Author Topic: Shattered Planet Guide  (Read 5575 times)

Jubal

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Shattered Planet Guide
« on: May 15, 2016, 11:59:03 PM »
Shattered Planet is a pretty nice game, it's a sort of roguelike for Android made by Kitfox Games. As I've recently finally finished all three of the plotline missions, I thought I'd write some notes on it.

Character Hints/On the ship
  • Ensure you save up scrap and buy character statline upgrades: they get more expensive the more you buy, it doesn't matter too much what the balance is between your three stats, probably don't plough absolutely everything into one stat, if there's a dominant one I'd guess it's probably strength (since most of the time, killing with one hit is the ideal strategy) but my character has fairly poor strength so it probably doesn't matter too much.
  • Do use the little purchase-bot on the ship - getting health boosts or a companion creature at low levels is probably more important than starting with good equipment, though both are important.
  • As far as I can tell, the character skin change is just a skin change, I don't think it has any ingame effect.

General Adventuring Advice
  • Every level, always, seems to have one and only one random event in it. This is useful, especially as it means that if you haven't found that, there's more of the level there somewhere.
  • Test mystery bottles by throwing them, do not just drink them to see. You can't seem to choose to throw beneficial bottles after you know what they do, which is the single most annoying feature of the whole damned game (means you can't heal companion pets, and makes teleport bottles pretty useless). If I was going to ask for one thing to be patched, that would be it.
  • The types of bottle available are:
    • Boosts: Regen fluid (quite a few turns of a small +health each turn), Health fluid (+40 in one go), Muscle Enhancer (+2 str for the whole mission)
    • Temporary boosts: Strength boost, Wits boost
    • Damage dealers (these work in a small + shape): Fire, Poison, Explosive
    • Other: Teleportation fluid, blight freeze
    • Notes - you can never take these fluids back to the ship even after plot missions, so do make use of them. Healing fluids are vital, don't waste them. Muscle enhancer just take at once, there's no point in carting it around. Tele fluid is useless as it's too unpredictable and can usually be dropped. Poison and fire can be useful but bear in mind the risk of starting a serious grass fire in some areas. Str and wits boosts are pretty good, and blight freeze certainly has its uses. Explosive is the best of the lot by far - I mainly use it at lower levels as a blight stopper, if you blow up the path from the start point (which is also where the blight starts) then the rest of the map is nicely sealed off and you're no longer under time pressure from the contamination. Explosives at higher levels can be get out of jail free cards against many enemies (sure you don't get the drops if you blow them into the void, but you're alive which is the main thing).
  • If you get to a scrapbot and see an item you haven't purchased yet, get it, even if it's inferior to your current equipment. It's really worth clocking up the number of discoveries you've made, not least for the occasional bonuses the Galactic Union pays you.
  • The corollary to this is that mystery boxes are usually worth getting - sure some will have rubbish kit in, but the chance of something good or something new is worth taking.

Fauna and Flora
OK, this section will have some hopefully useful notes on the plants, animals, and possibly also rocks that you may encounter.

BLIGHTS
The blight is the "time limiter" on SP levels and a major game feature. Every level starts with a patch of blight, which is a sort of unpleasant neural mental and physical disease organism. You cannot eliminate this initial patch, and believe me I've tried everything from explosives to unicorn tears (no really) in the attempt. The patch will then keep growing, unless halted temporarily by blight freezes; it can, however, be stopped by trapping it on a certain part of the level; if it no longer has a place to grow to it can't spread, so explosives are really useful there.

Any creature, more or less, can get blighted if it is on a fully blight-ridden square (if you or a companion animal are on a blight square you just start taking damage). Once a creature is infected with blight they will start seeking out the player and trying to kill them, even if they would not do so otherwise and even if the player is fairly well outside their normal radius for aggression. Blighted creatures also appear to be weaker and can usually be taken down fairly easily, though the mutants (at lower levels), or stronger creatures, can be really dangerous when blighted.

The blight also frequently spawns "blight vectors" which are little crablet-ish type things that will likewise come and chase you and kill you. These can deal some quite nasty blight-type damage, and you need good kit to one-hit them. I also think that companions don't usually attack the blight vectors though I may be wrong there. Ideally avoid fighting them, they give no drops and are just a bit of a pain. You can get a blight vector as a companion through the creepy diary random event, it makes a fairly good companion even if it is apparently a physical manifestation of your self-loathing. There aren't really any higher level variants of the blight, with the exception of the boss from the second plot quest, which is basically a terrifying super-manifestation of despair.

CRABLETS
Crablets are, in various forms, one of the basic life-forms on this planet. They have fairly basic drops, and can be tamed in various situations.
  • Red Crablets. These are small, red, low-level creatures, they will be aggressive to you but are not hard to defeat. They can drop tiny amounts of scrap, or more usefully they can drop a pet crablet (aka the Crablet has accepted your dominance) or a Crablet Mask (which allows you to charm the Queens).
  • Red Crablet Nests. These spawn crablet eggs, which turn into crablets. You can destroy them, which stops them spawning (yay) and also spawns a crablet queen (potentially hazardous)
  • Red Crablet Eggs. You can pick these up and then "use them", which spawns a crablet that starts attacking you. I'm not sure why, or if, this is useful.
  • Red Crablet Queens. If you're wearing a mask when you destroy the nest, the Queen will then become your pet. If not, they're fairly tough opponents and you should expect to lose health fighting them (if you're low level, try to ensure that you've mopped up local crablets first to avoid taking extra and unnecessary damage). That said, they give some very nice drops at times, it's usually just a pile of scrap but juice boxes are not uncommon and I've occasionally found some very nice odds and ends dropped by these.
  • Green (Poisonous) Crablet. These are annoying, they can puke poison at you which is hard to mitigate, and they're also tough to kill, even an OK-level character will want decent kit to be sure of a one-hit takedown. They can drop useful things sometimes, especially the "pet drop" that you get with the Reds (having a pet poisonous crablet is pretty handy).
  • Snowtunnel Crablets. These are horrible, horrible things. They don't even drop that much considering their level and they're basically utter murder, at least as tough as the red Queens. Neither they nor the Greens seem to have nests or eggs. You can through some events etc get a Snowtunnel Admirer companion, which is one of the tougher companions in the game (and if you're on a level where you get Snowtunnel Crablets, you're probably going to be in need of the help!)

MUTANTS
These guys are the fairly sentient native species; it's unclear how many of their various attributes are down to mutation and how many are natural.

There are a fairly wide range of forms; the important things to remember are that a) higher level areas have higher level mutants and b) the purple ones are aggressive, the blue ones aren't. Blues will go aggressive if you attack them, or if they're hurt by something you do (caught in a fire you started for example). The blue ones that are armed will often drop mid-range weapons, and the purples occasionally have some really quite good kit on them.

ROBOTS
There are three main types of robot, found in the laboratory levels; a small guard-robot variety, the turrets, and the larger "security slicers". Slicers aren't that tough or fast for their level but do a lot of damage very quickly. The little guard robots do three different damage types, they're not super awesome but they're certainly dangerous. The turrets are some of the nastiest things in the game in some ways - unless you have ranged kit or a pet to take them out, they'll always get one shot at you before you can kill them which is an unpleasant drain on health. They'll rarely take multiple hits to kill if you've got decent kit, but even so, the damage is significant and unpleasant.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2016, 11:31:07 PM by Jubal »
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Pentagathus

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Re: Shattered Planet Guide
« Reply #1 on: May 16, 2016, 01:07:15 PM »
I opened this thread expecting a super edgy travel guide. Total clickbait.

Jubal

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Re: Shattered Planet Guide
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2016, 10:15:18 PM »
There may be a travel guide section if I ever complete this! :P
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...