Ideal Starting Duplicants

Learn how to choose and manage your starting Duplicants in Oxygen Not Included. This guide covers essential tips for temperature, food, and base building to ensure a successful colony.

This guide provides essential tips for starting your colony in Oxygen Not Included, focusing on managing Duplicants, temperature, food, and base construction. It aims to help new players avoid common pitfalls and establish a sustainable base.

Starting your base:

Utilize the overlays in the top right of the screen to manage your base effectively. Avoid digging out everything indiscriminately.

• Temperature: Pay close attention to the temperature overlay. Keep living quarters and greenhouses away from hot areas. Plants like Meal lice and Bristle blossom require specific temperature ranges to grow. High temperatures can also prevent Duplicants from working. Use materials like granite or sandstone for decor and building, and igneous rock for greenhouses as it's not thermally reactive. Keep heat-generating structures like power generators away from greenhouses.
• Food: Early game, Mealwood (producing Meal lice) is easy to obtain but has low food quality and requires dirt. As your colony grows, switch to Bristle Blossoms (producing Gristle berries) which require water and light, or Mushrooms which require polluted water and carbon dioxide. Consider using hydroponic farm tiles to automate watering. To prevent food spoilage, keep greenhouses full of carbon dioxide or store food in ration boxes within an ice biome, especially if immersed in CO2.
• Dupes: Avoid recruiting too many Duplicants early on. Aim for a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6 until you can reliably support more. Build rooms like barracks for stamina regeneration and latrines to relieve stress. Managing Duplicant stress is crucial, especially after game updates.