Walkthrough Pt. 1

## **Walkthrough Pt. 1** *(W.I.P., feel free to correct me & add stuff)*

When I downloaded and started playing Frackin' Universe, I was very, very confused. There was so much to do that I had a hard time working out where to start, and where to go from there. So, four weeks and about 3/4ths of a playthrough later,  I'm putting what I've learned on paper (uh, pixels?) to make sure no other new players have to suffer as I did.

### **Warning**

This walkthrough is a work in progress. A fair chunk of the information on here comes from the wiki, which is out-of-date in several places. The writer of this page is not responsible for any loss of pixels, items, or sanity that results from following this walkthrough.

This walkthrough is also incomplete. The writer is working on it.

## Character Creation & Tutorial

As far as creating a character goes, you can almost do whatever you want. However, if you have Frackin' Races installed, DO NOT pick a race with low Cold Resistance-- this will lock you out of a certain endgame mission. In addition, if Frackin' Races is installed, try to pick a race with advantages that match your play style.

The tutorial mission plays the same as the vanilla one, except with altered lore context. If you don't care about the lore, I recommend downloading the Skippable Cutscenes mod and pressing ESC during the newly-skippable cutscenes-- you won't miss out on much.

As I mentioned, the tutorial mission plays the same as in vanilla. Be sure to grab the 3 Salve, 2 Bandages out of the crate just in front of your ship.

## Your Ship/Gearing Up

Once you wake up on your ship, you will be greeted with the Frackin' Universe first-time-playing window. You don't have to read it, but I recommend that you do.

Your next step will be to choose which kind of ship you want: the default, or one that you build yourself. I went with the default, and I recommend the same for a first playthrough. Once you've made your decision, S.A.I.L. will explain the situation to you and give you your first out-of-mission quest. Before you beam down, go to your shiplocker and grab the supplies inside. You can dual-wield the Broken Protectorate Pistol and Faulty Flashlight, which I recommend: it's much easier to shoot things when you can see them. Take the torches for the same reason. In addition, it'll take a while for you to set up a farm, and the Canned Food will give you some breathing room. There are also several codex books: you'll want to unlock them for future reference.

## First Planet & Crafting Stations

Your top priorities, once you've beamed down, are simple: stay alive, gather resources, and explore. You will definitely need wood, stone, mud, and plant fiber. Try to get at least a hundred of each, and grab any ores (Coal, Copper, and Iron are most likely) and crops/flowers/seeds that you notice in the process. Then, press [C] to open your hand-crafting menu.

The sheer size of this menu is your first big hint about how large of a mod Frackin' Universe is. If you find yourself overwhelmed by this, I recommend uninstalling, because it only gets harder from here. That said, it looks worse than it is. Most of the options are just Primitive weapons, which you can craft as roughly-equal alternatives to your Broken Broadsword. Greataxes are essentially heavier hammers, longswords are one-handed broadswords, shortspears are one-handed spears, katanas are swords with longer combos, and quarterstaves are built for button-mashing. Craft your choice of these if you want to, along with extra Salve if you need it. Then, go ahead and make some Timber, eleven Rope, two Campfires, and an Inventor's Table. Place the Inventor's Table and use it to make a Primitive Furnace, a Spinning Wheel and a Foraging Table. If you have any smeltable ore (Copper, Iron, Silver, and Gold), place the Primitive Furnace down and smelt those. In addition, place your Spinning Wheel and Foraging Table, then use 1 String from the Spinning Wheel along with a Copper Bar (if you have it) and some Timber to make a Hunting Bow. Unless you're playing an herbivorous race, the Hunting Bow with a Campfire makes for a useful source of early-game food, in the form of Cooked Steak. If you are playing herbivorous, well, that's why you were grabbing those crops.

If you have extra Copper and Plant Fibre, I highly recommend making at least one Flag. This is done by combining one Copper Bar with 1 Woven Fabric (crafted at a Spinning Wheel) and some Timber. Placing down the flag and interacting with it will allow you to beam to the flag's location with your ship's Teleporter. Flags are your friend in Frackin' Universe.

## First Questlines

By this time, one of two things will have happened: either S.A.I.L. will have said something about a readout and given you an objective pointer, or you will have stumbled across one of three generated structures. These structures are:

1. The mine entrance from vanilla. Go ahead and put down a flag here, if you have one.
2. A cave-with-a-background-object-that-also-looks-like-a-cave. Again, go ahead and put a flag down, if you have one.
3. A futuristic bunker with a red couch, two screens, a weird bed, and a giant, black-and-white slugbunny. This is the one that your objective pointer points to. If you find it, go ahead and chat with the slugbunny-- his name's Vinalisj, and you'll need to talk with him anyway.

Talking to Vinalisj will give you a new quest, which is to craft the Machining Table. This is done in the [C] menu. It requires 5 Iron Bars, 2 Copper Bars, and 4 Paper (which is made at your Furnace with a Wooden Log). Your next step will be to make some Copper Wire and an Electromagnet, using more Iron and Copper. If you're running low on metals, and confident in your combat ability, try going into the mine entrance. It's chock-full of monsters, but the crates have ore and weapons galore, along with Manipulator Modules and Tech Cards, which will be important. There's also a Mama Poptop in there-- when you find it, stand by the door and use throwing/ranged weapons until it dies, then pick up the Core Fragments it drops.

When you make the Electromagnet and finish the questline, you should get a Tricorder, which will allow you to view your stats and questlines, as well as set your Matter Manipulator's radius and alt-radius. You'll also get another pointer, which will point towards the aforementioned cave-in-a-cave. This is your first real mission, and it's full of monsters. Bring Salve, and if you're really concerned, make an Armorworks (8 Iron Bars, 4 Copper Bars, 8 Timber, 25 Water), and craft some armor. I recommend Bone Armor, you can get bones via mining the skeleton-looking blocks of dirt. (Wiki page for Bone Armor is outdated, you don't need Tungsten to make it.)

Interacting with the cave-in-a-cave will give you the option to teleport inside. Make sure you've got the equipment you want before you do.

## The Caverns

The cave you have just entered is a nest of monsters. They're all relatively weak, but don't drop your guard. Check the crates for loot, as they typically contain Bombs and Climbing Rope in addition to crops, seeds, and weapons. Certain doors, typically the ones with red markings, can only be opened via bombing or some other kind of explosion. Rocket or grenade launchers are the easiest to use, if you've got one. Climbing Ropes can be used to climb higher ledges than those you can jump over: click to throw a hook, use WASD to reel yourself towards the hook and swing around, then press [Space] to disconnect from the rope.

During the course of this mission, you will unlock three Techs: one which boosts your jump height, one which lets you dash a short distance by double-tapping [A] or [D], and one which lets you transform into a ball by pressing [F]. You'll also get a Tech Tablet, which will let you unlock and equip these techs. The mission does a pretty good job of teaching you how to use these on its own.

The final boss of the mission is another Mama Poptop. It's harder to cheese this one, just try to keep your distance and manage the little Poptops that it spawns. Beating it will give you even more Core Fragments, and exploring the arena will eventually let you enter a room with a vanilla Ancient Gateway. Power it up with 20 Core Fragments, and you're off to the vanilla Outpost.

## Tutorial's End

At the Outpost, go ahead and follow your pointer. Be sure to interact with the teleporter at the 2-Stop Teleshop on your way to the Ark. Talk with Esther to end the quest and unlock some stuff-- your ship will get repaired, Vinalisj will give you the coordinates for the Science Outpost, you'll get the quest to scan stuff at the Outpost, and you'll get told to find Floran stuff. So ends the introduction to Frackin' Universe, but the mod is not even close to done. The next part of this walkthrough is not-currently-available/nonexistent, but I'll eventually create and link it. Until then, use the quests on your Tricorder, and take it one questline at a time.