I’ve been playing Core Keeper way too much over the past few days. It feels like playing Terraria or Starbound for the first time, in that each discovered biome is mysterious and new. And, really, I never get tired of the basic mechanics in such games. Core Keeper also includes simple Factorio-like automation elements. For example, here’s a little drilling operation that I set up:
As you can see, one way this game differs from Terraria is that it has the perspective of a SNES action RPG. It’s by the same developers who made Radical Rabbit Stew, and if you’ve played that you’ll know to expect some good sprite work and some nice, elastic animations.
I’ve mostly played on my own but have done some multiplayer as well. With any game like this, I think it’s best to play alone first (or start at the same time as others with no one getting too far ahead) so you don’t get exposed to all the late-game stuff immediately.
You can play with eight players at a time. If there’s any interest, we could set up an always-on SB world at some point.
This is a Steam Early Access game, but I’ve seen only one bug in many hours and it wasn’t a particularly bad one. And while the game is not expensive in the first place, you can get a discount right now at HB (which stacks with your subscription discount if you have that).
I got this game in the autumn sale but only had a chance to play it yesterday. I’m not sure what I think of it yet! I found and cheesed a boss almost immediately using a slingshot I found, which…unlocked some stuff I guess? I’m not really sure what my goals are yet, and I’m doing a lot of inventory management which isn’t my favorite thing.
But the combat feels extremely crunchy in a way I like, mostly due to the sound effects. They’re really good!
The soundtrack is also very nice so far. So I’ll probably keep digging into it, it’s just a little…undirected so far, I guess.
Should I be keeping the wiki open for things like “what is a habitable room?” Or is there some way to find this in-game?
I just assumed (based on Terraria) that a habitable room needed to be closed in with a door, floor, and bed. I also added a table and don’t know whether that was required but it worked.
The only thing I remember having to look up so far is how to get fiber. Just because I didn’t happen to stumble upon it initially in the directions I traveled. I also missed a boss that was very close to my starting point for a while.
There are some keyboard shortcuts that help with inventory, similar to Terraria and Starbound. Might be worth looking at a list of them if you decide to continue playing:
Also, one very helpful thing I learned is that if you put a chest next to a cooking pot or repair table, for example, you can fill it with the required ingredients/materials so you don’t have to carry them on you to cook/repair things.
This is a game saver for me btw, I think I would have already quit had you not said this!!
I found a bunch of tin, which took a while - I figured the caves were basically concentric circles in the same way that Terraria is “just go deeper”, but then I hit stone walls and iron and couldn’t mine through them at all. Turns out I just needed to go a different direction.
I’m up to iron armor now, plus I’m using a slime sword and a fireball staff thingy so basically a powerhouse. Feeling ready to face the second boss, which for me is going to be the big wormy thing that runs around the place in a circle. I did try to fight it but…it basically just ignored me. Might need to make some traps, which probably means automating ore collection…maybe…
I’m disappointed there are only 3 NPCs though. Still, we’ll see.
I wish getting around was a bit faster given how far away everything is. I haven’t looked into any of the iron tech other than getting some armor, so maybe there’s some cool stuff in there. Also gonna mess around with jewelry making soon. I keep running out of iron though.
Anyway this is pretty neat! Glad I pushed through the initial directionless-ness. Did you know only 6.6% of players have beaten the first boss??
My solution to this was to dig the equivalent of a Terraria “hellevator” in each cardinal direction, and then eat food that increases running speed when I need to get somewhere. And always carry one of those teleport stones (you might not be able to easily produce them yet) so I can get back without running the path again.
I haven’t touched this game in a couple weeks now, but let me know if you want to meet up in your world for a few minutes sometime and maybe go summon a hard mode boss or something (not promising I won’t die, though). I like seeing what others have done in such games.
Would you be surprised that I have only built right next to the core in a deeply unorganized fashion? I’m very goal oriented in these kinds of games and since there aren’t any NPCs to build homes for, I’ve just been fully locked on to Making Progress. So there’s not much to see!!
But I did beat the big worm by using a bunch of spike traps (spoilered for anyone who doesn’t want to know what the bosses are or how to beat them). It was…incredibly easy, although it cost me about 40 tin.
So yeah, not sure what next. I think I’ll just continue digging north for a while to see what else is out there before prepping for the next boss. Wherever the hell she is…
I beat the Hive Mother after 3 attempts - I was too lazy to make more spike traps after the big wormy destroyed all of mine but that ended up being the key to beating her.
It looks like I’ll need to expand my home base in some capacity now because I’m starting to see a need for rail systems, at least for getting out further away from the core. That walk to the edge is…long… I haven’t investigated rails or electricity at all so far, since I haven’t really seen a need for it yet.
I’m also not sure what to do with the new area unlocked to the south (for me, it’s the desert) because none of my mining gear makes a dent at all. Going to take a bunch of bombs and see if that will blow up those walls. Good thing I’ve been farming the hell out of bomb plants. I also have a tiny little slime pit that I snag slime from once in a while, so I shouldn’t run out any time soon. Still, seems like a weird solution…I’m sure I’m missing something…
I’ve been enjoying going in mostly blind for this though! Usually these games are obtuse enough to require guides to make progress, so it’s been nice that this one has been pretty simple to understand. The only reason I didn’t initially make one of those boss finder things was because I thought they were like, temporary markers, so that being a permanent marker was even nicer. It’s a pretty cute game.
Went north and found the uh, sunken sea i think it’s called? I still can’t mine anything but the place is at least open, so I can look around. I gathered a lot of stuff, but still no new equipment or anything so I don’t really know what I need to be doing here.
The progression in this game is really odd. It comes in fits and starts, and then plateaus for a very long time. I don’t mind it, exactly, but it’s missing the goal-oriented mindset of something like Terraria or Minecraft where I can always make mini goals and work towards them. It’s also not like Falcom leveling systems either, because the progress feels less like big jumps in ability and more like necessary things to survive and get farther in the game.
So yeah. Odd game. I still wish there was a better way to get transported rather than building rails - I don’t have enough tin for that yet. But at least I finally figured out I could sell my crops and buy tin 10 at a time (whenever the dude restocks, which is not frequently).
Also I investigated electricity a bit and there’s nothing useful to do with it for now, as far as I can tell. I can make planks of wood but I can’t do anything with them yet - really weird decision. So that’s kind of annoying. I think I need to find the third zone to get some other kind of metal that I can actually mine and use.
Yeah, the next layer does not have very good signposting. You are on the right track cardinal directions are your best bet but the length of travel and having to typically build bridges to get there does dampen my enthusiasm.
There are ways to temporarily increase your mining strength, if you’re right on the edge of being able to dig through a certain type of wall. Enhancing your tool with the repair station, certain clothing, and I think certain food recipes as well.
But sometimes the answer is just to go somewhere else to find new ore for the next stage.
I built my first cart track today. It makes it much quicker to check on my automated mining spots, but I have plenty of resources at the moment. I just need to track down more of the bosses.
I thought it would be atmospheric to build a graveyard out of mossy ground. But that just made the associated enemies appear so I dug it up and used a more neutral type of ground instead.
i found the next metal, now i just need like… a lot of it. also found a castle type thing which was really cool but again provided no meaningful progress, just a lot of cool furniture.
i think if i was gonna change one thing about this game, it would be adding more combat items so that even if i don’t make progress, i have a good chance of finding a cool item in a new area
There is an element of that, I think, but I’ve found that the best weapons are enemy drops and not treasures in chests. I think any armed enemy has a chance to drop their specific weapon. I used the daggers from the desert characters and a battle axe from the giants in the cave for quite a while and was actually a little bit disappointed when the time came that I could forge something better. Before that, I was using a fun weapon dropped by those tentacles in the ocean biome.
i haven’t gotten an enemy weapon drop in a looonnng time, the last good one was the fire staff which i have been using for two bosses now. the last melee weapon i got was an axe and it was worse than the slime sword i’m using. so maybe i just have bad luck!!
I finally got enough materials to start automating stuff - made some drills and set them to mine the latest stone I’d found which is key for making more automation stuff. I’m at that part of the game where I can see how stuff begets more stuff and I can just stop worrying about resources altogether.
So I let the game idle for a while while I was in my home base, but…
disaster struck
apparently I forgot to close the damn door, and some enemy came in and started attacking me. Likely a spikey slime or a mushroom.
Dying isn’t so bad, but the fact is that I hardly take any damage from those bastards anymore, and I regen 3 health a second. When I came back, half my chests and furniture were destroyed. My theory is that the thing literally could not kill me until all of my armor broke, so it pushed me around the room destroying furniture while it futilely tried to murder my dumb ass. Eventually it did kill me and wander off.
Luckily, nothing seems to despawn in this game, so I was able to recover all of my stuff…except I couldn’t find my gravestone for a long time. And I just happened to be carrying all of my metals (except tin). So for about 45 minutes I thought I had just lost all of my most important materials, plus my second best weapon.
I did find it eventually though, it had pushed me to a barely used corner of the room and I just didn’t see the gravestone. Whew!
Anyway, lesson learned - I am now idling in a useless part of my base, and I closed the door. If disaster strikes again, at least it’ll just be in an NPC’s bedroom.
okay last core keeper post, was proud of myself for figuring out how to summon the next boss, but very irritated that it’s a consumable and that i have to make another one to do it again. because of course i immediately died.
i always thought this was one of the more annoying things in terraria as well
Pretty sure the boss will still be there when you return. But it will regain all its health and go back to its starting point (which also happens with some bosses if you lure them too far).
Oh, it is possible that it disappears after a few minutes if you don’t return to it. And I might have been fighting a boss with another player when I experienced this, so one of us was anchoring it there. I don’t remember whether I did it alone with a summoned boss (but I think I did).
