So you’ve finally decided to give Factorio a rest along with Satisfactory after a few thousand hours of gameplay. Now you’re looking at Techtonica, a brand-new early access title that’s looking to take the production line to a whole new level.
Naturally, you’ll be scrounging around the dark first as you learn everything the game has in store for you. That includes understanding the interface, mining manually, and plopping down conveyer belts. But you won’t be doing that forever! With this guide, we’ll make sure you won’t move another muscle once you’re on the factory floor.
Complete Beginner’s Guide
Discovering the bowels of Calyx will require a lot of resources along with heavy equipment. Your goal is to build specialized machines to minimize any inefficiencies on your end, which will most likely include manual labor.
Exploration will play also big part of your game as you dig deeper to uncover more bits of the story. The more you dig, the more you’ll have to rely on automation while continuously expanding your production line. Let’s start with what you’ll see on your screen first!
Getting Started and Basic Controls
As soon as you’re given control of your character, you’ll notice a few familiar elements on your screen. On the upper right will be your minimap along with a compass, in case you forget where north is. Accessing your toolbar can be done by pressing “Q”, you have two sets that can be locked or unlocked at any time should the need arises.
On the center, you’ll have things like the Crafting Menu, Map, Journal, and Tech Tree screen. All of them will have their respective keyboard shortcuts. Pressing “E” will have you interact with everything you see on the map, be it machines or resources that can be picked off the ground. If you’re moving around resources, then “Shift” and “Control” are your two best friends. Use these two keys along with your left mouse button to transfer a stack or transfer everything from one container to another respectively. Use the right mouse button to transfer half.
How to Progress Through the Game
Now that you know the controls you’ll shortly come into contact with Sparks. She’ll be giving you instructions as you start. A few basic objectives will be given to you as part of the tutorial phase. Your first objective will be to interact with your Production Terminal. It’s busted so your next objective will involve resource gathering.
Right off the bat it’s good practice to start making the machines do the work instead of having to manually walk up to an Iron or Copper deposit to mine it yourself. But first, you have to make mining drills. Open up your crafting menu by pressing “Tab”, you’ll see the maximum amount of items you can craft as long as you have the resources for them.
Craft two mining drills to speed up the gathering process of iron and copper. Have them sit right next to the deposit and make sure that they have enough fuel to use in order to function. The plant life you see scattered around the ground will make for an excellent fuel source. Put a stack of 500 in your mining drills to keep them busy while you’re doing your objectives.
How to Unlock New Technologies
Once you’ve gathered 15 units of copper and iron, go back to the Production Terminal. You’ll then unlocked the Scanner as soon as you get the terminal working again. To make the scanner, go to the Equipment tab of your Crafting Menu.
After you’re done scanning the Smelter Fragments lying near the Production Terminal you’ll gain access to the Tech Tree. Since we’re still playing the game on rails your next objective will be to unlock the Smelter. Research in this game functions the same as if you were playing Factorio.
To unlock items further down the tech tree, you will need Research Cores. The most basic research core can be crafted manually by using iron and copper. You can find those under the Production tab of your crafting menu.
You won’t progress through the game just by gathering iron and copper ore. The next step will include making use of the smelter to produce iron and copper ingots. For now you can walk up to your drilling machines and gather all the materials inside and transfer them over to the Smelter. The smelter also uses fuel, so keep a few stacks of Plantmatter handy.
At this point you would’ve already unlocked Conveyers and Inserters. The materials gathered from your basic drills will be placed on the conveyers and will get transported wherever you please. You’ll need Storage Boxes at the end of the line in order to keep production going.
And that’s basically the gameplay loop of Techtonica. Upgrade your terminal when you can to unlock more researchable tiers on your Tech Tree. Keep using your scanner as well to unlock more tech. It’s your next best tool if you want to find out more about the world while you slowly learn how to automate production, resource gathering, and research!
ALSO READ: How to Use Smart Splitters – Satisfactory
