Early permanent power guide (biofuel/coal skip)

Geothermal energy is of limited usefulness by the time most players unlock it. Compared to late-game power sources, its energy is negligible, and its only real point is to allow for a distant outpost base without needing to bring power lines all the way there, or possibly insulate something particularly important from grid failure. However, when it is unlocked very early in the game, it can be extremely good, able to power your entire setup. This is a guide on how to unlock and place geothermal power so quickly that you can skip some biofuel generation and skip coal entirely.

It's simply faster to unlock and easier to set up than a bunch of coal generators. There is also no chance of making an error and no elaborate process to make it function, unlike coal, where you have to deal with finicky water systems and jump-starting it using biomass burners on your water extractors. Coal generators usually need a building or platform of some sort to organize the pipes and belts, while geothermal generators can just be placed out in the open and hooked up to wires.

It also frees up any coal nodes for use making steel or as vehicle fuel instead of being sent into a coal generator.

For the purposes of this guide, your starting biome should be Rocky Desert or Northern Forest. I do not suggest starting in Grassy Field or Dune Desert, as they are too far away from the crash sites that contain necessary materials for geothermal generators to be worth it. You can still move to one of these other biomes later if you wish, though I heavily recommend unlocking Power Towers and the Zipline before you do if you do not wish it to be an arduous hassle to connect power lines there.

Northern Forest is an easier starting zone largely because of the very close-together nodes in the northwest of the biome and the free Supercomputer in a crash site nearby, which gives tons of coupons when sunk. But both are not so bad.

Proceed with onboarding (or skipping onboarding, for returning players) as normal. If you find any random Caterium deposit lying around, be sure to mine that to unlock the ability to scan for them.

These are the required tiers to research before doing this:

Tier 1

• Base Building (to build ramps to places)
  
• Field Research

Tier 2

• Part Assembly
  
• Resource Sink

Note: Unlocking Tier 2 - Obstacle Clearing is also highly recommended. It allows the player to harvest mycelia more easily and research fabric and the parachute, which makes using Zipline safer, and gives you extra inventory slots.


The next thing you should do is tap a caterium node. If you started in Northern Forest, mark the deposit on your map at -12,737,-104,523. Mark the coordinates -178,490,-79,773 if you started in Rocky Desert. In Rocky Desert, you will need to run a ramp of foundations up to it, since it's at the top of a mesa. Avoid the difficult alien creatures nearby. In Northern Forest, it's fairly easy to access, but blocked. You will need to set up numerous Portable Miners and hand-deposit the ore into a storage box that leads to a smelter. It ain't much, but it's honest work.


Use the MAM to research Caterium, Caterium Ingots, Quickwire, Zipline, Caterium Electronics. Next, it's time to actually explore.

You will need later-game materials from several crash sites - entirely in the Spire Coast biome - for this tactic to work. These materials are: Plastic and Motors. Do not discard these. Other materials are also useful for feeding into the AWESOME Sink later for coupons. You can disassemble crash sites for free materials. Bring 500 Quickwire for something later on.

For Rocky Desert, walk northeast. For Northern Forest, build a ramp down from the northern edge of the area.


If you see alpha enemies (big), I do not suggest engaging, just run or dodge them.

The ones you want to grab in order are:

(Northern Forest only)

-26,327, -129,047

You mostly want the Supercomputer for BIG coupons. Free Hard Drive.

(Both biomes)

-56,988, -144,928

Just grab whatever you can while dodging the enemies. The only necessary thing are the 29 motors, but the rest is useful for feeding to the sink.


-50,656, -259,272

The enemies are easy to kill here. Take nearly everything besides the quickwire/fuel since there is too little to matter. Free Hard Drive. You can build a temporary MAM right here and use the 500 Quickwire to research High-Speed Connectors to save on inventory space.


-136, -237,257

You will need the 95 motors here. The Encased Beams and Rubber are useful for the sink. There's a large Spitter here, but they're easy to dodge/block.


After you have all the items, return to base.

You will need enough coupons (8) to buy 200 High-Speed Connectors from the AWESOME Shop. You may also wish to buy 100 Modular Frames (8 coupons), as they are annoying to make this early.

Drop the Supercomputer into the AWESOME Sink and it should give you 21 coupons if you haven't put anything in before, otherwise just dump Encased Beams and other stuff that aren't Motors into the Sink until you have sufficient coupons.


Once you have at least 100 Connectors and 1000 Quickwire, research Geothermal Generator. This unlocks Geysers for scanning and lets you build the generators.

The proper place to put geothermal plants is important, as Pure geysers give double the power, essentially being like 2 plants. Impure geysers are very weak, nearly useless even at this early stage in the game.

The 2 Pure geysers at (-49,789,-162,416) and (-142,293,-61,383) should be prioritized. There is another Normal geyser next to the latter that you can use as well. As a 4th one, I recommend (-33,373,-88,036).



A 5th Geothermal Plant requires you to buy another set of High-Speed Connectors and Modular Frames, so it's not really that necessary and rather overkill. These 4 generators will easily give you enough power for the early game.

What if you aren't a fan of Northern Forest, etc. and want to set up your factory in a different biome? There's a quick way to do that, too. First, you'll need to set up the Space Elevator (pretty much anywhere works) and complete Phase 1 of Project Assembly. This should be very simple, and you don't even have to build a fully-connected assembly line, just a couple storage boxes with Reinforced Iron Plates and Rotors (specifically, 50 of each) going into an Assembler to make Smart Plating.

Once it's fully launched and you've unlocked Phase 2, you'll see the option to unlock "Expanded Power Infrastructure" in the HUB. This is normally something you will need to set up a significant amount of infrastructure to unlock, including transporting coal to your base, etc. But this can also be sequence-broken using crash sites. There are many crash sites in Northern Forest with Steel Beams with the closest one being at -4,707, -76,302 just south of the recommended starting location. I also recommend going to the one at 8,680, -41,778, even further south of the first one.

With these two crash sites, you'll have collected 155 Steel Beams. Combining that with the hundreds of Encased Beams you presumably picked up much earlier when going to crash sites, and some Modular Frames you can automate yourself, you can unlock Expanded Power Infrastructure. It needs 200 Modular Frames, so automating them may take a while. You may wish to AFK or possibly buy some of them in the AWESOME Shop.

The problem is, each Power Tower you place also requires 20 Steel Beams, so you can only place 2 of them. This is still not enough to reach a different biome. The answer to this lies to the south in the Crater Lakes area. This has only a few crash sites, but they're also replete with Steel Beams. Using the existing Power Towers to get to -56,144, -72,864 alone will let you build another 9 Power Towers and -29,069, -22,640 will let you build another 3 for a total of 12 Power Towers. That should be enough to reach pretty much anywhere on the map you want.

You can also use Power Towers to easily access the three Pure geysers slightly south of the map's center in Red Jungle, and using another set of High-Speed Connectors, place them down. Power Storage also lets you deal with the fluctuating power, increasing your overall capacity. This can essentially more than double your power production before necessarily unlocking Petroleum Power.