The Need for Planet Crafter End Game

It's been a couple weeks now since my last post about Planet Crafter. Granted, I spent one of those weeks over in Pensacola Florida and completely away from my computer. (Man, those Quartz sand beaches are nice!) So, I thought I'd give a little update on how the end game is going.

Still haven't seen any insects in my world, but in my imagination they're everywhere.

As of this posting, I'm at 13 TTi of Terraformation. I believe the end goal here is to get to 175 TTi . . . at least I hope that's the goal because there really hasn't been much new in the game since I unlocked the last blueprint wayyyyy back at 360 GTi.  These days, generating 360 GTi is like 12 minutes of waiting around, but here's the thing . . . it's not fast enough. Just waiting around still means like 80+ hours of just waiting around until I win the game.

Which, btw, can we talk about the current anti-climactic nature of the final blueprint unlock in Planet Crafter?  You go through all this work to craft a fusion cell and slot it in the wrecked spaceship only to have it have the effect of 2 Double C batteries.  All it does is open a few doors in the spaceship.  That's it.  Sure the crates inside there are full of loot, but the loot is a little meaningless at this point.  I mean, I did get a type of tree I can't get anywhere else, but . . . that's it?

It takes a lot of nuclear energy to open 2 doors

My current time invested is a bit crazy considering I have 101 Terraformation Rockets circling the planet, 65 Tree Spreaders, and a gaggle of other technology just grinding away. Let's be honest though, the real heavy lifting is being done by the Tree Spreaders and the Seed Spreader Rockets currently . . . and the 9 Nuclear Fusion Generators supporting it all. The big problem?  I'm running out of plants to turn into trees. Where I once had a locker full of plants, I now have only three. 

NEED . . . MORE . . . ROCKETS!!!

The game really feels like it's missing a couple updates to the end game.  I really need a Tier 5 heater and a Tier 5 Drill to chase after.  The rate of return for building a Tier 4 heater and a Tier 4 drill just don't seem adequate at this point.  The inefficiency of building one of those instead of a tree spreader just doesn't seem to make sense.

It's not for trying of course. I have 3 tier 2 Ore Extractors focused solely on gathering Iridium, the main ingredient in making heaters. I feel like I need to build 3 more and just go into heater production mode for a couple days. The gains just seem meaningless, which makes the end game of Planet Crafter seem unnecessarily grindy. The game is in early access, which means there probably is more to come, and I could jump into their Discord server to talk strategy, but really I shouldn't have to -- it should just make sense. 

Drill my minions, DRILL!

Besides adding a Tier 5 heater and drill to chase . . . I'd love to see the option to head into space and build a space station above the planet where I could mix chemicals in anti-gravity to give me a super boost on the planet below. There's SO MUCH that could be done in the end game! I'm excited to see what the devs could come up with. Here's to hoping that a future update solves the problem and adds new fun to the end game!

On the plus side, bugging out the rockets by mass firing them into space is hilarious

Happy Dueling

Time to Terraform in Planet Crafter

Over the weekend I dropped hard into Planet Crafter and surrendered my life to Terraforming a planet. I'm going to be honest, it took a bit to get into this game at first. I'm used to having my survival game mixed with a bit of evil zombie, but that's just not the case in Planet Crafter. No, in this game there are only three major threats: Hunger, Thirst, and Oxygen Supply. As it turns out, that's enough . . . although a giant dune worm or two might be kind of fun.

No Dune Worms to run from here.

Stage one of the game involves simply stepping out of your space pod and getting to work collecting raw ingredients enough to expand all your essentials: backpack space, Oxygen tank, exoskeleton space, agility boots, jet packs, and tools.

Where it all started . . .

The next stage is all about making a quick home base and starting to work on the big five of Terraforming: 

• Oxygen
• Heat
• Pressure
• Biomass
• Power Supply

Watching it tick up . . . ever so slowly

Power Supply is king of that of course . . . you can't run equipment to build a planet's Oxygen, Heat, Pressure, and Biomass without it. A few wind turbines are enough to get you started, but eventually you'll be upgrading to solar panels and nuclear reactors--crafting every step of the way.

Eventually your efforts will bring moisture to the planet as puddles begin to form and the ice you've been using for a water supply begins to melt. Puddles then become Lakes. Lakes then lead to Moss. Moss then leads to flora. Flora then leads to trees . . . and on and on as you attempt to obtain the seemingly impossible goal of 175 Ti (I think that "T" stands for "Tera" as in Terabyte?).  You start small, and at the time of writing this article I've only crested over into 2 Gi (I think that "G" stands for "Giga" as in Gigabyte?) -- I've come a long way but I've got a long way to go.

That moment when you realize you need to move your base because it'll soon be underwater.

The whole game has a management aspect to it similar to how the goal of a clicker game is to eventually stop clicking and instead unlock passive features that click for you. Eventually you've built multiple Biodomes, Multiple Tier 4 heaters, Multiple Tier 4 Drills, Multiple Algae Generators, and now they just . . . work for you.

Also, much like clicker games, there are expendables that have an impact on your terraforming in various ways. One is simply informational: GPS Satellites. A couple others cause meteor showers to rain down upon you with rare ore. Others release seeds and nutrients into the air to help your terraforming with one time boosts to your ever-counting Terraforming index.

Sky rockets in flight! Afternoon Delight!

Along the way you begin to discover traces of a story to the game. At first, I didn't know what my motivations were. Once I built a radar tower and received an email, it became clear . . . I'm a convict and I've chose to commute my prison sentence into an extradition to this planet. If I fully terraform it, they'll come take my beautifully isolated planet away from me and give me my freedom.

As it turns out, I'm not the first to have arrived here as part of the fun in Planet Crafter is delving through downed space craft of those that came before me. You can even find underground bunkers from previous extradited convicts full of loot for the taking and a few scattered hints to their story. (It's unfortunate I haven't found any of their dead bodies yet)

This guy went a little crazy in his bunker . . .

So while the first part of the game was a bit slow, soon I got absorbed into the flow of the game and I was unlocking recipes and crafting all kinds of better and newer stuff. The mid-game has been really fun so far. Building a base of operations and exploring my planet was great. The ever present danger of oxygen is real and acts as a tether to the safety of indoors or a supply of oxygen reserves. Mid-game is the best game so far!

I would say that it feels like now I'm more in the tail end of the mid-game, and things are starting to slow down. I've kind of run out of my supply of Osmium until I can build a Tier 2 Ore Extractor, and really that's going to take some down time as I wait for my planet's pressure to reach a certain state.

Up until this point, I've been extremely addicted to this game, which is always a good thing.  It's too bad it's not a multiplayer game or I'd ask Lessah to start a new world with me. So far, it's been well worth the price of admission.

Here's a quick walkthrough of how my base is looking here so far.

Happy Dueling!

Oops. I won V Rising, What Comes Next? Covid?

A couple weeks ago, the server settings on the Team Spode V Rising server somehow got set to easy mode and I didn't know it.  All I knew is that suddenly I felt like an uncontrollable superhero in game. My scythe was mowing down mobs like a butter knife going through soft butter. In my mind I was thinking, what did I just upgrade in my kit, this is amazing!

So, because I was feeling so amazing, I was like, man, I bet I could try taking on one of those final three bosses. 2 hours later I had beaten the game.

Man, I bet that's tough when the server isn't on easy mode

Then I started thinking . . . hmmm . . . that seemed too easy, and then I looked at the server settings. Yeah, I was at 10x damage and .1x damage received. I alerted Tipa and she hit the reset the settings button, but I already had the pylons sitting safely in my castle.

They give awesome buffs!

Whoops.

Team Spode has still been playing on Sundays, but my motivation to log in and play outside of that has been minimal. I've got my full Bloodmoon set, sanguine reaper, and blood key, so I'm kind of done. I could find a random server to join and give it another go, but I'm not feeling that passionate about playing it again just yet.

. . . . and then I got COVID. For the past three weeks my family had been hosting visitors and treating ourselves to fun things to do around the greater Austin area. I think we narrowed it down to when we went to the Snake Farm Zoo and a lady there was sneezing and coughing a bunch, and we had dropped our guard by not wearing our masks. Yeah, that was probably when it happened. And if not then, we certainly spread it around to each other in the Escape room.

That Star Trek Discovery Escape Room was really tough!

The past week has really been about recovering and just sitting around watching TV. The Iron Chef Iron Legend series was great! Allez Cuisine! Needless to say, after all that, I'm feeling hungry . . . for a game to play! To those ends, I have a HUGE backlog of VR games that I want to play, but being sick and playing VR don't go together. No one wants to strap on a VR headset in that state.

I also noticed my buddy Lessah Ismorah was playing a lot of Planet Crafter on her Youtube channel and she talked me in to buying it. It was only 20 bucks. That's also when I saw, my old wish list, Legend of Keepers was on sale for 8 bucks. A checkout screen later, I had both.

Bringing back life to a dead planet . . . why am I here again?

Time to kill some adventurers!

Dear readers of The Friendly Necromancer. I'm on the mend, and I have a lot of games to write about here in the future. Expect more posts in the future.

Happy Dueling!