I ended up getting a string of blueprints that changed everything. From how long I could last before needing to refill my oxygen tanks. The ability to get access to a few new tunnels and caves. I even increased my rover's inventory size by quite a lot.
I had a feeling at some point I was going to unlock something that reduced the amount of oxygen I'd need to use from my tanks. That ended up being an air filter that based on the current areas I was on the planet could last quite some time without needing to refill my oxygen tanks.
Things got even better after that. I was able to craft a water filter as well. Making any rivers or lakes I came across now something I could drink out of. I started to reduce the number of supplies I would bring along with me each time I set out exploring.
I was extremely excited when I got the blueprint for deconstruction 2. Just about every single wreck I had been on I'd find these servers that I could not take apart. Now that I had the technology to do so I went around to as many wrecks as I could stand and started looting them all.
Little did I know this would not be the last time I had to return to all the wrecks yet again for further loot. It has been quite interesting seeing how despite all the loot I've already pulled out of them. They still end up having a purpose for me well into the middle of things.
As far as the servers go. Each one yields me a single circuit board. While in some wrecks I might only get three of them. In a larger one, I must have pulled out about a dozen of them.
While I did not have as much use for them at the time as I thought I would. The entire locker I ended up filling up with them would hardly put a dent in the amount I'd need by the end game.
In the middle of all that action, I got interrupted by the night sky. I’ve seen a few asteroids hit before. This was the next level. This did not just happen once but twice over just as many days.
I even got hit by a falling asteroid. The loot from these were super alloys. I’ll take free loot when I can get it even more so when it's that stuff! As these were not caused by me sending up any rockets into space.
They also seem to de-spawn a lot quicker than the other types of asteroid events that can occur.
While I've been able to enter most of the caves that have been blocked off by ice now. Sometimes I’d run into tunnels in them or even caves being blocked by rocks. They all required some kind of explosive device to blow them up.
I’ve been wanting to get the explosive blueprint for quite some time. On one trip returning from salvaging a wreck and collecting a blueprint chip. I turned it into the computer and was rewarded with the explosive blueprint.
I crafted up a couple and jumped into my rover so I could start driving to a location where I wanted to see what was on the other side of a rock pile. The mystery here would only deepen.
After exploding through a few layers of rocks I came to a locked door. This door required five keycards to open. Since I've yet to loot an extra keycard out of any wreck I've cleared I started to wonder how I'd even get that many in the first place.
I also had high hopes that something massive would be hidden behind that door. For the time being that mystery would have to remain unsolved. At the very least I had a few other areas I could blast rocks away from and unlike this situation, I would not be denied entry.
In a cave not that far from the door I could not open. There was another set of rocks I could blast open after some ice had melted letting me into a cave. What was waiting for me on the other side was unexpected.
This was perhaps the coolest-looking part of the planet in this cave. I spent way too much time down here running around the loop noticing something different with each pass I made.
While down there I also found some terra tokens. Before coming down into this cave I had built yet another launch platform for trading. It uses terra tokens with different items being of different values. While most of what I could craft and send up was not worth a lot. It seems I just needed to luck out and find some token tickets that could be worth as much as 5k terra.
Needless to say, I was having a lot of fun going back to old areas. Getting to open up tunnels or caves I've been wondering what they had to hide. Along with deconstructing further loot from old wrecks that have been waiting some time for me to loot.
From some of these new areas, I was now getting access to. I ended up finding myself with a surplus of blueprint microchips. This event furthered my crafting progression. I was now able to craft a bunch of upgrades for my rover.
The biggest upgrade had to be even more inventory space. Just look at how massive the inventory of my rover is on the right compared to my inventory on the left.
My jaw dropped when I realized just how much storage space I now had between the two. For the time being, I would not always have to be so stricken by what I was willing to bring back. Some parts of the planet I'd go out exploring would take quite a while to get to and back. Now I could just freely loot wrecks as I pleased with the minimal number of trips required to haul back all the loot.
It’s kind of funny how quickly it felt like the game opened once I got a couple of critical blueprints. There were so many areas I now got to explore that I had been wanting to for quite some time. While some of them were a bit of a letdown others were jaw-dropping and worth the wait.
The terraforming process had also Slowed down quite a bit. The next biggest one was having a breathable atmosphere. It seems the upgrades I got for increasing how long my oxygen tanks would last would be rather short-lived and obsolete once I unlock the next planet phase.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Planet Crafter.
Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.
