Duplicants need a steady supply of calories to keep running around like headless chickens. One of the other most important concerns is food. Thus managing stress is one of the most important things for a colony.

Left unchecked this can quickly spiral out of control, and your colony can fail quickly. This can contaminate drinking water and spread disease, and other dupes will have to step in it to pass by or clean it up, increasing their stress levels. For example, a dupe who's a Vomiter, will of course, vomit when stressed, generating large amounts of Polluted Water. One stressed dupe can also increase the stress of others with their stress response. This usually makes them incapable of carrying on with their assigned tasks. When a duplicant reaches 100% stress they will exhibit a stress response. What will kill most colonies is an overload of Stress. But this isn't important in the first few cycles. That way, later you can clear up this space and add items to increase the Decor, which further lowers stress. Leaving a gap between the ceiling and top of any items you build early on can be beneficial for the same reason. You should leave a space or two between every couple Cots for future items you might want to build (e.g., Decor). Having a bed to sleep in decreases Stress and prevents them from getting the Sore Back debuff from sleeping on the floor. It is recommended to clear a space to make Cots for your Dupes. However, Duplicants must step in clean water or shower in order to clean themselves.Р”Р„t this point, you can begin to think about expansion and growing your colony to survive past the first few cycles. Luckily, polluted water can easily be mopped up. When a Duplicant steps in polluted water they will become stressed out. If not, they'll make a mess on the floor, which creates Polluted Water.

Because the bladders of Duplicants fill up once every cycle (twice if they have the Small Bladder trait) it is important to supply them with a toilet. Your first building should be an Outhouse, which you can find in the Plumbing menu. A golden rule of ONI is 'Don't expand too fast too early.' This includes accepting new Duplicants from the Printing Pod, not just making your base bigger! Not only will your Duplicants waste time digging out areas, your small oxygen supply will be spread out over a larger area, hastening your death by low oxygen. Although these won't kill your Duplicants (affectionately known as Dupes), they do complicate life early on. At this early stage you should try to avoid any polluted water/oxygen, poisonous gases or vacuum spaces. The first step you want to take is to start digging around to gather materials, increase your space and get access to water and other oxygen pockets. The recommended game mode for beginners arguably is the 'No Sweat' mode and the Terra asteroid. See Game Settings for a description of those. Before the actual game starts, you will be presented some settings dialogs.

Oxygen not included map seeds