Stranded: Alien Dawn is now out of Early Access and in good old-fashioned full release. The folks at Haemimont Games and Frontier have created fifteen top tips for beginners, to help you get on your way in this expansive title. While they don’t cover every aspect of the title, these fifteen hints will show you how to get started in Stranded: Alien Dawn, and hopefully give you a much higher survival rate.
If you haven’t picked it up yet, this one is available on PC (Steam and Epic), PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. You can find our full review just here, and we’ve popped the full launch trailer just below so you can take a look at it as well.
Pick the right survivors
At the start of your Stranded adventure you’ll need to pick your own group of survivors. This is an important choice as you’ll need to make sure you cover all your bases. This means keeping a close eye on any potential skills gaps, as each survivor comes with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Don’t hold off on research
On the frontier exploration of an alien planet research is (as you might expect) essential. While it may seem less important than crafting and gathering resources, consider dedicating one of your survivors to research early on. This will then allow you to quickly break through into new technologies, which will help you to expand and improve your settlement. Research isn’t necessarily fast, so keep this in mind when planning new additions to your base.
Develop your survivors
On this hostile world, your survivors must be able to rely on each other. Part of this means that you need to ensure you are levelling up survivors, improving their skills and providing additional value to the settlement as a whole. Paired with choosing the right survivors (tip #1!) this will be a critical consideration as you move forward. For example, survivors with high intelligence will make great researchers, but you’ll need to keep improving their skills to keep up with the growing demands of your base. Setting this as their dedicated role will help with this.
Plan for winter
Winter on alien shores will test even the most ardent of your survivors. You can help to keep them safe and sheltered with clothes, heating and food, and these will be critical to surviving the colder months. Make sure you are stockpiling these before winter sets in. If you don’t, your survivors may have to venture out into the cold environment with only their underwear on
Keep a happy home
The happier your survivors are, the more productive they are! If you’ve played Jurassic World Evolution before, treat your survivors just like you would treat a velociraptor. Checking in on their health and happiness will allow you to fix the things which are bothering them. While your survivors won’t break out of their cage and kill visitors to your dinosaur park (at least, ours haven’t yet) this will make sure they stay productive, rather than moping about.
What’s the way to a survivor’s heart?
Through the stomach, of course! Part of keeping survivors happy will be in making sure that they can enjoy more elaborate meals. Basic foods will keep them alive, but to keep your survivors happy, a home cooked meal hoes a very (very) long way. It will also – of course – make them more productive, helping your base in the long run.
Time management
So, we love treating video games like a workplace, right? You know the boss that always told you that you need to work on time management to fit 12 hours of work into an 8 hour day? That’s you now! Help out your survivors by managing their schedules and even giving them daily goals in advance. This will genuinely allow them to fit more into their day, and get more sleep as well. All of this together will ensure their overall wellbeing and keep productivity high.
Disable simple priorities
Survivors will all have a “simple priorities” option, and while this is critical early on, keep it in mind for later. After you’ve had experience and become comfortable with managing your survivors, turning this off will allow you to fine-tune schedules further, and take a little more control. This will then let you optimise workflows around the settlement and (you guessed it!) keep your survivors productive.
Keep track of the flora
Plants are easily overlooked in the title, but are a vital resource. Your survivors cna use plants to improve health, decrease hunger and craft important items as well. Have a scout around the area early on, and mark plants on your map while you do. This will make it much easier to locate them in future, when you might really need them.
Don’t forget storage
It can be seen as just “where we put things” but storage is absolutely critical both early on and while you are expanding your base. Preserving storage will allow food to last longer, as well as reducing the risk of the health hazards created by allowing it to rot outside. Play around with placement of your shelters to create larger covered and enclosed areas. This will mean that your survivors won’t have to discard important items, and mean that you always have the materials and food that you need.
Choose your time to farm carefully
While you shouldn’t leave farming too late, you also need to be wary of starting too early. If you leave farming too late you won’t have the supplies which you need to keep a healthy and happy settlement. On the other hand, however, planting too early will mean that crops are taking up unnecessary storage space, and will need to be stored for longer. Planting time should be a careful consideration to make sure you strike the right balance here.
Plant in the right place
You should definitely avoid planting in the first place you see. Consideration for your farm location should include the available area as well as soil type. Different soil types will have a drastic effect on the time taken to grow crops, and better soil means you’ll be harvesting much faster. Make sure you’re planting in the right places to ensure successful (and fast) plant growth.
Plants vs… uh… aliens?
Much like the rest of your settlement, farms are no good without protection. You know how your survivors love not starving to death? You know what else loves not starving? Alien life! Farm defences will stop unwanted raiding by the local animals. It’s definitely worth thinking about planting multiple crops within one larger and well-protected field, rather than a larger number of unprotected ones.
The hostile frontier is hostile
Who would have thought, huh? Resource management, inclement weather and players’ own stupidity (at least, if you’re me) are all working against you in Stranded: Alien Dawn. Sadly, there’s a whole lot of alien wildlife which is also gunning for you as well. You can work on this in two ways. Firstly, you can manage base defences to ensure your settlement is safe. Secondly, of course, you can launch an attack and hunt down the wildlife before it comes hunting you.
It’s the frontier, so go explore
While you’ll have enough to do in the local area as you start, you’ll need to think about venturing outside your comfort zone as you progress. Sending out expeditions will net further resources from far-off locations. But (obviously there’s a but) be mindful that these are not always winning situations. Your survivors might find a wealth of resources, they may find nothing, and they may also get injured as they venture out into the unknown.
