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In campaign you have a few tutorials at a base.
Until there is an reactor like, hell breaks lose and you have to escape FAST.
on the floor there are some green lights that guide you, but it can be sometime be difficult to really follow the path FAST.
After dying 3 times you are able to skip the escape and are in an survival capsule.

After touching down with the capsule first check the cupboards and take all the components, MREs and med-kits. Also take all the tools that are on the walls.
You will spend quite some time in this capsule, familiarize yourself with it.

It has a small 3d printer, you will need minerals to print something, which is at first not really that necessary.
Just remember, printed things are in the other printer inventory (you can switch from the ressource to the printer inventory!).

There is also an station where you can refill your O2 bottle.
I would refrain from putting off the helmet, risk of accidently getting killed is too high and in the whole game there seems to be no reason whatsoever to do that.

Lets take a step out and go to the nearest base.
Search it thoroughly, you will find some circuit boards and a probably a tablet, which will enable you to research something in the techtree that needs a blueprint.
On the outside is an ATV whith an broken circuit board, swap it out with a working one and you got your first vehicle.
Don't bother trying to repair anything else, all bases you will find are not meant to be repaired, you will scrap them leter on for components (took me hours to find that out)

Take it back to the capsule, pull out your scanner and go to the spot where water is found (blue pointer).
Build you first well, it will produce 4l/h H2O during the daytime, you can fill up your bottles by either using the display (only unequipped bottles get filles if they are not full already) or by going to the back and filling the equipped bottle at the spot where a hose could be connected. I never use the display, the chance that you forget the bottle in the well after filling is way too high and most of the time you only notice that you forgot it is when the equipped bottle reaches a critical fill value.

Next up is your need for electricity....
you should be able to build a small solar panel. Choose the spot wisely, you may want to use exactly that spot later on for your first building. I placed it as close to the capsule as possible and behind it.
You can refill your suits electrity by opening the socket of the solar panel and using the open socket.
Your ATV will also need a refill from time to time, park it near the panel and run a cable from the socket to the ATV.

Next you will probably need some rest, as soon as the sun sets it is getting cold so better be in your capsule and close the door.
You can only sleep in the chair and not more than 8 hours at a time. That duration can be even shorter if you have not enough H2O in your equipped bottle, game will warn you.
Since you have some time to kill it can be a good idea to maybe eat something if your hunger is below 50%, maybe refill your O2 bottles (never forget to take them out....you will rather find out you fogot it when you need it)
You can use the printers ressource inventory to store some stuff.

After around 0800 it is save to go out and you will not freeze to death anymore.
Look for some big rocks nearby and use your jackhammer on them.
Grind them down till only the minerals are left. Pick them up by double clicking on them.
...and so the grind begins..
Mining gives you the needed points to eventually unlock the higher versions of the tools.
Dont bother using silicon or aluminium for anything els than printing cables or hoses.

Some things you can reaserch may need a reasearch from another techtree, some need bluerpints which you find via using a tablet. Tablets can be found in abandoned bases, so slowly exploring out wards is recomended.
While exploring also grind down what you can, at first you will only be able to grind down simple stuff on the outside.
Those components are needed to build things again.

Now it might be the right time to start building the first building...the workshop.
And this is the time when the real "fun begins".
Chose the plot wisely. You may want it close to your capsule, but also with enough space for growth later on.
Always build two iris at the entrance, otherwise whenever you open it you will vent the rooms oxygen.
Buildings consume energy, more than one solar panel gives you.
Also you may want to even have the lights on during the night. so you will need a battery to store it.
Bulding one costs a small circuit board.
And since one solar panel is not enough, you will need a tranformer to combine 4 of them in order to run a cable to the battery (only has one entry and one exit) and a cable from the battery to the workshop.
Panel in the workshop shows you how much energy is needed, adjust the output of the battery accordingly and also look on the transformer that 100% of the input is on the output.
The battery gets drained during the night, so try to have at least allways enough for 12 hours of runtime in the battery.

Next you might wish to have a CO2 scrubber in the workshop (higher electricity costs!!) and a workbench.
You will need the workbench in order to upgrade your tools once you have reaserached them.
So now you will have to balance between getting the tech points for reasearch by grinding down bases while exploring and mining.
Might be slow at first, but as sool as you have the jackhammer 2 researched by finding the tablet and have your old one upgraded, it starts to get easier.
As soon as you have the grinder 2 you start to be able to grind down more of the bases At level 3 you can dust them completely, leaving behind some circuit boards, tablets, seeds etc that you might have missed during your first visits.
Upgrading the detector will help you at level 3 to even find what minerals are in the rocks.

If you find a really huge base and are tempted to explore it....save yourself the time.
You might get lost during exploration, there is some radioactivity around and you may not even have enough space in your inventory to store anything from there anyway.
You can revisit it when you can really store anything you grind from there.

So far the basics...
Once you can build a survival capsule you can venture out even further from your initial point, just watch out that you have the materials to build it along with enough to buid also a solar panel and a well.

From the research standpoint I would look to get the tools upgraded ASAP, in electricity you will want the battery upgrade (more storing expansion without costing a circuit board) and transformer upgrade enably you to connect more solar panels.Maybe also a sabbatier to enable you to produce O2 from the well, but I would rather suggest to not add them to the wells at your base (too much electricity, needs to be powered with at least 10KW).
O2 is not that much an issue, seems to last ages, H2O on the other hand needs to upped almost daily.

Another importan reaseach path is towards the rover.
Once you can build it you can venture out even further and even sleep in a bed :D Also there is a small storage compatment and one H2O and O2 bottle, enabling longer journey before you need to build a well and a sabbatier.
When you have a tipper on it, you can mine those ricks even faster and you can grab bigger pieces.
You will need a rock crusher, I never bothered to build the small one, bigger one has way more storage area and also includes a printer. Also on the big one you can switch containers and tippers. And again it needs electricity.
To unload the tipper on the big crusher, drive from the right side onto it until the "stop" on the ramp is almost blow you.
Containers come handy on longer expedition because you can store the stuff you find in them, enabling even longer journeys before you run out of inventory.

And what about plants ?
I would not bother with them until you really run out of stuff to do.
Most important things are have enough electricity and enough water to survive, MREs are so abundant that you do not need the plants.
Rather first build multiple patches with solar panels around your base with big enough batteries. You will want redundancy if something bad happens like sandstorms, tornadoes, dust devils or wors, a meteor storm that destroy something. Those things follow you, so if you get the warning hop into the rover and drive as far away from you base to safe you some trouble.
Then here are those science workbenches, once you have unlocked them and build they offer a bit of addition storage, but more importingly they als let you research the highe end things. But they need also electricity.

Only once you have electricity sorted out (preferably enough to last you two full days), you might want to get some "luxury!, add a sleeping capsule to your base and maybe a bathroom, the latter one will need water from a well via an hose that can be connected to the workshop.
At his point you should have really enough stuff to build whatever you want and enough cicruit boards.
You can expand your bas as big as you want, but allway keep an eye on the energy and water consumption.
The moment you have the greenhouse (would not even bother with the hydroponics in a workshop) you may want to have multiple wells connected to a pump and have them supplied with electricity even during the night.
Another luxury is a canteen, right now enably you to recharge your suit in the base.
Ulimate luxury are the garage (not much of use right now) and the domes (ability to plant trees)


sums it up I think :D

Even if in the beginning you might think that you are not finding enough tablets, you will get them all at a certain point.
Same things goes for the seeds.