Which starting asteroid to choose: every start compared
AsteroidsEasy
Water, metal and algae on every starting asteroid, measured from in-game seeds, with a guide for each.
Oxygen Not Included offers nine starting asteroids in the base game and more in Spaced Out!. They differ in what the colony runs out of first: water, food, metal, cooling or warmth. This page compares the starts with numbers from real games generated in the U59 client, three seeds per asteroid, and links each asteroid's own guide with screenshots, pros, cons and a build order.
The base-game starts compared
| Asteroid | Survival chance | Start biome | Geyser water | Metal ore | Algae | First problem |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terra asteroid guide | Ideal | Sandstone | 13.0 kg/s | 2,128 t | 643 t | Nothing in particular; the reference start |
| Oceania asteroid guide | Probable | Sandstone | 18.1 kg/s | 2,055 t | 355 t | Fresh water hidden in a salt water sea |
| Rime asteroid guide | Likely | Cold sandstone | 11.5 kg/s | 6,261 t | 459 t | Cold farms and Duplicants |
| Verdante asteroid guide | Likely | Forest | 10.5 kg/s | 5,090 t | 365 t | Short algae phase |
| Arboria asteroid guide | Moderate | Forest | 11.1 kg/s | 5,412 t | 87 t | Metal scarcity on a normal seed |
| Volcanea asteroid guide | Moderate | Sandstone | 11.7 kg/s | 3,671 t | 398 t | Magma pockets near the base |
| The Badlands asteroid guide | Marginal | Sandstone | 8.3 kg/s | 3,389 t | 119 t | Water everywhere |
| Aridio asteroid guide | Slim | Warm forest | 14.6 kg/s | 5,185 t | 362 t | Heat |
| Oasisse asteroid guide | Slim | Forest in a desert | 14.3 kg/s | 4,371 t | 349 t | Fresh water near the start, then heat |
Geyser water is the average output of every water-type vent on the map (water, salt water, polluted water, slush and steam vents), averaged over the sample seeds. Metal ore and algae are the total tonnes on the whole asteroid. Most sample seeds rolled the Metal Rich trait, so the metal column is higher than a typical game; the order between asteroids still holds.
Which one to pick
- First colony: Terra asteroid guide. Everything is close and nothing is extreme.
- Fish, salt water and a calm start: Oceania asteroid guide.
- Industry that runs cool, at the cost of cold farms: Rime asteroid guide.
- Early metal and a forest start: Verdante asteroid guide.
- A biological colony built on wood, plants and critters: Arboria asteroid guide.
- Volcano power and careful digging: Volcanea asteroid guide.
- A water-starved rock world: The Badlands asteroid guide.
- A heat challenge from cycle 1: Aridio asteroid guide.
- A desert with hidden water: Oasisse asteroid guide.
Spaced Out! starts
Spaced Out! builds every start into a cluster of asteroids reached by teleporter and rocket. Four families of start exist:
- Spaced Out! style: a medium start with close neighbours. Terrania asteroid guide, Folia asteroid guide and Quagmiris asteroid guide.
- Moonlet clusters: five small starts, each linked by teleporter to the next. The Desolands asteroid guide, Flipped Asteroid guide, Frozen Forest Asteroid guide, Metallic Swampy Asteroid guide and Radioactive Ocean Asteroid guide.
- Classic style: the nine base-game asteroids as large starts with one teleporter neighbour, plus Squelchy Asteroid guide. Each base-game guide above covers its classic-style version.
- The fixed map: Skewed Asteroid guide, the same in every game.
Asteroids you reach later
Every Spaced Out! cluster adds asteroids you reach by teleporter or rocket. Each has its own guide:
- Next to Spaced Out! style starts: Irradiated Forest Asteroid guide, Irradiated Swampy Asteroid guide, Irradiated Marsh Asteroid guide, Rusty Oil Asteroid guide and Oily Swamp Asteroid guide.
- Behind classic-style teleporters: Radioactive Swamp Asteroid guide, Radioactive Terra Asteroid guide, Radioactive Terrabog Asteroid guide, Glowood Wasteland Asteroid guide, Stinko Swamp Asteroid guide and Radioactive Forest Asteroid guide.
- In every cluster: Tundra Asteroid guide (iron and the Temporal Tear Opener), Marshy Asteroid guide (tungsten and resin), Moo Asteroid guide, Water Asteroid guide, Superconductive Asteroid guide (niobium) and Regolith Asteroid guide.
- In no stock cluster, only in custom clusters built with mods: Brimstonia Asteroid guide, Viscosia Asteroid guide, Oily Sandy Swamp Asteroid guide and the smaller variant in the Oily Swamp Asteroid guide. The Barren Moon world file no longer generates in the current game.
How seeds work
The game shows each colony's settings as a coordinate such as SNDST-A-1234567-0-0-0: the cluster prefix, the seed, then codes for the game settings, story traits and world mixing. Typing the same coordinate in the colony settings gives the same asteroids.
- World traits follow the seed number. In the base game, Oceania, Rime, Verdante, Arboria, Volcanea, the Badlands, Aridio and Oasisse rolled the same traits for the same seed in every sample here.
- Terra and Terrania never roll world traits.
- Some coordinates fail to generate. In the U59 client, BAD-A-2468024 and several moonlet coordinates stop with a generation error; the game returns to the menu and a different seed works.