The Planet Crafter: Terraforming Guide

Here’s everything you need to know about terraforming in the Planet Crafter.

The Planet Crafter's whole game plot revolves around terraforming planets. After getting convicted of a crime on another planet, you are sentenced or exiled to an unnamed planet, where you are tasked to terraform the planet's unforgiving environment. In a way, the herculean task is so to impossible that you are essentially sentenced to death at this point.

You have no choice but to become the Planet Crafter and terraform the planet to survive your sentence. Here's a comprehensive guide on everything you should know about terraforming the planet, reading the Terraformation Index, and eventually being able to beat the game.

Terraformation Basics

At the start of the game, terraforming the planet requires three major aspects or statistics – Oxygen, Heat, and Pressure. Once you improve on each aspect, you'll unlock new construction options and blueprints to further improve your character, base, and planet.

When you improve the planet's habitability, you'll progress through different terraformation stages. Here's a brief list of all the terraformation stages:

Each of these stages changes the environment of all the biomes on the planet. Some of these stages even change the resources found in some of the areas, including storage container chests filling up with better loot.

All the stages bring a new age for the planet, and you are there to craft all the newly unlocked tech to help terraform the planet even more.

How To Improve Oxygen

Here's a list of buildings that improve oxygen in the Terraformation Index:

Tiers correspond to the number of levels a building would have. For example, Tree Spreaders would have T1 Tree Spreader, T2 Tree Spreader, and T3 Spreader.

Each tier will be exponentially better than its predecessor. The same goes for the rest of the tables, excluding the rockets, in this guide.

The first method of getting oxygen up on the planet is through a simple Vegetube. You'll need to acquire some seeds to place on the tube to apply oxygen multipliers. The oxygen multipliers are highly dependent on the type of seeds you have, so you have to find the best seeds when exploring the planet.

These multipliers play a huge role in the rate of accelerating oxygen , so you would need to find some Golden Seeds inside the shipwrecks to maximize growth.

Eventually, you want to build multiple Vegetubes to place all the seeds or plants you have found. The next step to improving your oxygen rate is dependent on your progress. Once you unlock more tech, you should switch out to those instead.

For example, if you unlock the Flower Spreader, Vegetubes are no longer efficient and should be phased out. Once you get to Tree Spreaders, you'll be phasing out Flower Spreaders. When you get to T3 Tree Spreaders, that's the only building you'll need to max out your oxygen rates.

The oxygen rate also depends on how many you build. If you want to wait things out, crafting at least two of the current tier levels ofoxygen-producing equipment is good enough.

If you want to speed things up, you want to mass produce these buildings, even though you might lack the resources.

How To Improve Pressure

Here's a list of buildings that improve pressure in the Terraformation Index:

At the start of the game, the pressure only progresses through Drills. These Drills don't do anything but contribute to improving the planet's pressure. Once you have the other tech, you'll solely depend on Drills as the bulk of your pressure generation.

Ore Extractors are only valuable at automating resource gathering and don't improve pressure well. Rely on the drills to improve your pressure and disregard all the others. However, all the other tech listed in the table have other uses, so you'll end up crafting them anyway.

Once you unlock the next tier of drills, you can remove the old ones. Do this until you reach T5 Drills.

When you are building your Drills, you want them as to each other as possible. When you unlock the Machine Optimizer, you want to place it in the middle to maximize the pressure boost.

How To Improve Heat

Here's a list of things that improve heat in the Terraformation Index:

Similar to pressure, heat mostly relies on just the Heater to improve the planet's temperature. All the other tech listed won't affect the planet's heat levels that greatly.

However, Heat might be the easiest aspect to terraform because of how rockets are designed in the game. There is another way to increase heat, however.

If you have encountered any power problems in your base, you know very well that Uranium is extremely valuable. However, Uranium is also hard to find, but you can also spawn the Uranium needed with a rocket.

First, you need to unlock and build the Launch Platform. Once built, craft and launch an Asteroids Attraction Rocket, which will bring a meteor storm to your base. When these meteors hit, they will spawn five pieces of Uranium per meteor.

Don't worry. Although the meteor storm looks like it will destroy everything, your base is perfectly safe.

What do these have to do with the Heat Terraformation Index? Each rocket sent to space will have a permanent 1,000 percent heat multiplier bonus to your playthrough.

This multiplier also stacks , so you can send multiple rockets to space to improve your heat exponentially.

Terraformation Rockets

Speaking of rockets, there are rockets for each type of terraformation.

These rockets all give a 1,000 percent multiplier to a specific type. All these multiplier buffs also stack, so it is best to keep your buildings arranged by type and to each other.

You can improve the multiplier even more by putting Machine Optimizers near these buildings.

Most of the time, you'll be sending upwards of five rockets for each type. These rockets are the main contributors to speeding up your progress. If you don't use these rockets, you'll wait for a very long time before you can unlock new tech.

How To Improve Biomass

Apart from oxygen, pressure, and heat, you'll eventually reach Biomass. It is an additional Terraformation Index category you have to work on to improve your overall terraformation progress.

Unlike oxygen, pressure, and heat, Biomass is further split into three categories – Plants, Insects, and Animals.

Each Biomass subcategory can be treated the same as oxygen, pressure, and heat, where you need to improve on all three subcategories to improve your overall Biomass. To improve plants, you are going to make Flower and Tree Spreaders.

These Spreaders require seeds, and you need to find more of them to place inside your Spreaders. You can also remove your existing Vegetubes to get the previous seeds.

For insects, you need to craft an Incubator and a Butterfly Dome. Explore the world and grab some larvas. Incubate these larvas to create butterflies and place them inside the Butterfly Dome. Build multiple Butterfly Domes to improve your insect rate.

Finding Larva is extremely hard, especially if you are looking for rare ones. If you are going to explore, prioritize getting these rare Larvas for your insect farms.

For animals, you are heavily relying on your Aquarium, Fish Farm, and Amphibians Farm. Each milestone is quite far from the other, so you'll have to wait a little to further progress in the subcategory.

Once you reach animals, you are already nearing the end of the game.

Once you improve on each subcategory, you'll further improve your biomass. You don't have to improve on all three subcategories at the same time.

It is better to go through them one at a time. In a way, you have no choice because of how far animals are from the start of the Biomass era anyway.