Research and Crafting

= Research = If crafting is the door, research is definitely the key. You will certainly spend some of your time in Darkout imagining all the amazing things you will be able to accomplish when you finally unlock that fancy looking gadget. Unlike the crafting menu, the research view (accessed by opening the crafting menu, and clicking research) is an uncategorised list of every research item you have unlocked and have still yet to research. Also unlike crafting, research items never require you to be near a specific building, and as such you can initiate research from wherever you are in the map, whatever it is you are doing, provided you have the research points and the items needed as indicated on the research page. Research is never instant and always takes some time to complete. Similarly to the crafting menu, clicking on the beaker will initiate research, whilst clicking on the recipe icon will display more information. It is recommended that you always check the crafting ingredients using this method prior to research, as many recipes have ingredients which require researching themselves.

Research points can be obtained by:  Mining blocks Crafting most items (higher tier recipes generally award more points) Harvesting objects such as trees and plants Placing some objects such as buildings and torches 

When you unlock a new item, it is added to the crafting menu. Generally, newly researched items which you have not yet built will have their names appearing in orange text. This means that when you build this item for the first time, it will contribute progress towards unlocking the next research tier. It is possible to check which items will help in this way by looking for the text 'Not crafted, crafting this item will help towards unlocking new blueprints' underneath the item description. You can view how close you are to unlocking the next tier at any time by looking at the bar which appears directly above the crafting queue. Note that not being able to craft an item does not prevent you from using it if you manage to find it as a random drop.

= Crafting = In Darkout, crafting is the door to the many technological wonders you would expect from a civilization capable of crashing escape pods into planets. Crafting is where you build your armor, weapons, place-able blocks, utility items, buildings and even where you unlock the next tier of research. The first thing you will notice is that the various crafting recipes are divided up into many different categories. It can be somewhat difficult to work out exactly which category an item falls into, but below are some general guidelines as to which type of items you will find in each category:

The items which appear on the right hand side once you select a category are all recipes for items you have unlocked. Underneath the items name will be a list of all the ingredients required for the recipe including quantities. It is important to note that not all recipes produce only one of the target item, often multiple items will be created although there is no way to tell how many of the target item a recipe makes without experimentation. Clicking the hammer to the right will either begin crafting the item or some items display a series of boxes where you can specify how many items you want to craft, one, ten, fifty, or max (300 the maximum number of items which can be stacked). If you have all the ingredients for a recipe but the hammer is still grey, clicking on the hammer will inform you of the reason. Generally it is due to a required building being out of range or unpowered. It should be noted that without switching categories, the button will not refresh when you add items to your inventory but will still allow you to craft the recipe when you click on it. Another handy tip is that you will also utilize all items in storage around your character as well as any items in your inventory, this saves you from having to carry around hoards of raw materials or tediously remove the required ingredients from your storage room.

As with research, you have a crafting queue size of four. This means that you are limited to queuing only 4 non-instant recipes at a time, although when your queue is full you are not barred from crafting instant recipes such as wooden planks.