Planet Explorers plays more like a typical MMO than the plethora of sandbox titles we’ve grown accustomed to in recent years. Even sandbox veterans are in for a learning curve so daunting you might wonder if it’s even worth your time. Though once you’re used to the alternative systems, you’ll find they have a certain ease and convenience that’s thoroughly unmatched by its brick-by-brick cousins.
So how do you get into such a perplexing game? By following this beginner’s guide, that’s how. (That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?) We spent hours poking around Maria to bring you these essential tips and tricks for getting started in Planet Explorers.
However, if you don’t learn anything new in this beginner’s guide, we invite you to share your own tips and tricks for getting started in the comments section down below. Together we can create the most comprehensive new-player resource that Planet Explorers has ever known.
Planet Explorers – How to Get Started
Gather Your Bearings
When you start a new game, take the time to gather your bearings. First, inspect your inventory. Click through the various tabs and hotkey useful items like commonly-used equipment, food and health recovery packs. If you have any scripts, use them to acquire their crafting recipes.
Check around your immediate area for NPCs with quests. Purple markers are main quests and blue markers are side quests. You can receive useful new items and scripts by completing quests.
Many NPCs even have shops. For every item an NPC carries in their shop, they also carry a script. This is a great way to quickly fill out your available crafting recipes. Once you feel sufficiently prepared, feel free to head out and explore everything the planet has to offer.
Don’t Spam the Attack Button
This tip is relatively minor, but don’t underestimate its importance. Whatever you do, don’t spam the attack button. In general, this is good advice for any button in any game. Whenever you button mash, you make more mistakes, wear down (and potentially break) buttons and slowly develop a mean case of arthritis. However, there’s a more specific reason why we included this tip.
When you bite the dust in Planet Explorers, the revival menu pops up immediately. Best of all, the mouse pointer reappears over the “Cancel” button, which revives you — but all the way back at your spawn location. By spamming the attack button (read: spamming left-click) in combat, you seal your own fate before even realizing that you’ve died. Just don’t do it.
Just don’t do it.
Do Identify Creatures Through the Minimap
From the start, you’ll receive quests to chase away or kill specific creatures. However, without species names over their heads, it can be difficult to figure out what your target is.
The only way to identify creatures in Planet Explorers is by hovering your mouse pointer over their yellow dot on the minimap. Knowing about this trick is the difference between a world of frustration and a smooth gameplay experience. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to see the game try to explain this feature, so we’re left to the good graces of other players or sheer, dumb luck to figure this one out. But hey, now you know.
Gather a Little of Everything
This advice comes up often for other survival sandbox games and things are no different here. You can’t find a better tip for learning a new game in the genre. When you gather a little bit of everything you come across, you naturally learn where to find the resources needed for crafting. It’s just another step in becoming more familiar with the game.
Scan for Mineral Resources
Some resources may be more difficult to find than others. Particularly speaking, you’ll have to mine under the planet’s surface in order to find things like copper, tin and iron.
Luckily, your cellular device comes equipped with a scanner that’s useful for finding the mineral materials you’re searching for. Each scannable resource may even be toggled on or off for scans if you’re looking for something more specific.
Explore Build Mode
You know how every survival sandbox game ever has a brick-by-brick style of building? Yeah, well, don’t expect to find that here. In Planet Explorers, you have to open up Build Mode before you can even start on that dream house you’re planning on making.
In Build Mode, you can open up a menu to customize whatever you’re placing down. You can change the resource, texture and even shape of your building materials here. The toolbar lets you edit how the building tool behaves.
If you like, you may even detach from your character when in build mode for better maneuverability. It’s almost like building in a simulation game and allows for a fair bit of customization compared to other games that use direct materials for building like Terraria or Minecraft. Take the time to explore your options in Build Mode and I promise you’ll get a lot out of it.
Pretend You’re Playing an MMO
If you’re familiar with traditional MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like World of Warcraft, then you’ll find Planet Explorers to be a pretty familiar experience.
While grinding through hunting and gathering quests, you can safely expect to find a steady power creep of equipment and scripts as completion rewards. Everything from the inventory menu to the gathering system screams MMO.
You may as well think of it as one — without the whole MMO part, of course. It helps when you accept the game for what it is rather than struggle against it.
—
Those are all the tricks we have for you in this beginner’s guide. If you have any sweet tips that we missed for getting started in Planet Explorers, remember to drop them off down below.
Note: If you’re reading this around the time of publish, we are still working on guides for Planet Explorers. Do you have any specific ideas or requests you’d like to see done? We’d love to hear them. Sound off in the comments section below.
