Hi there! I recently started Twitch streaming with your mod. Wanted to see how viable (and cool) would be a no-resource run. Already got 4 streams in! The mechanics are solid and very interesting and trying to balance ore output and byproducts is very cool!

However I've been hitting road blocks due to biter faction support and early game being way too grindy. Have tried with Deathworld and Rampant separately so far. After experimenting with it during and after the first stream I realized I should set richness multiplier at 4 instead of 1 or 2 to reduce the grind a bit.

Deathworld was fine, but the new Toxic biters mod from Mferrai don't give any blood.

With Rampant 2, the first tier (Larva biters and spawners and worms) don't give any blood either. Didn't test with later tiers.

Could you possibly automate this by detecting any biter mod and enabling it to give blood? Maybe based on HP? (Since rampant larva tier is very low HP) This could scale with evo but not sure how medium or big crystals would be handled.

Also, another suggestion would be to make an official modpack with recommended mods with startup settings and recipes tweaked to help with the grind? (A' la Biomass modpack)

Hi there, check if this mod by eliont works for the Rampant biters that you mentioned: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RichBloodCompatFix

As far as early game grind, I did a no resource playthrough. It was definitely slower start than a normal game but it felt really rewarding to first research machine gun, then turrets, then figure out a way to automate crystal collection in the early game.

I took a peek at your videos, and I can see why it could feel very grindy. There's definitely a more efficient way to collect crystals :-)

I added a FAQ here with some pointers how I do early game without resources.

Ah thank you so much for the pointers! Will give it a try in a test save before my next stream. Cheers!