Minicology – Basic Guide

Guide to Basics

All credit goes to Zarathustra!

Basics

Controls

• WASD or Arrow keys to move (WASD recommended!)
• SHIFT to sprint / climb (watch your stamina!)
• Q to equip laser drill (or Q to re-equip previous item, if laser drill is equipped!)
• E to equip equipment (or E to deselect all, if equipment is equipped [Are you confused yet?!]… AKA, double tap E to deselect everything.)

• ESC to close UI quickly
• U to hide the HUD
• Numkeys 1-10 to equip various items
• Double tap A/D – Left/Right to DASH (once thruster boots have been equipped)
• Hold UP to FLY (once jetpack has been equipped)

On loss of health or hunger, players will die. Dying will cause them to lose several random items.

Use your laser drill on blocks and plants to destroy them. Unfortunately, like many modern power tools, it has a safety that prevents it from hurting people and animals – so you’ll have to improvise your weaponry…

Which leads us to:

Crafting

Head over to your crashed ship and pick up the 3D Printer and Research Station! These are your main tools for crafting things in Minicology. The research station will allow you to find new recipes, while the 3d printer is a lighter-weight alternative that allows for on-the-fly crafting.

3D Printing

Crafting in minicology uses a grid system. Aligning items on the hexagonal grid like so will allow you to create various items:

Research Station

Deposit an unknown object in the Research Station to scan it. If you have the necessary materials for a recipe, you can scan the item and the research station will print it for you – but this will take a few seconds, so it pays to memorize crafting recipes!

Seed Mill and Furnace

Later in game, once you’ve gathered some crops and mined some crystal shards, you’ll want to craft a furnace and a seed mill. These important items are crafted using a wooden cog – use the research station to find the recipes!

The seed mill will allow you to obtain seeds that can be re-planted, a viable option for ensuring no crop goes extinct (more on that later!). The furnace will require fuel, in the form of Wood , Bottled Methane, or various other items.

Crafting using either of these items requires that you turn the large wooden cog located in their menu – but hooking them up to a windmill or steam engine will allow you to turn that automatically!

Cooking

Various foods can be combined at a campfire into stat-boosting dishes. Each class of food (root vegetables, meats, fruits, herbs, and grains) has their own set of buffs. Combining the same ingredient multiple times will result in increased buff duration, while combining different ingredients will stack buff effects.

Ecosystem

Minicology is an Eco-Sim, which means that the entire planet’s ecosystem is simulated as you play! Predators eat prey animals, insectivores hunt pests, and grazers eat the lush grass growing around your planet.

The ecosystem mechanics are still being developed, but right now there are a few things you should watch out for:

Extinction

Nearly any species in Minicology – with the exception of a few pesky pests – can go extinct. This means you have to be very careful not to over-harvest trees and crops. If you do, don’t worry too much – you’ll be able to re-introduce them with a bit of elbow grease – but you might find yourself lacking resources in the meantime. Likewise, be careful when fighting bosses that you don’t accidentally massacre any native species in the meantime.

Reproduction

Species in Minicology also reproduce. Mature animals will breed – signaled by hearts above their heads – and mature plants will drop seeds when they are in season.

Feeding

You are not the only critter on your planet that needs food! Grazers eat plants, predators eat meat, and the tiny creatures you might catch hiding in bushes – the insectivores – will eat the pests of the world. Be careful about those pests, by the way – left uncontrolled, they’ll devour the vegetation of your planet!

Keep this in mind if you wish to avoid species going extinct.. which, BTW, is a totally viable strategy, but may have unexpected consequences later game!

Temperature

Temperature will adjust seasonally, and plants can only fruit and reproduce when in-season. Plant accordingly, and make sure you protect plants during their off-season as they will have a harder time healing and maintaining their population. Additionally, players venturing near to the planet’s core will find the heat intolerable, requiring them to get in and out very quickly – or requiring them to craft special heat-shielding accessories and foods in order to survive in the high temps.

Water cycles

Rainclouds will form above the ocean, and will water plants. Later in game, artificial water systems with more reliability can be created, but in the beginning game, it is best to rely on natural water supplies to water your crops. Plant your fields in the path of the natural rainclouds!

Events

As you go about your day on your planet, you may encounter one of several events. These will be indicated in the bottom left corner of your screen, and clicking on their tag will set your event finder to track them. Events are the source of several rare materials, necessary to craft rare and powerful accessories and crafting stations.

Star Shower

This will likely be the first event you encounter. Chase down stars in order to receive new plants. Collect enough stars to obtain star fragments, which let you craft some helpful accessories, as well as the Gene Sequencer – necessary for synthesizing new species from helixes.

Meteor Storm

Destroy falling meteors for a chance to obtain Burning Essence, necessary to craft specialized bullets and heat shielding accessories.

Rainbow

Rainbows will appear after rain. Complete a jumping puzzle to obtain rainbow fragments, a rare ingredient!

Comet

Comets will land in the upper levels of your planet. They emit freezing particles that will disable your movement for several seconds – but if you can get close enough with an empty bottle, you’ll be rewarded with rare ether gas, necessary to craft the fridge, an item that allows you to cook heat-reducing foods.

Apex Attacks

After day 3, the player may find themselves attacked by the large predators that inhabit their world. More on that later, but it’s good to be prepared for it!

Combat

Fighting in Minicology is fairly simple. Weapons, once crafted, have a substantial amount of durability – but will eventually break. Mobility is key. Keep moving and try to dodge the bosses attacks. Building an arena like the following (made using platforms, crafted with 2 wood) will increase your odds of success, as it will allow you to move up and down without falling.

Minicology has a few distinct classes of weapons. The primary ones available at the moment are range and melee, split into bows, guns, spears, swords, and gas-grenade weapons. Many weapons in Minicology feature two types of attacks – a basic one, activated by clicking; and a charged attack, activated by clicking and holding. The cursor will switch to a crosshair and will indicate charging on the charged weapon attacks.

Range Weapons

Range weapons in Minicology can be separated into bows (crafted with rope, wood, or ferrite), guns (crafted using the flintlock mechanism, crafted using flint&steel + ferrite cog), and gas-grenade weapons (crafted with the pneumatic pump and various later-game items).

Bows have retrievable arrows, and are able to deliver large amounts of damage in single projectiles. They require arrows, crafted from sticks and flint or bone. If you struggle with melee combat, consider crafting a shortbow for fast closer-range encounters, and a longbow for heavy-hitting long-range shots. Once you have several ferrite ingots, you can also craft the warbow, an upgraded longbow, for later-game encounters.

Guns fire bullets – of which there are several types – in a straight line. Bullets are, however, unrecoverable, and players may find that guns are expensive to maintain. That said, the shotgun and machine gun are very reliable weapons that do significantly more damage than the early-game bows.

Melee Weapons

Melee weapons include swords and spears.

Swords… are not that great, right now. I advise against them. In the future, they will make use of a parry mechanic that allows you to stun large enemies, but for now, they require a lot of coordination to use effectively. Instead, try crafting a…

Spear

Spears allow players to Pogo, double jumping for each successful hit they land on an opponent. Skilled players can use this to their advantage, maintaining an aerial advantage that gives them parity with their opponent. Additionally, the Bone Spear allows the player to charge up a dash, giving them significantly increased mobility.

Bosses

Currently, Minicology has three completed boss battles. If you run around your world, you’ll probably notice their nests!These are the Apex Predators, large creatures that, if not taken care of, will hunt you down and eat you! Play around with the crafting system to create some weapons and get to work – the drops from these enemies will greatly increase your mobility and crafting abilities!

You can wake these bosses up by attacking their nests, or you can wait for them to come to you. Bosses will begin to hunt you down starting on day 3.

Nautilus

Nautilus uses a combination of acid spit, lunges, and its large shell to fight the player. Luring it out of the water is key – as is keeping distance when it begins to lunge. Players might be able to get on top of its shell and score some free hits – but be sure to leave quick when the nautilus retreats into the shell and starts spinning!

Lotus

Lotus is a more difficult boss battle than Nautilus, simply because Lotus’s offshoot roots may begin to accumulate if the player doesn’t have enough DPS.

Lotus will teleport underneath the player and attack, so make sure you move back and forth. The drop from the Nautilus boss fight might prove useful here, as will piercing melee weapons and fletched arrows.

Hydra

Hydra is likely the most difficult of these three bosses – a fast-moving laser eye coupled with lightning-fast mobility means that players might want to craft some mobility-based accessories or invest in lithium armor before they confront this boss battle.

Jetpacks, double jumps, or the lunge special from the bone spear will allow the player to quickly navigate around the spinning laser attack, while an arena built with a solid platform for cover might help with the laser chase phase and the projectile storm.