How to play guide for The Riftbreaker

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This page will serve as a basic **how to play guide for *The Riftbreaker***. 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.

## Controls

Default controls:

Keyboard & Mouse

   Controller

## Basic gameplay

Gameplay in The Riftbreaker contains two main elements:

* Base building (managing resources, creating buildings, expanding territory, and defending)
* Exploring and fighting with Mr Riggs & Ashley (player avatar)

### Base Building Walk-through

Building UI explanation (click for larger version):

#### How to build

1. First open the build menu (CTRL)
2. then click on a Category of building from the first row (Z-N hotkeys)
3. then click on a specific building from the second row
4. finally click in the build-able area you want to place the structure (blue squares on the main game area)

#### Starting a base

The first step to creating a suitable base revolves around finding 2 or 3 patches of Carbonium Ore which is the basic resource required for building. Placing an HQ, some automated Carbonium mines, plus some basic power structures will start your base well, followed by some walls and defensive turrets close to your buildings. Don't forget to connect everything with power nodes!

* Find 2 or 3 patches of Carbonium by exploring the immediate area around your drop-in point
* Look for natural barriers such as cliffs, ravines, lava/water and other liquids, etc. as enemies cannot traverse these
* Decide on a suitable location to place your HQ building
	+ Once this building is placed, it cannot be moved and must be defended AT ALL COSTS.
	+ If it is destroyed then Mr Riggs will have no place to re-spawn. If you die while there is no HQ on the map it is "game over".
* Try to block off natural choke points nearby with walls and a few turrets

#### Powering your base

One of the most crucial elements to a base is power! Always ensuring you have enough power can be tough and it is a great challenge best overcome by moving up the technology chain to access increasingly powerful energy production buildings.

The power chain: (HQ1) **Solar/Wind** > (HQ2) **Geothermal/Biomas** > (HQ2) **Nuclear** > (HQ3) **Gas** > (HQ4) **Fusion**

##### (HQ1) Solar/Wind

* To start off, build **Solar Power plants** and **Energy storage** in a rough ratio of 3:1. **And build LOTS of them**. This should power your base through the beginning of the game and into early tech.
* Wind power plants are not as powerful but do not require energy storage. They are best used for powering small groups of turrets in a remote location, or a few mines away from the base as an alternative to using solar + storage.
* Try to notice how much power your base is using during the night time when Solar panels are not producing and you're relying on your storage. Compensate as necessary.

##### (HQ2) Geothermal/Biomass

* This requires upgrading the HQ to level 2 and then building a Communications Hub to open up the Research screen (Hotkey: O)
* You can research "**Renewable Energy**" to gain access to several buildings which will improve your power situation over just using Solar and Wind
* Now you get access to **Geothermal Power Plants** (which can only be built on Thermal vents but provide large amounts of power for the early-game)
* You also get access to the **Biomass** building 'chains'
	+ Animal Biomass plants can produce power from biomass collected from defeated aliens.
	+ The Plant Biomass chain is exceptionally good at this point:
		- Build a Flora Cultivator in open space (ensure that the highlighted area when placing it is mostly clear of obstructions as it needs empty squares to plant foliage)
		- Build 4 Flora Collectors next to it (1 cultivator has 4 drones for planting, each collector has 1 drone for collecting)
		- Build 4 Biomass Power Plants which should be sustained by the 4 Flora Collectors. This will provide you a net energy gain of 150.
* These can be further upgraded by researching Renewable Energy level 2 and level 3 - which allows Solar, Wind, Geothermal, and Biomass plants to all be upgraded, DOUBLING the energy gain you get from them at each level.

#### Upgrading buildings

For a single building:

* Go into building mode (CTRL)
* Left-click an existing building
* Select the "upgrade" icon

or for multiple buildings:

* Go into building mode (CTRL)
* Navigate to the Utilities tab
* Click on the "Upgrade" icon
* Click on each building you wish to upgrade in turn

### Exploration and Combat Walk-through

Standard UI explanation (click for larger version):

Mr Riggs is equipped with some very powerful weaponry and the player should absolutely NOT rely solely on turrets as their only source of damage. The player can move freely to areas that need assistance against attack waves, as well as being able to go on the offensive to root out alien hives or boss creatures roaming in the nearby area.

#### Equipping weapons and items

* Opening the inventory screen (default hotkey: I) allows the player to equip Mr Riggs with a variety of weapons they have crafted (Hotkey: U)
* Each arm, left and right, can be equipped with up to three (3) weapons which can be cycled when in-game by pressing default keys Q and E. This allows for a huge variety of weapons to deal with any situation without having to constantly go in and out of the inventory screen

#### Ammo production and storage capacity

* Building an Armory from the Primary Buildings tab is necessary to begin ammo manufacturing for all weapons (Hotkey: Y)
* After the HQ is upgraded to level 2 and a Communications Hub is built, the player can research Ammo Production and Storage, allowing them to build additional storage for Mr Riggs' weapons (and also some towers which share the same ammo pool).

## Tips and tricks

#### To view the amount of biomass you have

* Enter build mode (default key: CTRL) and see on the right side of the screen (below other resources)

#### To view the amount of other exotic resources you have

* Enter crafting screen (default key: U?)

#### To see the exact amount of ore left in an ore patch

* Go into building mode (Default key: CTRL).
* Walk near a resource patch and there will be a number by it showing the exact amount remaining.
* Mouse over an individual square of ore and look in the bottom-left for a tool-tip showing you the amount remaining in that individual square.

#### How do mines and ore patches work?

Each resource patch is made up of multiple 'squares' of ore. Each square has a finite amount of resources. When you build an ore mine, it can cover one or more squares of ore, but will always give you +1/s (at level 1). The mine can only gather ore under it's 3x3 building footprint though - so if you build it on 9 squares (3x3) then it will take longer at 1/s to deplete.

As an example, in this ore patch below you can see it has 16 squares total of ore. I could build 1 mine in the yellow area and it will last for a long time giving me +1/s because it is built on top of 9 squares it can mine. It won't mine outside of the yellow square. Or I could build 4 mines in the red squares which would cover the whole patch of ore, and give me +4/s but they would deplete quicker because each one is only covering a lower number of squares worth of ore and would require more power upkeep.

#### Self-sustaining remote outposts

* **1** **Ore Mine** (-20 power) + **2** **Wind Turbines** (+12 power each) is self-sustaining
* **1 Ore Mine** (-20 power) + **2 Solar Power Plants** (+20 power each) **+ 1 Energy storage** (10k) is self-sustaining
* Turrets can also be added for security as power prioritizes turrets over mines, the mines will automatically shut off temporarily if the turrets need to fire, and then come back on

#### Supplement night-time power generation

* If you find yourself running low on power during the night, during the day you can build a few Plant Biomass Powerplants but then click on them in build mode and set them to power off
* This will allow your biomass resource to fill up as you explore the map cutting down foliage in the early game, while solar panels do most of the heavy lifting
* When night falls, if your solar power is not enough to sustain your base or an attack wave is coming and your turrets may go offline - power up your Biomass Powerplants for a boost of power!

## Extra Defensive Tips

When I myself the editor was playing the game, I remarked that layering the whole base with walls was especially effective against deterring the waves. I have also noticed that turrets can be placed in the middle of the walls, replacing walls with the turret.

* Each different tower counters one or more type of enemies, for example the basic tower deals well for common big enemies, but doesn't deal well against smaller quicker ones, or the long range ones. Early on you can unblock 2 different tower types that deal with those threats: a flamer tower and a missile tower + artillery tower. The flamer deals easily with the small quick ones, while the artillery deals with the ranged ones ( the missile one does two, but it helps more against armored enemies).

* As with all, those advanced towers have a cost ( alongside the energy and AI cores). Now you have to supply ammo for them. Fortunately ammo is cheap enough.

## See also

* Release date
* System requirements