Your first expedition on Sota7

Choose how demanding survival should be

Scientist is the recommended balanced starting mode. It gives you a place to learn the relationships between exploration, supplies and research. Survivalist makes vital stats, including immunity, drain faster; Space Hell adds permanent death to that tougher experience. Engineer lets you customize the world rules.

If building is your main interest, Engineer can remove building costs. It can also change stamina and immunity drain, animal aggression, river force and material occurrence. Decide what you want to learn before changing everything: removing costs helps you practise layout, but it will not teach the supply rhythm of a standard-cost game. Use the mode comparison before committing to a harsher run.

Make the landing objectives your first route

Read the active objective after landing and complete its immediate tool or construction request before wandering toward distant scenery. The game links research, collection and building; returning with interesting plants is less useful if you cannot yet identify or process what you found.

1. Get your bearings around the landing area and identify the route back inside.
2. Check the current objective and the required blueprint or tool.
3. Gather for that requirement on a short loop.
4. Return, complete the step and check what the objective asks next.
5. Only extend the next outing when you know what supply or specimen you are seeking.

When Building Minion asks you to pin a blueprint, the Blueprints screen should be available. If it remains locked, install the latest update: Hotfix #1 added a safeguard for that specific progression problem.

Learn three plants before taking longer trips

The Valley provides practical early supplies, but plants solve different problems. Sunbeam Lumus fruit is safe raw and useful for thirst, yet offers limited nutrition on its own. Sweet Tarax provides juicy, nutritious produce and useful fibrous stems. Ice Bonebell has a minor healing effect, but grows in the Red Forest near predator nests.

Start with safe, accessible supplies. Do not turn a low supply warning into a dangerous run toward Ice Bonebell when a safer return route is available. The plant reference distinguishes food, hydration, healing and processing warnings so that “edible” does not become your only selection rule.

Scan first; collect with a purpose

Craft the Analyzer, your handheld scanning tool, and use it to catalogue life. Discovery now uses that handheld tool; an old tutorial that tells you to identify every plant through a lab centrifuge describes an earlier system. Scanning gives research information. Gathering the material you need is a separate task.

Lucuma Camilla is a safer early animal to study in open fields. Wild Green Zuma is timid and hides near damp ground and water, so approach patiently. Gum Nibis protects its nest, and Scorchweaver can be hostile: a Valley label does not make every encounter safe.

For a first research trip, choose a target you can identify and reach without exhausting your return supplies. Add new discoveries to your next-trip plan instead of trying to finish the entire region in one outing.

Build a working loop before expanding

Prepare a water source, a Water Pump, power and the growing equipment needed for your first experiment. The aim is a base that lets you recover, process what you collected and grow the next useful specimen. Leave expansion for after one successful cycle.

Your first milestone is straightforward: you can leave with supplies, collect an identified specimen, return without a survival crisis and put that specimen to work. From there, learn the laboratory setup, then complete a first compatible crossbreed.