Early on in development, I rushed to the various Golden Chests and Wrecks to loot them. Then came the recognition that if you leave some of those chests you end up with better loot. There were games I never got above eggplant seeds, for example, because I hit everything too early. So I switched over to "crating" only in places that would be hard to get to because lakes.

I've started to rethink this. I'm starting to think that maybe it makes sense to loot crates until I have around a half dozen eggplant seeds, then maybe I can leave the rest, at least for a while, for the better loot.

What say you? Do you hold off on crates? Do you open all the golden crates right away,? Do you go for more than a half-dozen growers? What difficulty?

So you're saying crate loot is calculated based on terraformation stage? It's not something I've kept in mind so far, but if that's how it works, it's worth a try.

The golden chests I leave until after rainfall. I loot the wrecks until I get just enough of what I need, plus all blue prints. Then loot the rest later. Anyway, a lot of the seeds found in wrecks are not in chests.
One question. Is the chest loot set when you come into a certain distance from the chests? I haven't done extensive research on this, but some of the first blue chests you encounter still have the base, basic stuff in them, even after rainfall. Of course these you can not really help coming close to.

Yeah, there are now a lot of seeds just sitting on shelves. I don't think that's always been the case in the early releases. Either that or I lost them somewhere. Or possibly didn't find them. Which seems weird as I remember them being pretty obvious.

I think loot is determined on opening. I usually leave the Dune wreck more or less intact, except for the fixed loot and small blue chests, and when I finally get around to going back through, moss or later, the regular blue chests don't have junk.

The Golden chests are a tough call. IMO, the Golden seeds are just too good to delay. I think the best oxygen plant you get in the early game is a 200%, but the Goldens are 600%. That's a lot more oxygen early game when energy is at a premium. But I don't think you really need more than 2 or 3 of those bad boys either, until there's better loot. Fortunately, there are 2 golden chests right away.