How to play guide for Atomicrops

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This page will serve as a basic **how to play guide for *Atomicrops***. While there is very little information available at this time, we urge you to check back often, as new information is being added all the time! Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

## Basic Gameplay

In Atomicrops, the player traverses different biomes located in north, west, south, and east of the player's farm. By defeating enemy camps, the player will be rewarded with upgrades such as: farm animals, turrets, rose seeds, crop seeds, pickaxes, and scrolls, all of which facilitate the growth of the farm. Cultivating crops will net the player currency to spend at the town, which they are transported to by helicopter at the end of a day-night cycle. In said town, the player is able to buy wood for building bridges to different biomes, crop seeds, weapons for use that day, and pickaxes with the currency. It is also possible to trade roses that are grown for hearts and for an increase in relationship status with certain strangers that have the potential to become a spouse. At the end of a three day season, the player talks to the mayor and is rewarded based on how much they grew that season as well as access to more of the town in which they can buy tractors, gamble, and trade roses for items and or animals.

## Tips and tricks

* Planting four seeds of the same type in a 2x2 formation and fully fertilizing the seeds will cause the the crop to combine. The giant version of the crop is significantly more valuable than the base version. Fertilizing and combining can be done at any any stage of plant growth.
* Weeds have multiple stages, on your farm-able plots if a weed just starts to sprout you can step on it to get rid of it which saves time having to cut it down later.
* Holding down the harvest button makes the area expand more, in some cases you may want to harvest just a single crop and leave others (ex. picking up a mega cropwhile leaving a patch of four to be fertilized). Standing right next to a crop and tapping your harvest button makes a smaller precise radius.

## Strategy and Decision Making

Atomicrops is a game all about speed and opportunity cost, days only last a few minutes but there's a lot of stuff you have to do if you want to survive out in the wasteland. Planning each day can be vital to your success because each step wasted or each fight taking longer than it should could be the difference of farming another few plots of land and losing out on the cashews to buy a gun the next day, conversely spending too much time farming can result in you losing out on drops from camps that can round out your build and carry you to the next season. Each area has different enemies, seeds, and challenges that each ask the player to solve a problem through skill, guns, animals, or items to get the most efficient advantages the biome has to offer. While there is no exactly perfect way to play the game, knowing what you're up against can make it easier to form a game-plan, clear camps, and grow crops faster

#### Plains

The plains is available on the first day without any bridge pieces. This area has wasps, bulls boys, pine bombers, bats, helicopters, blunderbunnies, and roaches to watch out for. Due to the bat swarm enemies it can be very difficult to clear camps with the peashooter and single target guns, aoe weapons like the shallotgun, blunderbloom, and jackrabbit can make clearing these enemies much faster and safer. Seeds from the plains grow faster but require a lot of water to mature, inverse of desert crops, and can net lots of money if you can grow multiple harvests in a night, but are difficult to grow without water upgrades or cows. Good reasons to go to the plains are having a strong aoe gun, plenty of water utility, low tilled soil space, or cleaning up tier 1 areas.

#### Desert

The desert is available on the first day without any bridge pieces. This area has scorpions, raven shadows, hermit oil crabs, cacti, helicopters, blunderbunnies, and roaches to watch out for. Hermit oil crabs are tanky and absorb a lot of hits, they also have a wide bullet pattern with very far reach that can make it difficult to hit at close range especially without flanking them, long ranged weapons and high single target damage such as the parsniper rifle can kill them easily as well as flanking with a shallot gun or jackrabbit. Cacti enemies spray bullets in 6 directions radially and can be difficult to dodge in close range and activate when they see you punishing impatient players or blunderbloom sneak attacks. Seeds from the desert are slow to grow but require little to no water, inverse of the plains, and tend to be a more stable source of income at the risk of not finishing growth by morning. Desert seeds are more difficult to grow if you're short on farmable space or have no growth speed upgrades. Since Lavender has a passive that increases plant growth speed as well as two bees to start she can negate a lot of the downsides of starting desert side first. Good reasons to go to the desert are having strong single target damage, growth speed utility, lots of tilled soil space, or just cleaning up tier 1 areas.

#### Value Decisions

Many camp rewards will ask you to choose between one of two items which can lead your builds in wildly different directions. Pigeon camps, animal camps, and box camps each ask the player to make a decision (and usually a very fast one) of what will help them the most. In some cases having animals and items well rounded will make farming/fighting easier and allow you to spend more time and attention on the other, in other cases focusing on a build can have huge payoffs and end you off on a build where turrets can defend all night on their own and let you explore or water witching will let your hose and your cows melt bosses together. Pretty much all items in the game will result in an overall buff in your abilities, so a fast decision may be better than a good decision and allow you to get to more camps in general. Some items and stats are almost always a good idea to buff, others can "unlock" areas to take advantage of their seeds.

* Movement Speed: Moving fast is strong in many situations, it lets you dodge bullets better, kite enemies better, get around your farm quickly, and most importantly find camps faster. High move speed can snowball into more move speed drops and let you speed clear areas. Horse, track pants, sweatband, fight stat up, and mushrooms are examples of items that help you move faster.
* Fight/Farm Stat: Pink skull orb, orange skull plant orb, and green plant orb all offer base stat boots. Fight stats make your guns do more damage and increase your move speed which help you clear camps faster. Farming stats increase the speed you preform farming tasks and reduce tractor cooldown which can make farming under fire at night easier and result in more gold generation to buy better guns and items. Note: Since 1.5.0f1 Update, stats are more plentiful in the form of stat upgrades gotten by buying guns. Because of this, it can sometimes be strategic to prioritize non-stat item drops.
* Farm Animals: Farm animals automatically preform tasks for you. Chickens cut weeds, cows water plants, pigs till soil, bees mature plants faster. Each animal can offer additional bonuses like laying eggs or tilling crust for you, they can also be buffed by some items, and also have upgraded versions in tier 2 areas. Having a flock of animals can greatly impact how you farm. Having lots of pigs will mean ever expanding farm land and will reward you if you have tons of seeds, lots of cows can water plains and jungle crops and support large quantities of those crops, lots of chickens will lay lots of eggs which earn you cashews and can be buffed by a number of items including Fertile Eggs which results in more and more chickens.
* Defensive Tools: Turrets, scarecrows, and super turrets are plant-able items that aren't harvested but rather shoot enemies at night. Collecting enough of these can even protect your crops through the night without you even being home and allow more exploration time. (A super turret alone can hold the night in spring, though in later seasons swarming enemies show up that are difficult for single target turrets to take care of and may require scarecrows). Alternately they can just be useful to keep adds off your farm while fighting bosses or artillery enemies at night. Drones are also useful defensive tools but follow you around to assist exploration instead of stationary defense.

## See also

* Release date
* System requirements