The best Oxygen Not Included tips for beginners come down to pacing: keep your first three Duplicants alive before you print more, build an Outhouse first, get a Microbe Musher and a Manual Generator running before your rations run out, and treat oxygen as a numbers problem. One Duplicant breathes 100 g of oxygen a second, so an Oxygen Diffuser (500 g/s) covers about five and an Electrolyzer (888 g/s) almost nine. Every figure below comes from Klei’s Steam patch notes or the Oxygen Not Included Wiki, checked on November 3, 2026 against the latest update (build 744825, July 28, 2026).
Table of Contents
Quick answer: Oxygen Not Included tips for beginners
- Settings: the wiki recommends No Sweat mode on the Terra asteroid for a first colony. It eases disease, morale, hunger and stress only.
- Golden rule: don’t expand too fast. That includes new Duplicants: the Printing Pod offers one every 3 cycles, and you can reject all.
- First builds: Outhouse, Cots, then a Microbe Musher, Manual Generator and Battery for Mush Bars, then a Research Station.
- Oxygen: 100 g/s per Duplicant. A Diffuser (500 g/s) is the early fix; Electrolyzers (888 g/s from 1 kg/s of water) are the long-term one.
- Food: 1,000 kcal per Duplicant per cycle on default settings. Plan 5 planted Mealwood per Duplicant.
- Research first: Basic Farming, then Power Regulation, then Meal Preparation.
- Stress kills colonies: at 100% stress a Duplicant stops working until it falls to 60%. Rooms, food and downtime raise morale.
Oxygen Not Included is Klei Entertainment’s space-colony sim. It’s $24.99 on Steam (Windows, Mac and Linux, released July 30, 2019). The newest DLC, The Aquatic Planet Pack ($9.99), came out on June 11, 2026. These tips are for the base game.
A built-up colony stacks its rooms along ladders. Every machine here has a fixed power, oxygen or food rate to plan around. Image: Klei Entertainment
Best way to start Oxygen Not Included: game mode and settings
Both modes are presets you can still adjust on the next screen. The Game Settings page lists what No Sweat changes:
| Setting | Survival (default) | No Sweat |
|---|---|---|
| Disease | Default | Germ Resistant (lower chance of getting sick) |
| Morale | Default | Chill (lower morale needed to avoid stress) |
| Hunger | Default: 1,000 kcal per Duplicant per cycle | Fasting: 500 kcal per cycle |
| Stress | Default | Chipper |
| Oxygen, heat, building ratios, world generation | Normal | Unchanged |
Most wiki numbers assume Survival defaults. Our advice: play your first colony on No Sweat with Terra, and switch to Survival on the second.
Duplicant needs in numbers
Every system you build has to cover these per-Duplicant numbers, from the wiki’s Duplicant page:
| Need | Base value | Traits that change it |
|---|---|---|
| Oxygen | 100 g/s (60 kg per cycle) | Diver’s Lungs -25 g/s, Deep Diver’s Lungs -50 g/s, Mouthbreather +100 g/s |
| Carbon dioxide exhaled | 2 g/s (1.2 kg per cycle) | Scales with the same traits |
| Calories | 1,000 kcal per cycle | Bottomless Stomach +500 kcal |
| Bladder | Fills once per cycle | Small Bladder fills it faster |
Our advice: when the Printing Pod offers a Duplicant, check for Mouthbreather and Bottomless Stomach first. One Mouthbreather breathes as much as two normal Duplicants.
Your first cycles: a beginner build order
You start with three Duplicants, the Printing Pod and a Ration Box, in a pocket of breathable air. The wiki’s Getting Started guide says oxygen isn’t the first worry. Starter air plus the pockets you dig into last a while, and food runs short first. This is the order it suggests, with the costs from each building’s page:
- Outhouse. No pipes needed. It uses 13 kg of Dirt per use and leaves 19.7 kg of Polluted Dirt, so a Duplicant has to empty it. If it stays full too long it spawns a Morb. Without a toilet, Duplicants make a mess on the floor (Polluted Water), and stepping in it stresses them.
- Cots. Sleeping on the floor causes the Sore Back debuff. Leave gaps for decor items later.
- Microbe Musher + Manual Generator + Battery. A Mush Bar costs 75 kg of Dirt and 75 kg of Water and gives 800 kcal. It’s the game’s last-resort food: quality -1, and every bar carries 1,000 Food Poisoning germs.
- Wash Basin at the entrance to the food area or next to the Outhouse. Each use takes 5 kg of water and removes 120,000 germs from a Duplicant.
- Research Station (60 W). It uses 50 kg of Dirt per research point and needs a Duplicant to run it.
- Two Storage Bins, each set to the materials you want stored. Messy surroundings add stress.
- Oxygen Diffuser once the air starts to thin (next section).
Avoid digging into polluted water, poisonous gas or vacuum pockets early: every tile you open spreads the same oxygen over more space.
Oxygen setup for beginners: which machine to build
Oxygen output divided by 100 g/s tells you how many Duplicants a machine supports. The three early options, from their wiki pages (Diffuser, Terrarium, Electrolyzer):
| Machine | Power | Input | Oxygen output | Duplicants supported | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oxygen Diffuser | 120 W | 550 g/s Algae | 500 g/s at 30 °C+ | 5 | Burns through Algae, which doesn’t renew. Stops when its tiles hold more than 1.8 kg of gas. |
| Algae Terrarium (Basic Farming) | None | 30 g/s Algae + 300 g/s Water | 40 g/s (44 g/s in light) | 0.4 | Makes 290 g/s Polluted Water that must be emptied by hand. Also absorbs 333 mg/s of CO2. |
| Electrolyzer (Air Systems) | 120 W | 1,000 g/s Water by pipe | 888 g/s at 70 °C+, plus 112 g/s Hydrogen | About 8.9 | Needs a pump and pipes. Its gases come out hot, and the hydrogen has to go somewhere. |
The wiki works out the Electrolyzer’s water cost at 112.5 g/s, or 67.5 kg per cycle, per Duplicant. The Getting Started guide uses Terrariums to clear the CO2 from digging, then removes them because they keep using water.
Carbon dioxide sinks. It’s heavier than most gases and pools at the lowest point when lighter gases are around. Our advice: dig a small pit or dead-end corridor below your living area so the CO2 collects where nobody works.
The long-term goal is an Electrolyzer room that feeds its hydrogen to a Hydrogen Generator, which the wiki calls a self-powering oxygen machine (SPOM).
Pockets of unbreathable gas surround the starting biome. Seal them off early instead of digging into them. Image: Klei Entertainment
Power tips: generators, batteries and wires
Ratings from the wiki’s generator, battery and wire pages:
| Building | Output or capacity | What it needs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manual Generator | 400 W | A Duplicant running on it | First generator. Trains Athletics but takes a worker off other jobs. |
| Coal Generator (Internal Combustion) | 600 W | 1 kg/s Coal (600 kg per cycle) | Gives off 20 g/s CO2 at 110 °C and a lot of heat. Holds 600 kg of coal. |
| Hydrogen Generator (Advanced Power Regulation) | 800 W | 100 g/s Hydrogen | The most heat-efficient continuous generator. Other gases damage it, so filter its input. |
| Battery | 10 kJ | – | Loses 1 kJ per cycle. Jumbo Battery holds 4x as much. |
| Smart Battery | 20 kJ | Refined Metal | Loses 0.4 kJ per cycle and sends an automation signal at a charge level you set. |
| Wire | 1 kW max | 25 kg Metal Ore | Overloads and takes damage above 1,000 W. Decor -5 unless run through tiles. |
| Conductive Wire | 2 kW max | Refined Metal | No decor penalty. |
- Use the battery threshold slider on the Manual Generator. Lower means fewer trips but risks empty batteries at bedtime.
- Count the watts on each wire. Our advice: keep each plain-wire circuit under 1,000 W and use Conductive or Heavi-Watt Wire for trunk lines.
Food tips: from Mush Bars to farms
Each Duplicant needs 1,000 kcal a cycle on default settings, so a colony of 3 eats 3,000 kcal a cycle. Wild Muckroot and Meal Lice help at first but aren’t sustainable. Calories from the Microbe Musher recipes and the plant pages:
| Food | kcal | Quality (Musher/grill list) | Made from | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mush Bar | 800 | -1 | 75 kg Dirt + 75 kg Water | Microbe Musher |
| Meal Lice | 600 | – | Mealwood harvest (1 per 3 cycles) | Planter Box or Farm Tile |
| Liceloaf | 1,700 | 0 | 1,200 kcal of Meal Lice + 50 kg Water | Microbe Musher |
| Pickled Meal | 1,800 | – | 3 Meal Lice | Electric Grill |
| Bristle Berry | 1,600 | – | Bristle Blossom harvest (1 per 6 cycles) | Planter Box or Farm Tile |
| Gristle Berry | 2,000 | +1 | 1,600 kcal of Bristle Berry | Electric Grill |
That works out to 5 planted Mealwood per Duplicant on raw Meal Lice, or 3.75 Bristle Blossoms on raw berries (3 if you grill them). Per the Mealwood page, a crop left unharvested sits for a cycle and then drops and starts to rot. Our advice: plant 1 or 2 extra per Duplicant.
- Keep farms away from hot machines. Generator and grill heat can kill crops.
- Food rots unless it’s below -18 °C and in a sterile atmosphere. Carbon dioxide counts as sterile.
Research tips: what to research first
The Getting Started guide’s order is Basic Farming (Planter Box, Algae Terrarium), then Power Regulation, then Meal Preparation (Farm Tiles, Electric Grill). Oxygen research can wait, because a new colony runs short of food before air.
- Put your highest-Science Duplicant on the Research Station.
- Build the station next to the Printing Pod. The pod gives +30 decor in a 6-tile radius and lights a 5-tile range, so the station gets a lit-workspace bonus.
- The March 2026 update added a Research button to the Printing Pod’s side screen, per Klei’s patch notes.
Stress and morale: keep Duplicants from breaking
Stress is what kills most colonies, per the Getting Started guide. At 100% stress a Duplicant stops taking orders and has a stress response, such as vomiting Polluted Water, until stress drops to 60%. Common causes, per the Stress page:
| Cause | Stress per cycle | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Full bladder / making a mess | 30% / 50% | Enough toilets close to work areas |
| Low oxygen (under 500 g of oxygen per tile) | 10% | More oxygen output, smaller base |
| Popped eardrums (gas above 4 kg per tile) | 20% | Don’t overpressurise rooms |
| Soggy feet / sopping wet | 10% / 20% | Keep walkways dry |
| Morale below expectations | Up to 50%, varies | Rooms, food quality, decor, downtime |
Morale is the counterweight. Every learned skill raises a Duplicant’s morale need by the skill’s tier, and by 1 less when it matches one of the Duplicant’s interests. If morale is 2 or more points above the need, stress falls 20% a cycle. Each point below the need adds 2.5% a cycle, up to 25%. The easy early morale sources, from the Morale page:
| Source | Morale | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Mess Hall | +3 | A Mess Table in a 12-64 tile room |
| Great Hall | +4 | 32-120 tiles, a 20+ decor item and a recreation building (a Water Cooler works) |
| Latrine / Washroom | +1 / +2 | Toilet + wash station, 12-64 tiles; Washroom needs flush toilets and plumbed sinks |
| Barracks | +1 | Beds in a 12-64 tile room |
| Downtime | 0 to +5 | Each extra downtime block in the schedule adds 1 |
| Standard / Good meal | +4 / +8 | Food quality 2 / 3 (Mush Bars give -1) |
Our advice: hold off on skill points until a Mess Hall, Latrine and Barracks are up.
Recreation buildings, rooms and downtime raise morale, which keeps stress from building up. Image: Klei Entertainment
Base layout tips for your first colony
- Keep industrial machinery out of rooms. Every morale room above fails if a generator or similar machine sits inside it, and a room that meets two room types at once gives no bonus.
- Build Barracks 4 tiles high. Luxury Barracks (+2) and Private Bedrooms (+3) need a 4-tile ceiling, so you can upgrade to Comfy Beds later without rebuilding.
- Our advice: stack services vertically along a central ladder. Beds, toilets and the Mess Hall stay close, so less of each cycle goes on walking.
- Keep storage in its own room: Polluted Dirt in bins gives off gas, and bins have negative decor.
- Seal the edge of the starting biome. The biomes around your start are hotter and full of bad gas and germs. Seal them with Insulated Tiles and airlocks, and don’t dig through Abyssalite veins until you’re ready.
For other colony and factory games, see our Satisfactory tips for beginners, the RimWorld dev mode guide, the Frostpunk 2 factions tier list and the Manor Lords beginner’s guide.
What’s new in Oxygen Not Included in 2026
- March 2026 Bug Fix Update (live April 1): Unity 6.3, batteries that stop working when entombed, and domesticated plants that no longer use fertilizer while wilted (patch notes).
- The Aquatic Planet Pack (June 11, $9.99): Duplicants can swim for the first time, plus a new starting world (Marinea), new Duplicants Kai and Minnow, and Beach, Reef, Kelp Forest and Abyss biomes. It doesn’t need Spaced Out! (announcement).
- Build 744825 (July 28) is the latest hotfix.
FAQ
Is Oxygen Not Included hard for beginners?
It’s demanding because everything has a rate: oxygen, calories, power and heat. No Sweat makes Duplicants tougher but leaves those systems alone.
How many Duplicants should I have early on?
Keep the starting three until food and oxygen keep up on their own. The Printing Pod makes an offer every 3 cycles, and you can reject all of them. Each new Duplicant needs another 100 g/s of oxygen and 1,000 kcal a cycle.
Do I need the Spaced Out! DLC?
No. The base game plays without any DLC, and Klei says The Aquatic Planet Pack doesn’t require Spaced Out! either.
Sources: Klei Entertainment’s Steam patch notes and announcements (March 2026 Bug Fix Update, The Aquatic Planet Pack launch, build 744825) and Steam store pages; Oxygen Not Included Wiki (oxygennotincluded.wiki.gg) building, Duplicant, food, room, stress and morale pages plus Guide/Getting Started, read November 3, 2026.
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Featured image: AI-generated illustration
