Strip mining simulator

Beat on science path. I started on Harder difficulty and went mining instead of exploring the surface of the island. I killed a wyrm early on by throwing a boomerang at its back as I went up and down to the surface, and soon had a full set of steel. I dug vertical shafts to methodically mine everything I could as efficiently as possible, while doing quests and building some farms. I used hamburgers for healing and pie and apples to restore stamina. Later I found a pumpkin secret place and planted a pumpkin farm. I found a lot of secrets underground but stayed out of the dimensional cave because steel swords could not hurt those enemies. I assume that was a place to harvest infinite resources. Eventually as I mined I also explored the rest of the surface, finding the hunter and dragon. I got killed instantly by the dragon, so I left him and the yetis alone.

After making a recurve bow, lots of arrows and the boat, I went to the next island. I did sail past the pirates, mine a bunch from their island, then accidentally pack up the boat and drown because I did not know what I had done. I opted not to go back and to strip mine sunset island. Used the bow and tame wolf to kill bandits, then was cheesing the cyborg enemies; they were deadly and I accidentally let them overrun the town. It took a lot of arrows to hit and run underground to kill them, and I built a fence to keep them out. It was around this time that I lowered the difficulty to Casual as I was getting tired of the tedious combat and how slow it was leveling up. Difficulty did not seem to make combat easier but it did greatly increase my carrying capacity, and I was all for that. Then I beat the Mirrows with my arrows and a lot of running around. Eventually I had titanium armor, cyborg jet pack, guns, chainsaw, drill and patrol boat. I did not find the guns all that good and mostly killed stuff in melee. I absolutely loved that cyborg pack with its power generation, which allowed me to freely use the drill and chainsaw. Then I killed the pirates and took over their island, strip mining the whole place. I used kite or enchanted shields in my offhand and torches to see, even though I did get a head lamp; I wanted to save power.

It was not much longer that I had a full set of gear from the lab; laser drill gun and sword, space armor and helm. I opted to keep the cyborg pack for its power rather than upgrade to the anti gravity pack. I did build a car but never bothered to use it. I used a boring machine to get through the tunnels on pirate island, though that was before I had the laser drill. And I used a submarine to explore west of sunset island and get the tech parts I needed for all that space age gear. I had fun draining water with the laser drill and developed a plan to hollow out one island to drain the ocean and make the kraken easier to kill. It took a lot of time, including leaving the game running to let power recharge, but it was all a waste because the ocean level never went down. So I killed the kraken using the laser gun. I killed another with a water sword, and a third with the laser sword. I made a simple map to remind me how each island connected, and what was on each. I eventually strip mined every island and set up solar powered teleporters on my 3 main settlements. It was annoying to keep having to feed coal into the kitchen to cook food. I did not realize until I had the mobile lab that I probably could have made an electric powered kitchen to immediately cook as much as I could. The last thing I did was take a jet to a floating island and kill an ice storm boss. I could not figure out how to hurt him, trying different things until I tried a fire sword. I had the spells for healing, shield, and frost but did not need them. Just before the end game I got the rest of the spells. I liked how they had unique mechanics (like frost passing through walls, fire going in front and behind, plant life draining etc), but I stuck with my tech weapons.

I fixed the fighter spaceship and started exploring off the planet. I strip mined the closest planet, which was very annoying with the lack of atmosphere. I put a plasma cannon on the ship and took out an alien ship. Then I went to the depths and stripmined as much as I could. I learned about pressure damage and made hollow air filled tunnels to negate the damage. I did try to get out of the sub at the bottom of the deep trench to mine an air bubble, but I died instantly. I did not know what else to do here or how to activate the monoliths so I looked it up just before the final mission. Then I made a ton of torpedoes to kill those water dragons to get the items necessary to activate the monoliths. I killed the boss by flying around and shooting him with the exo gun. I took all monoliths except 1 and put 1 on the mountain on the starting island, then another below the AI space station. They were free to use as opposed to the exotic matter consuming interstellar teleporter.

Before I did all that end game stuff and after leaving the depths I went to the werewolf planet. The quest line here was simple. Afterwards I strip mined the planet as the werewolf. It was fast but I ran out of stamina food and had to sleep frequently. I liked the hp regen body, and the stamina regen body looked handy. I especially liked the mini map from the werewolf head and was greatly disappointed that none of the tech gear had that. I could not figure out how to apply werewolf mods until near end game when I came back with exotic gear to mine the purple stone; just use the mods from the inventory. Dexterous paws was mandatory to use weapons and drills, but overall I did not think the werewolf was better than technology.

Then I went to Earth and upgraded to the automated suit. I was annoyed that I could not equip my trusty laser sword and had to resort to the lousy gun arm, but I eventually realized that pressing A attacked with the best melee weapon in my inventory. So I could have had guns equipped this whole time? Well it was easy to switch weapons. I strip mined Earth and did the quests to get the mobile lab. Then I did mercury and Mars. I was not expecting Mars to have an ocean with life deep underground, and I had to be careful with deep mining to not suffer pressure damage. Seemed like pressure damage was caused by being underwater below a certain depth regardless of how much water was actually above. Then I attacked the aliens. I thought about building a massive fleet of drones, but I went the stealth route going by myself in just the suit. I boarded the enemy ships, killing the enemies in melee, and a dragon mech with ranged. Then I was rescued by the AI and brought to the final planet, which I of course strip mined. Here I finally got the ability to build the ultimate exo gear. I never tried the exo fighter. I put a chainsaw and light on the mech and it stripmined several times faster than on foot but consumed exotic matter at an alarming rate. I went back to a few places to use the exo drill, and found it good to keep a laser drill handy for weaker materials. I did not bother to fuel the exo armor for its stamina regen; its high armor made it the best body slot. The exo helm had stealth, light and oxygen but no defense. Not sure how useful stealth was, but I carried an earth helm which had high head defense for that slot. The enchanted shield was still the best offhand slot, and I used an electric eel as my pet for passive energy regen. Just before fighting the final boss was when I looked up online how to complete the quests I had left behind; the monoliths, witch, and sushi. I also found out about feeding coal to wyrms and raising dragons, but at this point it was useless. I liked the stamina regen on the witch robe; that would have come in handy for mining. The magic staff from the stranded merchant was good but not better than the laser sword. The last thing I found was upgraded cyborg gear; it was better than space age gear but not better than exo gear. I killed the final boss using the exo sword, wrecked a dragon mech with my exo mech, stripmined a little using the mech, and exterminated the hatchlings. I chose the starting planet to be the new home for humanity, repaired the crashed colony ship and tried out the lame arcade games.

This was a decent game that reminded me of Minecraft, Terraria and Ark survival evolved. The gathering and crafting were not tedious at all though. I wish there were world and area maps as the map item only showed the nearby area. Combat was simple and engaging enough, and there were quite a few user friendly options. The pacing of the game was very good with new technology fundamentally changing the way you play, like gear durability only being relevant until the industrial age, power and batteries only being relevant until infinite energy power cores, ammo becoming irrelevant for energy weapons, teleporters bypassing weight limits and so on. I did not find some things useful at all though; like mine carts, rails and elevators. I could see it maybe being a worthwhile investment if there was a spot with infinite resources, like that dimensional portal. It was a fairly enjoyable game, despite the terrible graphics. Like why even bother putting in hair style and color options with these graphics?

I ended at level 24, about half way to 25. 10 points in health, 9 in stamina and weight, 7 in crit, maxed evasion, 0 in mining speed, 1 in sight, maxed attack and defense, 0 in cut, 3 in range, and 0 in trapping, bargaining, fishing, oxygen and spellcasting.

6.8/10