Before I get into how we wrapped up terraforming on Skeo I do have a few observations on this bit of free content.

Certainly A Planet Crafter

To start with, it was free.  Not only that, but it landed just as we were wrapping up the last planet that came with the base game, Aqualis.  It is hard to be free, but free and well timed will get you there.

Second, and I mentioned this in the previous post, the team did a great job on the planet.  For scale it feels like it is on par with Prime, the starting planet.  As it moves through the various stages of terraforming Skeo also changes more dramatically than the other planets.

I put up a picture of a icy canyon from early in our run on Skeo.

Up the icy canyon

By the end, as we approached final terraformation, it had changed into… well… a tropical canyon I guess.

The canyon now full of verdant life

Finally, as with Prime, there were a number of places to explore that only unlocked as the process carried on.  I had left a marker on a site that was encased in ice when I first discovered it.

We went back after the planet had warmed and found it open.

Sheathed in ice no more

That tower brings you up to a platform and more climbing until you’re deep into the mountain, at which point there is a who array of platforms to visit as you descend.

Down into the base depths

One the way up, and then back down again, each platform has things to discover and loot to carry off.  Our packs were soon full and we were bypassing all but the most rare items, swapping out lesser items to be left behind.

At the bottom the whole thing turned into a tunnel, which was an amber mine setup by the previous expedition that left all of this behind.

Caverns to explore

That tunnel, which goes for quite a ways, has its own set of areas to explore before coming out from behind a waterfall onto a lake, not too far from our initial landing site, which had been bare and frozen on our arrival.  Now it has fish and even the giant skeleton has acquired a layer of green.

The lake skeleton

So there was some pretty cool stuff discover.  In fact, in looking through my screen shots, I have an image of what looks like a wooly mammoth encased in ice that I took off in a distant corner of the planet.  I’ll have to go back and see what became of that.

The flip side is that, while there was a lot of stuff to collect, we didn’t really need it by the time we explored the place.  Our sweep through that area was done when we were hanging out waiting for terraformation to complete.

And while I am not suggested that the game force you to explore thoroughly… that was also kind of a thing on Prime, the planet where you start out.  And, as a gameplay element it remains, but is not nearly as important as you spread to other planets because you already have all the building knowledge unlocked.

Or maybe the process just isn’t as big of a deal a few planets in.

Instead it becomes more of a resource scramble to build up your base and terraforming process, the gating of which is reduced by the fact that you can assemble a system to let you draw resources from your past bases.

So by the fourth planet we could have probably just stayed in our base, had resources FedEx’d to us, and just watched the numbers go up.  And by the time we were on Skeo we were not even building as much infrastructure.  We had unlocked 6000% boost satellites, so it made more sense to get some infrastructure laid out then just keep launching rockets to make the numbers more faster.

Another fine moment in satellite launching

There are a few oddities that they could probably close off to make the terraforming less of a shotgun approach.  By the second planet you can start growing plants and tress, start spreading insects, and even get animals going at any point during the process, breathable atmosphere or not.

There are also some terraforming balance issues that raise questions, looking at our status boards.

The panel stats

It is hard to see, but animals, by mass, greatly outweigh the combined mass of all plants and insects, which I am pretty sure is the reverse of how things should be in an actual, viable ecosystem.

What you can build and the balance of things could be gated better I suppose, if you wanted to slow people down.  But do you want to do that?

Maybe that is what you get with “hardcore mode.  We only played on “standard” and got through things pretty quickly, so I can’t image how easy “relaxed” might be.

Planet Crafter difficulty modes

This is one of those things where, having played through in one mode I am not sure making things more difficult would make the game fun or just annoying for another play through.

Aside from exploration and making the numbers go up, there is also a base building aspect to the game.  We went with mega domes, which had a nice vibe.

Our four mega dome base

Inside the mega dome you can put an auto crafter in the middle and then lay our your T2 storage lockers on the circle on the floor of the dome and it will be able to draw from any of them.

A look inside our production dome

After exploring for a bit we went back and watched the number tick up through their last few moments before the planet was declared terraformed.

And we’re done

That also left me with the question of how much terraforming can a planet take.  We left all of our equipment running on the previous planets, and the numbers kept going up on all of them.

Our solar system options

Is there a point where atmospheric heating is… to much?  Our current environmental disaster here on earth certainly suggests there can be too much of a number of things.  You get your terraforming achievement at 8 GTi, so what does it mean that Selenea has carried on to 85 GTi?

Speaking of achievements, despite having hit almost all of the markers for achievements I am still sitting at 36 of 55.  How it counts them on a shared save seems to be a bit odd.  It doesn’t seem to be a matter of being online when something happens.  Instead, you only seem to get the achievement if you were the person who launched the save.

Oh well.  I like achievements, but not enough to expends a lot of effort collecting them.

And, on the topic of who held the save, Save Sync, the utility we used to share a save between us seemed to work out pretty well.  I could see using it for a casual Valheim world where you didn’t want to rent a server or something like that.  It supports most of the co-op base building survival titles I have in my Steam library, including Palworld, Raft, Terraria, Astroneed, Valheim, and Windrose.

And, if you are a chaser of achievements, Save Sync now has those as well.  I got 4 out of the possible 11 with our Planet Crafter venture.

Save Sync achievements… I got in early

Anyway, Save Sync works.  I am not sure how well it would work with half a dozen people, but it worked very well for just Potshot and I in this run.

Overall, I am coming away from Planet Crafter feeling pretty good about it as a game.  We’ve hit a natural stopping point, having done all the worlds that came with the base game.  I put in more than 70 hours into the run, while Potshot, who also spent some time in a creative mode session working on base building ideas, managed almost double my time.

There are two more DLC worlds, and we may go back to give them a go.  Like all of the previous worlds, both have their own special features.  And I kind of want to see how much you get for a paid world relative to the free additions.

Finishing up Skeo felt like a good point for a break.  Other titles are coming up.  We’ll certainly be spending more time in Azeroth.  So for now we’re putting Planet Crafter away.