It's now almost a week into the Early Access of Osiris: New Dawn, and the game has proven to be a real challenge. Thrusting you onto a surface of a planet not dissimilar to Mars, but with aliens, Osiris asks you to play Mark Watney and find a way to survive.
But how exactly to survive is the real question. In this guide, we'll show you the best ways and simplest tips to make your trip into the desert planet of whereverthehellthisis the safest and easiest.
The Basics
You've crash-landed on a desert planet with aliens. Surrounding you will be a few boxes of resources and a utility drone you can control to do various tasks. You will be able to create an inflatable structure with a kit you find around you, but you will obviously need to create a better shelter, which will require materials such as iron and aluminum. These are the two most common resources and scanning the horizon will reveal several such deposits which you can mine with your chisel.
Build your inflatable close to your original spawnpoint, as your HUD will direct you to the spawn point, but not to your inflatable.
ALSO SEE: Where To Find Resources In Osiris New Dawn
Don't worry too much about hunger and thirst. While these are in the game, the developers told me at PAX that they wanted Osiris to feel more like a game and less like a simulation. So every 2 or 3 game days, you'll need some water, and every so often, you'll need to eat. But you should be all settled in the planet before this ever becomes an issue, and the game will notify you when you need to eat or drink.
Deviating from the Mission
When you start the game, you'll see a blue "Mission Details" notification on your HUD. This will give you your basic goals until you get the hang of things, which Osiris has deemed the time you build your first Habitat.
After you build your inflatable, it will tell you to find the materials to build a Forge (we'll get to that later), but you should first stock up on enough materials to build a Depository. Since this is built with just iron and aluminum, you don't need any advanced tech to build it. This will allow you to store more materials, rather than lugging them around, which will weigh you down and could stifle your movement capabilities.
After that, go ahead and build your forge, which only requires resources you can find throughout the planet.
Using Your Drone
Your drone has a functionality that makes a Depository essential. It's called "Patrol & Mine." Once you've created a Depository, you can have your drone mine a specific area, deposit the materials in the Depository and repeat. So, while you're looking for the rarer minerals, such as plutonium, titanium and magnesium, you can set your drone to mine the close iron and aluminum patches until the end of time. Trust me when I tell you that you can never have too many minerals.
Your drone can also be set to follow you. Since it also has a gun, this can be useful if you're traveling through dangerous territory or at night, when more volatile creatures come out. In my experience, but please don't quote me on this, your drone will not be attacked if it's by itself. So I was able to set it to patrol & mine into dangerous territory without worry of it being destroyed so long as I didn't mettle in its business.
Resource Tiers
There are several different tiers of resources that you need in order to create better structures, but we'll focus on the basics for now, and I'll expand on them later.
1. Resources you can find on the surface (iron, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, copper, lead, etcetera)
2. Resources you need to craft with the Forge
3. Resources you need to craft with the Chemistry Table (more on that later)
After you've built your Forge, you'll be prompted to gather the resources required to build a Habitat. You'll notice, though, that a Habitat requires both Glass and Steel, which aren't resources you can find on the planet surface. Glass can be made with Sand, but Osiris requires you to craft a shovel in order to successfully gather sand, and shovels also require steel. Steel needs to be forged with Magnesium, Iron and Aluminum.
So, after building your forge, you need to forge Steel to make a shovel, use the shovel to get sand, forge glass with the sand, forge more steel and then you can build your Habitat.
Once you've built your habitat, however, you'll notice that almost every other structure or utility building you can create requires more complex materials, such as plastic or rubber. These materials can be created by building Chemistry Table inside your Habitat, which requires you to collect gasses around the surface with barrels (see below).
It gets more complicated from there, but you'll be in good shape with this understanding of resources to be able to build more advanced structures, such as Biodomes.
Avoiding the Giant Effing Worm
When I last wrote about this game, I avoided spoiling the big surprise lurking in the desert, but I'm sure you've already figured it out by now: Osiris: New Dawn has a giant fucking worm in it. It usually sticks around craters, which, if you're unlucky like me, will be the only place you can find essential resources such as magnesium.
I was tempted to tell everyone to identify where the worm is and just never go there. But then I found a little work around, which I'm not sure the developers intended. All you have to do is avoid the very first dive of the desert worm. After that, he'll apparently take an extended smoke break beneath the surface, and won't return until you leave and come back. So be not deterred by this Beetlejuician menace, at least … not too much.
On that note, I've also noticed a slight work around with regular combat that I'm sure will be patched eventually. But for now, if you're ever attacked by the aggressive aliens that only come out at night, you can simply jet pack on top of your Habitat and shoot them with your pistol, and they won't be able to attack you back.
Still in Early Access, Osiris: New Dawn is sure to undergo many changes before it's full release, and we will be there to update you and advise on the more advanced tactics.
