Whether you are an experienced automation gamer or a survival game veteran— or better yet, neither of these—, StarRupture can get tricky at certain points. Where should you place your base? How can you survive the hordes of aliens? How the heck can I get into the caves? What about the radiation zones!?
Don’t worry, we’ll answer those questions and more with our StarRupture beginner tips & tricks, which are here to help you have a smoother time on Arcadia-7 (apart from the occasional Ruptures that turn the entire planet into a burnt crisp, of course).
Table of Contents
- Where Should You Place Your First Base?
- Which Corporation Should You Level First?
- How Can You Find Blueprints?
- How Can You Deal With Massive Hordes Of Aliens?
- Save Often
- Don’t Upgrade Your Base Core (Or Else!)
- How Can You Access Radiation Zones?
- How Do You Get Into Closed Caves?
Where Should You Place Your First Base?
We answered this question in-depth in this article (LINK TO BEST BASE LOCATION), but we can give you the cliff-notes. It is fine to have a base right outside the Orbital Lander crater, which is where the tutorial will have you build one.
You won’t feel the need to move until you start farming Calcium and Helium. At that point, move to this location, which will position you around the middle of the map for easier exploration and will give you access to the four main resources you’ll be farming.
Which Corporation Should You Level First?
This is a trick question because it only has two answers, and neither of them truly answer it. The correct question is: all of them. You should ideally be levelling all Corporations at once, having your base constructed in a way that is feeding resources into five Orbital Cargo Launchers, one per Corporation.
The also correct question is: whichever ones you can. While you’ll eventually hit a progression wall on every Corp, that won’t happen simultaneously. So our advice is, when a Corp is asking for a resource that you can’t craft because you lack a blueprint, go hunt it. If you need a building from levelling another Corp, temporarily change your base layout to have two Orbital Cargo Launchers funneling resources into that Corp.
How Can You Find Blueprints?
There have been some posts on Reddit and Steam forums claiming that blueprint locations are randomised. This is not true. You will bump into duplicates every once in a while, but blueprints are not randomised, they’re always in the same place.
You’ll find blueprints inside abandoned bases throughout Arcadia-7, so keep exploring. If you’re looking for a specific one you might be missing, check out our guide covering the location of every blueprint in StarRupture.
How Can You Deal With Massive Hordes Of Aliens?
As you progress further into the game, exploring more of the map, especially to the East and North, you’ll encounter more aliens roaming around. When you get into abandoned bases or activate a Geo Scanner, they’ll come in massive, sometimes overwhelming numbers.
If you’re having trouble with combat in StarRupture, we recommend investing into defensive LEMs, buying two weapons to replace your Pistol, and making good usage of grenades. Grenades not only clear a ton of aliens, they attract their attention, so they can be used both offensively and defensively.
In case you bump into a horde in a base that you are unable to clear, simply wait for the next Rupture to come, build a habitat nearby to stay covered, and loot the base as soon as the temperature goes down. There won’t be any aliens there.
Save Often
We’re as much against save-scumming as any other hardcore gamer out there, but there are situations in which you will lose so much time on the shameful walk back that you’ll consider giving up entirely.
StarRupture does have automatic saves, but they aren’t too frequent. So if you’re about to activate a Geo Scanner, invading an abandoned base, or trying your luck against the Rupture timing, save your game first!
Don’t Upgrade Your Base Core (Or Else!)
If you’ve interacted with your Base Core, you might’ve noticed that you can upgrade it, but here’s why you shouldn’t do it, especially as a solo player. Upgrading your Base Core allows you to get more cooling capacity, effectively allowing you to cram more buildings around that core.
The problem is, when you upgrade to level 2, your base will start getting periodically attacked from all nearby Monoliths. Aliens will spawn and you’ll have to engage into a tower-defence game until they’re all mowed down.
If you want the challenge and have access to turrets, go ahead and do it. But if you’re playing solo and want to explore without worrying about it, just build mores cores around your main one and enjoy the peace of mind.
How Can You Access Radiation Zones?
This is another trick question: you can’t! These Radiation areas are essentially locked behind story progression, but at this point in development, Creepy Jar don’t allow you to unlock them yet.
So you’ll eventually be able to access radiation zones in StarRupture by progressing through the main story, but that isn’t available in Early Access just yet.
How Do You Get Into Closed Caves?
And here is our final trick question: you don’t! Caves are tied to the Rupture system that happens every once in a while in Arcadia-7. After the Rupture and before all the plants come back, caves are all open and explorable.
Once the planet stabilises and all plant-life return, the caves become inaccessible. So if you want to explore a cave and it is always closed, you need to wait for a Rupture to come and rush in before the planet finishes regenerating.