mentioned it twice. Explore today, and explore tomorrow!
Nutrient paste will keep you going (at first!)
While you’re running around in the early days, don’t forget your nutrient paste. It’s no fun, and it won’t provide bonuses, but it does mean that you won’t go hungry, and it’ll fill up 10% of your energy back to help you continue with your day. It’s not quite the 15% you’ll get from a veggie stew, but it’ll do as you get started.
Grow as soon as you can
While you won’t be able to sell it for a while, growing produce is incredibly important early on. Your hunger is a relatively simple yes / no for if you’ve eaten but it will have an impact on your day to day activities. If you don’t eat anything for a day, you’ll wake up tired in the morning. This saps 25% stamina, and can stack with actual tiredness to take off another 25%. So make sure you eat (handilly you’ll get a similar message from your in-game mum, as well).
Give yourself some space
When plotting out your farmland, make sure you leave enough room for future crops. This is due to two primary factors. Firstly, when you reap and gather produce you’ll likely pick up more seeds than you planted, allowing you to expand. Secondly, crops’ germination time varies quite drastically, which will mean that you’re not harvesting all of them at once.
If you have carrots planted next to your bok choy, for example, this will mean that you might not have enough space to plant your next batch of carrots all together. Now, you could just split up the carrots and plant them either side but also NO, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU THINKING OF, GEMIMA?! So just make sure you give yourself some space to expand, huh?
Interact with your plants as they grow
You’ll find Omnistars through the exploration we’ve already told you to do, twice. However, you can also find these (as well as some detailed botany statistics) a little closer to home. While you’re growing crops, you can interact with them to get valuable data on the growing cycle, environmental requirements and much more.
Doing so will also give you images of plants not only as they reach various milestones in maturity, but also what they will look like if they aren’t doing so well. This will let you easily identify any problem plants and see to them. You’ll be able to spot ones that you haven’t interacted with quite easily, as they’ll have a question mark bobbing above them.
Selling Produce in One Lonely Outpost
In other titles you can typically get to selling quite quickly. Not so much here on Calypso in One Lonely Outpost. You’ll have to wait for your second settler to arrive, as well as perform some small tasks in order to unlock the community food blueprint (and then, of course, you’ll have to get the resources and build it!)
This will take some time, around thirty or so Calypso days, and you won’t be able to sell any produce before then. It’s something which we were concerned about at first, thinking that we were missing some vital concept, but luckily, it just takes time (and people, and steel)
Don’t just sell everything
When you do get the community food tech up and running, it’s important not to just sell sell sell straight away. Unlike other titles, you’ll be directly tasked with feeding the local community on Calypso. This means that you will have to grow, process and deliver certain specific targets, so it’s best to have a good few produce resources still available. This will let you deliver to the community quickly, and earn bonuses alongside general sales.
Each community target takes around 30 days but can be done much faster if you have stocks already in place. While you would typically have time to grow, process and sell in this time, it’s less stress all around if you have the resources available.
Use carrot boosts to get around
On a similar subject, you should also be using your produce to create hearty and filling meals for yourself! All of the running around, farming, building, mining and processing takes it out of you. Nutrient paste will keep you going at first, and home cooked meals like veggie stew will give back some energy to help you continue with your day.
While it only gives 5% daily energy back, a bowl of roasted carrots gives something slightly different. 180 minutes of boost from this meal will let you run around Calypso instead of taking the usual leisurely walking pace. This helps you get around much faster between different areas and speeds things up a lot. We definitely recommend keeping a bowl of (processed) carrots in inventory at all times, just to keep you speedy.
Go mining as soon as you can
It’ll be a little while until the mine opens up, and (of course) you’ll have to do the work to get it open. When you do, it is the best source of minerals and similar resources. This is especially true when you consider that the resources on the surface are finite!
At first, mining feels a lot like Stardew, with different levels and various rare resources as you get further down. The notable change here are the numbers which indicate hazards in the mine, allowing you to avoid them.
Noxious green gas is the most common hazard we’ve come across. If you do release any, stop using the mining laser (it’ll ignite it) and use the gust tool to sweep it away.
Mining numbers mean something
What do the numbers mean while mining in One Lonely Outpost? Glad you asked. Old-school PC lovers should remember Minesweeper. The numbers in the title are exactly the same as this old (and epic) game. Numbers hover over each square within the mine. This value is simply a count of the number of hazards in the 8 squares surrounding it (horizontally, vertically and diagonally).
Take some time to consider each one. If there is no number there, then each of the 8 squares around it can be safely mined. You then need to use the numbers to work out the location of the hazards. If you need more help with this, get in touch. We love Minesweeper here.
Keep an eye on your Omniac
This little tool is probably the best information resource you have. This is where you’ll fint hints and tips from various tutorial messages you’ve unlocked in game. It also has detailed information on the plants you’ve grown, as well as your current or completed objectives. The Omniac is a great little resource and if you’re ever wondering what to do or need a little additional guidance, it’s one to consult immediately.
That’s it (for now!)
Thanks for checking out our beginner’s guide for One Lonely Outpost. Hopefully you found the tips here helpful but if you do have any questions, do get in touch! We’re more than happy to help, and you can get in touch with us at most outlets on the web! Don’t forget to check back as the game evolves, and let us know your top tips, if we’ve missed any!