My impression of Starbound has greatly improved since I saw the trailer for the first time. At first I thought it looked ugly, but it's own artistic style has grown on me and I like it. The graphics remind me of Secret of Mana, a Squaresoft game for the SNES. In that game, when your power level is back to full, you hear some kind of notification and you can see that you are ready to attack at full power. It seems to me that I hear something similar in Starbound. Sometimes either while fighting or finishing off a monster, I hear a "bling" kind of sound. I haven't figured out what this means yet. Any ideas?

My current star system is "Alpha Gloomii 84 III a" and "b", "b" is where I set my home, a forest planet. "Gloomii a" is a snow planet, which has made me use some strategy in order to explore. It's cold on this planet and before exploring this planet, I had not yet crafted a Yarn Spinner nor collected enough leather to make the necessary gear. That was something I pretty much over looked for a while. So I placed campfires at intervals so that I wouldn't freeze to death. The threat level in this system is 1 and enemies aren't providing as much of a challenge as before I upgraded my weapons and armor. I also crafted a Light Stick, which provides some light around me. That and the flashlight help me save on torches, which I don't place very often anymore, instead I use them mostly for campfires now.

Compared to Terraria, I'm not sure how the size of planets are relative to a world. I also wonder if the planets differ in size as well. My first planet seems to be probably as big or bigger than a large world in Terraria. I've already enjoyed an improvement over Terraria which is that the terrain wraps around, going all the way to the left or right will lead you back to where you landed on the planet. I wonder if Terraria will eventually do that.

Some of the ore isn't as necessary as it was in the beginning. I'm mostly using silver and steel now. I don't have much use for copper or gold, but I've found out how to upgrade tools using ore (pretty simple), which is really cool. I've also crafted a refinery, which helps me get rid of excess ore and get more pixels (Starbound currency). I don't die as often as I used to, which didn't help me when I needed pixels.

Since I've been playing Starbound, I feel like I've learned at lot as well. I don't think there is a huge learning curve, especially if you've played Terraria, but there is still a lot to learn. I'm getting used to using more hot keys than I usually do. They have been very useful.

I have not yet traveled outside my starting system. I wanted to save fuel (or coal, which is still important) and stay near by and explore various planets. I've written down my home coordinates because I got a little lost and confused with the navigation system. It seems that you can type in coordinates or click the "Random" button. I'll experiment with that more soon, probably, as I'm making my wait through this final (second) planet in my system. I do now have access to the Beta sector, but I might travel around the Alpha sector for a while to explore the various planets.

I've already defeated a few bosses and some monsters that have that red stuff glowing from them (not fire). I just defeated the robot boss, which was easy since I took advantage of him getting stuck by some terrain between us. I know this was a cheap strategy, but I did take a few hits, he took plenty of them with my Tomahawk (not the Tiny one). One problem I ran into was trying to place the inactive robot so I could activate it. It seems I had to find a good stretch of flat terrain without trees on the surface. The penguin UFO wasn't very difficult, but it was cool and fun.

The game definitely seems a lot like Terraria, which I think is obvious and great, but it's still so much more, which makes it awesome!

Travis   Admin wrote on 04/29/2014 at 02:58am

In regards to world size, yes, worlds can be very differently sized. Also, unlike Terraria, if you walk far enough to one side you end up back where you started, which I like.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 04/29/2014 at 03:12am

Right. It seems like Starbound planets are about as small as the small worlds in Terraria and as big as the very large ones. That said, there are more things in Terraria worlds than in Starbound ones. That said, a small Terraria world seems much richer in stuff to do.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 04/29/2014 at 04:59am

Well, after being on three different planets, they seem to be at least as large as a Terraria large world. I just finished wrapping around a desert planet that had snow in places. But, I also found a temple. I'm still exploring the planets in the system I started in. The original two that I found are just two among a few others revolving around a sun, which I failed to notice on my initial view of the navigation system, which I've gotten used to.

Yes, if you compare a world to a planet, Terraria offers much more diversity in one world of biomes and things to do. Although Starbound seems to break large biomes up into planets, moons, and asteroid belts.

Oh and did anyone else notice the "FTL Drive?" =)

Travis   Admin wrote on 04/29/2014 at 01:18pm

FTL (the game) didn't invent that term, it's a common sci-fi trope.

http://galactica.wikia.com/wiki/FTL_Drive

hardeyez wrote on 05/01/2014 at 06:55pm

The "bling" sound is probably you picking up pixels the monster dropped when it died.

hardeyez wrote on 05/01/2014 at 06:57pm

Also, copper ore remains important to repairing tools (well any ore, but copper seems to be best bang for the buck).

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/01/2014 at 10:59pm

I don't think it's picking up pixels, as I know that sound. And yes, I haven't been refining my copper ore, but I've been using it to repair my diamond drill. It only takes one ore to repair one bar, which is pretty cheap, but I have plenty of copper.

hardeyez wrote on 05/02/2014 at 12:13am

Yeah, there's not much to spend ore on yet... I ended up collecting over 1000 bars of gold, then crafted up diamond drills for both my kids and spent a chunk of that. :)

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