The Riftbreaker Tips from Players

Advice From My Experience

These are just things that I noticed. They are organized in no real order other than the order that they came to mind. I will try to improve this in time.

Basic Observations

I am going to assume that each map has its own raids on some timer. Although there must be of rerolled of the spawns every time one occurs. I was at an outpost to quickly add some additional mines that would be outside my main defended area. I was not ready for defense when I got the notification for an incoming raid. I didn't want to deal with it, so I jumped back to a save to a few minutes before it sent the warning. I waited and it still occurred a few minutes later, but they were spawning from a different side. So I loaded again, but this time left the map to go do things in another map for a time. When I just jumped back to that outpost again, a raid was going to occur again in about the same time that it would have if when I reloaded. So I am going to guess that the timer pauses when you leave a map.

Always hard save before going to a new map. The map is generated when you arrive, You can reload the save and have a new map if needed.

If you get a research option to handling a specific rare resource, always bump that to the top of your research queue. You can't really do any major collecting or farming of a resource until it has been researched.

Related to the above statement. If you are Cultivators/Harvesting and a plant says that it produces a certain resource, you won't collect that resource until you have researched its handling.

From what I can tell, The research speed for Base and Weapon Research Trees are dependent on how many Communication Hubs you have and their building levels. The amount of Laboratories and their building levels effect the research speed of the Alien Research Tree.

The game advises you on using weapon with different types of ammo so that you don't run out in battle. You also need to take that advise into account when building towers. They all use a specific type of ammo too.

When a nest occurs on the map, you should try to destroy all of the eggs before they hatch as they seem to normally contain rare resources.

Always try to keep moving when in combat. Enemies seem to always fire at where you are currently standing. So you can go back and forth between shot.

Skills

The Emergency Explosion skill can be a life saver when swarmed by creatures. Also a good tool to draw in melee creatures and just detonate.

Getting Dash skill that leaves a elemental damage trail is a very good thing to have throughout the game. The first that I got was one that leaves a Fire trail. It is the easiest to create as it requires Cobalt, while the others use a different rare material. Although creatures in the Volcanic Region are resistant to it. I found Cryo my preferred version as few things seem to have resistance to it and it slows creatures down. Weak creatures that give chase normally don't survive moving though the trail if they are chasing you.You can also turn it into a form of a wall by circling back around and get the creatures to chase you through it. Unfortunately, this doesn't work as well in the new Metallic Biome due to most creatures flying.

The Crystal Pillars contain key schematics. So it is good to destroy them. You will find schematics for the skills mentioned above as well at other weapon and decorations.

The Dash and Emergency Explosion skills make it much easier to defeat the the mobs of small creatures that come after you when you start the drill. I also noticed that these Schematics are unlocked for all future Campaign and Survival modes. You will still need to craft them though. The pillars can also contain mods or resources, but those don't carry over. Dash doesn't help at hurting the enemies as much in the Metallic Biome now but Emergency Explosion still does.The key there is to keep moving.

Weapons

My main weapons that I always have tried to keep on my are a Sword, Spear, and a Blaster. I also use others like High Caliber and Nukes.

Sword is good for slicing the plants and its wide attack area helps deal with weak creatures that are charging at you. Yes the hammer has a wide range, but is slows your movement.

The spear lets you keep larger melee creatures at a distance and can go through multiple creatures in a single strike. It can also go through other objects. Unlike other melee weapons, a spear does cold damage. So creature like the Gnerot (Rock Golem) who has resistance to Physical damage, a spear is a melee weapon that can do good cold damage to them while keeping you out of there melee range. Due to it being cold damage, the creatures were also slowed down. Also on the exploding plants mentioned above, you can normally destroy the plants while staying outside the blast radius.

I suggest the blaster as it is ranged weapon that can be good early to mid game, Even late game. It is good against ranged creatures, primarily use while exploring. But not as useful against strong enemies. The main keys are that it has splash damage and uses no ammo. So also a back up in case you run out of ammo on your other weapons.

On the topic of ammo. The games doesn't really tell you, but restocking on ammo and other items such as mines do cost resources. I learned the hard way as my resource deposits ran out while I was out exploring. I ran low on a resource because I was using ammo when I didn't have any active Ironium being produced. I think this is also true for all skill items except for Emergency Explosion and Radar Pulse. Most likely won't be an issue late game especially if you have Cultivators farms or Synthesizers set up.

Experiment with Mods to see what you like as some can have interesting effects. Example would be giving Machine Guns splash damage or Rockets Penetration.

Enemies And Environment

A key is to know your plants. Primarily learn which ones explode. They are normally the round ones, I believe the spear is the only melee weapons that you can hit them with as long as you stand back.

In certain cases, you can use the environment and creatures against each other. I already mentioned the exploding plants. In the cases of things like meteor showers and Volcano Eruption events, it give you a warning on where things are going to hit the ground. It will also damage or kill any creature in the area of impact. This also goes for when creatures try using an artillery type attack on you. If you see an area of impact, whatever is in it will take damage.

You can kind of is the Gnerots, Golem thing, as a shield if you need a minute to recharge and heal. They have a ranged and Melee attacks but they seem to have can't hit you zone at about spear length. If ranged creatures are firing at you, they will hit the in the back.

The neutral enemies always blame you if you are near by and they take damage. The Gnerot and Krocoon which are normally neutral unless provoked, decide that you are to blame if they get hit my another enemies attack or a meteor fall on them.

You should try to always use your geoscanner to see if there are any resources nearby.

On a few Acidic Plains maps, it can be "mine detector". On that note, don't rush those areas. While defusing one, you can set off another. They can do heavy damage. If you activate one, it normally gives you a visual warning by showing the blast radius and few second delay to try to escape. You will have to use Dash or a skill normally to escape.

You can use a Blaster with a Homing mod to take mines out quickly and from a distance. You can still be damaged if you are too close. No charging needed for the blaster. I did not test other weapons. So it can be possible.

Try to scan and grab samples of the creatures and plants as much as possible. You will receive more resources from plants at checkpoints as you gain familiarity. This is similar for creatures, but you also learn their strengths and weaknesses. You will also get damage bonuses against them. Also some creatures and plants need to be scanned to unlock some alien research. Since the update, bioscanner is friendlier as you don't have to constantly. It remembers the time you scanned. So you can break scan for a time and it pick up where your scanning left off. The scanning turrets now help too.

Compressors/Decompressors

Compressors/Decompressor are a hard thing to figure out. Their main purpose appears to be to allow players to transports liquids between Biomes. Their main purpose seems to be to allow the transfer of Morphium to other Biomes since it is only available in the Metallic Valley Biomes. This was to allow you to use their towers and power plants.

I would suggest using Compressors/Decompressor sparingly on the same map. The compressors require a lot of energy. The only reason would be if you have a fusion generator and room and power to create the Compressors/Decompressor. Although it is the only way not to cross pipes although you could technically pull the needed resource from a separate map.

For Compressors/Decompressor, I set up an Outpost in the first Acidic Plains Region map since there is a large amount of sludge. So you could send water regions short on water. You could also sent plasma or Supercharged Plasma to maps were you don't have room for a Fusion Generator.

Try to convert sludge to the liquid that you want before sending it through a Compressor. It will save you space as a Compressor can hold a max of 200 Liquid at level 3.

On the Decommpressor, you will need to remember to select the middle button and tell it what type of liquid to use.

Advice And Experience From Players.

I am looking for advice and the input from other players. If I can get this started, I will start adding that information here/

Per Edifier

For weapons if you want to go meta it's basically this.

1: Dual Grenade launcher has the best ammo economy and still wipes the floor with majority of the enemies. Due to not being able to damage yourself with it you can easily get out of any swarm of enemies as well.

2: Dual Minigun for those tougher enemies while using Corrosive element on them. It'll rip apart majority of the enemies in the game with just a short burst. You won't be able to just spam them as you'll run out of ammo.

Per Triarii

Acid creatures do not like fire and fire creatures do not like acid. They both seem to take extra damage when using their opposites. on acid maps use fire. Of fire maps use acid.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837001886

Tips from Players