I played Pillars of Eternity + Avowed more for the plot than the mechanics (slightly). Both are dialogue heavy games, where choice matters and you want to be involved.

Monster Hunter Wilds is not that type of game, you are there to attack big monsters and the story itself is more of a blur than much else. For some odd reason, the game has 2 types of cutscenes, one where you can skip ahead on the text, and another that’s locked to the entirety I always play with subtitles, too much experience with key words missed in some elvish language or something. So reading during a cutscene is instinctive and miles faster than any voice actor can deliver. Some games it’s super worth watching the nuance (Mass Effect 2 is a real highlight), others not so much. Monster Hunter Wilds is far from a bad game in that sense, but the story is superfluous and the lines given to the actors right up there with the best Monster B-movie. I get it, the whole point is exposition, so they need to tell much more than they show. I will say it’s interesting for your character to have spoken lines!

You can gather than I have the majority of the main line stuff done by this point. I’m into a multi-option quest in Chapter 5, with an HR of 30+. By my math of MH games, I should have 1 or 2 steps left after this, which would them put me in the farming stage.

I had it last post, and will say it again here, MH Wilds is mechanically a superior game to its predecessors in every regard. Combat, movement, interactions, crafting, monsters, environments, sound, art, group play… you name it, it’s done better here. The Seikret mount negates almost all of the in-world friction points from prior games and I absolutely do not miss the Wirebug from Rise. The difficulty is still here, the last quarter of the game is full of 1-hit kill monsters if you’re not paying attention. The grind is there at the tail end, so that you don’t need to farm in Low Rank. Cooking may be a bit of an adjustment as the ingredients are not infinite, but the ability to cook anywhere is amazing.

I’m still in the mix of things now, and normally only come up for air near HR50 or so (e.g. once I have the armor & weapon I want, not the decorations). The top end consumables are not really a consideration right now, nor optimization. So far, the entire vibe is Monster Hunter World 2 – Even Less Friction. Impressive.

All the way to the credits, I enjoyed the ride. There’s just so much here that simply works that it’s extremely easy to dismiss some polish pieces. May be some spoilers in here, will try to avoid.

I played a Wizard build. I tried a more stealth-based role but the combat mechanics don’t really support it. Caster, Bow or Tank are the only real options. Works for me! The character progression options as a wizard are limited for a decent while, as it has a rather unique requirement of using grimoires for spells. Grimoires are spellbooks with pre-assigned skills, so you’re generally looking for a specific type.

The challenge with a wizard, and the game in general, is that 90% of combat is against 6 or more enemies, including ranged attackers & healers. As a caster, you need to use AE attacks which have some rather weird dynamics. Fireball is super useful at the start, if only in pure damage, but the range is small and recast time long. By about level 10 you get accustomed to status effects (fire DoT, thunder stun, ice freeze) and quickly realize there’s only one true path – ice. You can clear entire camps in 2 spells if you specialize in ice attacks (skills + armor), which can feel trivial at levels 20+. I truly don’t mind feeling like a god by that point, cause it sure as heck was rough roads to get there.

Story-wise, the game moves from luscious lands to barren volcanos, with similarly ever depressing quests along the path. The pace and structure are really good though, as nearly every quest has some sort of long-term consequence, either in NPCs moving towns, or help later on. An interesting one in the 3rd zone has you visit a tower with a good 50 traps along the path, to meet 2 NPCs who are doing everything in their power to protect their land from invading forces (which you represent). It’s an interesting bit to talk them down.

Which gets me to the truly fascinating bit here, in that a large chunk of the backstory is defined by your interactions. At key points, you interact with ancient lore and select the behaviour of earlier NPCs. These choices impact the larger story, all the way until the final credits. It feels like choose-your-own-adventure here, and it works really well!

The penultimate choice is the more difficult of them all, and depending on choices / discoveries you made along the way, is either very obvious or very hard to make. I had done everything by that point, discovered a ton of lore, all sidequests, been generally ‘good’ with a couple exceptions and had a really tough time squaring the choice in front of me. It felt like a large gamble. The final choice is super obvious, you either side with a genocidal undead lich, or not. (You should try actually siding with them, I think you’d be surprised how it turns out – or not.)

Having completed the story, I am absolutely impressed with what was presented. While it does have a couple rough spots, the high points shine and make you quickly forget. All the NPCs are well constructed, with interesting and non-obvious drivers. Many of them have hubris, or are outright liars, where you need to discover more contextual clues to navigate. The companions are interesting, with varied backstories and quests. Progress is mostly self-driven through exploration, with only a dozen main quests. The choices you make are generally consequential, and it’s cool to see them come together in the final act.

Avowed does so much right, and with clear and consistent direction from Obsidian, that is honestly puts other modern RPGs with quadruple the budgets to shame. The Pillars of Eternity storyline continues, and I am looking forward to the next chapter!

Right, to the point. Avowed scratches an incredible itch that I didn’t realize I truly had. Video games, at their core, often show up as pretty skinner boxes – you repeat a set of activities hoping for a dopamine hit. The challenge with that construct is that the set of activities need some balance on challenge/reward in order to feel fulfilling. Ubisoft, for example, has lost sight of this where as games like Ghost of Tsushima have used the setting itself as the incentive.

I ‘completed’ the first zone over the weekend and am surprised at my joy in the process. While I certainly threw a lot of fireballs, it never truly felt the same. Each environment was different, so that the tactical portions changed. Sometimes there were a lot of big bad bears (melee who love to charge), other times well placed archers (which I can thankfully defend from), and at times summoners who have a seemingly infinite supply of minions + spells (which I cannot defend from). I had to prioritize each fight.

And the reason for each was different. Sometimes it was a random group just standing around. Others I had to collect a bounty. Others protected a cave I wanted to enter. Heck, a few times I just wanted to pick a fight because the dialogue gave me the choice. I don’t have to collect 5 bear pelts, or bring flowers across town, or some ridiculous box moving puzzle. Heck yeah!

Exploration

This is a thing that hasn’t really been discussed in open world games since Skyrim – 14 years ago. There’s an thing about world building where stuff has to have a purpose, even if that purpose is minor. I can trip over a dungeon that has a set of lore within, or read a note about some hidden mushrooms, or find a lost key in the sewers that opens a door to a shop. They aren’t actual tracked quests, I’m not directed to any of it. They are completely organic activities that serve contained but interconnected purposes. It feels like there’s breadcrumbs everywhere as a result and zero minimap cluster bombs. It’s exploration for the sake of exploration, not achievement. No Man’s Sky scratches that itch, but this world is hand crafted. Some human decided it was a good idea to put a book under a table for me to read, and then go on my own little adventure. Fascinating.

Combat

A decent amount of time is spent here, and a substantial amount of flexibility is present. You don’t get stronger with levels, you simply have more tools. You get stronger with better gear, and there’s so much gear to choose from. Now, you don’t have the enchantment system of Skyrim, so choices are certainly more limited, but it also prevents a sort of min/max situation of ‘perfect enchants’.

Where the game struggles, at least in my opinion, is the defensive portion. You will take a rightful beating at the start, which is likely to impact your playstyle. It’s certainly possible to go in with a 2 handed weapon, but you’re going to be tanking dirt quickly until you figure out the battle dance, especially with the sheer amount of enemy attackers. If the companion NPCs did a better job tanking, this would open more options. As it stands, you’re much better off to start with ranged attacks and finish with melee. Blocking + Parry are life, and a thousand times more reliable than dodging. Avowed is not an action game.

Next Steps

Into the new zone I go, tracking a pile of breadcrumbs along the way. And combating voices in my head every night. This is a truly enjoyable experience.

Simply, it is above my expectations.

The most obvious comparisons are Skyrim and Starfield, but the real comparison is Outer Worlds. Avowed is a level based, instanced, free flow RPG, layered on a strange set of serious lore and quirky events. Sort of like how Fallout has a serious undertone, but you’re going to find a bunch of weirdos along the way. It’s a great Obsidian product.

Character development is simple, but skills and stats can influence each other. You’re never stove piped into a single path, which adds a tremendous about of flexibility. You slowly discover these elements through the tutorial and initial level, allowing you to adapt over time. Notably, dialogue is not hidden behind super complicated skill checks (a part that annoys me in many party-based RPGs). The live action means that the onus is on you as a player to be effective, rather than the skills themselves being right/wrong.

The world itself deserves mention, in particular in regards to the design. Every space has something, and few of them have any indicators other than simply exploring. This is a massive contrast to Skyrim and Starfield, where much of the world is empty. The serendipity of discovery is everywhere. It feels like there are no wasted spaces, which is a miracle in and of itself.

Which gets me to the story elements and core drivers. I get lost easily in RPGs, following all sorts of breadcrumbs. Fallout 1’s ticking clock on getting a water chip, let me tell you how many times I failed that! I found a dungeon, after having read a note, with no in-game marker directing me. The dungeon itself was instanced, and the main story was that a delving team had gotten lost. Within, I found another godlike (born touched by a god) that sacrificed the entire team to power up a homemade robot with the spirit of a god. One, finding the actual area/quest was super organic. Second, the writing of an insane person trying to rationally explain their path was very funny. And third, the integration into the larger storyline didn’t become evident until much later.

I’m not saying the game is perfect. The moment to moment flow feels a little off, and the combat mechanics could use some QoL passes for sure (enemy AI is actually pretty good). It is however a good game, one with an interesting setting, and scratches a heck of an itch for an RPG after years of disappointment from other studios. I hope, truly hope, that Obsidian can be rewarded for what it’s been able to do here. A fraction of the budget and still hitting the right notes.

Now time to dig back in. I am enjoying shooting lightning bolts!

I tend to have one on the go at any given time, and honestly there’s a massive glut of games that fit this theme to select from. The gold standard remains Stardew Valley, but there’s a few dozen alternatives that will scratch one itch or another.

Quick note, mobile/web versions should be avoided as I’ve yet to find any option that didn’t include a ton of micro-transactions.

I would think that the defining feature of any cozy simulator (I’m sure there’s a better term, but I’ll use this one) is that you are provided a wide slew of horizontal activities that are tangentially related, and are limited in your ability to perform said activities based on a time/energy mechanic. You can either see this as time-gating (the most egregious are like this, and allow you to pay $$$ to bypass the gate), or something that aids in general focus of progress (more like Animal Crossing). You have a temporarily limited set of resources and a slew of time-based activities on which to spend it.

I would say that the best of this genre hit a few big ticket items

1. There are a slew of activities that hit every part of the Bartle quadrant of players (killers, achievers, socializers, explorers). Multi-stage quests are the most accepted versions.
2. The amount of activities you can perform in your temporary allotment should take approximately 15+ minutes to exhaust. This requires a significant amount of balancing in terms of energy costs.
3. The systems are optimized over time, both by performing said activities and by boosting from other activities (e.g. get better at farming by farming, or by making new clothes)
4. The game has a sense of belonging/roleplay where your character’s actions have a meaningful and lasting impact. This could be new buildings, extra areas, or relationships, meaning that your game is different than someone else.

More akin to Blizzard of old, cozy games hide their complexity through simple actions. Things as basic as farming may be tilling land, putting a seed, watering, and waiting. The complexity may come from the seasons, if you use fertilizer, the tools you are using, the amount harvested, if you get seeds back, if nearby plants have an impact and so on. Then there’s what you can do with the plants after they are harvested.

There’s also the mystery aspect of these games, where the systems are purposefully obfuscated to start, where you need to explore them over time. I think of Stardew Valley and how Ancient Fruit work. The seeds are extremely rare, they can’t grow in winter, and take nearly a month to grow. At first, it seems a useless plant. Then you unlock the greenhouse, where you can grow things year-long, and the seed maker that has a chance to give you seeds based on the matter added. It will take nearly a year in-game, but you’ll have a full greenhouse by the end. You also learn that you can turn it into wine (takes 7 days), and then age that wine (takes 3 seasons). And if you sell all that within a year, you’ll have a million gold. There’s no way you’d know that when you get your first Ancient Seed.

Back to the main issue, the slew of games and seeming dozen that launch every week. Most of them will take a couple slow months to burn through, so how to pick? Honestly, I have no idea. Steam curators are the only method I’ve found any success with, and even then it’s been a stretch. I’ve tried Fields of Mistria, which is well rated, but didn’t click with me. Graveyard Keeper however, that stuck.

I think the most enjoyable part of this type of game is that it scratches nearly every gaming itch. There’s a reason Farmville was a worldwide phenomenon, and an even greater reason why it isn’t anymore. And my regular Steam Deck plug comes again, where all of these games are pick up and play, making them perfect for that device. Sometimes real life gets too complicated, and I just need to fish in a pond…

2024 was a thing. And an interesting one at that.

Da Blog

I’ve honestly lost count on when this all started. I moved to this new platform in April 2008, but was self hosting for nearly a decade before. It’s always been a mental health outlet, and continues to be so in this age of 10 second video clips. Appreciate all the folks interested in reading the somewhat livestream of thoughts I put up.

Oddly this year had more of a series of posts, which really hasn’t been the case in a long time (FF14 and WoW have their own categories for a reason). This is mostly due to the types of games played this year, where it needed not only multiple sessions, but a lot of thinking to puzzle them through.

Overall post counts were up, visits as well. Let’s see what 2025 brings.

Games

A fair chunk of smaller games if my Steam library is any indication. Zero mobile gaming, zero Switch. Steam Deck had a ton of use, I appreciate it more and more every time I pick it up.

Thematically most games were production-related, where logistical puzzles abounded. Satisfactory had a few playthroughs, including 1.0 (it’s double good now). Foundry gave a go (needs some end-game goals and QoL). Techntonica launched to not much fanfare (too bad, ridiculous potential here). And well, Factorio hit 2.0 and sucked up all the IT engineer’s time on the planet (very, very easy to sink hours here).

I played quite a few others.

• Price of Persia metriodvania was OK (not sure why this is seen as GotY level).
• Turbo Kid is also a metroidvania, more indie and worth the purchase.
• Hades 2 kicks butt and looking forward to full release.
• I played Cocoon and Sea of Stars finally, both absolutely amazing games.
• I caved and bought the Kingdom Hearts series on a very deep discount, they play well on the Deck (KH3 has more cutscences than gameplay).
• V Rising hit 1.0 – it’s interesting though likely a billion times better as a group.
• Enshrouded launched. It’s right behind Valheim to me.
• Pacific Drive, which I didn’t like as the runs were too long. Cool concept. I should give it another go now that QoL patches are in.
• Horizon 2 came out on PC. Very good game. Massive optimization issues in the DLC.
• Ghost of Tsushima on PC is amazing. It has an emotional mark in my life, so that helps.
• Riven on PC was nostalgic.
• Wukong may have set a new bar for why PC gaming is going to overtake consoles. It looks amazing and gives me a souls-like experience I prefer.
• God of War Ragnorok came out. It’s good but I find it too big. Personal preference I guess.
• Golden Idol 1 + 2 are great puzzle games.
• Balatro. This thing is like crack.

There’s more, but those are the notable ones.

Life

Another very busy year, but generally a good one. Much more stable than prior ones, and enjoyable to spend with family. I had a physical injury I’m still not quite over, which sucks. Work had much more stress this year, which increased gaming and blog posting.

2025

Sort of predictions I guess.

• PC gaming will come to dominate the market. Steam Deck will continue to grow and the Steam Store will show up on PS5 + XBOX. Nintendo… I dunno.
• AAA games are all but done in the way we know them. They are not sustainable, and AC: Shadows will be the final nail in that coffin. Exception: Monster Hunter Wilds!
• Maybe we will luck out and Live Service games will finally end.
• Political turmoil will accelerate, further enabled by social media, oligarchs, and the underestimation of the global level of willful ignorance. It’s already quite stupid, but there’s ample room to dig deeper!
• Nostalgia will be an even larger attraction as fear is used as a weapon and people find comfort in the known.
• AI everything.
• The blog will continue, and I’ll have more posts in 2025 than 2024.

The game up until this point is about building self-sufficient planets. You start off with only a few things, then need to get a cycle running, then expand the local resources, and finally enter the research phase. The challenges presented are certainly more complex as you go (Gleba’s production loops are something new), but nothing that makes you question your sanity.

Aquilo is not that. Aquilo makes you question everything you now about the game and you will likely fail multiple landing attempts due to the environmental issues. I will say that the difficulty on Aquilo is mostly in the ability to create fail states that feel unrecoverable. It is the only planet where I needed to revert to earlier saves. It doesn’t have overly complex production chains, but the logistics of getting stuff around is the real challenge.

Getting There

Whatever ship you have, it’s not good enough. Medium asteroids are on the path to Aquilo, and you’ll need production capacity to fill missile turrets + gun turrets to survive. You’ll also need much more storage than prior, as Aquilo has very few natural resources. I made a lot of mistakes here. Overprepare.

Planet Conditions

Solar only works at 1%. There are no natural resources, though you can collect Ammonia from the oceans to make rocket fuel. This means you’ll need to ship all basic materials to Aquilo, or build a farming space platform and put it above the planet (I did both).

The planet is also ice cold and nothing works without being close to a heating pipe, which is heated from a Heating Tower. It takes 2 fully moduled chemical plants to create sufficient rocket fuel to power 4 heating towers. All power + heating will come from these for a very long time.

Ice is everywhere and a huge byproduct issue. You’ll melt what you can to make water, transform the rest to ice platforms (that need concrete above to not melt). Every other ice needs to be recycled.

Oh, and it’s so cold that robots take 5x the power to operate. So mass robots fleets are not really viable.

Lithium and Fluorine are two other liquids on the planet you will need to harvest for the planet specific items.

Making Space

Aquilo requires you to create more room for the factory, and requires concrete to be laid down on top of the ice. The starting footprint is barely enough to get going, and you’ll reach a point where even that is so poorly optimized you’ll need an ammonia + water bus to feed all the various machines. And when you hit the power issues (you will) it will likely cascade into a full factory outage.

Very important note. Heating towers can only boil water in heat exchangers when above 500 degrees. They can burn until 1000, so you will absolutely want to have a condition on your inserter to not add more fuel if the heating tower is above say, 550 degrees. Otherwise, say goodbye to your rocket fuel.

Second important note. Heating pipes to thaw equipment will drain more heat from the tower that you may think and easily force you to continually add fuel to keep above 500. If in doubt, disconnect the heating pipes to generate power – pipes only need to be around 30 degrees to work

Aquilo Science

Getting to this point is a lot of yada-yada of heat + power management shenanigans that includes unlocking Cryogenic Plants and science packages. You will need efficiency modules to reduce power usage to eventually claw your way to unlocking Fusion Power. That requires a TON of quantum chips (cryogenic chamber with 8 production modules and 2 speed beacons is sanity).

Aquilo is extremely slow and quite hard to design due to the heat limitations. I barely scrapped by with 4 heating towers. However…

Aquilo Power

Fusion Power is insane. Completely insane. It works on a 4:28 ratio (less reactors messes up the ratio), requires a cryogenic plant (operating at 16/s, so add modules) to cool down material in a closed loop. You will prime it with ~100 barrels of Hot Fluoroketone and never touch it again. It will then give you GIGAWATTS of power. Every single power management issue you’ve ever had, ever, is gone. I don’t mean managed, I mean gone. And it burns near-free fuel at a super slow rate, with no after product and self-manages load. Every disadvantage to nuclear is gone, at 10x the power output for 10% the space requirement.

Moving On

Once you have this unlocked on Aquilo, that pretty much to me means you’ve beaten the game. There’s a minor step of building a ship that can go past Aquilo and will require ~6 railguns and ammo to survive long enough. Given all the work up until this point, that is a very minor detail.

And, similar to the base game, you can complete it and move onto prometheus science which unlocks the ability to speed up research. Which is super useful if you are planning to scale up to insane levels or chase quality levels.

Or perhaps worded as the most optional, grindy aspect of the game, which is required for optimization but NOT in reaching the end.

Factorio Space Age has some rather foundational changes that impact significant portions of the game. First, is that each planet has a source of infinite resources. Second, each planet offers a unique building that provides a massive inherent productivity boost. Third, quality of an object has substantial impacts on production chains.

Infinite Resources

Nauvis offers infinite water + oil. Vulcanus has infinite iron, copper, stone, and sulfuric acid. Fulgura offers everything but coal, but in random amounts. Gleba is very weird – you could argue it has every base item in infinite quantities if you can get the production chains running. Aquilo has water, oil, and unique planet-based gases.

Space, with the appropriate set up, gives you infinite iron, copper, sulfur, coal, carbon, calcite and ice.

Production Boosts

Foundries, Electromagnetic Plants, Biochambers, and Cryogenic Plants all offer absolutely insane production boosts, not only in quantity but speed. You would be insane to create green/red/blue chips in an assembler instead of an EM Plant. This drastically reduces the value of production modules.

Quality

The difference between a normal and legendary item is substantial. The item could be 500% more efficient as a result, meaning you need less of them for the same result. Every planet has space restrictions, so you need to build more compactly.

The challenge in creating quality is that you can either gamble that something gets better, or practically build with at-level material. You can hope for a rare assembler after 100 tries, or you can build a rare assembler with rare (and only rare) materials.

Enter upscaling

Upscaling

The act of brute force gambling. This is only possible due to the two other factors – infinite resources + production boosts. If the odds are 1:100, then you will do it 100 times because you can. If you want a legendary item, you would need to do it about 18,000 times.

To make this process faster, you can upscale. The concept is as follows:

The model can be applied at large (belts/trains) and small (bots) volumes. Until you unlock rare + epic research, rare is going to be amazing in its own right, and chasing legendary is a very long tail.

The builds are somewhat straightforward. You feed a set of production-boosted machines with base material. You send all the results to a set of recyclers with quality modules, which will randomly increase the quality of the output. You will only get back 25% of what you put in, but with enough iterations you’ll eventually generate legendary items.

Thankfully at later parts this isn’t a required activity for all material, but unfortunately it is for some specific items. And more importantly, this shifts the mindset from creating legendary end items to creating legendary materials.

Let’s say you want to crate legendary Quality Modules. That needs legendary superconductors. Those require plastic (easy enough), copper (strangely a byproduct from plastic), oil (quality doesn’t matter) and holmium plates (that are liquid based, therefore can’t be legendary at base). Oddly, the best approach is to build an upscaler for supercapacitors instead. If you recycle those, you get legendary batteries, green circuits, supercapacitors, and holmium plates. As you progress here, you can go from 2.5% quality to 6.2% quality in the recycler (so 10% to 24.8% as they can have 4 each).

The concept of upscaling really takes off on Fulgora, but the true end goal is only do it for base / intermediate material and actually craft as much legendary as you can.

Nauvis

• Biter Eggs need a quality upscaler. And turrets as they can spoil to bugs.
• Uranium seems to be best with ammo, and then you can dump it in a kovarex plant to make tons.

Vulcanus

• Calcite comes from upscaling on a space platform.
• Tungsten is best to upscale the raw ore. You can get bars from Mk3 belts, though not sure that’s efficient.

Fulgora

• Holmium Plates and superconductors come from a somewhat complex upscaler.

Gleba

• Gleba is easy because resources are infinite.
• Gleba is hard because no plants have quality, so you can only upcycle end items.
• Gleba is hard because you need to maintain normal quality items for science and bioflux, meaning 2 factories
• Gleba is hard because your pollution will likely double, meaning more stompers.
• Jelly + Yumako Mash needs to be upscaled. Everything depends on these 2 items.

Aquilo

• I think the devs took pity because almost everything on this planet is liquid. Lithium takes 1 Holmium plate… with 8x production modules you get 200% bonus.

Gleba is a very weird planet, one that I find overly complicated and a real pain in the butt to manage. It has enemies that will attack you the more you produce (sort of like pollution), it has a ton of water, it only has stone as a natural formation, it has very specific locations to place buildings that can be a pain to defend, and importantly, almost everything on the planet has a timer where it will spoil. Spoiled items in a production chain suck, as you’ve lost time/resources invested. Oh, and one particular item when spoiled spawns enemies. It is a right nightmare to get going, but once it is running, it feels like free everything.

Power

50% solar power sucks, so to start you really need to limit your power usage. You’ll quickly unlock a Heating Tower, which is sort of like a nuclear power plant. Put in fuel, transfer to Heat Exchangers (4 per), and then to Steam Turbines (2 per exchanger). Save yourself the headache and ship all of the material to Gleba to build this power plant.

You can use different fuels, and the start up time takes a lot of materials. Once it hits 500 degrees, the burn rate slows dramatically, so you really really want to use a conditional inserter that shuts down above 530 degrees. I recommend using Rocket Fuel, as you can easily import it. Be warned, it will take about 10 just to get it running.

Early Gleba

When you first land, you’ll find it painful. Set up the power as above, install a Big Miner on the nearby stone patch and have it start creating Landfill. From there, you want to go exploring. You’re looking for water patches that have Copper or Iron Stromatolites. Collect these and 1 minute later you get basic ore. You can set up a basic foundry with imported Calcite to create Copper + Iron plates + Steel.

The next step is finding Yumako (yellow) and Jellynut (red) trees. Each will give you a fruit that can be refined into seeds and unlock the Agricultural Tower. Processing 1 stack of the fruit should give 1 seed which can be replanted for another stack of fruit. Mk3 Assemblers need productivity modules to ensure you don’t lose the seeds. You’ll place the towers where you collected the trees, the ground icons will be green when placed (have at least 4). Use robots to ship seeds to, and bring back the fruits.

You can use some of the plants to manually create Nutrients, 10 will unlock the Biochamber and open up a world of optimization & pain.

Biochamber

Biochambers have a 50% productivity increase on their recipes, and all of them are specific to this planet. Create one in an assembler, then use that product to create more. You’ll need pentapod eggs, which are found on Gleba’s enemies, so go hunting.

Biochambers do not use power, they use nutrients as fuel. Efficiency modules reduce the amount of fuel burned, while production modules increase it. This is great for power generation issues, but horrendous as you need to find a way to create a few tons of nutrients to power everything. Oh, did I mention that Nutrients spoil in 5 minutes? You still need them as the productivity bonus is the only way to ensure you get enough seeds from fruit.

Biochamber Crafting Tree

There’s a complex interaction between all the products on Gleba, and most of them focus on Bioflux, which is created by combining the products of the 2 tree types. Bioflux is then used with other things on the planet to create most other products. This creates some really complicated dependencies, and you’ll need to work in modules to craft specific items to be used elsewhere. More than any other planet, robot speed & amount will make or break your production chains. 1000 logistic bots will not be enough.

You’ll have crafting modules for:

• Nutrients
• Yumako
• Jellynut
• Bioflux
• Rocket Fuel
• Pentapods
• Science
• Plastic
• Carbon
• Sulfur
• Lubricant
• Carbon Fibre
• Iron Bacteria
• Copper Bacteria

I would not recommend starting any given module until the Nutrients one is up and running (Spoilage + extra Bioflux should be used to create Nutrients). The bacteria ones are optional, not much use for copper on this planet – iron has a lot of uses though.

The main challenge here is space. You’ll only be able to fit 4 or 8 Biochambers with an Efficiency Beacon for any given product. You’ll need to send nutrients to each item on a cycled belt, then the actual basic material to the Biochambers. You’ll need to ensure that spoilage is removed from every step (active provider chests are the only real option). You’ll also need to collect the material for distribution elsewhere. Adding too many nutrients will cause spoilage, so you’ll want to rate limit inserters in many cases. Pentapod production will spoil into enemies, so you’ll want turrets protecting that module.

The goal is to unlock the planet’s science, which you guess it, can spoil. You will need to modify your science hauler to go right to Nauvis after Gleba, and even on Nauvis, have a burner to get rid of any potential spoilage.

Dealing with Pentapods

There’s the short term answer of Tesla turrets around the base, as they are the only effective way I’ve found that deters them.

The long term answer is to look at your map, check the Pollution tab and see how far the spore cloud has gone. Build a defensive wall around the cloud and only collet fruit from trees when you need them. That should limit the spore cloud from growing.

Next Steps

Honestly, this planet is a right nightmare to manage, as much from the spoilage mechanic as it is from the rather insane nutrient requirements to power Biochambers. And I haven’t even begun to talk about the enemy spawns, land configurations and PITA logistics present. I enjoyed Fulgora as it presented logistical challenges to sort through a pile of stuff with limited room. Gleba has more complex production chains and a continual timer that makes things go poof.

Biolabs have no use outside of Gleba, which makes it an outlier. You will be exporting Carbon Fibre, Stack Inserters, Biolflux, and Science. Spoilage is used for efficiency 3 modules but since it doesn’t spoil naturally, odds are you will have tons of it on other planets. Given the multiple logistic challenges on this planet, large scale factories are not practical. Modular is the only way… and that will cause future challenges if you want to focus on quality items.

This page was updated on Nov 18, 2026.

This specific post highlights the one part of Factorio that is not found in other games. Heck, it had next to no real purpose in the base game as you could just saturate belts. Space Age logistics can be a huge pain in the butt to set up, and if not managed can absolutely drain a planet’s productivity.

Logistics in the simplest sense is getting materials from where they are produced to where they are needed. In the complex sense, this is about minimizing buffers, where you have too much material waiting to either be delivered or produced. In the base game it was simple, an empty belt was a problem. In Space Age, you can’t create belts between planets.

Space Logistics can be automated, but it’s a multi-step activity. The easiest way to explain it is that Space Platforms are mobile storage chests. You want them to always request the maximum amount of material needed so that it can be drawn down where needed. From there, each Landing Pad should only request what they need, which is not obvious.

In a practical example, every ship will always ensure it has 1000 Rocket Fuel. That way, it can distribute whatever each planet requires. Early on at low volumes, having 2 ships do a cycle on the inner planets (Nauvis, Vulcanus, Fulgora, Gleba) is more than enough. Later on, you’ll likely want dedicated platforms for say, only Red Circuits. Aquilo needs a dedicated ship given the size of asteroids.

Landing Pad

The landing pad can accept 3 rockets at a time. Add cargo bays if you need to receive more bulk. Each landing pad should have inserters heading to active providers (purple chests) with 20 or so storage (yellow) chests nearby. This ensures that you landing pad is empty and that all the items are in your logistics network. You should only use steel chests if you want items inside them to be “hidden”.

Again, you MUST store items in colored chests for it to count to the logistics network. Items on your character, in wood/steel chests, or the actual landing pad do not count.

Supply vs Demand

I will use these terms a lot. Supply is what is available from a space platform. Demand is what you actually need in a landing pad. Demand is the difference between what you have on a planet, and what you should have. Ideal – actual = demand.

Fill the Supply

In the Space Platform interface, you can create groups. These should be logically broken down to items from each individual planet. If you have an item in multiple groups, know that they are additive. These groups will change as you progress throughout the game.

• Nauvis: Nauvis has 3 phases. The first time you leave you will offload a pile of stuff for a first landing eslewhere. The 2nd phase is keeping up delivery (e.g. circuits, electric poles, robots). The 3rd phase will be nuclear, biter eggs, and Mk3 Productivity modules
• Vulcanus: Foundries, Big Miners, Green Belts, Cliff Explosives, Calcite. (Eventually, 80% of your production will be here). Mk3 Speed modules are later.
• Fulgora: Recyclers, Electromagnetic Plant, Mk3 Quality modules. You’ll add holmium plates and superconductors later.
• Gleba: Plastic, Rocket Fuel are easily made here. Carbon Fiber, Rocket Turrets, Bulk Inserters, Spoilage and Bioflux are good to have (the last one spoils). Mk3 Efficiency modules later… though they have very niche use.
• Aquilo: Cryogenic Plants, Railguns, Foundations.
• Fusion Power: Fusion Generator, Fusion Reactor, Power Cells, Cold Fluoroketone (barrel)
• Rocket Parts: Low Density Structure, Blue Circuits, Rocket Fuel

The first landing on each planet has slightly different requirements, so make a group just for that and adjust as needed – like making sure you have a landing pad. Each Space Platform should move between planets and requests a full load of all the respective groups. You may need more (or higher quality) cargo bays on the platform to store it all.

Well, the exception here is science. I’d suggest 1 ship dedicated to collecting 2000 of each planet’s science output, and only science. Gleba should be the last planet you collect from, to maximize the time before spoilage.

Set The Demand

Two options, static and dynamic. Static is simple enough, you set the item demands in the landing pad interface. If you request 200 red belts, then you will receive up to 200 red belts. If you don’t want red belts, you need to change the demand. The landing pad becomes the logistics network and you must ensure everything is stored here and nowhere else.

Dynamic uses combinators and math. It’s a relatively easy set up to repeat and understanding it on a planet makes ship building much, much more effective.

Requesting Magic

The concept here is that you want a Landing Pad to only request the items it needs and not any more than that. The groups are the maximum amount you ever want on a planet. What you have in the logistics network is subtracted from that maximum. Your request is the difference.

A practical example. I want to have 200 Bulk Inserters on Vulcanus. My logistics storage has 68 in stock (found in 3 boxes and connected landing pad). I therefore need to ship 132 down to the planet.

How does that work with the tools in game? Some simple enough steps.

1. A Constant Combinator that is set to include all the requests for a given planet. This is the maximum amount I will ever need. Constant because it will not change. (Using the above example, that would include 200 Bulk Inserters)
2. An Arithmetic Combinator that will be connected to the Constant Combinator and the logistics network roboport. I will subtract the available amount from the demand. (Using the above example, it will be 200-68)
3. Connect the Arithmetic Combinator to the Landing Pad, and set the Landing Pad to set requests automatically. The result is that the Landing Pad will only request the items I need from the available space platform.

This helps for numerous reasons. Importantly, it ensures I always have the minimum required items on any given planet which dramatically reduces waste. Second, it ensures that if I produce an item on the planet that I don’t request it from a space platform. Third, it limits the amount of items shipped to a planet so that I only need to produce what’s needed across the entire space network, and allows a planet to focus on the more critical items. This is important in the mid-game when sending rockets to space is relatively expensive.

Finally, and most importantly, I never need to worry about it again. That means that once I leave a planet, it stays operating in the state I left it forever. I can focus on the next task, without having to worry about the prior one.