The Roadmap to Victory in Oxygen Not Included (Base Game)

As requested, here's a text version that breaks down the steps and an estimated, EARLIEST cycle you can get there safely. It's totally fine to get there later than the cycles listed, or to do some of these in a different order depending on the map you're playing on and how quickly you are taking duplicants. Just keep in mind that deviating from the walkthrough steps will change the shape of the run, since resources will be spent much differently than what is implied with this order/timing. Keep in mind that these are just estimates!

Basic Dupe Needs
Grow Mealwood (Cycle 5)
Explore Starting Area (Cycle 10)
Coal Power (Cycle 20)
Use Polluted Water (Cycle 30)
Find Ice Biome (Cycle 40)
Start Berry Sludge (Cycle 45)
Dig to the Top (Cycle 55)
Create Base Ventilation (Cycle 60)
Start Shipping (Cycle 65)
Ranch Hatches (Cycle 70)
Solve Long-Term Dupe Morale (Cycle 85)
Create Cool Water Bank (Cycle 100)
Create Ice-Powered Cooling System (Cycle 110)
Salvage Steel (Cycle 125)
Harvest Natural Gas (Cycle 130)
Find Renewable Water Source (Varies, latest is around Cycle 180)
Dig to the Bottom (Varies, roughly Cycle 150)
Start Atmo Suits (Varies, roughly Cycle 150)
Start Creating Steel (Varies, roughly Cycle 150)
Harvest Oil Area (Cycle 200)
Capture Metal Volcanoes (Cycle 225)
Get Power from Magma (Cycle 260)
Update Cooling Infrastructure (Varies, roughly Cycle 290)
Set up Electrolyzers (Varies, Cycle 400 at the latest, but need cooling first)
Enter Space Biome (Cycle 375)
Rocket Launching Pad (Cycle 425)
Launch Rockets (Cycle 435)
Liquify Hydrogen (Cycle 500? It can take a while)
Finally, Breach the Temporal Tear (as soon as you have enough Hydrogen Fuel)

Chapters!
0:00 Intro
0:38 The Early Game
10:50 The Mid Game
17:48 The Late Game
21:16 Outro

[SarcasticGoose]

I know most people don't like being told "what to do" but thank you for this video. I'm on cycle 100 and have been stuck at basically the "early game" and needed some direction on what to do to get to the "mid game". I don't think I'll be doing everthing in order but it's nice having some goals to accomplish.

[DrakeWurrum]

If you feed your hatches only sedementary rock, you can build them up into stone hatches forcefully, and stone hatches will feed on *IGNEOUS* rock, which is a renewable resource from volcanoes.

[vertisbrown]

This is a superrrr complex game and it took quite awhile to even watch this tutorial series but I’m extremely appreciative of it because i can’t seem to get past early game without having either a melt down or not knowing what to do next

[nghianguyen-qoyn]

Spaced Out Walkthrough!!!! Let's go!!!!

And honesty, still a good quality video that I enjoy throughout the end. Looking forward to the next

[dwillingham]

I just picket ONI back up again. I've never beat the game and always tap out around cycle 120. Usually because my base starts to overheat or I feel like I can do things more optimally if I restart. I've done about 4 saves this way now and I am ready to take the next step! Using your video here to try to move forward.

[geeksdotbetter]

Great job! I haven't seen many roadmap style summaries and found it useful. Keep going!

[darkally]

1. I always put the research station on one side of the printing pod (and the super-computer on the other) to take advantage of the built-in light. Put doors around those and you have an instant laboratory. (I often deconstruct the ration box and build the research station there.)
2. Plant mealwood in planter boxes instead of farm tiles (and plant only 5 mealwood plants per dupe). Then when you don't think you need it anymore you can disable the planter boxes. And if you start to run out of food you can quickly re-enable them. I usually build my meal lice farm in the area where I'm going to build my hatch ranch so it sits in the back of the 4x4 area with the grooming station. There's no need to pickle the meal lice - no improvement to the food quality and dupes should be eating the meal lice as quickly as they are harvested.
3. I'd recommend against hollowing out the starting area for three reasons: 1. each tile is 1-2kg of oxygen which must be created. 2. I'd much rather have some unmined copper, algae, etc for when I "run out" to give me an "easy out". 3. hard to build a nature preserve (+6 morale) if you've mined everything out.
4. At the beginning you can do a lot with just manual generators and dealing with carbon dioxide in the early game can be a challenge. (Also there's no point having more than one coal generator at the beginning.) 5. Not sure about your plan for using deoderizers for oxygen generation. Each dupe needs 2 full tiles of PW at the surface and 1 deoderizer each which uses 90kg of sand per cycle. And I don't know whether having rows of deoderizers would be effective.
7. Personally I go for fried mushrooms as my second food source (until I get a hatch ranch running). While berry sludge is good, it requires water.
9. I build a simple door crusher to get rid of carbon dioxide (and natural gas if I have a flatulent dupe). Then I use simple liquid locks to keep other gases (i.e. chlorine) out of the base.
11. I use a stacked ranch design which starts with wrangling & manual egg sweeping but can then be automated for sweeping and repopulation. Each 8 hatches will feed ~4.7 normal dupes.
12. Latrine, barracks & great hall can all be built very early and will give +8 morale.
One of my very early priorities is researching oxygen Masks (+ gas filters) to better explore the adjacent biomes. Next set up a metal refinery (powered by two coal generators) using a pool of polluted water for cooling to minimize wasting metal ore making refined metal.
One of my other early priorities is planting a thimble reed so I have the reed fiber for atmo suits. One algae terrarium makes enough polluted water for the thimble reed.

[vassilisa.n.]

My first playthrough using your tutorial went amazing, made it to the swamp planet but started having trouble and dying
My second one went smoothly but made a mistake of closing up the metal volcano but also dig it up so with time the metals started to melt and some became magna
I guess the secret is planning, some choices you make can break your base and you can't just take it back

[sneezyfido]

I might have made a miscalculation, but as I see it..
One dupe seems to generate more extra water per cycle from toilet use than an electrolyzer uses to make the oxygen for that dupe.

I'm currently in early stage of a run where I experiment with a spom setup with a liquid valve up front.

I'm building the gas room up front for 3 electrolyzers (planning an area that will house 20 eventually) so that I can leave that closed. I set the valve to allow exactly enough water through for the number of dupes I have.
I feed that from a waste area at the bottom, which is a loop of lavatories, sieve and carbon skimmer.
There's space to make an overflow option, but so far my reservoirs are just slowly filling up.

This thing allows me to not worry about oxygen at all. Any other water sources I find are for research and expanding my food options.

In this run I'm also trying for carnivore. I really like the hatch ranch as food source! Might keep that in for later colonies, but omelettes and lower dupe nrs when I don't go for achievements.

... ofcourse I fumbled my speed a bit, and I'm off by 1, 5 cycle for carnivore with the planned 8 dupes. Guess I'll have to get a 9th and go hunt.

[perkin]

God I love this series. I watched tons of ONI vid but none of that can beat yours. Cycle 568 and completed everything 😊 Thanks again!

[benpowell]

Very valuable! I've never finished, mostly because by the time i get to the late game, there is so much going on and no clear direction where I'm going.

[BrerRait]

Thank you wery much. It helped me to better understand the basic idea of sustainability, transition to renewable sources and quite realistic temperature management. I appreciate your efforts in creating sequence of simple yet meaningful steps for progression in the game, as I was basically lost after setting up toilets, food and energy myself. It is also quite clear to me, that there was impressive work done "behind the scenes" to deliver the message without overextending to billion of possible mechanics that is probably there. Well done!

[samwheller]

Appreciate it. Sometimes, there's so much to learn about this game, it's good to have a nice simple path.

[chrisrobs]

exactly what i was looking for! just came back to the game after a few years nice lil wrap up of all the steps.

[Lorens]

Great video! I usually skip a lot of stuff, like digging out large portions of the map, using polluted water for oxygen, taming volcanoes, oil wells and geothermal power by keeping my base very small and limiting the duplicant population to 12 members. By 200th cycle my base usually has the unlimited source of the 3-4 degree oxygen (that can passively cool down a small base) from salt water geyser (that's really easy to find in a salt biome) that gets through Desalinator + Hydra + TATST setup, which also gives me extra power for the core part of my base. Plus, it acts as a Sleet Weet farm, dirt is produced by a Pip ranch with wild plants for free, and the water can be supplied by a second geyser you're pretty much guaranteed to find. The last rocket is usually sent around the 1500th cycle. Currently, I'm trying to skip petroleum entirely and go straight to the liquid hydrogen. Unless the ammount of Data Banks is limited for every nearby asteroid, this should be possible.
One more thing. I know that Terra is designed for the beginners, but Verdante is so much easier with Pips, Arbor Trees, Oxyferns, and Ethanol, to the point that it's kind of unfair. XD

[FullCircleStories]

This was really cool. I love all the beginner friendly material you make, because it's taken me so, so long to understand the game

[_Zilch]

Great video! I was looking to play ONI again since the last time I played ONI was 3 years ago and the difference of gameplay from then and now is CRAAAZY!!! Not having to worry about diseases as much as before is mind blowing to me. That might be another video you can make, pointing out the big/major differences from back then to now, along with blueprints/mechanisms that are no longer required/necessary. I think I'll have to remove my old ONI goggles with all the fear and caution, and put on a new pair with fresh perspectives.

[mrjblacc]

Interesting, I usually start with hatch ranching and electrolizers much sooner, never really used much polluted water off-gassing.

Other possible goals:
-have 1 main ladder run (with a fire pole)
-make an industrial brick with refineries, industry & power all cooled down by an aqautuner in a steamroom with turbines
-fully isolate your base with 1 exit, covered by atmo suits (spam decor to cover morale needs of suit skills)
-reed fiber setup/dreko ranch (for atmosuut repairs and insulation)
-petroleum boiler (much more efficient)

[octagone.]

You have no idea how much this helps me as I am just starting, watching the rest of ur tutorial series right now.

[_Albuz_]

😐Me watching this video thinking that I always got stuck in the midgame while the video calls it early game