So last night I decided to start fresh and go permadeath. I've been playing on version 1.57 since it dropped, and just said 'Screw it, I'm updating and going PD'. So I did. Wow, what a difference (at least for the start).

Attempt #1: There weren't enough nearby sources of sodium, so that one ended in the death-wipe within a couple minutes.
Attempt #2: Okay, got some sodium collected, so now I need to find oxygen. Nope. Sorry, you die.

Attempt #3: Sodium? Check. Oxygen? Check. Alright. Heading out to find a Hermetic Seal and the sodium levels are getting pretty low. Hmmm, storm coming in as well. Gotta find shelter. Okay, head into a cave. Nice. Wait it out. Cool. Alright, storm's over, let's get to that seal. Done. Now to head back to the starship. But wait! I need sodium. Not much around, but let's get going. Find a sodium rich plant, so that helps build up the protection. Hopefully enough. NOPE. No more to be found, die a face-meltingly miserable death on a lonely caustic world within sight of my crashed starship. Sigh.

Attempt #4: Okay, everything's actually going reasonably smoothly. Some issues with resources, but manage to juggle everything and get that starship operational. While doing so, entered some caves and found a crapton of vortex cubes. Filled inventory with as much as I could spare the room for. Back to the starship and off into space. HUZZAH! Land at the space station, and sell off anything that's not immediately useful (vortex cubes, tetracobalt, and a couple other things). End up with just over 400,000 credits. Yeah, baby.

Alright, let's get planetside and build up some resources. Follow the signal and land on the planet. Get out, look around for a source of carbon to replenish dwindling supplies. No worries. Plenty of plants. But wait! Launch thrusters are empty and I forgot to buy uranium or launch fuel. Shit. Hope there's something nearby, so off I go to hopefully find some uranium. Get about 50 units from my ship and WHAM. WTF was that? Turn around, and see a predator coming in for the second - and, as it turned out, final - strike. Dead again. I forgot that the latest update changed things so the Traveller is now a tasty morsel to some of the fauna. Shit. Time to restart.

Attempt #5: Okay. Did we learn something from our previous experiences? Yes. Yes, we did. This start was a scramble from the get-go. Always on the edge of running out of an important resource, which meant instant death. Always pulling my ass out of the fire at the last second. Finally get into space and head for the signal. Planetside, I find a pleasant green world. Thank you, RNGesus! But wait... frenzied sentinels? Seriously? FFS. Okay, I find a cave and dive in. I collect some resources, find a bunch of vortex cubes again and stockpile for a trip to the space station. This time, it's different. This time I'm cautious. See that animal? Yep, doesn't scan as dangerous. Kill it anyway. Bastards. Now you're nothing but a few bits of mordite.

Back to the ship, up to the station. Sell off everything that's not immediately useful. Not as lucrative as the last attempt, but still just under 200,000 units all told. Cool. Grab a full stack of uranium. Hit up a starship captain to see what he's selling. Hmmm, residual goop? Yes, please, I'll take all of it. Head down planetside to start refining. But what's this? Pirate atttack? Seriously. Damn. Okay, don't panic. There's only 5 of them... This was a nailbiter but I managed to survive. Okay, now off to refine my goop. So now I've got a nice little stockpile of nanites, so it's time to think about grabbing a few modules to make life just a wee bit more comfy.

That's where it ended last night. Five attempts before I decided to stop dying right away. But I have to say, the tension added into the permadeath run is really fun. I know it won't be long before it doesn't matter but right now it's a blast. Can't wait to fire up the game again tonight.

Entertaining reading! :D

I prefer my laid back normal game. Have not updated yet.

Read about the predator behavior. First thought: "Nice, some should probably more aggressive". But after reading some reactions to it it sounds it went from bad to worse realism wise. It does make sense that a lot predatory creatures rather avoid that disgusting plastic/static/ozone smelling thing which blasts rock dissolving fire from its arms in favor of their regular diet. Sure, some would still just come to "play" or are simply aggressive territorial with severely lowered self preservation. But it reads like all of them are now and on top even with massive DPS. The 2-hit-death you described was mentioned a few times.

IDK. I like some spice; but right now creatures sound like either go totally bland or eat that 3.000.000 scoville dish.

Thanks! I'm considering keeping an ongoing chronicle as I go further into the game (although it may turn out to be more work than I want to put into it. :P) Anyway, I'll likely pop a post or two on here once in a while. Yeah, it remains to be seen how bad this will be. I'm very early into the game, so haven't landed on many planets yet. If it turns into something that's just going to keep getting me killed (and thus wiping game after game), I may look into reverting to an older version or seeing if there's a mod to modify predator behaviour somewhat. I like the idea that they can be aggressive, but I just hope it doesn't turn out to be the 3,000,000 scoville unit nightmare to which you alluded. Worst case scenario is I switch to Survival so I don't lose the save after dying.

Nice diary. Do the harder modes like permadeath offer any perks, to clunter the diffgiculty? Like a better loot rates?

Not that I'm aware. It's just much tougher to start off, since your game is wiped if you die. The opponents are tougher too (animals, sentinels, pirates), from what I've read. Seems to be the case for the pirates at least. Not that they're tougher individually per se, but I ran into a group of 5 almost as soon as I got off the first planet, which never happened to me before (they've always been only 1 to 3 ships early on - at least in my experience).

Thanks! You know, it's weird, as this isn't generally the type of game I usually play (I've tried a few and enjoyed them, but they don't tend to keep me 'obsessed'), but this one? Well, I'd say it's quickly becoming my favorite game as well. It's the game that, if someone said "You're stranded on a desert island and can choose only one game to play for the rest of your life", this would be that game, easily. LOL - pretty much the same here.

In some lonely cave in some backwater world in the Euclid galaxy, there's an unmarked grave. Lament for the poor nameless Traveller! He had an adventurous spirit, an intrepid sense of discovery, and a curious mind. Alas, his time was short and he fell to some foul cave creature without even knowing his enemy. May the stars shine bright on you, Traveller.

Attempt #6: So, yeah, as noted by the purple prose above, I ended up taking a dirt nap last night. This was pretty much unavoidable, I think, as I was exploring and dropped down into a cave (the opening was one of those where it's just a hole in the ground). As soon as I landed some sort of crab-like creature spawned out of the ground literally at my feet. Took a big bite out of the exosuit and before I could even jet pack back up, he'd bitten me a second time and it was game over. Sigh.

Anyway, fired it up yet again. The only real nail biter I experienced was when I was looking for a Minor Settlement to see if I could afford a new multitool (and also to see what was on offer), and found a waypoint beacon. Landed beside it, and since you're ejected onto the ground immediately when you exit the ship (I really wish you'd always exit onto the ship instead), I was immediately attacked by both a sentinel (frenzied world) and an aggressive predator. Barely made it back into the ship. I think I literally had the lowest possible health.

Nothing else untoward to report on this start. I actually got pretty lucky. Plenty of oxygen and sodium to be found both via the glowing plants and also the hazardous flora in caves. I'm now just at the point where I need to buy circuit boards to build a hyperdrive. Of course, on this run, I've found limited higher value resources, so money's more of an issue than the last two attempts. Bloody game gives with one hand and takes with the other...

Just an update. I hope I'm not jinxing it, but it looks like 6 may be the lucky Permadeath start. Still going on this one, with some real progress.

This weekend, I jumped to a couple new star systems and decided it was time to really get out and explore. I'm ever wary of predators though, so tend not to wander too far afield from the ship. Ended up after the first jump in a wealthy Korvax system, so decided to dump all my meager units into trade goods to give me a bit of a boost on affording a new multitool should I get lucky at the space stations or settlements.

So, there I was with my inventory brimming with expensive goods, take off from the space station, pull up the galaxy map and... crap on a stick, I don't have the economy scanner! I'm flying with a hold full of trade goods and no idea where to go to offload them. Nothing for it but just choose a star system and jump. So I do, and of course, there's not a chance in hell I'll luck out with the right economy. Oh well. I check the trade terminal and find that I do have something that at least sells for a reasonable price (but no huge profit). So I get lucky and find the blueprint for the economy scanner, and then sell a few goods so I can afford the materials to build it. Off to the galaxy map again.

This time, I can find lots of the proper star systems to sell my goods but of course, karma isn't done taunting me yet. I find probably 6 different systems that have a great sell rate, but I can't reach them. Out of jump range. I know I could probably do a couple short jumps to get myself in position, but I don't have all that much warp fuel, and almost no money. Inventory slots are pretty much filled up with trade goods, so it's not going to be easy freeing up slots either. So that's going to quickly end up being problematic. Alright. I find a system I can jump to that's showing a 66% sell rate. Not great, but good enough. I jump, and manage to sell my stuff. Okay, sitting on about 2.8 million units. Should be good enough for a new multitool.

And what do you know, I end up talking to a Vy'keen and get offered a mew multiool! It's a B class with 20 slots. Far better than what I have, so yes, please. Okay, this is better. Off I go to explore the system.

This system has several planets and I end up choosing the closest one, which happens to be a toxic world. But I go down to have a peek anyway. Okay, fairly standard. Let's get out and start exploring. I immediately locate a trade post and drop down to see what starships are in the system. Freaking Exotic shows up in the second wave. And again about 5 minutes later. 18+5, then 19+6. Not maxed, but damn, it's way better than the starter ship! Yeah, I don't have enough units.

Now, at this point, I'm thinking "You can probably find a crashed ship and get it moving, then trade it for a nice little upgrade on a shuttle or hauler". But no, my lizard brain is saying "I want that Exotic". Now, I'm well aware this isn't the optimal decision. But, I just want it. So, I decide what I need to do is build up some units and that means either I do the trade run or I get out and explore. Trade run is quick and pretty easy. I choose exploration.

Planet has tons of caves and a crapton of vortex cubes lying around in them. Since you get both cubes and tetracobalt for every one you pick up, they're actually reasonably lucrative. It's a slow haul to 10 million units that way though. But I'm patient, I love to explore, and I find it fun to work towards a goal that's not instant gratification. Meanwhile, I'm flying all over the place, scanning for structures and looking for crashed freighters. I actually found a handful of the latter, and managed to get some pretty valuable resources from them. I also found a number of storage depots, so shot them up for more resources. Fairly quickly I'm sitting on about 7.5 million units. Still not the target, but not bad at all.

Of course, opening those freighter containers means several different resources required, so I spend a lot of time gathering those, as well as survival necessities, and ingredients for launch fuel. I scanned several times for crashed starships and did manage to find 4, but none of them were any better than my starter ship. Oh well. I also found some manufacturing facilities and grabbed a few blueprints, which will be useful down the road.

Anyway, after hopping between planets in the system and finding a crap ton of structures, I eventually stumble upon a minor settlement with an S class multitool. Rifle. 24 slots. Jackpot! I grabbed it, setting me back about 2.8 million. Worth it, but I have some monetary ground to catch up for my target.

One thing I found interesting/amusing that I'll mention here specifically. Sunday night, I found a really cool trade post. It was nestled at the base of a cliff that was formed like a C. Kind of the perfect sheltered spot. Facing out the opening of the C, there was a crashed freighter literally within reasonable walking distance. Of course, I check it out and I need Copper to open the containers. Okay, I have none, but a scan reveals a fairly close deposit. When I check it out, it's a big one. Turns out it was probably the most massive deposit I've ever mined. With the regular mining beam (I didn't narrow it), I pulled over 1250 units of copper out of that deposit. Even cooler: it was actually the roof of a cave. So I opened up a whole cave system by mining the deposit out. Grabbed a whole load of vortex cubes as well. Amusingly, the freighter was a bit of a bust. I scored close 250,000 units from one container, but the rest consisted of antimatter containers, starship fuel, and warp fuel. A bit disappointing, as I was anticipating a really good cash-in. Oh well. Still useful stuff.

Okay, going to finish this long ramble off to note that I ended up with just over 11 million units by the time I packed it in last night. Sat at the trade post for a while to see what showed up in the first few waves. I did see an S class shuttle 28+8 and was waffling on whether or not to just be sensible and grab it. Finally made up my mind and just as I started to head over to it, it took off (I was too stupid to go stand on it while I was thinking about it). Well, still waiting for that Exotic. I think tonight I'll head back to that toxic world and see if it shows in the first couple waves like before (I was on one of the other planets when I found that trade post/freighter combo). Once I upgrade my ship (to whatever it happens to be - I'm not waiting forever for this Exotic), I'll start seriously looking to add slots to the exosuit.

Last note: I've taken out over 40 starships with this little starter craft without any upgrades. It seems on Permadeath, you'll get hostile scans very single time you enter space. I should probably invest in better shields or at least upgrade the photon cannon... Oh, and predators. I've had several really close calls. If that red paw warning ever fails, I'll be toast. It's saved my ass a number of times. I can take one hit and that's it. A second hit is death. (Oh, and why is it a 1/2 meter tall crab predator can still hit me when i standing on top of my starship? That almost killed me last night). I have to admit though, that wandering through caves or a forested area, constantly paranoid about a predator spawning, sure gets the adrenaline pumping!

Anyhow, the adventure continues.

Turns out 6 is not my lucky number - at least, not when mixed with my arrogance and hubris. Bounty notice. 300,000 units. 3 stars. I'd taken out over 70 starships at this point and decided "Heh, how hard can this clown be?" Turns out, too hard. He had a friend that I didn't see until my shields were down and then it was Game Over. 50 hours down the Permadeath drain.

Time to start again. Attempt 7 went for about 35 hours. Then dead from an unseen predator when exiting at a Waypoint. I have no trouble owning the previous death, but I was less than pleased about that one.

Attempt 8 lasted only minutes. I melee boosted in order to cover fast ground, as resources were running low. Unfortunately I ended up boosting right over a cliff that I didn't see (firestorm raging at that point) and had no boost left. Hard landing, hard death. Unfortunate, as there was an Observatory with a pair of small shelters at the bottom, which would have been an ideal rally point for the start while I fixed up my ship. Alas, it was not to be.

Now on Attempt #9.

Okay, Attempt #9 is still going. Got my Traveller established and kitted out with an A class multiool with 24 slots (traded up a couple times). Added some tech to make it a bit more effective. Nothing S class yet though, as there is still a dearth of nanites. Grabbed an A class Explorer 28+8 and fitted it with a few B and A class modules to toughen it up and extend the jump range.

Found a crashed A class Shuttle with 17 slots (most broken, of course). Grabbed it though, and fixed the Launch Thrusters so it could take off. Had it waiting on standby while I gathered some units together, then used it as trade bait last night to grab a 25 slot shuttle and only having to shell out just over 1 million units in the trade. So now I have some decent mobile storage.

As for units, the Buried Tech Modules have been my main source of income for now. Although I finally got the blueprint for an Economy Scanner and installed that on the Explorer last night. Time to start doing some trading to bank some more serious units.

Past couple nights, I've been wandering/flying over a toxic planet named Tibet. Would be more fitting if it were a cold world, but that's the random name generator for you. Found a few crashed freighters, which has helped build up capital, as well as several (something like 7 or 8) storage depots, which I've proceeded to shoot the crap out of. More units. I've also been lucky in finding some Drop Pods (3 so far - 2 of them within walking distance of each other) while just flying and have been using those to add Cargo slots on the Exosuit.

Nailed some blueprints from several manufacturing facilities and even got the blueprint for the Atlas Pass Version 3. I don't even have version 1 yet. Now to find some Emeril...

Anyway, taking things very carefully and so far, so good. Will update with more as events unfold (or with an obituary should the worst come to pass).

Attempt #9 continues: this weekend, did a lot of exploring on a toxic world with only 5 fauna types and rather infrequent storms. No predators as far as I could find. Collected a crapton of buried technology modules, which I subsequently sold and eventually amassed well over 12 million units. Invested a fair bit of that into Platinum at trade posts, space stations, and NPCs so I could process that into nanites. Depleted the funds, but allowed me to grab some blueprints and a few upgrade modules.

Grabbed a couple holds full of trade goods and did some warp jumping to wealthy systems with good sell percentages (rinse and repeat) to boost the income as well. So finally tipped the 25 million mark. Decided to stay and explore in a system with a pair of planets, one of which had two moons. One of the moons was a lush world, so I was fully expecting the crazed sentinel treatment, but was really pleasantly surprised to find sentinel presence was low. So, off to explore.

Heh, RNG had something else up its sleeve. At least 2 predator species on this particular moon, and they seemed to be the first two species that spawned anytime you get out of your ship. Had 4 very nasty close calls before deciding I'd be better off braving the cold on the planet than flirting with disaster at the hands of a meat-eating crab or dog-thing on this moon. Why do these predators always spawn behind the player? Sure, it's exciting, but I don't know how much more my heart can take. I've gotten a lot better at running as soon as I see that red paw, then turning and filling those buggers full of lead. Still, it makes it really tough to mine ore deposits.

Anyway, the planet was a hyborian type with intense cold. Actually red lettered-extreme cold. No-go on the exploration there. Too much hassle when your environmental protection drains in just a few seconds. Off to the other planet (the second moon was lifeless, so not much there but some mining possibilities - but I'm after something else). Go to this world and it's a hot one, but not extreme. Okay, I can live with that. So I spent a few hours just cruising the landscape and finding buildings/structures. Ended up finding 5 drop pods*, 3 storage facilities, several crashed freighters, and several minor settlements. Also a couple trade outposts, and one spot where there were 2 manufacturing facilities within sight of each other (snagged a pair of blueprints from them), as well as a monolith within walking distance. Nice.

*Combined with space stations and a few drop pods on other planets, I now have 14 slots in the high capacity Exosuit cargo, and have all but one of the tech slots in the suit as well. Storage space is becoming a little less of a hassle.

Headed to a trading post to see what ships would land, and in the second wave, down drops an Exotic. So I said what the hell and grabbed it. I now have my Explorer, my mobile storage Shuttle, and one of those tall-wing Exotics. I fill up their holds with trade goods, and proceed to jump out to sell.

Find an appropriate system and go to a trade post to offload the goods. Summon the Exotic and sell its cargo only to find I can't summon the shuttle with 18 slots filled with goods because it has no launch fuel. Now what? I tried everything I could (made sure the Exotic was topped up, topped up the Explorer, and even made sure I had launch fuel in my exosuit storage), but no way would it summon. So I'm now thinking the only way to get that bloody thing to show up is to grab a freighter and summon the freighter so my current stable of extra ships (all 2 of them) will show up in the hangar. Then I can top it up and summon the damned thing when I need it. While I'm fiddling about trying to get the Shuttle to summon, what do I see land but another Exotic. So I go take a look. I'd have bought it outright (it was one of those 'guppy' designs with no long wings, which I tend to like better), but it only had 19+5 slots, and the bonus stats were pretty much all the minimum, so I decided to give it a pass.

Anyway, I didn't yet have a freighter, as I was being picky about which one I'd accept as the freebie (hoping to get a capital ship with 34 slots, of course). It's getting late, so I decide I'll warp to a wealthy system and just take what shows up and call it a night. I'll upgrade/trade it later. So I make 2 warps before the battle spawns. Wealthy Korvax system. And look what it is, a large size Venator! Cool. I shoot down the attacking pirates, land on the freighter and talk to the captain.I fully expect this to be a C class with 28 or so slots. Nope, this time RNG smiles on me and it's an A class with 34 slots. Score! The accompanying Trading frigate is also A class. I called it a night, but now I'm itching to get back to the game. Going to be a long work day...

Quick update:

Attempt #9 continues. Spent my entire game session last night on the same planet, just cruising around scanning and looking for buildings. By the end of the night I'd found enough Drop Pods to upgrade my suit from 15 to 31 cargo slots, found several crashed freighters*, and also several Minor Settlements (looking for a 24 slots S class mutitool or an S class Experimental with lots of slots). I actually found 3 settlements with Experimental pistols on offer, but the best was an A class with only 8 slots.

Also found one offering an S class multitool but only 16 slots (I have an A class 24 slot MT).

Also found a lot of manufacturing facilities, so managed to snag quite a number of recipes and blueprints, one of which was the Atlas Pass V2. So now I have the blueprint for the Version 2 and 3 Atlas Pass. Still don't have version 1 yet (I'm not very far into the quests. Getting sidetracked).

Snagged another Exotic (blue 'guppy' style), so that's now 4 ships in the stable: 2 Exotics, 1 Shuttle, and 1 Explorer.

Hit several storage facilities for some easy loot and units as well. So after spending several million on trade goods in preparation for my next warp (I've got the holds of three of the ships filled with goods), I've more than replaced what was spent. Pure profit when I hit the trade terminal.

*some of these crashed freighters require a lot of resources to open the cargo pods. And the vast majority of what I get are antimatter housings, antimatter, starship launch fuel, and warp drive fuel. Rarely do I ever get more than one item worth more than 50,000 units. Starting to think I may just ignore the crashed freighters. Granted, even 50,000 units plus all the other mundane stuff is worth more than the resources required to open the cargo pods, and having basically an endless supply of warp and launch fuel is great (I have a steady stack of at least 10 launch fuel and 15 warp fuel at all times) but the pain in the ass of replacing the resources is what's making me feel it may not be worth it.

edit: Oh, forgot to mention, I also found 2 monoliths (one of which revealed the Portal) and an unmarked grave. So I now have 8 of the 16 glyphs.

TerriblrPurpose, your adventure almost mirrors mine, vortex cubes, radiation planet and all you above woes.....

So much for a random game, at least you do not exit your ship and get stuck in geometry multiple times and need to use a editor to not need to redo so much.

I wish I could get back to owning just 4 ships, I get a swarm of circling traders trying to land in my hanger these days.