Oxygen Not Included Beginner’s Guide: How to Get an Easy Start

Oxygen Not Included is known for its unfriendliness and high-difficulty level for beginners, but is it really that intimidating? Expanding the space colony and digging for resources sounds simple enough. Then, what gives players the most headaches is the complicated research projects, power, liquid, and ventilation systems, which are realistic enough to require thorough planning and consideration. Before drilling through the more difficult part of the game, let’s start with this Oxygen Not Included beginner guide and learn how to relax and play with ease!

Refer to This Oxygen Not Included Beginner Guide if You’re Within 50 Cycles!

First things first, at what stage should you be counted as an Oxygen Not Included beginner? For games that are more difficult and more realistic in terms of settings, it undoubtedly takes a longer time to pass the beginner stage, which is basically knowing 50% how the game mechanism works.

For Oxygen Not Included, it takes roughly 10 hours of gaming time, 50 cycles in the game, to know the basic settings, including:

1. Personnel
2. Building
3. Resources
4. Research

It refers to the stage where you have built up a functioning colony with your initial resources after the spawning. This stage does not include fancy planning, advanced equipment for betterment, and others.

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Basic Facilities That You Must Have

As an Oxygen Not Included beginner, we’ve all been through the phase of entering the game and being flooded by buttons. To begin your colony life, the most important buttons are the building options at the lower left and lower right corners. To make it simple, the necessary infrastructures are:

1. Structure: Ladders, tiles, Storage Bins
2. Oxygen: Oxygen Diffusers
3. Power: Manual Generators, Batteries, Wires
4. Food: Microbe Mushers
5. Plumbing: Pitcher Pumps, Bottle Emptiers, Outhouses
6. Refinement: Compost (Optional for now)
7. Furniture: Cots
8. Stations: Research Stations, Super Computers (Optional for now)

This list of infrastructure provides players with the basic supply of oxygen, food, water, hygiene, power, and leisure to make the colony operate. Now let’s break down the details of each infrastructure, why you need it, and the best way to place it.

Building the Basic Structure With Ladders and Tiles

What’s wrong with keeping the original dirt and rock blocks as the floor? The thing is, Oxygen Not Included has very diverse types of blocks for different resources.

Not replacing the blocks with proper floor tiles might cause water leakage or collapse (if the block is sand). Water is one of the most critical resources in the game, and players at the beginning stage generally cannot afford to lose water resources because of leakage. Moreover, as water naturally flows downwards, it may ruin your original colony layout as you need to adjust the plumbing system.

A proper tiles and ladders layout can also maximize the efficiency of your duplicants’ commuting in the colony. Long commute time slows down the building and working efficiency. The best arrangement is to have a three-tile gap between the two floors and build long ladders that travel through all floors. This layout is more friendly for oxygen to travel among floors, and some infrastructure require three-tile height space to build.

As to the storage bins, one is definitely not enough. Players can build 3 storage bins and set them to collect different materials. Duplicants will store the materials on the floor automatically in the matching storage bins. What? You can see copper ores on the floor, but you cannot build facilities requiring copper ores? Material insufficient? That’s because the material, in this case, the copper ores, is not stored properly in storage bins!

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Provide Power for the Colony

Yes, providing power actually takes priority over oxygen, because the oxygen diffuser requires power and algae to work. At the Oxygen Not Included beginner stage, there is no need for fancy stuff, and just building a manual generator should work.

Yet, in order to provide power when the duplicants are taking downtime and sleeping, players need to pair one manual generator with ideally two batteries. Batteries can be charged when the duplicant is generating power and provide power during the night.

The priority level of the manual generator should be set slightly above 5, so that duplicants will take priority to generate power for the colony.

Players need to connect the generators, batteries, and other facilities requiring a power supply with wires.

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Oxygen Not Included, So You Need to Generate On Your Own

There is not always oxygen generated naturally in each cave, so players need to build oxygen diffusers after getting the power supply. To observe whether a room has sufficient oxygen, players can check:

1. Whether there is blue gas, signifying oxygen, in the room.
2. The oxygen layer and the percentage indicator are at the upper right corner.
3. Whether your duplicants are gasping for air and running away from certain rooms…

An oxygen diffuser consumes algae and power to generate oxygen. When digging new areas, players can prioritize areas that have algae. The oxygen takes a three-tile height space to be properly diffused in the room. If the ceiling is too low, it will block the oxygen from coming out of the diffusers.

Should I choose Oxygen Diffusers or Algae Terrariums? Don’t bother with the latter one after getting electricity. The Algae Terrariums do not generate as much as the diffuser, although it requires no power.

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Some Food Is Better Than No Food

It may come as odd, but food is not urgent when beginning Oxygen Not Included. The game supplies players with some food in the initial ration box, which is enough for about 10+ cycles. When players do diggings and expand the territories, there will also be food from plants or killing critters. Although they are raw food and can decrease morales overtime, the duplicants usually have enough morale for the first 20 cycles.

To stabilize the food supply, players can build the microbe musher. One is fairly enough for the first 50 cycles. The simplest food is the mush bar made from water and dirt, which are both easily accessible materials.

Later, players can improve the quality of food by building fridges, electric grills, and other kitchen facilities. Good food quality can increase morale. Low-morale duplicants will quit work from time to time. But that’s for later considerations. Start with a Microbe Musher at the Oxygen Not Included beginner stage!

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Simple Plumbing, Avoid Flooding

Water Pumping and Disposing

Here we go, almost the most complicated system in Oxygen Not Included, plumbing! Before dabbling in the real plumbing layout with all the water pressure and pipe running, let’s start with simple input and output for the early colony. The core problem is: how to draw the water out and how to discard polluted water.

First, Oxygen Not Included beginners need to locate clean water resources. Clean water is in blue color, while polluted water is in yellow color.

To draw water out, players need to build a Pitcher Pump, with its branches extending below the water surface. Then duplicants will start pumping water out from the pump, for the Microbe Mushers and others. And yes, the water will run low and out eventually. Players need to keep building the pump lower to get the water out and eventually seek out other water resources.

To discard polluted water, players need to have a Bottle Emptier. The main reason why there will be polluted water is usually that your duplicants cannot make it to the outhouses on time and have made a mess…😅 No matter how unbelievable that might sound, it will actually lead to quite a lot of polluted water on the floor, which requires mopping and discarding.

Players need to build the bottle emptier with enough space beneath it to store the polluted water.

Outhouses

Outhouses are another mandatory facility at Oxygen Not Included Beginner stage. Build at least two outhouses in different regions of the colony, to make it convenient for colonists to use the outhouses. Outhouses will be full and require emptying. If there is a compost, duplicants will automatically move the polluted dirt to the compost. Players do not need to do anything, and duplicants will empty the outhouses. But during the cleaning, the outhouse will not be functioning. That’s why you need at least two outhouses.

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Research to Advance the Technologies

With the research station built, players can unlock more infrastructure. Super Computer with Research Station combined can unlock more advanced technology. Only duplicants with the matching skill can use the super computer. It is recommended to start research early, because many problems later can only be solved with new equipment and facilities.

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Furniture and Decoration

The furniture and decor are a much-overlooked section for beginners. Usually, at the start of the game, it does not take much to maintain high morale and low stress levels for the duplicants. However, the stress will accumulate, and the morale will drop if players keep ignoring the decoration and furniture when coming to 30 cycles or more.

The most basic furniture is cots. Make sure that every duplicant has a cot. It’s not that the duplicants cannot sleep without one, but unrest can increase stress level overtime.

Players can unlock other decorations from the research station. All in all, to check where you should place some decorations, you can check the decoration overlay in the upper-right corner. Good decoration contributes to morale, keeping your duplicants from idling.

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FAQs on Oxygen Not Included Beginners’ Guide

How do I get started on Oxygen Not Included?

The game offers minimal guidance to players, which can definitely cause much confusion. Generally speaking, Oxygen Not Included beginners need to focus on building the basic floors, ladders, power supply, oxygen diffusers, pitch pumps, outhouses, bottle emptiers, research stations, and microbe mushers to set up the base properly. Digging for new areas and new resources, managing duplicants’ skills and vitals, printing new resources, and duplicants are also important parts of the workflow.

Is Oxygen Not Included a good game?

Definitely, for players who are interested in survival, strategy, sandbox genre, and complicated statistics. It sure takes a long time to explore the mechanism of the game. On the bright side, it also means that it is time-consuming in a good way. Oxygen Not Included beginners can start with the No Sweat mode to avoid frustrations!

It May Sound Like a Lot of Trouble to Set Up the Base…

Starting to play Oxygen Not Included is certainly an overwhelming experience. The game almost gives you no hint on where to start, how to build, and what are the mandatory facilities. Plus, you have no idea which can lead to death and which statistics to pay attention too. Most players weather through the beginner stage instinctively… (Of course, searching guides frequently helps too.)

But then, once you survive the first 50 cycles, you will become more or less aware of what is going on in the game. It means you know how to check overlays, duplicants’ statistics, operate and build necessary facilities. Basically, it will become the process of problem occuring and problem solving. The next stage? Time to explore how to make the base more sustainable, structured, efficient, and advanced!