Abiotic Factor Guide | Beginner Tips and Tricks

Our Abiotic Factor guide will teach you the basics of the game, explain the HUD, and help you create your first character!

Abiotic Factor HUD Explanation

1. Current Objective: Your main objective for advancing the main story is always listed on the top left. You can learn more details about your specific objective by going to your Journal and selecting the sector where your objective is located.
2. Skill Gain: Any XP gain for your skills will pop up on the top left.
3. Objective Marker: A dot pointing toward your next objective will always be on the screen. Highlighting this dot with your cursor will show a tooltip explaining the objective in a little more detail.
4. Journal Indicator: If you’ve recently learned some new lore through conversations, e-mails, etc., the journal icon will flash yellow on the top right.
5. Buffs and Debuffs: All active buffs and debuffs will be shown on the left side of the screen. Green circles are buffs, and debuffs are colored yellow, orange, and red in increasing severity.
6. Player Status: The bottom left of the screen is dedicated to player status. This shows, from left to right:
   • Health: The vertical bar with the heart above it shows your current health, along with an arrow indicator showing whether it is regenerating or going down due to a debuff such as bleeding.
   • Damage: The person icon shows which areas of your body, in particular, are damaged. Pressing the indicated shortcut button next to this (X on PC) takes you to the “My Health” menu which shows health status, buffs, and debuffs in more detail.
   • Temperature: The thermometer shows your current temperature and whether it is rising or lowering. Being too hot or too cold can have deleterious health effects on your character.
7. Inventory and Social Icons: The bottom left of the screen also has three shortcuts for inventory and social actions. They are:
   • Inventory: Pressing the listed hotkey (Tab on PC) opens up your backpack and lets you see your inventory.
   • Wristwatch: Pressing the listed hotkey (T on PC) brings up your watch.
   • Emotes: Pressing the listed hotkey (B on PC) brings up your emote menu. This menu also has a shortcut for Your Pager which is used to broadcast your location to other players in multiplayer.
8. Hotbar: The 8–10 items you can store on your hotbar (depending on chosen Traits at character creation). Items stored on the hotbar are not just easier to access — they also weigh less than they would in your backpack.
9. Flashlight Battery: This shows the battery left in any equipped lights (such as the Makeshift Headlamp) as well as any Flashlights on your hotbar.
10. Stamina Meter: This shows how much stamina you have. If the bar dips below the vertical bar on the left, you will be unable to perform certain actions such as blocking with your shield.
11. Ammo: Ammo for your weapon, if applicable, will be shown on the bottom right.
12. Control Shortcuts: Other shortcuts for your controls are shown on the right depending on what you’re carrying in your hands.

Abiotic Factor Guide | Starter Guide for New Players

Now that we’ve explained the HUD, it’s time to get our Abiotic Factor Starter Guide moving. We’ll help you figure out how to create your character and tell you which Traits are worth picking; when you’re done, you can move on to our walkthrough for the game!

Creating Your Character

If you’re brand-new to Abiotic Factor, your first step will be to customize your character’s appearance. This is done via the “Customization” button on the title screen before you even jump into the game. After that, you’ll need to create or join a game, select your Job, and pick out your Traits. (More on that later!)

Don’t worry too much about getting your character’s appearance perfect — you can change it at any time for no cost on the title screen. Odds are you won’t be able to see much of your character’s customization anyway; eventually, you’ll get pieces of armor that will cover up your clothing items.

Entering the Facility

When you’re done getting your look just right, it’s time to jump into the game. You can play the Introduction for a quick tutorial on game mechanics; after that, you’ll want to Enter the Facility.
 
You have three options here: Load Game, Start New Game, or Join a Server. Games of Abiotic Factor can either be single-player or multiplayer; you can decide how to handle this by checking the “Singleplayer only” box on the menu.

It’s important to note that you can only pause the game in single-player; multiplayer games cannot be paused. If you’re going to be playing by yourself, it’s best to select the single-player option.

Choosing Your Job

The very first thing you’ll do in a new game of Abiotic Factor is select your Job. A Job is the equivalent of a Character Class. You can’t change your Job after you pick it, so you’ll want to be sure that you’re making the best choice.

Every Job is essentially broken down into seven components:

• Starting Points: The number of starting points you get to spend on Traits.
• Skill Bonus: Some Jobs get a jump start on their Skills with one or more bonus starting Skill Levels.
• XP Bonus: This is a bonus to a Job’s experience gain for particular Skills.
• Crafting Bonus: A handful of Jobs get a Skill XP bonus when crafting certain items.
• Suggested Roles: This is a suggestion for the ideal playstyle of a Job based on the Skill Bonuses it gets.
• Starting Items: These are the starting pieces of equipment a Job gets, if any.
• Forced Traits: Rarely, certain Jobs have Traits that cannot be deselected.

Most of these benefits of a Job simply speed up gaining Skills or give you a few pieces of equipment that will likely be replaced in the first few hours. In my opinion, they’re not all that important for these reasons.

What is important, however, are the Starting Points that give you options for picking your Traits. Traits are permanent bonuses or penalties that stay with your character forever and can’t be changed through normal gameplay. This is the most important part of character creation.

With that said, I believe your best bet is to pick the “Summer Intern” Job as it will maximize your Starting Points for spending on Traits.

Selecting Your Traits

Once you’ve chosen your job, your next step is to select your Traits. As I just established, Traits are permanent bonuses or penalties that stay with your character forever. You can’t change these later or affect them in any other way through normal gameplay, so picking the right Traits can make things a lot easier.

Traits are split into “Positive Traits” which reduce your Available Points and “Negative Traits” which increase your Available Points. The idea here is to maximize benefits while minimizing downsides.

Here are the Traits I believe you should pick; I’ll explain these choices shortly.

• Positive Traits:
  • Wrinkly Brainmeat: Gain 20% more XP than normal
  • Fanny Pack: +2 extra Hotbar slots
• Negative Traits:
  • Dry Skin: Get thirsty 20% faster.

“Wrinkly Brainmeat” gives you a +20% bonus to Skill XP gain across the board; this is a much greater benefit than the +50% bonus to a single skill provided by some jobs.

The two extra Hotbar slots from “Fanny Pack” can’t be replicated with any extra piece of equipment; this gives you a little more flexibility in having items ready to access on the go. Hotbar slots also count as inventory slots, so this is a permanent +2 slots to your inventory space, too.

As for the sole Negative Trait, “Dry Skin” sounds terrible, but it’s pretty easy to set up renewable water production in the first hour or two of the game. You won’t really run the risk of running out of clean water.

This build will leave you with 1 Available Point left over. Unfortunately, there are no Positive Traits that you can select for just 1 point, so we’ll have to move on.

Most of the Traits boil down to problems that can be solved with time or by finding the right equipment in-game. The two Positive Traits I selected are pure bonuses that you can only get through Traits; that’s why they’re so important.

Confirming Your Choices

Now that you’ve picked your Job and Trait choices, it’s time to get started. Click “Finish” and you’ll have one last chance to go back and change something.

When you’re certain you’re ready, click “Finish” and you’ll enter the GATE Facility to start your adventure.

The GATE Facility and Portal Worlds, Explained

Here’s a quick explainer on the GATE Facility: this massive underground complex is split into several Sectors, each of which serves a specific purpose in the GATE organization’s research into portals and other strange technology.

Progressing to new Sectors is a key part of Abiotic Factor. Each subsequent Sector gets more dangerous, and it typically introduces new enemies, new crafting materials, new environmental hazards, and tougher enemies to fight.

In addition to the Sectors, there are over a dozen Portal Worlds to visit. Portal Worlds are usually accessed from one of the Sectors. While furniture and other loot don’t respawn in the GATE Facility itself by default, the contents of Portal Worlds will completely respawn twice a week as long as the spawn points for items aren’t blocked. This makes them a good source of renewable crafting materials and other items.

That’s the basics of Abiotic Factor explained. If you feel you’re ready, it’s time to move on to our walkthrough, starting with the very first sector: the Office Sector!

What Happens When You Die in Abiotic Factor?

If you die in Abiotic Factor, you will drop everything in your backpack and keep all of your equipped items and everything on your hotbar on default settings. All equipped items and hotbar items will lose 10% of their durability, and this can break items that have very low durability.

Please note that death penalties can vary depending on any custom sandbox settings the server may have made.

How Do You Retrieve a Lost Death Bag in Abiotic Factor?

You can retrieve a lost death bag in Abiotic Factor by exiting the game or rebooting the server. When you reenter the world, all loose death bags will appear in the center of the Office Sector lobby.

Where is the Abiotic Factor Save File?

The Abiotic Factor save file is located in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\AbioticFactor\Saved\SaveGames

Where “USERNAME” is your Windows username.

Is Abiotic Factor Multiplayer?

Yes, Abiotic Factor supports online multiplayer.

Thanks for reading our Abiotic Factor Guide. We have extensive guides covering all aspects of this game, so go ahead and give them a read below!