Mining and Construction

= Mining =

Of course, you won't be able to craft or research much without mining. Mining is very simple in Darkout, simply select the first slot in the action bar and left click on the terrain you wish to mine. If you wish to mine out a back wall, simply shift click, note however that this requires a sledge hammer which is not part of your starting kit. More difficult materials will take longer to mine, and some rarer materials cannot be mined without a certain level of tool. There is no ingame warning about this, it will simply allow you to strike the same block repeatedly with no effect. If you find that you cannot mine out a particular piece of terrain, also be sure to check that there are is nothing growing on it as these blocks will be un-mineable until the growing object is harvested.Pressing M key will change the number of blocks you mine, alternating from 1 to 3. If you keep selected the "All" option in the possition 0 of the action bar, it will use the proper tool to mine the material you want to deal with.

= Building = One of the most creative aspects of playing Darkout is definitely the building. Do you want to live in a small wooden shack or a huge tower, an underground research facility or a cloud city? You can do any of these and more during your many playthroughs. In this area you are only limited by your own imagination and of course availability of construction material!

Refining Materials
Unlike some sandbox games, raw materials must first be refined before they can actually be placed in the world ('built'). Anything you dig out of the ground has to be turned into building material, if that's what you want to use it for. There are essentially two types of blocks you can use for building, walls and back-walls. Generally, each raw material will allow you to refine it into at least one type of wall and one type of back-wall. Walls are blocks which appear in the foreground layer and will actually collide with the player and other world entities. You can stand on them, place buildings on them and most importantly, hide from monsters behind them. Some materials may even be refined into floor tiles, these are only aesthetically different from standard wall tiles but are designed specifically to appear like flooring. Back-walls appear in the background layer, they provide decoration but do not collide with any objects in the world although certain game items such as Wall Power Sockets must be placed on a back wall. Back walls are typically used to define the interior of a structure and later tiers of back wall come in many different styles, these are sometimes referred to as 'wall panels'.

To refine a raw material, simply look for the 'wall', 'floor', 'back wall' or 'wall panel' item which corresponds to the material you want to use and the type of block you wish to place. The following is a list of raw materials which may be refined into construction blocks:

 Dirt Stone Wood Copper Bar Iron Bar Platinum Bar Titanium Bar 

NOTE: When refining construction material, bear in mind that you will require far more back wall than standard wall. Also remember that typically each raw material will refine in to multiple placeable blocks.

Placing Blocks
Once you have your placeable walls, it's a simple matter of assigning them to slots in your action bar. Once you have selected the appropriate slot, remember that left clicking will place the block you've assigned to the top slot, right clicking will place the block you've assigned to the bottom slot. Of course, you can place your construction blocks in any action bar slot you wish, however for convenience it is suggested that your front and back wall are place above/below eachother so you can complete your entire building by only left + right clicking. If you made a mistake, simply mine out the block you placed (see mining).

Please note that construction blocks must be placed next to other blocks in the world (either foreground or background). This prevents you from building structures in mid air, but there are no consequences for disconnecting blocks later through mining (no cave-ins, collapses etc).

Basics of Wiring
Wiring and power are more fully addressed in Advanced Concepts. This section is intended to provide you with enough information to get your first one or two powered buildings operational.

Once you have researched and placed the workbench, you will begin coming across more and more devices which require power. For now, it is enough to simply connect your combinator (which produces a small amount of power) to your workbench. In order to do this, you will need some electrical cable. You may also use one wall power socket. Either string the cable directly from the workbench to the combinator, or place the socket on the wall (NOTE: A back wall must be present for the socket to be built) and place your electrical cable in your action bar. Once this is done, click and drag between the combinator and the socket. This will then place a cable between these two points, repeat the process with your workbench and you should now be able to turn it on! If you can't, double check your wiring and make sure your combinator is turned on (shift + left click) before trying again. See the picture in the Building section for an example of a working workbench to combinator connection, with both devices powered on. Most of the wiring in the game follows this basic idea and should be enough to get you using your first powered devices, but for a more comprehensive guide to power generation and base wiring please refer to the Advanced Concepts guide. Note that sometimes you need more than 1 cable to deal with longer sections of wiring.

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