Some general guidelines to help new (and perhaps not so new) scientists attain success in the world of Forever Skies.
General Approaches
Pay Attention to the Guidance
It always helps to know what the game designers think you should be doing next. Not that you have to do it – often I ignore this just to see what will happen – but if you know what the designers expect, you have an idea what you can find.
Forever Skies is Procedurally Generated
Why keep that in mind? Because if you miss a step or otherwise overlook what the programmers consider something you HAVE to do, the opportunity will keep appearing until you take advantage of it. For example, early on there’s a flashlight technology available. If you don’t take advantage of where it’s found, that opportunity will keep appearing until you take it. On top of that, procedural generation means there’s an infinite amount of resources to gather.
This does leave you vulnerable to what some call “RNG Jesus” – sometimes something just doesn’t seem to spawn, no matter how hard you try. When you run into that, my advice is to just pick a direction and keep going. Eventually you will force the game to generate a new area of the map, where you have another shot at finding what you are looking for. Need electrical elements and for some reason can’t make them? Keep visiting towers, and eventually you will gather what you need; after all, there’s an infinite amount of them. Need to find that special tower type that has frozen pizza preservation tech? Force the game to keep spawning environments till one shows up.
Forever Skies is a Relatively Fair Game
What do I mean by a “fair” game? As you progress through Forever Skies, the game design tries to provide you with the tools needed to overcome the tasks it sets before you. It’s not deliberately trying to make you fall into some dead end you can’t back out of. In other words, if the game guidance (the hints in the upper left of the screen) asks you to do something, odds are you either have the tools available to do it, or can get the tools needed in the immediate area. If this doesn’t seem to be the case, sure, it COULD be a problem with the game progression (which the dev’s need to know), but it’s more likely you’ve skipped over something. That being said, there’s the next point:
What Was Once True May Not Forever Be
I’ve fallen into this trap more than once – a new patch or update comes out, I jump in and start a new game, and start moving almost automatically to get to the more interesting sections. All of a sudden, I find things aren’t going as smoothly as I expect! It’s because the new patch has moved something to be discovered elsewhere, a new game mechanic has been introduced, or otherwise some change has taken place that tosses a monkey wrench in my heretofore “rapid” start. Assumptions based upon past game play can lead you astray.
This is a good intro to the next section, where I go into more specific pieces of advice:
Specific Approaches
Scan, Scan, and Keep Scanning!
New technologies typically use one of two triggers to become available – either you’ve gathered up something new, or you’ve scanned some specific thing. As much as you can, keep your scanner active – new items that have not been scanned will have a flowing golden grid pattern appear over them. The earliest and perhaps best example (minor trivial spoiler) is at the very beginning, when you first get a scanner. You don’t get the engine / fuel tech by finding an engine to scan; you get it by scanning some synthetic flotsam. In the same way throughout the game, sometimes building object X means scanning object Y. My latest screwup in this area was when new mechanics were introduced to get into the UnderDust – I kept looking for an item, forgetting to actually use my scanner on anything new I found. If I would have kept scanning, I could have saved hours in fruitless searches.
Also, realize the scanner has a huge range. As long as you can bring the targeting sprite of the scanner on top of your target, you can scan it even if you are sitting on your ship reasonably far away. Why crawl around in the ruins when you can just scan it from the comfort of your floating sky palace?
Listen for Audible Cues
Most people think of looking for visual indicators, but often audible cues are also present and can give you an edge. These fall into two categories: game alerts and environmental hints.
- Game alerts are for me, primarily new technology notices; I may not always see the text appear that tells me I now have something new to research, but I will usually hear the “dingish” sound associated with it.
- Environmental hints come in several varieties:
- Greenhouses. Listen to the background noise before and after you find and kill a cricket; you will quickly learn that, as long as there are crickets in the area, you will hear a particular noise associated with them.
- Wheezing. At certain points in the game, you will make certain noises as you run out of oxygen. Listen for those, and use their information wisely.
- Medications and boosters can give you special bonuses of various types. They last a while, but eventually you will hear a distinct and obnoxious “boing” sound when those benefits expire. Don’t ignore that alert.
Watch Your Immunity
When you look at your inventory, you will see your state of immunity: High, Medium, or Low. There are specific events (for the player to discover) that will drop your immunity state. Those are built into the story, and can’t be avoided by any sneaky tactics or by keeping fully fed and hydrated at all times – you WILL drop immunity. My advice is to do as much as you can while your immunity is high and allows you to fight off disease. Certain actions have little negative effect when you are at high immunity, but have great impact at low immunity – particularly what you eat, or what tries to eat (or at least attack) you.
In particular, there comes a point where you can boost your immunity and keep it boosted – that allows some tactics otherwise impossible.
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