Abiotic Factor: Challenge Runs

• Sandbox setting “Day Night Cycle” to be set to “Always Night”

• 1 Makeshift Battery, fully charged. These can be recharged at a GATE Recharge Station regardless of time.

This challenge can be done with the sandbox setting “Power sockets off at night” ticked or unticked. Just note that if you do attempt this challenge without power sockets being on at night, you’ll have to either have this option on anyway until you can get a makeshift battery or you’ll have to get a battery on one world, drop all of your other items, then start another world, leave it, and copy/paste your player data from the battery-having world over to the night-only world, so you’ll start with the battery.

• No hacking

• To get to Manufacturing, you’ll need to use Platform Carts. These apparently also work with any door that’s even slightly ajar, vertically at least. The carts can be recalled by pressing the button by Warren in the lobby.
• You’ll probably need to build bridges across various locations.
• (Uncertain) You may want to skip Security and instead jump directly to the Hydrostation. Ingredients for the Jetpack should be acquirable here which will help immensely with travelling. It’s possible to go up as far as the battery will let you, so long as you keep an eye on the heat and don’t just go full throttle upwards.
• If you can angle Bridges correctly against a wall, the supports should be able to attach to the wall, allowing a longer, easier mad bridge construction without needing to use shelves.

I would recommend checking out the source (discussion) as there’s a lot of helpful tips, especially seeing as you’ll likely get stuck in a lot of places. Otherwise, get creative!

You also will likely see very, very little of Anteverses/Portal worlds. So try not to waste too many resources. You might want to get the “Castle Doctrine” bonus (Construction 15) if you even can. If you run out packageables, you can always get Construction XP by assembling something with a screwdriver. The bonus will help you use less resources when building mad bridges.

For reference, the limit as to how far you can progress appears to be the Spillgate in the Hydroplant sector, where you can’t open it. Still kind of the end of the game for now, as the kill zone might be removed when the devs finish Reactors and don’t have anything to hide anymore. If not, you might need to go out of bounds. Definitely possible with the right loading zones and a Jetpack. Might need to bring several Jetpacks though as the journey over the abyss may be very long.

• No object in the facility receives damage, by your hands at least. Enemies shouldn’t pick fights with undisturbed equipment so, if you want to, stop any creatures from taking their anger out on nearby objects when they can’t reach you.
• Meat/Resources from aliens are fine.
• Anteverse resources may be fine, unless you want to attempt some extreme version of this challenge run, it should be fine as your destruction will revert in the near future.
• You shall not damage, destroy, or harvest security bots. Unless you don’t want to also attempt the No Hacking challenge run along with this one, and rule it as self defense or something. Crusader mentions fines, charges and costs, so maybe you start with a predetermined “balance” which is spent when you damage GATE resources. Or maybe just take the 3 CPUs free.
• Animar mentions some way to reduce debt, e.g. janitorial work, spawnproofing, and clearing radiation.

• Janitorial work: +1
• Spawnproofing: +1 (Maybe per enemy that is prevented from spawning.)
• Radiation clearing: +5
• Damaging property: -15
• Destroying property: -40
• Damaging a security bot: -20 (Arguable whether or not Self Defense counts here)
• Destroying a security bot: -40 (Read note above)

Note that this Points system might defeat the point of the run if you get too many, so this list above is very harsh. Don’t obviously pick fights with the Security Bots.

A very pick-what-you-want challenge run.
I would recommend either going with the replenishable debt or harvesting only 3 CPUs for progression.
I would also recommend considering the Portal Worlds free to harvest. Crusader did theorize adding a fine to pay every time you do this, so add that if you will.

If you go with the debt/balance bit, might want to get some way of determining your current balance, whether some toolbox with metal scraps on the left/right according to your balance or your debt, or have a text document open on the side. It’s currently undetermined how much these things should cost, so you might want to go for a Points system rather than Money.