Stranded: Alien Dawn is an in-depth, sometimes unforgiving, survival sim. With its steep learning curve and detailed mechanics, it takes plenty of time and several lost colonies to grasp.

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Thankfully, you can help your new survivor colony persists through the year. If you practice the game's mechanics, pace yourself, and plan for the future, your crew will live to see another day. Keep reading for essential Stranded: Alien Dawn tips.

Updated April 21, 2023, by Chris Sanfilippo: Stranded: Alien Dawn leaves early access in May. So, we're taking this opportunity to update our beginner tips to the latest version of the game. Additionally, we increased the readability with clear, concise paragraphs, thus making Stranded's mechanics easily digestible.

Play Through The Tutorials First

Unlike other strategy and survival sims, Stranded: Alien Dawn does not introduce its core concepts in the campaign. Instead, the game has a series of tutorial sessions. You can pursue the tutorials at your leisure or knock them all out ASAP. However, we recommend you play all the tutorials before starting a campaign.

All of the game's systems intersect with each other. For instance, if you wish to install a motion capture device to defend against predators, you must configure a functioning electrical grid.

Or suppose you wish to create a punching pole to improve your survivors' Happiness. In that case, you must observe Skin Bark and harvest it to construct the Veggie Leather required to build the pole.

Furthermore, the game has a detailed UI, which can become overwhelming. However, playing through each tutorial will give you plenty of practice with all the game's menus. In turn, you'll feel more confident when starting a campaign.

Taking on Stranded's six tutorials all at once may seem daunting. After all, each tutorial lasts ten minutes, amounting to an hour. And you won't retain every piece of information. Still, you'll gain a solid grasp of the essentials. Then, you can replay tutorials to review the game's finer mechanics.

Gather Resources Early In The Year

After your ship crash lands, your priority is gathering materials necessary to build shelter, storage units, makeshift beds, and a campfire. You'll start your campaign with starter resources, like scrap metal, food rations, first aid kits, and a few weapons. However, these supplies will only go so far.

To get your colony on track to its first steps of progress, you must focus on tasks like scavenging your spacecraft, gathering sticks and wood, observing plant life, and harvesting the local flora. These base resources are the building blocks for workspaces like research desks, tailoring stations, and crafting tables.

Furthermore, Spring is the best season to pursue these activities because your survivors can tolerate the weather without additional housing or clothes. You wouldn't want to run low on wood and send a survivor out into the Winter cold to chop down trees, thus risking hypothermia.

Always Have Someone On Cooking Duty

Starvation is one of the quickest ways to kill off your party, even during more temperate seasons. Furthermore, you would be surprised how quickly food resources dwindle without proper storage. Therefore, stocking your camp with cooked meals is vital to maximize your hunt and produce's shelf-life.

We recommend tasking your colony with cooking quick vegetable and meat soup recipes to meet a specific stock. You'll want three meals per survivor ready for the next day. Keeping a cooking activity queued with one survivor dedicated to the task will adequately maintain your food reserves.

Furthermore, upgrading your cooking appliances, from a campfire to a heat stove to an electric stove, will help your survivors cook faster. Finally, installing electric storage, such as fridges and freezers, will add shelf life to meals, produce, and meats.

Still, circumstances may arise that force your crew to neglect cooking duties for a period. Allowing your survivors to eat raw plant crops is acceptable in these situations. The only dietary restriction we highly recommend is no raw meat. After all, you don't want your survivors to contract food poisoning.

Related: Stranded: Alien Dawn - Desertum Region Guide

You'll Gain More Resources By Farming

Investing in robust agriculture will significantly benefit your colony. Several valuable crops will assist in survival. For example, Glitter Caps are a stable food source. In addition, Clothblossoms can produce cloth for coats, sweaters, and other garments. So, once you finish observing a new plant, farm it immediately.

Farming is a valuable, low-risk activity that will keep your food supplies up. While hunting creatures can expose survivors to possibly mortal wounds, farming crops can stock your reserves with hundreds of vegetables per growth cycle.

Furthermore, crafting and tailoring are resource-consuming tasks. It takes a lot of cloth blossoms and skin bark to prepare the materials necessary to tailor new clothes. Therefore, harvesting locally occurring flora will not be enough to equip your survivors, especially for the Winter months.

Prepare Ahead For The Changing Seasons

Crafting, research, farming, and construction are necessary to survive on a new planet throughout the year. However, pursuing these tasks without an end goal is inefficient and possibly dangerous.

Seasonal changes require specific resources and infrastructure that will take time to assemble. Therefore, you should plan activities with the upcoming season in mind. Winter is especially critical since your survivors' cannot handle the weather without proper shelter and clothing.

To prepare for Sobrius's cold season, begin tailoring sweaters, coats, and snow boots in the Summer and Fall. Constructing roofed buildings for survivors is another vital endeavor. Lastly, an electrical grid will provide survivors with lighting, enhanced tools, and indoor heating appliances.

Wait Before Removing Simple Priorities From Activities

Stranded utilizes an in-depth planning system for assigning responsibilities. The Activities menu lets you assign survivors to specific tasks. However, advanced options allow you to prioritize each survivor's assigned duties. Priority setting is a valuable tool on paper, but it takes practice to work well.

Advanced priority settings can hinder your survivor's success by focusing their efforts in areas that may not align with the colony's current needs. You can assign direct orders to party members, but they will return to their highest priority tasks after taking any break or idle time.

We recommend keeping the Simple Priorities setting on to avoid mismanagement. These settings allow you to see how your survivors behave without extended interference. Then, when you're comfortable with the activity system, you can enable advanced priority settings to fit the needs and experience of your team.

Avoid Advancing Time Too Quickly, Or You Will Escalate Problems

Like other life simulation games, Stranded allows you to manipulate time to suit your gameplay needs. There are four settings: pause, play, fast-forward level 1, and fast-forward level 2. You'll likely find yourself often fast-forwarding, especially while waiting on rudimentary tasks.

Still, advancing time too much presents risks. For instance, if you fast-forward while your colony experiences a food shortage, you'll lose opportunities to fix the problem. Then your colonists will perish from starvation. Advancing time can also worsen illnesses and wounds without giving your medic a chance to treat them.

In short, it's crucial to use time advancement strategically. If your survivors are sleeping or out of harm's way, you won't have much to lose by advancing time. However, reset the time to average speed if a survivor or the colony faces a crisis. Lastly, the pause feature provides planning time during tense situations.

Next: Stranded: Alien Dawn - Trading Outpost Scenario Guide