Advice for New SeaBlock Players

Sea Block has a slow start. This is a quick list of things to help you avoid common mistakes that make the start even slower, and where to find more information.

Other guides are in: Category:Guides .

## Communities

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Seablock/

Discord: https://discord.gg/zkg8rdn

## Installation

Most players use the Sea Block Pack, which includes many mods from Angel and Bob, Science Cost Tweaker, Circuit Processing, and Space Expansion. It is possible to play with just the Sea Block mod, but that's not the full **Sea Block Experience (TM)**. Be sure you have the SeaBlock Meta Pack. The SeaBlock mod will work alone, but it won't be the same.

Guides:Installation

After you first launch and make sure everything's running correctly, go into FNEI (recipe broswer included in mod pack) settings and untick "Show hidden recipes," to filter out the recipes to which you will never gain access.

## Updating

Updating mods can cause problems. Sometimes recipes change. Check the Breaking Changes page before updating.

Sometimes a mod will break something that another mod relies on. The Sea Block dev (KiwiHawk) works with the devs of the other mods in the pack, so the most-recent version of those mods work together. All other mods, including many popular ones and the Compatible mods, are at risk. Unless you want to risk losing hundreds of hours of work, make a copy of the mod folder and saved game, and put them in a separate location before updating. Then the Community can help you "un-update" the problem mods.

## Additional Mods

Choose **additional mods** carefully. Check this wiki for information. Read the official forum for bug reports. Look at other mods from the same dev to see if they keep things up to date.

The most-popular mods are listed under Commonly Used Mods.

Watch the **research line** above the mini-map for early instructions.

## Calculators and Recipe Browsers - Highly Recommended

todo add links to page for each one

Recipes in Sea Block are much more complex than vanilla, and often have by-products. Most players use recipe explorers and calculator programs.

**FNEI** is a recipe browser. It's part of the pack, and lets you explore recipes by product or ingredient. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/FNEI Additional instructions are at FNEI . See above for configuration.

**RecipeBook** is another recipe browser. It lists all the recipes for each product or ingredient on one page, but has an almost overwhelming amount of detail.

**Helmod** is part of the pack. It calculate number of machines, modules, beacons, and power, to produce or use a set amount of an item.https://mods.factorio.com/mod/helmod . https://mods.factorio.com/mod/helmod/faq

If the results don't make sense, check that Matrix mode is enabled. Also check that it's linking the right items. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/helmod/faq Eg For Dirty Water Electrolysis II plus charcoal (for filters), it will try to make mineralized water (for algae for charcoal) by cleaning millions of electrodes, even if you told it to turn some slag into rock and dissolve the rock to get mineralized water. You need to break that link, and add a link so cleans the electrodes from the electrolysers.

**YAFC** is similar to Helmod, but is a separate program that points to the mod folder.

**Foreman2** is also a separate program. It makes flowsheets rather than a grid of numbers, so you have better control over loops. It has a few issues, but is great for planning complicated flows. https://github.com/DanielKote/Foreman2/issues

(todo -- intentionally a bit wordy/convoluted, just like SB, but make sure it's accurate)

## Tips / Mild Spoilers

Use **all the wind turbines**. (Not using them all is a common mistake.) Don't make more. There are better ways to get power.

Watch your **power use**. Power death spirals are a rite of passage. Prepare for them. Make it easy to cut off power to the rest of the plant and reboot it in sections. Put the fuel plant on its own self-powered network and export fuel. Check the amount of fiber needed for each fuel, and how much power it gives. In general, each processing step increases the power per fiber, but some of them decrease it.

Guides:Early Power

Move to **mineral sludge** as soon as possible. They use less space and less power for much more production. Check the full loops before committing. Is it better to smelt crushed saphrite, or to sort it to iron and copper ore first? Does it make a difference if you recycle the slag back into slurry and sludge?

The community is mixed on the value of **green algae II** in the very early game. It is a good introduction to loops, which are important in SeaBlock. It produces more power with less chance of byproducts backing up. On the flip side, it requires higher tech and more resources to set up. Debate about which methods are better is common in the community. Often there is no clear best method.

Keep your research speed slow. **10spm** is typical for new players. Yes, per minute. That gives new techs faster than you can learn how to use them. 60spm draws resources from other important things, like landfill. Even at that slow speed, you may have to turn off science to have resources and/or power to make buildings or landfill.

More specifically: Begin each science level with a very low speed, eg 5spm. You will have very inefficient recipes for some key materials. Eg When you start green science, the only way to get aluminum ore is by mixed-output sorting, which produces many byproducts and not much aluminum ore. Smelting produces only one ingot per aluminum ore. You can immediately research direct sorting of aluminum, which produces more aluminum, faster, and without byproducts, and, with later science packs, recipes that give more ingots per metallic ore. Once you have decent tech for everything at that level, increase the speed.

In Seablock, you tech your way out of shortages. In vanilla, you expand.

**Do not overbuild**. Most products begin with a very inefficient and/or complicated production method, which will be replaced with a better method, often multiple times. **Build enough** that you can build new machines without waiting too long. Yes, it's a balance. (Four electrolyzers to start with is not over-building.)

Always **check production lines** before committing. Some recipes come with unexpected costs. Look at the materials, energy, infrastructure, by-products and complexity. (Eg You can make purified water from oxygen plus hydrogen in a chem plant. That takes more power than an offshore pump, hydroplant and clarifier, but less landfill.)

Do not get hung up on **ratios**. Many robust, fast builds aren't to ratio.

**Use direct insertion** more than in vanilla. Belts are slow and use precious iron. A few more machines often costs less iron than belts. (Green algae to fibre is an early example of this.)

Use **adjustable inserters**. They're in the modpack for a reason.

Review the Underappreciated Tech page.

You will have to use a few gardens to make **alien plant-life samples** to research the first few bio sciences. Try to keep one or two of each type of garden, for future use. It's not strictly necessary, but might save a step later.

**Bots** are near the end of green science, well before the insanity of blue science.

Tanks, rockets, and sniper rifles require **military science**. Researching one of these will make clearing worms much easier. It is also possible to fight the biggest worms by dodging or driving. Plasma turret range is a tiny bit larger than the biggest worms can spit. They are military + blue science. They usually destroy the puffer nests and gardens beside them, so you might want to fight with simpler weapons until you harvest at least 2 nests.