Stranded: Alien Dawn: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide – Tips & Tricks for New Players

by Mike Alexander / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 21 Oct 2023

Following a catastrophe in deep space, you and several of your crewmates escaped in an emergency pod and made a break for the nearest inhabitable planet. Now, you have crash-landed on a strange alien world, and have no choice but to work together to bend the planet’s resources to your will, build a stable community, and defend it from native threats as well as other invading humans.

This is the world of Stranded: Alien Dawn, a new city-building/survival/strategy game from the developers at Haemimont Games and publisher Frontier Foundry. This alien planet will not be kind to you at first, and getting established will be quite a struggle. But, with perseverance and some helpful tips from this Stranded: Alien Dawn Beginner’s Guide, you’ll have a thriving settlement in no time! So gather up your survivors and resources, and let’s get started!

Selecting Your Survivors

When you start Stranded: Alien Dawn, you’ll first need to select a team of four survivors to begin your community with. There are quite a few characters to choose from, and they all have their own backgrounds, strengths, and weaknesses. Choosing which characters to form your team with will largely depend on how you want to play the game.

Do you want to be a warmongering leader who takes land and resources by force? You’ll probably want to load up on combat-focused survivors. Or maybe you’d prefer to focus on gathering and crafting instead? There are plenty of characters who excel in those areas. Take the time to read through each character’s info so you don’t miss out on perks that might potentially be game-changing for your style of play.

Beginning Your Journey

When you have your survivors selected, you’ll be presented with your emergency pod’s crash site. Every time you start a playthrough of Stranded: Alien Dawn, this location will be different. This randomization presents plenty of its own challenges, and you’ll need to figure out how to get started regardless of the situation you are presented with to begin.

If you look around and don’t see many resources, try not to panic. The game will give you a challenge, but it will never put you in a place that makes it impossible to progress. Carefully take in your surroundings, scout out possible routes for expansion, and try to see what resources you can gather in the immediate area. The main sign of a good leader is someone who can stay calm under pressure and make informed decisions, and that’s exactly what you’ll need to do.

Early Settlement Requirements

When you start to put down roots, there are a few things you’ll need right off the bat. First, you’ll need a shelter where your survivors can sleep safely and soundly. Be mindful of where you place these shelters because if they are too close to a worksite where construction is happening, it will disturb the people who are trying to rest, which will in turn decrease their happiness. So do your best to place them a good distance away from any work that is going on, and your survivors will have a solid place to rest and rejuvenate themselves before getting back to work.

Next, you’ll need a campfire. These provide warmth, comfort, and a place to cook your food, which will make everyone happy. You can place a campfire anywhere, just make sure it’s not too close to any flammable material to avoid any issues in that regard.

Scheduling Your Survivors

Stranded: Alien Dawn has a handy scheduling feature that allows you to pretty much automate your survivors’ processes throughout each day. From the scheduling menu, you can set times for them to do whatever they want, relax, work, and sleep.

Balancing all of these options carefully is critically important for not just the well-being of your settlement, but also for each survivor’s individual happiness. You don’t want them working too much with too little sleep, but you also don’t want them to not have any time to relax or do the things they want to do. Play around with the variations of each category to find out what works best for the survivors you chose.

Conclusion

We hope that this Stranded: Alien Dawn Beginner’s Guide will be helpful to you in your quest to settle a strange new planet and successfully create a society that will last! Remember to keep your survivors happy to keep them working at peak capacity, and you’ll be sure to make it.

Mike Alexander

Mike has been playing video games since he was able to hold a controller, having been fascinated by Sonic 2 on his mom’s Sega Genesis. That fascination and passion for the art form has grown exponentially nearly 30 years later, and he doesn’t see that fading away anytime soon.
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